Comments on: Cost of living in Seoul

By: ric10

ric10 — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 10:04:02 +0000

I’m just wondering if you can easily communicate with them. I mean, can you really speak Korean language or are they really good in English? Sometimes, the only thing that make me worry to work in Korea is the language barrier. Buying something from the supermarket might be difficult if you can’t really read the Korean Language and I wonder, do they have any sign board or anything in English???

By: ric10

ric10 — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 00:08:58 +0000

Thanks dude..

By the way, you have a great informative blog. Keep up the good work.

By: admin

admin — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 07:34:35 +0000

@Ric10 my apologies for the delayed response, I’ve been really busy. Your food allowance is more than adequate, a typical local (Korean) meal here costs around USD 5-7. You can take your internet budget down to about USD60. I’m not sure about your lifestyle but you might want to set aside some dough for a mobile phone.

By: ric10

ric10 — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 09:16:32 +0000

Hi! I just got an offer to work in Seoul. They offer me the salary about US$3.6K per month, in which the accomodation, transportation and lunch are provided. The salary is also tax free. Based on this salary, Can I really survive in Seoul? If say the food is about US$600 + US$150 (Internet Service), monthly I think I will have saving of about US$2.85K. Is there any other expenses that I should include in? Hope you can advise me.

By: betchay

betchay — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 00:55:58 +0000

honga! i just found out that my husband’s sis pays 80K for her cellphone alone… swerte ng asawa ko alam ko kung paano kumuha ng mura… LOL

By: admin

admin — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 11:55:49 +0000

@ Eden, I can’t speak for other occupations but I’d say Koreans are paid pretty well in my line of work compared to South East Asia.

@ Betchay, looks like you’ve got a pretty good deal going for you there. The company pays for my phone bills so I don’t have a clue of how much my monthly bills are, the mobile phone figures I gathered were from my co-workers, mind you they are motormouths ^^

By: betchay

betchay — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 10:40:48 +0000

we only spend about $60 on internet, landline and cellphone… i use yahoo phone out for international calls… we pay 2,500 won monthly for our TV, we don’t have a cable subscription but we do have over 60 channels

By: Eden

Eden — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 12:31:54 +0000

Hi! Based on your post, I’d say living in Korea isn’t bad at all. Hehe Hmm… For grocery, we used to spend USD 150-200, apt is around USD 800-1000 too, shopping makes me crazy sometimes ‘coz my dad has an unusual hobby so we get to spend around USD 300-400 for the whole family. I’d agree about the mobile phone plans. I have a Korean friend who stopped sending SMS and calling me because he said it’s expensive. Am just curious, do Koreans also get good wages or compensation that somehow matches their cost of living? By the way, thanks a lot for the info.