Learn how to create a custom travel itinerary in Korea with places you find online. This blog offers helpful tips for you to plan your next adventure.
Using Naver to Create Itineraries
I don’t speak Korean and I use Naver Maps in English to plan all of my Korean travel. The following video will tell you more about Naver Maps. It’s a great introduction that will help you get started quickly. After you finish the video, the rest of my blog will walk you through how I plan my trips.
Why do I love Naver links?
Creating unique travel itineraries in South Korea means learning how to use tools such as Naver Maps. To begin you will need to download Naver Maps which you can find in Google Play or in the Apple App Store.
You may be accustomed to Waze in the States but in South Korea, Naver and Kakao maps should become your new best friends. You can learn more about navigation apps in South Korea by reading the South of Seoul blog “Nav Apps: Options, Strengths, and Failures”.
Naver Maps
Naver Maps is the top navigation app in South Korea and it has an English interface.
Using Naver Maps to Create Itineraries
The following step-by-step process walks you through how I create my many travel plans for my family. These plans also work as my outline for my blogs later. Learning how to create a custom travel itinerary in Korea makes life smoother. Let’s go.
Save Locations Into Naver Folders
Many Korean travelers and bloggers share Naver links on their Facebook posts. You may easily organize them into categories and color-code them for future reference. The following photo shows the folders I use for keeping track of what I am interested in. Everyone has a different system that works for them and Naver Maps allows you to make your own folder names.
You can also see how each category populates on the map using the same color and icon I chose for my folder. It makes it easy to conceptualize what each pin means.
PRO TIP; You may also find a location on Naver by adding a business phone number into the search bar. You will notice in the following image that I have typed in the business phone number and the location of the business populated with the name of the business. It’s an elegant solution if you find typing in Hangul (the Korean alphabet) difficult.
Pro Tip: You may also use your translation app, like Papago or Google Translate, to search for something on Naver, including searches in a specific location. Here’s an example of a search for cafes 카페 in Daejeon. The following video will make the search come alive.
What if you can’t read Hangul?
If you need assistance with understanding Korean or Hangul you have a few options:
- Google Translate App (Translates screenshots)
- Papago App (Translates screenshots)
- Chrome with the Google translate extension
- Contact 1330 with the place you are interested in and ask them clarifying questions.
Get to know the above tools and you will be unstoppable.
Using Papago to translate screenshots
If you have never used a translation app to translate photos I will walk you through how it works. First, take a screenshot of the image you need to translate.
Second, click on “image”. You can see it as the option second from the bottom in the following photo. It has the image of a camera on it.
Third, select this icon which I pointed at with the green arrow, which should bring you to your photo gallery from which you may select to the image you want to translate.
Finally, Papago will scan the image and create a translated image. You can see that the translation works pretty well. In fact, Papago often translates far better than Google since Papago is developed by Naver (a Korean company).
After inputting your locations, the rest should be fairly easy. Here’s a 5-minute video example. The following video will help all the previous steps make more sense.
Join the Pyeongtaek Travelers Group
You are also welcome to join our Pyeongtaek Travelers. The South of Seoul moderated community of active and friendly travelers (most who live in Pyeongtaek, South Korea) sharing their adventure across the country.
Volunteer with South of Seoul
Interested in working with a fun team of talented volunteers? The South of Seoul volunteer team is always looking for other like-minded folks to research information, compile blogs, and edit content.
LeaDan Yee holds a Master’s in Education with a focus in Secondary Education and Teaching – Language Arts and Bachelor’s in Psychology, with a minor in Speech.
As a Cultural Liaison and Content Creator at South of Seoul, Ms. Yee focuses on creating content for families interested in traveling and those with toddlers. She is especially interested in opportunities to share her Native Hawaiian background and empower others to be cultural ambassadors.
Prior to joining South of Seoul, LeaDan worked as a High School Speech Teacher and Adjunct Communications Professor. She specializes in Public Speaking, Argumentation and Debate, Team Management, and Event Planning.
