Getting a phone or sim card in Korea

This post should have been done sooner but I forgot to even do it until I looked back at all my blog posts.  Getting a phone and sim card is a little difficult in Korea but not impossible.  If you don't want to wait so long for your ARC and would prefer to have a sim card asap then you can do what I did.  thearrivalstore.com is a website for expatriots to visit that are going to be in Korea.  An expatriot is a student, a long term tourist (2+ months) or someone starting new in Korea due to occupational purposes.  Anyway, so I went on the website and got my sim card there. It is very easy to do.  All you have to do is go on there and click on the sim card only option, put in how long you will be there and click a plan you want.  Then when you pay, you will be charged the activation fee and then a calculated fee for how many months you're going to use it.  I got a plan that gives me unlimited talk, text and 2GB of 4G data for $54.00 a month.  There are other plans and if you don't want to spend so much you can get the most basic plan and then get a wifi egg at an olleh store (15,000W a month for 11 gigs).  Here's the thing though, in order for your phone to accept the Korean sim card, your phone needs to be unlocked.  Or, if you don't want to unlock your phone but know what kind of phone you want, get the sim card and then buy a phone in Yongsan (post on Yongsan/Sinyongsan coming later).  I haven't bought a phone there but I have seen the prices and types of phones and they are reasonably priced.  I think you only need a passport also to buy a phone there.

This is how my sim car came.  I picked it up at a cj counter that thearrivalstore.com emailed me about.  Purchasing the sim card is very straight forward and easy.  A few days before you arrive, they tell you the location of the sim card and give you a map showing you where it is.  The cool thing about the sim card is that unlike American sim cards, it has the capability of being used as a t-money card as well.  However the t-money function does not work on every phone.  It can also be used as cash bee.  The way I understand cash bee to work is that it is like a reloadable pre-paid visa that you can use anywhere that accepts services like apple pay/android pay.  Along with the sim card, you get a packet of instructions and your phone number.  I immediately set my phone up in the airport and it took less than a minute.