About

Korea Field Guide is written by Gape, a Korean local who wants first-time visitors to skip the confusing parts of a Korea trip: which transit card to buy, which apps actually work with a foreign card, how the tax refund works, and what changed since the last blog post you read.

How we research

Rules for transit, payments, tax refunds and entry to Korea change often, and the changes are usually announced in Korean first — by Seoul Metro, KORAIL, the National Tax Service, the Ministry of Justice and the apps themselves.

Every guide on this site:

• is based on official Korean sources, which are linked at the end of each article;
• shows the date the facts were last checked against those sources;
• is updated when the underlying rules change, with the update date shown at the top.

We use AI tools to help monitor Korean announcements and draft articles. A human reviews and fact-checks every article before it is published.

Corrections

Found something outdated or wrong? Please let us know — we fix errors quickly and note the update in the article.