To further analyze Seoul’s cultural
adaption to foreigners, we are now going to look at the city public
transportation.
The most three used ways to move in
Seoul are to take the subway, the bus or a taxi, that’s why we will only focus
on those transportation modes in this article.
According to “About.com Geography”,
Seoul’s subway is the third busiest
metro in the World (after Tokyo’s and Moscow’s). Indeed, it completes an
average of 2.04 billion annual passenger rides and receives 5.6 million daily
riders (Schulz Richard, K., 2011).
Language used in the subway
facilities is Korean, English, Chinese and Japanese. All vending machines operate in those four languages.
Subway maps are also available in
four different languages. Find below snapshots of Seoul subway map in English
and in Korean.
Within the subway train, stations
are announced in Korean, English and Chinese. Fortunately, in each station, the
name of the station is written in Korean signs and using Roman alphabet because
pronunciation can sometimes differ from what we read.
As you can see on the picture, each
station is numbered as well as exits, which makes things easier for tourists
and foreigners that are having trouble with Korean pronunciation.
Pictograms are also used to indicate
toilets, elevator... so it can be understood from everyone.
Below is an example of signs present
in subway stations. The first sign indicate the way out with the number of the
exit and the second sign indicate the way to go to transfer to line 7 in
Korean, English and Chinese.
Just by taking the subway in Seoul,
you can have an insight of the Korean culture: how technology is present in
everyone’s life, respect of the elderly, etc.
To learn more about it, please go
watch the video hosted on the Official Site of Korea Tourism Organization page:
http://www.visitkorea.or.kr/ena/TR/TR_EN_5_1_4.jsp (Korea Be Inspired, 2012).
Regarding buses in Seoul, four categories exist. Each category is designated
by a color code: blue, yellow, red and green, according the type of road they
use, the length of their travel, their circuit and the destination. Each bus is
identified by a color and a number, which are universal elements of
codification understood by everyone (given the fact that people are aware of
what the color code means).
Unlike the subway, taking the bus
can be confusing for strangers because of the large extent of the network. Indeed,
according the website Korea4expats.com, there are approximately 400 bus circuits
with 8,500 city buses.
Bus stops are easily recognizable,
as you can see on the picture, they are grey with a bus pictogram at the top in
the color of the category of the bus that is stopping at this station.
Circuits put up on bus stops are
written in Korean, only few stops are written English (maybe 3 or 4 per
circuits). That is why, without any previous preparation using the Internet (http://topis.seoul.go.kr/eng/) to look for which bus to take and where to stop, foreigners can not
really make it.
QR codes can be found on most of bus
stop in Seoul. Those QR codes can really be useful for tourists as they give
information about the bus network in Korean, English, Chinese and Japanese.
Moreover a helpline is available.
Taxis can be
found really easily in Seoul’s streets. Even though an increase number of taxi
drivers speak English, it is still advice to write, in Korean, on a piece of
paper the name of the destination you want to go to. Indeed, foreigners’ Korean
pronunciation is not well understood by local taxi drivers. In the middle of
2009, “International taxi” service has been created where taxi drivers can
speak English or Japanese. Moreover those kinds of taxis can be paid with
international credit cards: VISA, MASTER, AMEX, JCB (Korea Be Inspired, 2012).
Reservations for international taxis can be made by English or Japanese
speakers by calling an exclusive call center or on this website: www.intltaxi.co.kr.
The real strong point of
Seoul’s public transportation is its unique method of payment whereas you are
taking the subway, the bus or even a taxi. This method of payment is in the
form of an electronic card, called the “T-money card”. It can be reloaded in
department stores or thanks to vending machines present in each subway
stations. To use the T-money card, a simple beep on card readers is needed.
Taxi, buses and subway’s security gates are all equipped with card readers
which make payments really easy to make.
For buses and subways
a beep going in and another going out of the transportation facility is needed.
Thanks to that system, final destination does not have to be known or specify
by the user, the card itself withdraw the correct amount of money that is due.
This unique method of
payment for public transportation is really useful for foreigners that can
still not recognize the Korean different coins. It is easy, quick and
practicable!
To conclude this article on public
transportation, we can see that a real effort is done to make them accessible
to tourist and foreigners. As we previously saw with food facilities and
touristic spots, most signs are translated into English, Japanese and Chinese.
References
Retrieved from: http://www.korea4expats.com/article-seoul-by-bus.html
Korea Be Inspired. 2012, April. Public Transportation.
Schulz Richard, K. 2011, July 26th. The World's Busiest Subway Systems in Major Cities.
Retrieved from: http://geography.about.com/od/urbaneconomicgeography/a/Busiest-Subways.htm
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