Travel Tips For First Time Korean Adoptee Visitors To Korea.

Posted to Paperslip on January 27th, 2026.

Below are some travel tips for first time visitors to S. Korea. Please note that this list is not exhaustive, but hopefully serves as a useful jumping off point for further research for your upcoming trip. In our experience, the more planning you do in advance, the better.

Things To Do / Consider BEFORE Your Trip To Korea:

Passport vs. Visa?

Depending on your country of origin, you will need either a passport or a visa to travel to S. Korea.

If you are a US citizen, you will only need a passport to visit S. Korea, IF your visit is under 3 months. Please be VERY careful not to overstay this 3 month time period during these unprecedented times in the US. You could get into serious trouble if you overstay.

If you are from or traveling from another country other than the US, you will need to check your own country’s requirements, which will vary.

For those who wish to stay in S. Korea longer than 3 months, you will need a visa, such as an F-4 visa. Please see:

Questions About The F-4 Visa Process

Travel Safety.

In these uncertain times in the US, you should take some precautions when traveling overseas. We recommend that you send your travel itinerary to trusted family member/s or friend/s whom you will inform about when you land safely in Korea, and when you land safely back in the US. If you have any concerns about traveling you should contact an immigr. attorney whom you trust, to monitor your trip and your expected arrival times to S. Korea and back to the US.

We also recommend printing and having in email on your phone the contact information for the US Consulate / Embassy in S. Korea, in case you encounter any problems with your passport or visa.

For US Korean Adoptees, it may also be a good idea to take color prints and digital versions on your phone of your Naturalization documents, REAL ID, and Passport.

Of course, you will need to take your REAL Passport and ACTUAL REAL ID. However, we also recommend taking color copies and digital versions on your phone, just as backups. We absolutely do NOT recommend taking your ORIGINAL Naturalization document! Keep this somewhere safe at home, and only carry a copy.

A Caution For Those With Dual Citizenship.

Please note that we have heard an anecdotal story of a US Korean Adoptee who was detained for having two passports (US and Korean). We cannot give you legal advice in this situation, but please be advised that this may be an issue for you when you travel to and from Korea.

Money.

Personally when I travel to Korea, depending on the number of days I will be in town, I order Korean Won from my local bank well in advance of my trip. For a two week trip I typically take about $800 worth of Korean WON (currency). However, I usually have WON / cash left over from my trip. Bear in mind, your financial needs will of course depend on how many people you are traveling with, so you should take the amount of cash you feel comfortable carrying.

I typically want enough cash to cover a taxi from the airport (Incheon) to my hotel (or other accommodation) in Seoul. It’s about an $80 taxi ride each way. I would recommend that first timers take a taxi from Incheon Airport to your place of stay — however there are other methods of getting to and from the airport which you will need to research on your own.

The conversion of USD to WON is pretty simple. $10 = about 10,000 WON. You can check the daily exchange rate online.

If you run out of cash in Korea, don’t worry, you can go to one of the millions of convenience stores to see if they have an ATM in the back. These can sometimes be finicky, but you should be able to find an ATM that works.

K-ETA.

Depending on your country of origin, you may or may not need a K-ETA to travel to Korea. IF you DO need a K-ETA, you will need to do this IN ADVANCE of your trip. It’s a pretty easy / painless online process, though it may require a small fee.

To my knowledge, as of this writing on January 27th, 2026, K-ETA is NOT currently required for US citizens. However, this can always change. Please be sure to Google:

Is K-ETA required for travel to Korea?

See the K-ETA page here:

https://www.k-eta.go.kr/portal/newapply/index.do

Sim Cards.

Before your trip, you will need to set up a sim card (whether physical sim card or e-sim) so that you can use your phone in Korea.

If you have T-Mobile, it is likely you can just use their international plan and let them know your dates of travel, without using any kind of additional sim card. Please check with your cell phone carrier about this. You will likely need to UNLOCK your phone (you will likely need to have your cell phone provider UNLOCK your phone). However, please do not take our word for it and check with your specific cell phone provider. I have personally used T-Mobile’s international plan in 2025 and this was the first time I did not use a physical sim card. It worked great and part of why I got T-Mobile was for this purpose.

In past years I have used Verizon’s international plan, and it NEVER worked well for me in Korea, or in any other country to which I traveled outside the US! So I definitely do NOT recommend using Verizon’s International plan! It left me stranded without service many times while abroad.

The best advice for those who need a sim card is to get a TRAZY sim card IN ADVANCE of your trip:

https://www.trazy.com/experience/detail/korea-sim-card-unlimited-data-voice-call-sms

I've used a Trazy sim card many times for trips to Korea, and it's always worked great. Previously for phones that required a physical sim card, I would just take a Ziplock bag with a safety pin in my carry on baggage, so that as soon as I landed in Korea, I could swipe out my sim cards. I would use the Ziplock bag to safely store my original sim card after inserting the Trazy sim card.

WiFi Eggs at Incheon International Airport:

You can also rent a WiFi egg at kiosks at the airport in Korea. These are rechargeable devices that you must carry with you at all times you wish to use your phone. I used this on my first trip to Korea, and while they worked fine, they were a pain to carry around and recharge.

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For peace of mind, I personally feel that the T-Mobile international plan or the Trazy sim card is best. If you get a Trazy sim card, you should order it so it arrives at least a week before your trip. The instructions online are very easy to follow. I just bring a plastic bag with a pin in my purse for my sim card. However if you have a new phone that will only accept an e sim then you will have to ask Trazy or your wireless provider about what is best. I personally inquired at T-Mobile prior to my last trip in 2025 which is when I was informed that I could just get my phone unlocked and use the international plan.

Plug Converters and Portable Rechargers.

Bring several Plug Converters specific to your country and S. Korea, and Portable Rechargers. There are many situations where you will be out in the wilds of Korea and unable to easily recharge your phone. Your phone is your life, so bring plug converters and portable rechargers everywhere!

Hotels.

Seoul is a pretty massive city, and there are many hotspots for tourists to stay.

Insadong, Myeongdong, and Dongdaemun are all great places to stay and near popular shopping districts. If you feel more comfortable in an area with a lot of foreigners, try Itaewon.

Mapo is close to HOLT, but that is of less consequence now that all former Korean Adoption Agency files are housed by NCRC (as of this writing on January 27th, 2026 — please note that all former Korean Adoption Agency files may move AGAIN to the Seongam branch of the National Archives in the first half of 2026. Please check our IMPORTANT NEWS dropdown on our homepage for updates).

Booking Your Stay.

You can book your stay on any popular English language booking website. I personally use Priceline, but you can use anything.

Some travelers who feel more confident about traveling outside of Seoul during their time in Korea may prefer to keep their hotel bookings flexible. Since I have now been to Korea for a few times, I book my Seoul based hotel for arrival, but do not book the hotel for my entire stay. It is easy to book on Priceline to visit other cities in Korea. So I personally prefer to book hotels on the fly (with the exception of for the dates that I am flying into and out of Seoul, which are fixed). However, please be advised that in busy Summer months or during major events, you may have a hard time finding a hotel at a good rate.

If you book far enough in advance and if you are booking in the off season, you can find some fantastic nearly 5 star hotels for relatively inexpensive prices.

Some Adoptees prefer to book an Air-BnB. Personally I have not tried this, so just be sure to explore your options. For first timers to Korea, I think staying at a hotel is best.

K-Pop Tours and global tourism may impact your visit.

Please note that BTS kicks off a world tour around April 2026 in Korea, and this may impact your ability to get a hotel at an affordable price, especially in Seoul, Busan, and other major S. Korean cities. In recent years, we have noticed a big surge in foreign tourism in Korea, due to the global popularity of K-pop. For this reason please plan your trip carefully to be sure that you can get a reasonably priced hotel (or other accommodation) for your stay.

Taxis.

When you first arrive to Incheon Airport, it will be easy to find your way to baggage claim and to the area where taxis pick up riders. Many signs are in ENGLISH as well as Korean. Please NOTE that BLACK CABS / TAXIS are VERY EXPENSIVE — a lot of black taxi drivers will approach you, try to take your luggage to lead you to their cab. Just politely decline.

If you are more budget conscious, catch a YELLOW taxi.

Most Korean taxi / cab drivers do NOT speak English. Speaking LOUDER in English is NOT going to help your situation! Help others help you by being prepared, and always assume there’s a chance you may not have access to Wi-Fi. For this reason, be sure to always have a PRINTED copy of your most important address information (such as hotel NAME and ADDRESS) in your wallet at all times.

BEFORE you leave your Western country of origin (US / Europe / Canada / Australia, etc.) be sure to PRINT the KOREAN name of your hotel or other destination and put that in your wallet, so that you can show it to your taxi driver. ALSO keep the Korean name of your hotel or other destination in email on your phone as a backup. I think it’s always wise to PRINT the address in Korean in case you have any issues with Wi-Fi once you land in Korea.

How to catch taxis in Korea.

KakaoT (an app for your phone) is the best way to catch a taxi in Korea. It is MUCH harder to wave down a cab on the street, unless they are already parked at a taxi stand. Taxi stands are most reliably found at major airports and bus and train terminals. But if you are just on some random street, it can be VERY hit or miss to wave down a taxi by hand.

KakaoT is a little tricky to navigate for foreigners. You may need help from a Korean hotel front desk person to navigate set up and entering your credit card info. At least as of my last trip to Korea in 2025, it is still best to select the option to “Pay directly to driver” — this enables me to pay with cash OR credit card directly to the driver at the end of the taxi ride. Oftentimes KakaoT will not let you use a foreign card to pay directly through the app, but you need to enter credit card information I believe in order to use the app in the first place. I personally had a Korean friend help me set this up. Your best bet is to get a hotel front desk person or other Korean speaker to help you set this up either before or during your trip.

If you are staying at a hotel, front desk staff can call you a taxi. However, once you are in the streets of Korea, you will need to know how to get BACK. KakaoT is the best option for this.

If you get stranded for whatever reason and cannot hail your own taxi, go to the nearest decent looking hotel and ask front desk staff to help you hail a taxi.

Tips: Do NOT Tip.

Here’s a tip: Tips are NOT a thing in Korea. You do not need to, nor should you, tip taxi drivers, waitstaff, etc.

Things To Do.

I personally don’t offer many tips on things to do in Korea as I think those questions are easy to find online. Generally for touristy type things, the following websites are a good source:

Viator and TripAdvisor

I have used these sites in the past for booking day tours or cab tours, etc. These have all been very satisfactory experiences. These sites also list things to do and the most popular tourist locations.

Join Korean Travel Groups on Facebook.

There are MANY S. Korean travel groups on Facebook to join. These are great sources of up-to-date information on travel to S. Korea.

Traveling Around Korea.

Personally I am not knowledgeable about buses, but getting North and South from Seoul to points South is easy by train, called KTX.

Note: It’s far less possible to travel East / West across Korea by train. For example, there’s no train from Busan (located on the east side of Korea) to Gwangju (located on the west side of Korea). In order to travel East to West, you must either use a bus, taxi, or private car. If you do NOT have familiarity with Korea’s bus system to go East to West across Korea, and you are ONLY familiar with KTX — and want to go from Busan to Gwangju (East to West example), you will need to do the following:

Go from Seoul to Busan; then from Busan to Seoul; then from Seoul to Gwangju; then from Gwangju to Seoul.

KTX departs / arrives out of Seoul Station in Seoul. ALL taxi drivers in Korea are going to be familiar with Seoul Station. This is a very clean, modern facility with restaurants and shops. It kind of looks like an airport terminal.

For KTX, I highly recommend booking first class if it’s affordable, as it is pretty inexpensive and well worth the money. Economy seats are perfectly fine. Please note you should book at least a day in advance as tickets sell out. You can book easily online in English at KTX’s website, Korail:

https://www.korail.com/global/eng/main

If you need to cancel or rebook you may need to visit a kiosk in person at the train station. This can be tricky as most Koreans at these kiosks will not speak much English. Cancellation / rebooking can only be done within a limited time frame, so just be advised.

Take A Duffel Bag Or Small Suitcase For Trips To Cities Outside of Seoul.

Take an empty duffel bag, backpack, or even a small suitcase in your regular suitcase when you go to Korea, in case you visit cities outside of Seoul, and don’t want to take your large suitcase. Oftentimes, assuming you will be checking back in later, your main hotel in Seoul will allow you to keep your suitcase at the front desk’s storage area while you are away on a short trip — be sure to check with your hotel if this is allowed.

Popular destinations include Busan and Jeju Island (note that traveling to Jeju requires a flight from GIMPO Airport, near Seoul. Gimpo Airport is a different airport from Incheon International Airport).

Experienced Korea travelers tend to take an empty suitcase just for all the things they are going to buy and bring home from Korea!

Translation Apps.

Get comfy with ChatGPT, because it is one of the best ways to translate Korean language via text. You can download and use ChatGPT on your phone for free. Just select “stay logged out” when you use it, unless you prefer to create a login, which is NOT necessary in order to use the app.

Be sure to type into ChatGPT’s prompt screen, “Translate to polite Korean:” — then type the text you wish to translate.

ChatGPT will swiftly translate your English (or other language) text to Korean, which you can show to a native Korean speaker on your phone.

*Please note that you may want to set enable a Hangul Korean keypad on your phone in addition to English. Most phones will allow you to toggle between the two languages. This would enable a native Korean speaker to type text into YOUR phone for translation, assuming that many Koreans will not likely have ChatGPT on their phones, nor know how to use ChatGPT for translation.

Be sure to include the word POLITE because Koreans are serious about HONORIFICS, and it is unfortunately very easy to offend Koreans by NOT using them!

On my last trip to Korea in 2025, I had ChatGPT on my phone and a native Korean speaker had ChatGPT on her phone, and we had a nearly seamless “conversation” via ChatGPT translation.

ChatGPT is FAR superior to Papago and Google Translate for Korean text translation.

Please see:

ChatGPT for Korean Text Translation

Google Lens + ChatGPT Translation Tutorial

I have also heard that the newer versions of the Samsung Galaxy phone have pretty decent AI Korean speech translation, though I have not tried that myself.

Papago for VOICE translation:

For extremely limited VOICE translation, use Papago, which you can download to your phone. Please note that by comparison to ChatGPT text translation, Papago voice / text translation is very garbled and can often come up with unintelligible translations. But it’s ok for simple communication. Just speak slowly! Be sure to turn on the HONORIFICS setting so that you do not offend anyone!

Google Maps.

Google Maps works in Korea, but on a somewhat limited basis. For example, it won’t give you explicit walking instructions verbally from one location to another, but you can use the directional indicator to see if you are walking in the right direction. This of course assumes that you have Wi-Fi (see the section about sim cards and wi-fi eggs above).

By and large, Koreans use Naver Maps instead. However, of course this is only in Korean.

I have gotten by with just using Google Maps on all of my trips to Korea. As mentioned previously, it always helps to have the KOREAN text of any destination easily accessible, whether through your email or otherwise online.

Business Cards.

Koreans love business cards. Be sure to take several with you to Korea, particularly if you are planning to do active birth family search — visiting Jumin Centers, Police Stations, etc.

If you do not already have business cards, you can make your own very easily on a site like Moo.com — no graphic design experience necessary. The business cards are a bit expensive, but they have various pricing options, and their cards are very professional looking and they have always shipped to me on time. Of course, be sure to make and order them so they arrive before your departure for Korea.

Pro-tip 1: In addition to including your regular phone number (using your country’s code, such as +1 for the US as the prefix, for example: +1-111-1111), leave a blank space on the card for your KOREAN phone number, assuming you use a sim card and get a Korean phone number. Carry pens so you can write your temporary Korean phone number.

Pro-tip 2: If you are making birth family search specific cards, include your baby photo on the back of the card.

Please be sure to both GIVE and RECEIVE business cards with a slight bow and with TWO HANDS. Using one hand to give / receive business cards is considered rude.

Please see related:

Pro-Active Birth Family Search Tips for KSS (Korea Social Service) and ALL Korean Adoptees

Learn At Least How To Say “Hello” and “Thank You” In Korean.

Research Customs Like Bowing And Gifts.

Before your trip to Korea, go on YouTube and at least learn how to say basic things like “Hello” and “Thank you” in Korean.

Also check online about Korean customs like bowing, and using two hands to give / receive things, like money or gifts.

If you plan to do active birth family search, be sure to understand Korean gift culture. If someone does something significant to help you, you should bow when you give them a small gift with two hands. You should also bow and receive gifts with two hands. This is the polite Korean custom.

What Kinds Of Gifts Should I Buy?

Personally I hate this question because I never really know exactly what to answer.

In general, Koreans like things from the US that they can’t get in Korea. Recently, Trader Joe’s bags have been a huge fad in Korea.

Also, things that have the name of your state or the area where you are from, or oddly, Burt’s Bee’s products may be popular gifts. A lot of Dutch Adoptees buy Stroopwafel or other Dutch products as gifts.

Basically, the rule of thumb I use is — use common sense! If it seems like a thoughtful gift, it probably is one. Just don’t buy Koreans touristy stuff that’s for tourists!

Hand written cards are often hugely appreciated. Koreans are often very thoughtful in their gift giving. If someone does something important for you, be sure to reciprocate with a gift.

Please note that government officials are not allowed to accept / receive gifts, as they are considered bribes. But you can write a nice thank you note.

Wherever You Go, Carry A Pack Of Thank You Cards, Pens (For Writing Thank You Notes), And Some Small Gifts With You Just In Case You Need Them.

Seriously, this is something you should do when you go to Korea. You never know when someone is going to help you in your search or be kind.

I often go to the Dollar Store in the US in advance of my trip and buy several gift bags to take to Korea, to use to put gifts and cards inside for those who significantly help me. If I know that I am going to meet a specific significant person, I usually buy a gift in the US and take it with me to Korea. But I’ve also often bought gifts in Korea. There’s an amazing underground upscale shopping mall and eatery under the Lotte Hotel in Seoul.

Budget Time To Unwind.

If this is your first trip to Korea as an adult Adoptee, please budget some time to unwind. Your first trip home can often be emotional and overwhelming, and it’s not advisable to fill every single minute up with activities — unless this is something you just prefer to do. Take some downtime for yourself, to just wander the city on your own or to do some solo traveling. The more time you spend navigating around Korea on your own, the more confident you will feel.

Korea Is Very Safe. Just Don’t Be Stupid, And You’ll Be Fine.

Korea is in general a very safe place. You don’t have to feel like your items will be stolen if you leave them on your KTX seat or something like that. Of course, use common sense in all situations — particularly when it comes to alcohol consumption. But in general, Korea by comparison to a place like the US is exceptionally safe.

Birth Family Search Tips.

If you are visiting Korea for birth family search, please see:

On Paperslip’s homepage:
DROPDOWN: AFTER July 19th, 2025, ALL Birth Family Search Requests Must Be Processed Through NCRC/KAS

ALL Adoptees Start Here! General Birth Family Search Steps Through NCRC — Overview

Address and Contact Info For Important Locations Related To Birth Family Search Through NCRC

Pro-Active Adoptee Birth Family Search Tips

DNA Testing

ADOPTION CERTIFICATES - NCRC Will Accept Applications From July 19th, 2025 — Via Email!

NEW! Advisory Sessions - For Both KSS and Non-KSS Adoptees