Traveling without a car in Korea

One of the interesting things for us living in Korea is the fact we do not own a car.  Since we live in the city it turns out okay.  Everything is close enough together here there is not much of a problem.  If you did not know, Daejeon, has over 1.5 million people, but has a land footprint that is half the diameter of Charlotte (Measured by belt line size.)  Charlotte has 0.7 million people.  So this makes living without a car very easy.  We do not even miss the things, except the powerful feeling we get when driving them.  So without the gas guzzling traffic generating machines that get our country into awkward political situations (See Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria etc) what do we do when we want to go somewhere?

Work: We usually walk the 3/4 mile journey to work.  It takes about 30 minutes.  Along the way we normally practice our Korean.  If we are late we bike.

Groceries: There is a grocery store that is a 5 minute walk away.  It has almost everything we need.  It carries a good stock of fruits and vegetables, and there are many mom and pop dealers outside too.  Shopping in Korea is halfway between a western supermarket, and a open air market.  The dealers outside sell fruit, vegetables, and grains.  We normally buy from them when we can because once they know you as a regular, they give you discounts :-).  Unfortunately, we still do not know the words for many food items, so we normally point, and ask how much it costs.  It's a little awkward, but it gets us food.  Note: the Korean fruit tastes, and the Korean milk taste much better than the American versions.  Every piece of fruit I have ever had here, has been perfectly ripe.  It's nice, but I wonder if it is because of GMO's, or if it is because their agriculture here is ran almost exclusively by small farmers who pay very close attention to their products.  On the apple trees here, they always wrap plastic bags around the apples to keep the insects off because the cost of labor is low ($5 per hour minimum wage, but given the work culture here (long hours, but slow work), it is probably equivalent to our $7.75 minimum wage).

Manufactured goods: There is a Super Walmart-like store here, called Home Plus.  It is operated by a British firm known as Tesco which has similar stores in Brittan.  We go there about once every 2 weeks to get special items.  It is a 30 minute walk away, but we sometimes bicycle (10 minutes).  There is also a Sam's Club-like store that requires no membership very close to it.  We get our bulk items (Prego Spaghetti Sauce and peanut butter) there.  Although we can get a lot of Prego for cheap, very few of our friends know what it is or how to use it, so they are often impressed when we make spaghetti.  We also use it to make pizza.

Church: This is our farthest destination.  It is a 45 minute walk, or a 20 minute bike ride.  There are other churches closer to our house, but this church is the first one we attended, and we liked it so we stayed.

Downtown: The movie theater, and a bible study that we often attend is downtown.  It is somewhat of a trek in the winter, when bicycling is not much fun at all.  What we normally do is bike to the subway station, and take the subway the remaining distance.  It is not efficient and takes about 30 minutes to make the 3 mile trip.  In the summer we normally bike and if traffic is nice, it takes 25 minutes.  We only go once a week.

Across town: Twice a year, an English speaking high school has really awesome festivals (think western food that is normally unavailable in Korea like hot dogs and tacos), so we go to them.  The bike ride is 45 minutes, and the bus ride is too, but the bus ride is often worse because the air gets stuffy.  I really enjoy biking, so we normally bike.  The taxi fare there is $6, but we like to save money.  The school also puts on a twice a year play which is also good.  Some of our church friends teach there.

The countryside:  This is the best part about a compact city.  There are parks everywhere, but if you want real trees, they are right outside town.  So we can take a 20 minute bus ride, and be in a national park (which is more like a state park), or a 10 minute walk and be on a forested mountain that is on the edge of town. 

Other cities/the airport: We take the Korean intercity bus.  It takes about 3 hours to get to Inchon (where the airport is).  We take the KTX sometimes too.  It takes 90 minutes to get to Seoul, but that is because we are going 150+ mph.  It runs on standard rails, but they have the concrete ties, so they are very stable.  Also its couplers are as tall as the car, so oscillations are greatly reduced.  I think that's how it goes so fast.

So that is how we survive without cars.  It's also nice that we pay no mechanic, no insurance, no fixing it ourselves, no gas and no traffic.  The nice thing about this city is that our rent is cheap and we have no grass to mow.  So we like our life here, but we really miss home because it is what we know and what we are used to.  I am coming home in June for two weeks, and I hope to see many of you.  Margaret is staying in Korea, but will visit in September.

Taken from a bike trip across town and over a mountain (no fossil fuels used!)