Customer Reviews

Frommer's South Korea (Frommer's Complete Guides)

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As a frequent traveler to Korea, as a Korean linguist, and as a huge fan of Korean culture, I was thrilled to learn that a new guide to South Korea was being published. I ran to the store to buy it. Wow, what a disappointment! I don't even know where to begin with my condemnation of this tragic tome. Let's start here: as a guide that claims to inform the reader about little-known secrets about this amazing country--well, there are none. The Lonely Planet Guide and the Moon Guide offer 10 times more information. Also, there is MUCH out of date info. The author recommends shoppers to visit the Freya Town department store in Dongdaemun. That building was demolished years ago. She claims that dental floss is impossible to find--it is available at any convenience store. This factoid was probably "borrowed" from an earlier edition of the Lonely Planet guide when, years ago, this was the truth.
Even worse: when she does recommend the usual tourist-trap restaurants that both above-mentioned guides cite, she only gives the address. No map. Well, the first thing the first-time traveler to Korea needs to know is that Korean addresses are WORTHLESS. It's not like in the West, where buildings are numbered incrementally--you won't find numbers on buildings in Korea, as building numbers are only assigned to buildings as they are built. These numbers are used only by the post office. To find out a particular location in Korea, Koreans describe what is the near the building in question, or they fax each other maps.
What is more, whereas Lonely Planet uses BOTH the Ministry of Education transliteration system AND the Korean letters (Hangeul), the author saw fit to eschew Hangeul completely and use her own sloppy, inconsistent, misleading, and incomprehensible transliteration system. In short, the novice to Korea will be completely baffled. To make matters even worse, she includes a glossary of Korean and of Korean foods at the end of the work. Although the English seems fine, there are numerous mistakes in the Korean language she uses, and in some cases, the Korean and English terms don't even match up!
Shall I go on and on? For those who want to buy electronic devices, she mentions Yongsan Electronics Mart in Seoul and doesn't even mention Technomart, a much smarter place for foreigners to buy electronics. She mentions the most expensive places to stay in Jeonju but doesn't even mention that the best places to stay in Jeonju are right by the train station (most people go to Jeonju for the excellent food and the international film festival).
More? the author includes a subway map of Daegu, but not that of Seoul? Where is the wisdom in this decision? How many first time visitors to Korea will EVER go to Daegu. Highly unlikely.
Worst of all, the author recommends that visitors go to the DMZ as their first trip out of Seoul. Wow. No place on Earth is more boring. Anyone who has visited Korea will tell you this. It takes an entire day to go, there is a dress code, and the only food available is an expensive, tasteless, foreigner-based quasi version of the real stuff.
I could go on and on. I am so disgusted with Frommer's for allowing this unedited travesty to be published. Save your money. Buy the Lonely Planet Guide to Korea (and also their very good guide to Seoul). If you want lots of background info on cultural sites and Korean history also buy the Moon guide. Frommer's guide is just a waste of money. What a shame.

This book was apparently issued at the beginning of summer and I bought it to used during a recently completed trip to Korea. It had some good information but I found it maddeningly sloppy in execution and extremely frustrating to use. Maps were inaccurate--for example the map of downtown Seoul shows the magnificent National Museum of Korea near the city center, but in fact it is close to the river several miles away--having been moved from the place shown on the map in 2005. (The text does describe its new location and how to get there, but the map will confuse many readers who might be interested in the museum.) Was the map simply carried over from an earlier edition without any updating? A section on a region in central Korea describes a museum (the Independence museum) in the "second largest city" in the region but the regional map doesn't show the city. (It is, however, shown on the map of all of Korea at the beginning of the book.) Areas of Seoul are described but for many of them there is no map as to where (even in general) they actually are--e.g., Itawon. Very few restaurants are listed in Seoul and for many there is no map even indicating the general area where they are located. Two cities, Incheon and Daejeon are both described as the "fourth" largest city in Korea. (I could find no "third" largest city listed.) I could easily go on. There should be a thorough re-editing of the book if it is to be a helpful guidebook and not a frustrating experience for a traveller trying to negotiate his or her way through Korea.

Where do I even begin. I had to buy this book because it was the only one available at the time in ebook format. It is by far the biggest waste of money I have ever spent. I'm not sure who "world traveler" is but I doubt they read the book or needed it to get where they were going. The author allows her personal bias to color everything and tries to force the reader into her mind set and views. I typically like Fodor's because it explains what each place is good at and what its bad at and gives me an idea of what the attraction is trying to convey, not tell me how I'm suppose to think and feel. This book is just an editorial from the author's point of view. If I wanted that, I could have just asked Joe Shmoe for his opinion.

First of all, she doesn't give you enough detail about the different sites and places in order for you to even visit them. Ironically most of the places she is talking about have great websites with address, schedules and information and she doesn't list a single one of the web pages. The author spends an enormous amount of time talking about the Korean Folk Village in Andong - si. There are a couple closer to our location, but she goes on about how commercial and worthless they are and how the village in Andong was the one everyone needed to see. My family - 19 month infant included, drove 3 hours to see Hahoe village. We even took one of our Korean friends with us - what a huge disappointment. Yes the village is old but every house is protected by 5 foot high walls so all you see are the streets and the tops of the buildings. The buildings are individual homes and you can't look inside. People actually live in these homes, so 1/2 of the homes had satellite dishes - how authentic is that? My Korean friend thought she got more out of text book than she did out of actually visiting the site. She also discusses the Mask Dance Festival and how it is held at HaHoe Village. A very small portion is held there, the actual Festival itself is held in Andong-si, in the city at a huge complex. No mention of that in her book.

We next tried to use the book to visit Mt Seoraksan, Korea's largest National park. Again she tells you the general vicinity, how you should visit and that's about it. She also disparages the Kensington Stars hotel, which is actually the nicest hotel up there. There is no usable information on the trails, the hikes and the fact that Koreans look at parks completely different from other nationalities - there are shops, restaurants and about anything else you can want before the park, in the park and along the trails - basically every km you run into a convenience store and restaurant. She does tell you to go in the Fall because the leaves are so nice, but forgets to mention that the majority of Koreans go in the fall as well, making it almost a ridiculous event and hard to enjoy with that many people around you. By this time, we had gotten the Moon's guide to Korea which actually had great information about the individual hikes and Seoraksan in general.

The last time we tried to use this book was to visit the Folk Village near Suwon. The book implies that it is close to the Fortress and Palace in Suwon. My family spent an hour lost in traffic in Suwon before we were finally able to speak to the English speaking tourist specialist and she explained that we weren't even in the right city. I don't know if the author excluded this particular Folk Village because she doesn't want you to go or because she doesn't know a thing about it. The author completely leaves out any mention of the fact that the Folk Village near Suwon has actual buildings that you can visit and go through, people dressed in period clothing, performances, artisans and craftsmen making wares and even a Korean wedding processional. But according to the author, its cheesy and not worth seeing. Seriously? The people buying this guide book are people who don't know a lot about the culture or the country. We didn't study it in school and know very little about it. This is at least a way of being able to comprehend and understand - a sort of living museum. If you're Korean or an expert on Korean History than this may seem cheesy, if you're an American living in a Foreign Country and trying to learn something about it, this would be considered educational. For whatever reason, this author doesn't want people to visit this Village.

My last mention will be the shopping and the author's very strong bias against the military. I have a really hard time believing that prostitution only exists in Korea because the US has a military presence. Which is what the author implies. I'm sure the military presence doesn't help but the last time I heard, prostitution existed in some form or the other all throughout the world, long before the Korean war. To blame the military for prostitutions existence in Korea is a bit of an exaggeration. She also discourages and denounces the shopping outside of Osan Air Base. I can't think that she's ever visited the area. 98% of the business are owned by Koreans and they sell to Koreans, Americans and Europeans. This is how these businesses and companies make their living. The business owners there seem very happy to take my money and the prices there are much more reasonable than Seoul. You can pay 1/2 the price for the same services and goods in Osan than you would in Seoul. It seems unfair to discourage people from going to this area just because America has a military presence there. Who is she really hurting, the visitors or the shop owners in the area?

Overall this book is beyond useless. Get the Moon's book or someone else's, anything you get is better than the junk is this book. Moon's does a good job but its a shame that Fodor's doesn't offer a decent book on Korea. It is such a great country to visit and worth exploring, just don't use Frommer's book to get around.

Just to note, this review focuses on portions of the book dedicated to Seoul.

I have to agree with what has been said in previous reviews. This is a deeply flawed guide.
To give them the benefit of the doubt, this is probably geared for the very, very casual tourist who just wants to see the top touristy sites and not delve into the local culture.

There are very few maps in this book, and none are very useful. They only stick to the more popular sites, and for such a jammed packed city, you will be missing a lot of cool stuff. Street names on maps is a must for an aimless wanderer like me, {even Lonely Planet sometimes comes up lacking in this regard}, but some of the Frommer's neighborhood maps for Seoul are just atrocious. Entire neighborhoods are reduced to just a few named roads and a couple of dozen blank lines.
They have very limited map indexes, and no map page references in the attraction listings, so no fast flipping back and forth between the two like you can with the Lonely Planet guides. You have to turn back and forth to try to find the corresponding map, if there even is one.

The lack of vital information in the maps is not the only place they dumb it down. Their directions to points of interest often contain no more than a subway station name and number followed by a series of turns left or right. This can simplify things sometimes, but with no street names so you know where you are walking to, and no time frame to figure out how long a walk it should be, we often overshot our target. What really burned me was when they would say, "walk in the direction of" something (like a school), but not have the aforementioned landmark on the map or to even show the Korean text so we could try to recognize it.
The total absence of Korean text was a real bummer. This comes in handy when you need a cab and don't speak the language (of course the book fails to mention when you really need one).

Just a tip: If visiting the Seoul Tower via subway and then cable car, their directions take you on a steep 25 min. hike uphill just to get to the cable car. An easier, faster route is to get off at the Myeongdong station. Use exit 4, walk straight until you hit the next major intersection (Banporo), turn left and walk one (long) block till you hit the Funicular tram that will take you up the hill straight to the cable car. This may be new, as it wasn't included in the book, and it will save some strength you will need for the stairs you will encounter further up.

Combined with a printout of the WikiTravel guide, you can get around with relative ease and see all the major things to see, but don't expect much more. We were lucky to have a friend in the city to show us the true heart of Seoul, but this is the first time using a guidebook where we felt we needed that kind of help.
We never felt lost, but with this book alone, we never would have experienced the best of Korean culture and hospitality.

When we return, and I really hope we do, it will be with a different book.

I just returned from a self-guided tour of Korea. As I was only going to be there for 10 days, I wanted to find the highlights of the cities I was going to visit: Seoul, Busan, and Ulsan. This guide got me started in the right direction, and most of the recommendations were good.
But as other reviewers have pointed out, this guide misses on the details. I was fortunate that I didn't read about the lack of a train from the Inchon Airport into Seoul until after I had used the train from Inchon Airport to get to Seoul. This is just one of the details that needs updating in the guide. The times for various sites and museums seemed to have been copied from the English language pamphlets from those sites. A little additional editorial work would have made them easier to use, such as listing clearly the times that the museums are closed, not merely when they are open. I also found the map error on the location of the National Museum in Seoul to be very confusing.
I picked up this guide from a bookstore, and didn't have the benefits of the reviews here. I also got the Lonely Planet guide, which I found confusing to use for some reason. I wouldn't avoid this guide for general trip planning, but would not rely on it for the needed details. Frommer's needs to do a better job of updating.

I will attempt to make a long story short. We purchased this book as it seemed to offer great nuggets on information not only on Seoul, but the whole country. The old adage that things are dramatically different from theory to practice strongly apply here. Here are some of the questions we routinely asked ourselves as we used this book in our Korea travels:

1. Why is a book on Tailored for Foreign English speaking travelers written by someone fluent in Korean?

The author of the book, Cecilia Hae-Jin Lee (Korean by birth) in the beginning of her book makes reference to language barriers by saying "Although English speakers are hard to find in some of these more remote areas, it's all part of the excitement and adventure of taking the road less traveled". If I spoke fluent Korean I too could say that. I don't. That said, I have traveled to numerous countries where I don't speak the language. I have been able to get by because through body language and signing and with single word expressions I have been able to have what I would equate to relative complete conversations where I have been able to get what I want. Korea is a much different place. This is not my first time in Asia, but it was the first time where words like breakfast or right or left, or where pointing or making shapes did not mean anything. Korea is full of wonderful people and it is a place where I experienced some of the most generous souls I have ever met in my life. Despite that, from a practical standpoint those experiences do not make up for how this book is written misleading the reader to think the language barrier is much easier to surmount than it is. A book of this nature probably should be written by someone who is not fluent in the language as they are more likely to reflect a more real experience.

2. Why are the names of places including restaurants, shops, and street addresses not written in the local language script?

I don't speak Korean. Therefore, I can't read it. Names of restaurants and sites on the page of this book mean nothing if you are not able to even recognize them when you run into them. We had one instance where not only was the address wrong (in fairness it can happen from time to time with this type of book), but I had to stroll through an alley and it was the phone number what gave away we were at the right spot. Hint: We also hit Tokyo on this trip and used the Fodor's guide. They had the names of places both in western lettering as well as Japanese. We did not have any issues there. The same in Korea would have been appreciated.

3. Why not use actual addresses for stores when recommending places?

We followed the directions to Icheon in our search of Celadon pottery. Everything was going well until the "just tell the cab driver to take you to Syeong Myeong and all the kilns are there. Funny, but for non-Korean speakers saying this to a Cab driver may prove difficult. It was. Finally a cab driver dropped us off in the general area of Syeong Myeong in the middle of nowhere. We ended up in a convenience store where the generosity of a group of nice Korean ladies that took us in their cars to two different locations in an attempt to show us what we were looking for. If it had not been for those ladies, once again thanks to this book we would have ended up frustrated and disappointed.

You may say that my gripes center around language. You may be correct on the surface. While I agree with Cecilia that the language barrier is a part of the experience, I have to take points away from the fact that it was at times extremely frustrating and baffling. She undermines things that would have been good to know going in. I am highly likely to return to Korea that one of the first things on my agenda back in the US will be to learn the language as much as I can. Despite a "seemingly helpful" language reference in the book, Korean in my humble opinion is as flexible as it is precise. Sign languages to reference locations or shapes of things don't help at all the same way the approximations in my pronouncing Korean words or phrases. If I did not get it exactly right in my speech I could not make myself understood. Korea is a country with an ancient culture that while evolved is not open to the Western world the same way other countries are. That is something that does come into play when traveling. Regardless of language, being able to understand and be understood is a part of the experience, not something that should ruin it.

Like all the Frommer's books, this one is jam packed with useful information. It even tells you how to travel to sites via public transportation (Seoul has a very good and extensive train/subway system and the KTX is an efficent high-speed train).

This guidebook to South Korea was exactly what I needed as someone coming to live in the country. It is well organized and gives recommendations for several types of visitors including families.

Finally Frommers puts out a traveling guide for Korea. I've used their books before and will use again. Just in Time for my visiting. Thanks!

well, there aren't too many travel guides for korea out there. i came across this one and found it interesting. i have to say, thanks to frommer's for finally introducing a travel guide to korea. i look forward to taking it on my journey!