Carry your ARC and install three apps: Korea basics for new teachers

Your ARC isn't a nice-to-have. Foreigners staying in Korea must always carry their passport, seaman's identification, foreign entry permit, ARC, or landing permit. Skip it and you're technically in violation. Failing to carry your ARC can result in a fine of up to 1,000,000 won under Article 98 of the Immigration Act. In practice we've rarely heard of teachers getting stopped and fined for this alone, but if police do ask and you have nothing (no card, no photo of it on your phone), the conversation gets longer than it needs to. Carry it, or at minimum keep clear photos of both sides saved offline.

The three apps that matter

• Kakao Map, not Google Maps. Google's Korea coverage is thin on pedestrian routing and subway exits; Kakao Map is built on Korean address and transit data and simply knows the country better. It defaults to Korean, but you can paste an address and it'll route you.
• Papago for translation. It's built by Naver specifically for Korean, and it handles sentence structure and honorifics better than general-purpose translators in our experience, useful for a student's note or a landlord text about a broken heater.
• Coupang for delivery. Korea's dominant online retailer, with fast next-day and same-day delivery on everyday goods. You'll need a Korean phone number and a local card to set it up. Coupang Eats handles restaurant delivery separately and has an English toggle.

Cards, cash, and taxis

Plenty of small restaurants and shops still don't take foreign-issued cards smoothly, even when the terminal looks like it should. A Korean debit card, opened once your ARC comes through, solves most of this. If you're pulling cash from an ATM on a foreign card, expect two separate charges: your home bank's foreign transaction fee, and whatever the ATM operator itself charges, and those numbers vary by bank, so check your card's fee schedule before you rely on it.

Taxis are simpler than they used to be. Seoul's standard taxi base fare is 4,800 won for the first 1.6km, rising to 5,800 or 6,700 won late at night depending on the hour, and this fare structure has been in place since February 2023. Kakao T links to your registered Korean card and sends your destination to the driver automatically, no card-reader fumbling required.

Getting sick isn't like home

You can't call a GP for a refill. You go in, wait, see a doctor for a few minutes, and walk a paper prescription next door to a pharmacy. What it costs depends on the clinic tier: at a small clinic your standard co-payment share is around 30%, rising to 40% at a hospital, 50% at a general hospital, and 60% at a tertiary hospital. If you're enrolled in national health insurance through your hagwon (most E-2 teachers are), you pay that share directly at the counter, not the full bill up front.

None of this is complicated once you've done it once. The annoying part is that nobody hands you this list on day one; you just find out the hard way, usually in the first month.