Traveling and Transportation in Korea

I am sorry that it has been a while since I have posted, a lot has been going on!

The next topic I would like to share with you is what it is like to drive here and the different types of transportation we commonly see! We sold our Jeep before moving overseas so we did not have any vehicles for the first couple of weeks. Once we both got our Korean drivers licenses, we each bought a car! The nice thing about the military community over here is that someone is always moving, so we each got a car without having to buy brand new ones. Daniel drives a Hyundai sedan and I drive a Daewoo (basically a Korean Kia). I typically would want to drive a normal sized car, but after driving around in the Hyundai, we both learned that having a smaller car is easier and better to have for the Korean roads. I would not trust having a small car (a little bigger than a smart car) in the United States, where it might not be as safe. But over here, having a small car is almost safer than just a regular sized car! Many of the streets around where we live are very narrow. It does not help that people like to park on both sides of the street as well!

Another interesting fact about driving and traveling over here is that many roads are curved and hardly any are straight for long. Because of this, it takes us longer to get anywhere than it would if the roads were a straight shot. It does not help that the highest speed limit locally is around 60 kilometers per hour. Instead of police cars out and about, there are quite a few speed cameras at the many traffic lights. Speed bumps are also common whenever you enter towns and cities.

Buses and taxis are very common around here! Since many Koreans live in apartments and high rises, it is very common to take public transportation. And you must be very careful and watch the taxis, since some completely ignore red lights! You do not usually see any trucks on the roads, unless it belongs to American stationed at a local military base, and I have yet to see a semi-truck, if they even exist here! The biggest vehicles we see are public buses and some trucks that (that are about half the size of a semi-truck, and not as high) are used to transport furniture or large cargo.

If you have any questions or comments, you are more than welcome to comment below! We will always try to have the comments option available on each blog post!

The picture below is a road that we took to get to a large market that takes place on side streets. There are also lots of people walking around on these types of streets as well!