Know
More About Korea
Class 5-2
Hi people,
I’m Jung Hoon from South Korea. I’m
writing this for foreigners who are living in or traveling to Korea and those
who want to know more about Korea. There
are a substantial amount of Korean things to introduce but this time I will
focus on introducing three distinctive things that you guys may experience in
Korea. These are the Korean public
transportation transfer system, 24-hour open convenient store, and the fast
Internet in Korea.
The first thing to show is the
Korean transportation transfer system.
This is a very useful system for people who use public transportation.
In Korea, almost all people use a transportation card called ‘T money’ in order
to take the bus or subway, which makes it possible for people to transfer. When you use public transportation you need
to tap the card on the T money machine. You need to do this when you ride and
also when you get off the transportation. The first time, the machine charges
fee from T money. But when you transfer
from one to another the machine does not charge again. It only charges some when you move far
distance. That means you can go everywhere within a city for a cheap price by
transfer. Also you can save your time by
using T money because you don’t have to pay in cash, the only thing you need to
do is to load cash on the card then tap the T money money on the machine. An
even more interesting thing is that you can transfer from a bus to a subway and
vice versa. So it is very convenient to
use Korean public transportation.
Another interesting thing is 24-hour
open convenient store in Korea. In
Korea, there are more than 25,000 convenient stores. CU, GS25, Seven-Eleven, and Mini Stop are the
most famous stores in Korea. These
convenient stores serve as small department stores. They have everything from groceries to
stationeries. They have microwave and
hot water for quick foods and they also sell lunch boxes, so you can eat your
meal there fast. Also, you can use
parcel service provided by the store. It
is very useful because people can buy their needs without their time being
constrained. But since the stores are
open the whole day, the prices of products are more expensive than that of
other supermarkets.
The last thing that I will introduce
is Korean Internet. When you use the
internet in Korea, you will experience the great speed of the internet. As you see the graph, the Internet speed of
Korea is the fastest all over the world.
Because of Korea’s developed information technology, the Internet is
wide open almost everywhere in Korea. So
unlike other countries, most people have easy access to the Internet. Many Koreans can watch HD TV through the Internet,
and they participate actively on social network services such as Twitter and
Facebook.
I just introduced three distinctive
things you can experience in Korea as I mentioned above. One thing you can notice is that these three
things reflect Korean culture and that Koreans live a busy life. Koreans like fast and they all want to do
things fast. And that way of living
brought Korea out into the world and helped develop the country.
By - By Park Jung Hoon
