Delivery apps, cash and the pharmacy: daily life once you live in Korea
Korean daily life runs on apps and systems that look simple until you need them at 9pm on a Tuesday. Here's what foreign teachers figure out the hard way, and the sequence that saves you the trouble.
Park English2026-08-254 min read
We've placed enough teachers to know that the first month is when the small stuff becomes large. You sorted the visa. You opened the bank account. Then you get a cold on a Wednesday night and realize you have no idea which green cross on the map is a real pharmacy, or whether the clinic down the street takes foreign cards.
This is the next layer down.
Delivery apps: Coupang, Baemin, and actual grocery shopping
Coupang is Amazon if Amazon delivered toilet paper in four hours. Sign up with your phone number, add your debit card, and turn on the English interface if your Korean is still thin. Coupang Eats handles restaurant delivery; the separate Coupang app does everything else.
Baemin (배달의민족) is the other delivery giant, mostly Korean-interface, and it covers restaurants Coupang Eats doesn't. Most teachers install both and check which has a better deal that night.
For groceries, Homeplus, E-Mart, and Lotte Mart all deliver through their apps or sites. Free-delivery thresholds exist but they move around depending on the delivery type you pick (same-day, next-day, dawn delivery) and which store you're linked to. One E-Mart page we checked put its one-day delivery threshold at a flat amount that had nothing to do with what a forum thread claimed for standard delivery. Don't trust a number a friend tells you here; check the threshold in your own app before you check out.
One thing nobody mentions: your address in the app needs to match the format on your Alien Registration Card. If it doesn't, drivers will call you, confused, and you'll spend five minutes describing your building in broken Korean.
The cash card vs. the check card
Korean banks hand you a "cash card" when you open the account. It only works at ATMs. To pay for things in stores or online, you need a "check card": a debit card, just called something else. You have to request it specifically, and some teachers spend two weeks mystified that their card gets declined at Paris Baguette. Ask for the check card on day one.
Hospitals, clinics, and the building with the green cross
Once you're enrolled in National Health Insurance, what you pay out of pocket for outpatient care depends on the size of the place you walk into, not a flat fee:
| Facility type | Your share of the bill |
|---|---|
| Local clinic (의원) | around 30% |
| Hospital (병원) | around 40% |
| General hospital / tertiary hospital | around 50% / around 60% |
The system charges patients a smaller share at clinics precisely to steer routine care away from big hospitals, with the split running roughly 30% at clinics, 40% at hospitals, 50% at general hospitals, and 60% at tertiary hospitals. Outside city districts (the rural eup and myeon areas), hospitals and general hospitals charge a little less, 35% and 45%, and at a tertiary hospital you also pay the consultation fee itself in full. That's the coinsurance rate, not the final won amount; the actual bill depends on what's being treated, so don't expect a fixed number.
Pharmacies display a green cross and are everywhere. You don't need a prescription for most common drugs. Walk in, describe the problem, take what they hand you. You won't always know what you've been sold. Ask for the English label or photograph the box if you want the actual drug name later.
Naver Map, not Google, is what you use to find clinics. Search "병원" or "의원." Small clinics don't take appointments. Walk in, take a number, wait. If you get seriously sick, call your recruiter. We've walked teachers through late-night hospital visits enough times to know "call someone who speaks Korean" is correct advice, not a cop-out.
Phone plans
Prices here move by carrier, by data allowance, and by whatever promotion is running that month, so we won't quote you a number that'll be wrong in six weeks. Check SKT, KT, and LG U+'s own sites directly, and compare the foreigner-specific plans against a regular postpaid plan once your ARC is in hand; the foreigner plans aren't always the cheaper option.
Where foreign teachers actually gather
Every mid-sized city has a bar or two where teachers end up on Friday. Seoul still has Itaewon and Hongdae as anchors. Busan clusters near Seomyeon and Gwangalli. You'll find them the way everyone does: someone mentions a place, or a Facebook group posts a meetup. There's no directory, and the map shifts whenever a bar closes.
Two last things
Korean addresses are hard: a road name, a district, a number that means something to postal workers and nothing to you. Keep a screenshot of yours in Korean on your phone.
And learn "감사합니다" on your way out of a shop or clinic. You don't have to. It smooths things anyway.