Korean Job Discussion Forums

kngr721 · Joined: 30 Sep 2009 Location: Pyeongtaek

I'm looking for a bookstore where I can find books in Spanish and/or Italian (NOT grammar or language learning books). So far I've only seen books in English and French. I'm not too picky, but I'd like some sort of selection and I'd really like to avoid the costs of importing books directly.

Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!

Jubalum · Joined: 15 Jun 2008

I could be wrong, but I seem to remember some Spanish books at the main Kyobo store (near the US embassy). I'm not sure about Italian though.

santafly · Joined: 20 Feb 2008

Doesn't Amazon ship to Korea?

rickpidero · Joined: 03 Sep 2009

I ordered some books from Amazon on November 9th. I am still waiting on those books! They tell me if they are not here by the 19th of Jan. then I can finally get a refund. I wouldn't recommended going through them, although I did standard international shipping. Maybe the upgrade shipping will bring you better results.

There is an English book store in Seoul, What the Book, they could have Spanish books too. Website: http://www.whatthebook.com/

Good luck.

air76 · Joined: 13 Nov 2007

The cost of importing books is greatly reduced if you are only paying a couple bucks per book.

If you have someone in the US who can ship to you...go to half.com, find a seller who has loads of books in Spanish, buy 5-10 books from the seller (you can often get old library books for under $2 each) and then the shipping isn't too bad when they're all from one place. Many of the sellers won't ship internationally so you can just get the books sent to a friend/family member and then they can ship them on.

You can sometimes get 10 books for $30 (including domestic shipping), then pay another $30-40 to have them shipped over, that's still much cheaper than paying 20,000 won a book in Seoul.

My guess is that a lot of sellers would be willing to ship to you directly if you asked them ahead of time.

For example...this shop has 300,000 books, I just found Kurt Vonnegut's Galapagos, one of my favorite books, for 75 cents. (not in Spanish, though) Surely there are loads of other great classics for under a buck as well.

http://shops.half.ebay.com/ukazoo-books_W0QQsellerZukazooQ5fbooksQQmZbooks

Michael_75 · Joined: 13 Oct 2008

The Kyobo in Gangnam has a tiny selection of Spanish books, not sure of they are just textbooks or not though. I don't think there are any Italian ones though.