Korean Job Discussion Forums

[thecount]

...What are they?

I'm slowly developing a contrasting image of the city. Anyone have personal experience with the good points / bad points?

What aspects of the area make it a good choice? A hard sell?

I'm trying to develop the most complete picture I can have of the place before arriving, or absconding off to Busan with a friend and ditching any hope of seeing Seoul save the weekends.

Thanks.

[lifeinkorea]

I am about 10-15 minutes away. There are tons of shopping areas near the station, and it is in a good location if you don't want to be in the crowded Seoul nest.

[BoholDiver]

It's like a mini-Seoul. Cleaner than Incheon or Seoul. Slightly cheaper than Seoul but more than Incheon. It's close to both.

[Luvlykylady]

I lived/live in Daeya Dong. I never made it past Bucheon station much, but I liked it. You are roughly an hour away from anything cool in Seoul. Itaewon is still my favorite place in Seoul. Yongsan station has all of the cool DVD's for sale in the back of the Iriver mall. 5 for 10,000 won.

*sigh* I am going to miss the shopping here. It is a shopper's paradise.

[BoholDiver]

32 minutes to Yongsan from Bucheon Station, 25 if you catch the express.

Itaewon takes 50-55 minutes depending on your transfers.

[Son Deureo!]

I used to live near Songnae Station in Bucheon (between Bupyeong and Bucheon stations, in the city of Bucheon), but it's been a few years so some of this may be out of date....

Bucheon is mostly a bedroom community for Seoul, so if you end up choosing Bucheon over Busan you're really choosing it for easy access to Seoul on the weekends, but there are a few things there worth checking out in the area if you do end up there.

It's probably most famous for Pifan, the Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival, which happens every summer. It's a festival of genre films from around the world. It lasts about 2 weeks, you'll see some great movies, and they all have English subs. Definitely worth checking out. http://www.pifan.com/eng/

Just outside of Songnae Station is a cart with the best damn chicken on a stick in the republic for just W1000.

Across the street from Songnae Station is a plaza with a lot of good Korean restaurants with outdoor seating. Great place to have galbi al fresco in the summer.

Jung-dong market. An open air traditional market that's about 10 blocks long with a lot of great hole in the wall restaurants and other deals to be had. If you live in the area, it's definitely worth a walkthrough. Butcher shops with live cows, huge octopus tentacles getting hacksawed, conveyor belt pizza. You might not be able to get everything you want there, but its a pretty good time. I lived around the corner from it and bought all my produce and meat there.

Bupyeong Station (actually Incheon, but close enough) has Starbucks and the expat bar Goose Goose, plus a huge underground shopping complex.

The Bucheon Station area has a decent-sized K-style nightlife district that can be fun. There used to be a fun bar called Halloween that got a good expat crowd.

Einsworld - A theme park with miniature replicas of many of the great monuments of the world. Cheesy as hell, but it cost less than W10,000 and there are worse ways to kill a Sunday afternoon. Who knows, you might even learn something? http://www.aiinsworld.com/

Even if you end up not liking Bucheon much per se, it's still a pretty convenient location, there are Samhwa Express buses and special express trains on Line 1 of the subway that will get you to downtown Seoul in 30-40 minutes. Looking westward, it's also fairly close to the Yellow Sea Islands, about a 20 minute subway ride then 15 minutes by cab to Yeonan Ferry Port/연안부두, from which you can catch ferries to a lot of rustic islands with some pretty nice beaches off the coast of Incheon. Great fun in the summer, and these trips are much more feasible on a regular weekend if you're living in Bucheon than if you're living in Seoul.