Seoul Resources

While preparing for my trip, I came to rely on several resources but my main resource was the Lonely Planet: Seoul City Guide book. I also got Lonely Planet: Korea if you recall which is a guide for the entire country but I rarely referred to it at all as I planned to only stay in Seoul. The Seoul City Guide book breaks the city down into smaller areas or neighbourhoods and I paralleled my itinerary in the same fashion by breaking Seoul down into smaller areas and grouped close sights and attractions together. In the end, I divided the sights into the following areas:

1. Gwanghwamun – North
2. Gwanghwamun – South
3. Insadong
4. Myeong-Dong, Namsan, Itaewon
5. Hongdae, Sinchon, Yeouido
6. Gangnam, Jamsil (East and West)
7. Greater Seoul
8. Walking Tours
9. Outside Seoul

Some areas had more attractions than others. For instance, I had 6 places to visit in Gwanghwamun North vs. 3 places in Insadong. I had 21 days in Seoul so if I didn’t end up visiting all the sights in one visit, going back on another day was not an issue.

In addition to looking up individual sights and attractions on the net, an online resource I relied on was becoming a fan of Seoul on Facebook. The city of Seoul has a Facebook page run by city employees and several times a day they post information on various things you can see and do. They range from major attractions to lesser known areas or hangouts or restaurants. For instance, I watch a show called We Got Married on MBC and in one episode the YongSeo couple met for a traditional bento box lunch at a restaurant. When I saw the show, I always thought it would be neat to visit that place but I had no clue what the restaurant’s name was or where it was located and then I forgot about it. One day while doing my daily visit to the Seoul page on Facebook, I saw that they posted all the details about the restaurant on their wall. They are also very helpful and responsive. I had a couple of questions about some attractions that I wanted to visit and posted them to their wall and they were quick to respond back.

There are 2 other resources that really helped me while I was in Seoul and they are 2 Android Smartphone apps that do not require a data connection (therefore no roaming data charges).

1. Metroid (New Version / Old Version)
2. Locus (there's a free version with ads and a paid version without)

Metroid is a great Seoul Subway app that had a map of the entire Seoul Subway system. It also allowed you to enter a starting Station and ending Station and it would provide directions on how to get there (i.e. what lines to take, where you need to transfer, etc.).

Locus is essential Google Maps but offline. Locus allows you to pre-download maps of an area and zoom levels of your choosing and store the map tiles for future use thereby giving you full map functionality without the need for a data connection. It is not limited to only Google Maps as you can choose to download maps from other providers also. After installing this app, I chose to download the Greater Seoul area (more than I what I needed just to be safe) and at all levels of zoom. After downloading all the map tiles, I was surprised to find it only took up about 250MBs of space on my SD Card. Like Google Maps, the app has GPS and Compass functionality (provided your phone supports it). I used this app all the time when I was in Seoul to find my way around and to get a sense of what direction I needed to walk when I wasn’t certain.