Save my Seoul (Trip)!

December 12, 2008 8:20 PM

Good street maps of Seoul, South Korea? That I can buy in Boston?

I will be traveling to Korea some time next week. I'm curious if someone knows of a good source for street maps of Seoul somewhere in the Boston area. I'm looking for something that has both English and Korea names, at least for the major administrative divisions. I've tried the travel bookstore in Harvard Square and they don't really have anything.

If it helps, I'm going to be staying around here.

posted by larsks to travel & transportation around Seoul, South Korea (10 answers total)

I'd try the Globe Corner map store in Cambridge.
posted by zippy at 8:29 PM on December 12, 2008

uh, unless that's the travel store you already tried. Sorry.
posted by zippy at 8:30 PM on December 12, 2008

Came in to recommend the store zippy recommended, yeah. I think the Lonely Planet guide has pretty good maps; if not, you're probably better off going to a travel info desk in the Incheon airport and getting a few (probably free) maps.
posted by suedehead at 8:54 PM on December 12, 2008

yea you can pick up maps pretty easily from the airport.

i also strongly recommend this website for figuring out how to get around. all my friends would wonder how i got around town so easily and i'd give this site all the credit!
posted by tastycracker at 11:11 PM on December 12, 2008

i also strongly recommend this website for figuring out how to get around.

Hmm, looks like that site uses some sort of plugin that I don't have available.
posted by larsks at 12:54 AM on December 13, 2008

you're probably better off going to a travel info desk in the Incheon airport and getting a few (probably free) maps.

Thanks for the suggestion.

My prior experience with free airport maps is that they're never very good, but I'll certainly give it a shot. I'm still hoping to find something like the detailed, laminated "Easy-Finder" maps you can find for US cities (like this sort of thing).
posted by larsks at 12:57 AM on December 13, 2008

Actual street names frequently don't exist in Korea, or they're completely useless anyway, so if that's what you're worried about, don't. You'll want to know the general locations (i.e. nearest subway station) of the places you're going to, which you can find by Googling, but beyond that, don't worry about it because if you can't read Korean, forget about using buses. For more precise locations, you'll be able to use the neighborhood maps, which are abundant in the subway stations.
posted by smorange at 2:07 AM on December 13, 2008

smorange: I didn't think the buses were all that bad. I think a good map is useful even without street names.

It looks like Google Maps actually has street level data for Seoul, as long as one is willing to navigate the Korean language version. The quality is excellent (far surpassing the street maps I've found for sale).
posted by larsks at 5:40 PM on December 13, 2008

The buses are good, I use them all the time. But I'm just warning you that they're really hard to use if you can't read Korean because, unless you know which bus you're taking and where you're getting off ahead of time, it's hard to read the maps at the bus stops. You'll be able to see the subway station stops, which are usually written in English, but none of the other stops. FWIW. Have fun, though, while you're here!
posted by smorange at 5:04 AM on December 14, 2008

It would be useful to know what you plan to use it for.

If it's finding places based on their address, give up now. As smorange said, people generally don't refer to street names in Seoul, so you probably won't find a street map to be the essential it is in many cities. In my experience, even taxi drivers don't know the names of fairly major roads. Directions are instead given in terms of districts and nearby landmarks. (Often you'll be told where something is in relation to a nearby shop, which makes perfect sense since retailers start and close businesses so rarely here...)

If you want a map for wandering around and exploring, then I'm pretty confident you will not find any paper product similar to the Rand McNally EasyFinder. Most locals use electronic/online maps in their cars or on their phones. Paper maps don't have a strong tradition in a city that has built and rebuilt itself repeatedly over 50 years. The best English map I've been able to find by shopping in Seoul is this one, but it's fairly small scale.

The Lonely Planet and free maps at the airport suggestions from suedehead above are good ones. Many hotels also have decent free maps. From your link, it looks like you'll be staying near Hapjeong and I'm pretty sure the Lonely Planet Seoul guidebook has a Hongdae map in it that goes pretty close to there. The other thing to do of course is to print a few pages from Google Maps or a local online map of areas you know you're going to explore. It pains me to say this as a cartophile, but you'd be better off learning a bit of Hangul than trying to track down a bi-lingual detailed street map.

Hmm, looks like that site uses some sort of plugin that I don't have available.
Heh. Welcome to Korea. To use many websites, including most of the useful ones, you need to be running IE (some sites are IE6-only) and you also need to accept every plugin they insist you install. I'm not joking. Tastycracker's suggestion of the Seoul Bus website is an excellent one and, if you can, I urge you to grit your teeth and install the plugin. It overcomes a lot of the problems that smorange describes, since it tells you exactly what bus to take to get from a to b and if you zoom in, you can even count the stops to your destination.

Hope that helps. Have a good trip!
posted by Busy Old Fool at 8:13 AM on December 14, 2008