South Korea is infamous for its unusual map.
Korean law requires map data to be kept within their borders, and Google doesn't want to keep all Korea-related Maps services on Korean servers.
Instead, Google purchased prerendered images sometime many years ago.
That's why road numbers are so hard to find on the map, and also why many locations are a bit misplaced, and why movement can be awkward: the street view pictures can't be related to the roads on the map, but instead Google guesses where the roads are based on its GPS data.
The aim of this site is to provide both a tutorial-style guide to playing Korea, and reference material.
For now I'm just collecting reference material that I can then use in the guide :)
Phone codes are usually displayed as (02)-XXX-YYYY. 010, 070 and 080 prefixes are very common but not area-specific. Major cities have their own prefix.
The poles at subway exits are some of the most useful things you can find in urban locations in Korea.
The poles list the name of the station, the colour of the lines serviced by that station, and the exit number.
Different cities use different styles for their subway exits.
Subway lines show up on the map from a far zoom level and are colour-coded so they are easy to find.
Seoul has the most extensive metro network. It extends into some of the surrounding cities as well.
Most Seoul poles look like this. They are green with a yellow box at the top. From top to bottom, they display the exit number, the name of the station (in hangul, then romanised, then in chinese, then in japanese), and the lines serviced by the station.There are slight colour variations on the same concept.There is also a brownish grey pole. I think it's less common than the green ones. The information is laid out in the same way.Sometimes a subway entrance doesn't have a pole, but a banner on the entrance staircase building itself. From left to right, they display the lines serviced by the station, the name of the station (first in hangul, then transliterated in latin, chinese and japanese), and the exit number.
Busan has a lot of lines, and they mostly service different parts of the city. Like Seoul, it also has a few different exit poles.
Some poles are this non-obvious brown with a yellow box at the top. From top to bottom, they list the exit number in a blue square, the lines serviced by the station, the name of the station in hangul, latin and chinese. The stuff at the bottom is advertisements. The line icon is often faded so it will look different from the colour on the map. The romanised text is small so being able to read Hangul is useful.
Many Busan poles have this big blue "METRO" circle at the top. From top to bottom, they display advertisements, then the lines serviced by the station, the name of the station in hangul, latin and chinese, and the exit number in a blue circle.
Some stations use this grey pole with a yellow metro icon. From top to bottom, it lists the exit number in a yellow font, the station name in vertical hangul, the line numbers serviced by the station in a colour-coded font, and finally the station name in latin and chinese. Again being able to read Hangul is useful because you can't always get close enough to read the small English font.
