Packing for Korea: 6 Essential Things To Take

If you’re packing for Korea and wondering what to take, then look no further. We give you the lowdown on what you’ll need – and what you won’t need – for your Korean adventure.

When he’s not writing blogs for The Expat Lounge, Anthony enjoys taking delivery of care packages from home and trying out new Korean snacks. Originally from Cape Town, South Africa, he’s moved around the world enough times that you’d think he would have learned to pack a little lighter…

So you’re moving to South Korea for a year, and you don’t know what to pack. Those airline weight limits are not intended for people moving abroad – but on the other hand it’s a first-world country, so you can probably take just the essentials and work out all the other stuff after you arrive, right?

Well, while Amazon does deliver to South Korea (certain items, at least), you’re going to pay an arm and a leg for them to haul a box of Reese’s Pieces over the Pacific (or Jaffa Cakes over Asia, if you’re Old World-oriented). Many of the essentials you can’t imagine people living without are going to be completely MIA, while others things that you might – very reasonably – expect to be hard to come by may in fact be easily available and, what is more, cheaper.

Read on to discover six things you should bring with you, and three things you shouldn’t.

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Things to Bring

1. Comfort Food and Spices

Every culture has its own selection of chocolate, chips, and snacks that they grew up with and find comforting when far from home. Whether yours are peanut butter cups, McVities digestives or Vegemite, you’ll be hard-pressed to find them in Korea. And given that Korean snacks are too-often shrimp-flavored (and with little warning) you would do well to bring a stash of your own, at least until you’ve had time to experiment with the local stuff.

As for the foodies, spices much more exotic than basil, oregano, and thyme are going to be hard to come by. Consider bringing your own red pepper flakes, curry powder, or whatever else tickles your tastebuds.

[one_half]What you will find:

• Delicious shrimp snacks!
• Dried shrimp; less delicious
• Standard Mars chocolates: Snickers, Twix, etc.
• Oreos
• Hershey’s chocolate
• Chocolate digestives (Diget)

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[one_half_last]What you won’t:

• Peanut butter cups
• Decent black tea
• Good drip coffee (consider buying a Bodum press)
• Cadbury’s anything

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Alternatives/workarounds:

Home Plus supermarkets are the Korean branch of English Tesco’s and as such have a wider range of international products. E-Marts in affluent areas normally have O.K. international food aisles, and lately they’ve even been stocking good imported beer. You’re going to pay for it, though. Big department stores often have large international aisles too, as well as excellent wine departments.

If you’re in Seoul look up High Street Market, or some of the international markets in Itaewon. Finally, iHerb is a great place to order those things you just can’t find elsewhere.

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2. Flat sheets

Traditionally, Koreans sleep on the floor on a thick mat called a Yeo (여). As with everything else in this country, this is changing rapidly, but bedding in Korea still doesn’t feel quite right. Beds tend to be (extremely) hard, necessitating a sleeping mat, and all bedding is unnecessarily expensive (and often garish), but the one thing you simply cannot find is flat sheets.

 

[one_half]What you will find:

• Comforters
• Pillows
• Fitted sheets

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[one_half_last]What you won’t:

• Flat sheets
• Duvets with separate covers

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Alternatives/workarounds:

You can bring flat sheets over with you, though they’ll be both heavy and bulky, or you can buy some through the Arrival Store and have them waiting for you when you arrive.

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3. Large towels and deodorant

Two things Koreans never use: large towels and deodorant. Even in a fairly decent hotel, you’ll find your room stocked with three or four tiny hand towel-sized towels. Also, apparently, westerners stink more than we realize.

 

[one_half]What you will find:

•  Tiny towels!

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[one_half_last]What you won’t:

• Deodorant
• Large bath-sized towels

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Alternatives/workarounds:

You can find large-sized towels if you look hard enough, and the last I heard EPIK was giving out large towels to new public school teachers, but you won’t find any deodorant outside of Itaewon unless you order it online.

Again, the Arrival Store offers large towels for sale.

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4. Large-sized shoes and clothing

Personally, I find Korean shoes and clothing fits me perfectly and so over three years I’ve replaced most of my wardrobe with stuff from here, but I’m a fairly normal-sized man: Medium clothing, size 10 shoes. If you’re any bigger than a large, with feet bigger than a US 11, you’re going to find it harder to buy clothing and, if you’re a woman, well, make sure you bring all the shoes you’re going to use for a year.

What you will find:

Largest common sizes:

• Men’s shoes: UK 11; US 11½
• Men’s pants: 32″
• Men’s shirts: 110″
• Women’s shoes: UK 7½; US 10
• Women’s clothing: The whole field of women’s clothing sizes is arcane and mystic to me. They’re small, is all I know.

Alternatives/workarounds:

Itaewon is awash with signs for “Big Size” clothing, though there seems to be a gap in supply right between Large and Enormous; still, if you look long and hard enough, you’ll find something. Really the best bet is just to pack enough shoes and clothing to last the year.

Korean shoes are measured in millimeters, use this table to compare them to sizes in your country.

One things you must pack is a decent winter coat – Korea has them, of course, but the styles tend to be more flamboyant than westerners are generally comfortable wearing.

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5. Gifts for coworkers

If you’re starting a new job in Korea, a little bit of forethought goes a long way in setting a good tone with your coworkers. It’s more traditional in Korea to give gifts when departing than when leaving, but screw that noise: Your cash is best spent on gifts that will most benefit you by engendering goodwill amongst the people you’re going to have to work with for the next year.

 

[one_half]What to buy:

• Alcohol for your male boss – a cheap bottle of wine will make you an instant favorite
• Perfume for your female boss – I know it sounds condescending, but in Korea they don’t know what that means
• Tiny foreign trinkets for coworkers – flag pins or pennies are just fine

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[one_half_last]What not to buy:

•  Perfume for your male boss

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Alternatives/workarounds:

Just go with what feels good to you. If you don’t want to spend the money, don’t: it’s not going to hurt your relationship with your coworkers, though it would be a missed opportunity for bonding.

For more tips on your first week working in Korea, check out this blog post.

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6. A presentation about your home

This is specifically for public school teachers arriving outside of the normal intake periods. When I first arrived in Korea I stepped off a plane at 11 in the evening, spent a night in a very sketchy motel my recruiter put me up in, and was the very next day introduced to my school and thrown in a classroom. I had never taught before and had nothing prepared.

This probably won’t happen to you, but it won’t hurt to be prepared and at the least you’ll have your first week of classes done in advance! Apart from giving you loads more time and breathing room to adjust to all the changes, it’ll make you seem super-professional to your coworkers.

[one_half]Dos:

• Use PowerPoint, your school will have computers
• Use loads of pictures
• Very simple language – you can always talk it up if necessary
• Hand out some of your currency for them to look at

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[one_half_last]Don’ts

• Get political
• Stress about it: they’ll still be interested the first week
• Drunken pictures?

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You Won’t Need These

1. Medicine/Contact lenses/Eyeglasses

Korean healthcare is superb, and everyone is required to be on a plan. Pretty much all standard medications are available, at least in comparable form, and most of it costs less than $2USD.

Contact lenses cost about the same in Korea as they do in the US, but you won’t need to visit an ophthalmologist to get a prescription: any one of the many, many glasses stores (look for “안경”) will do the test for free in less than five minutes. Glasses themselves are dirt cheap, and if you wear them you should buy a few pairs, just for backup.

Exceptions:

It can be hard to find Korean doctors who speak English, especially outside the big cities, so anything personal or that needs a prescription you might want to bring over. Birth control pills, for instance, are fairly easily available, but most women bring their own.

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2. Books

If you’re going to be travelling a lot and, really, if you’re in Korea you should be, you probably want to have an eBook reader. I have a Kindle 3G, and the ability to download books – seemingly from the ether – while in the Middle of Nowhere, China, is, in my opinion, a sign that we are finally living in the future.

If you can’t stand digital books, though, What the Book, located in Itaewon, has a massive selection and will deliver to anywhere in Korea, always within ten days, and usually within two.

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3. Electronics/phones

Korea is a major producer of electronics, home of both LG and Samsung, by whose monthly profit margins the Korean Won rises and falls. Every supermarket will have an electronics department, though the prices are reasonable at best. Find the best deals online at sites like Gmarket, if you can stomach the epilepsy-inducing web design, or head to the electronics markets around Yongsan station in Seoul.

Because Korea likes to be difficult, your foreign phone is unlikely to work in Korea. Unfortunately, getting a phone cheaply in Korea is still difficult for foreigners, and if you want the easy route to having a decent phone check out the Arrival Store’s phone offerings.

For more information on phone networks and contracts in Korea, check out this page.

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Do you have an opinion or a question? What do you wish you had known to pack before going to Korea? Leave us a message below.