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Kosher Travel Advice for South Korea

Seoul
Seoul

Contributed by: Cassie Daniels |  Last Date of Travel: August 2011

Kosher Info:
There’s a Chabad in Seoul in a very trendy area. They were great. Chabad has a shop with lots of essentials and they also make and sell bread/ challah (except summer). There are two or three Costco stores in Seoul where you can get frozen salmon and Philadelphia cream cheese with hechsher, plus snacks, tinned tuna, peanut butter, jams and pasta etc with OU. There’s a chain of bakeries called Paris Baguette in Seoul, Busan, and Ulsan and I’m sure other cities that is worth looking in. All of their stores had OU Pepperidge Farm cookies and some Snyders pretzel items with an OU.
In Ulsan there’s a good range of kosher stuff in the aisles of the giant Lotte department store and the Hyundai department store in the city centre – both have ‘foreign food’ sections in their basements, including cookies and Carrs Crackers with hechsherim,  pasta, Italian tinned chick peas and lentils, which clearly listed their ingredients.
In Seoul, the lovely Is@k Travellers Lounge hostel is near Chabad.  They had a little kitchen where I used their stove and my own pot to cook. (Turns out one of the owners went to a Jewish high school in the US and he sang me Hava Negilla to prove it!) The door to the hostel is electric and code activated, but I spoke to the owner who happily listened out for my knock and let me in on Friday night.
Travel Info:
Korea is beautiful, especially in the autumn and spring when the parks and public places are filled with color. Jeju Island is a great place to spend a few days, and if you are interested in North Korean relations you can take a tour to the DMZ in the northern section of the country. There are several pottery villages worth visiting, but if time is tight, some of the best pottery can be bought in Dandemun in Seoul.
(South) Korea is very tourist friendly and the people are helpful and often offered to carry my bags, point things out on maps, and give advice. I found the cities to be very safe. Koreans enjoy visiting sauna/spa places which are safe and clean places to relax. They usually have separate women’s, men’s, and family areas with cold and hot pools and tiled steam rooms. They are often open 24/7, with lockers, towels and pajama type outfits usually provided free to visitors. I used the one at the airport in Seoul and it was excellent.
Busan
Busan
  • Seoul has several tourist information offices which have computers with free internet access. The tube system is great, though make sure to have a tube map on you. There are walking tours and hop on hop off tours around Seoul. The modern N Seoul Tower has beautiful views from the top and is surrounded by pretty grounds. Seoul is also home to several beautiful temples and a large food market at Nandemun (though for the kosher traveler this can be a bit of a depressing place. Everything smelled delicious and the cakes looked beautiful, but the only thing I could find to nibble on was watermelon.) My favorite place in Seoul was the high street in Dandemun where you can buy traditional Korean pottery and other arty things.
  • Busan has a huge shopping mall -the Shinsegae Centum City which is full of designer shops, a fantastic but pricey sauna/spa and a roof garden with lovely views. Across the city is Busan’s famous aquarium. Here’s a link to the Busan tourist information website.
  • Ulsan has a nice whale museum. I would recommend taking a tour of the Hyundai car factory, which is the largest in the world. The Ulsan Grand Park is fantastic, and there is also a zoo on site. Here’s a great link with loads of tourist info for Ulsan.
Jewish Info:
The only known shul is the Chabad in Seoul. There used to be a Jewish chaplain in a US army base outside Busan, but I’m not sure if this is still the case. In Ulsan, I was working for Hyundai and lived in the accommodation village across the road from the main factory. I was in an older 1970’s building which was great as there were no electric doors etc. All of the newer buildings had electric light sensors everywhere (making Shabbat a huge hassle), but also kitchens where I could have cooked (but my pot was not suitable for an induction stove so didn’t work!).

About the author

Dani Klein

Dani Klein founded YeahThatsKosher in 2008 as a global kosher restaurant & travel resource for the Jewish community.

He is passionate about traveling the world, good kosher food / restaurants, social media & the web, technology, hiking, strategy games, and spending time with his friends & family.

11 Comments

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  • I just studied abroad in Seoul for 6 months, and while my dorm had a stove top for me to use and I got much of my food from Chabad, my lifesaver was Jelly Belly’s, Hershey bars, and Haagen Daaz, which are available in every convenience store. It made exploring Korea much easier, because while they’re not exactly healthy, it made it easier for me to not have to worry about having to bring along snacks for when I was away from my apartment for much of the day. You can also find Kosher noodles in many small markets, you just may have to look around a while. Many coffee shops also sell KIND bars and other small snacks that have hechschers on them.

    • I can speak to what my Rav, who was in Korea as a military chaplain said, “I could only drink milk from a can because the local milk is not like America. Here, we have laws that it must be 100% cow milk or there will be a serious fine and the company may go out of business. When I was in Korea, I saw with my own eyes farmers milk their cows, then if they did not have enough cow milk, they would milk other animals that were not kosher and add that milk to the total amount of “cow milk” to sell. So, it was a hard time for me living there.” Otherwise, he ate fruit and veggies and fresh fish if he knew it was kosher or he waited for food to be sent to him. Maybe things changed, but unless it is Parmalat milk in a box, I know that I won’t even drink the milk in Europe.

  • Kosher travel in Asia is actually interesting. I’ve been on a Vietnam river cruise before, along the Mekong river, so I got to see Cambodia too. I will definitely be visiting Korea very soon.