Severance, Exit allowance, Pension and Moving On

It's that time of year, folks. After two years in EPIK, it's time to pass GO, collect $200 and keep on going.

The DMOE sent out the following email which caused much a-fluttering:

Hi - 

If you are receiving this email, you have requested copies of the documents that are necessary to continue employment in Korea after your current contract with the DMOE has ended, or have indicated that you have secured employment elsewhere in Korea through communication with the coordinator's office. As you are probably well aware, we are not permitted to distribute the exit allowance to those NET's that continue employment in Korea after the end of their contracts, whether it be at another MOE or POE, a private institution, or university (article 11, clause 4). Essentially, if you are changing your visa while staying in Korea to reflect new employment, then you are not eligible to receive the exit allowance. At this point, we have asked our financial officer to withhold sending the total amount to your school until you are able to submit substantiating evidence that you will be leaving the country. You will need to submit a copy of an itinerary or plane ticket in your name that shows the date of departure as anytime after the end of your contract (or before, if you are using vacation days to leave early). You may feel free contact us individually if you feel you have a special circumstance that does not allow you to submit said documentation. 

Please understand that this is an incredibly difficult rule to enforce on our end. While we are well aware that merely requesting copies of documents doesn't automatically mean that you will be securing employment, it is the only objective method that we can use in order to enforce this particular rule in the contract. We would appreciate your cooperation in order to give you the allowance if eligible. 

Thanks,

DMOE Coordinators.

TL;DR:

1. If you are leaving the country, you get the $1300 exit allowance. If you're transferring your visa to another employer, you don't.

2. To get your $1300 (if you're eligible), send them the receipt of a ticket (plane, ferry, tuktuk, whatever) in your name, leaving the country. 

I took a closer look at our contracts and the above is in there, so there's not really any way around it. 

However, I also found this:

3. Everyone, regardless of what you're doing next, who is ending their EPIK contract, is eligible for severance pay. 

From the DMOE:

Information regarding the severance pay went out in the "end of contract details" email that we sent out when you renounced your renewal contract. I will provide you with the link again. Severance pay is roughly equivalent to 1 month's worth of salary for every year that you have completed. Note that the entire sum is taxed. Your admin office may be able to give you the exact sum total. I might suggest that you ask for a breakdown of your last payments for your records.

So let's break that down. On payday, February 25th (more or less), you should receive the following:

1. February 2015's paycheck (according to the pay scale, your usual amount).
2.1 month's salary (of the amount you were paid in your FINAL year) for each year of your previous consecutive EPIK contracts. (e.g. 2013 + 2014 = 2 months worth of 2014 paychecks)
3. (- taxes)

If you have not yet received your renewal bonus for re-signing for 2014, you should definitely remind your school about that and receive that too. 

As far as I can tell, renewal bonus and severance are NOT the same thing. If your school carried over your renewal bonus to pay it with your severance, it should NOT be deducted from your severance.

So, if you're leaving Korea, your paycheck for February should be about $5000-8000 (depending on your pay scale level and how much taxes are). If you're staying but moving to another job (not EPIK) it should be about $4000-6000. If you're moving to another POE/MOE, you should receive $4000 ~ 6000 + $300 (settlement bonus) from the new POE/MOE. 

On top of that, Australians, Canadians and Americans are eligible for a full refund of their pension payments as follows:

You have been contributing 50% to your pension fund, while the DMOE has been matching that and paying 50% as well up until now. You will be eligible to get a 100% refund ONLY if you are from Australia, Canada or U.S.A., according to the national treaties. You must physically go to the National Pension Office in person, up to one month prior to your departure from the country to request your refund. After the last day of your contract, your school will report the termination of your contract to the pension office. After the school's report and the Immigration Service's confirmation on your departure are complete, your application for the refund will be processed. Please refer to the website for the National Pension Corporation for detailed information about the Pension Plan and the application process for your refund (http://www.nps.or.kr - English website available). Also, a telephone consultation service is available at 02-2176-8702.

*Please note: while you can physically submit your application for renewal up to one month prior, your refund request can only be processed starting the day after your contract ends, and it usually takes about one to one and a half months after your departure has been confirmed by the Immigration Office for the funds to be deposited into your account.*

Required Documents
Passport
Alien Registration Card
Flight Ticket (departure date must be indicated) - flight confirmation/itinerary printed from the internet is acceptable.
Bank Account Number (domestic or international - international may require your bank's swift code)

*Please note: The DMOE does not provide pension payments. Your payments will come from the National Pension Office.*

You lucky bastards. 



I hope this is clear... If not, please go ahead and spam the coordinators' inboxes.

The Ulsan Whale Museum

Last weekend I had a fun date at the Ulsan Whale museum.

There's no shade, so bring your own hat or steal someone else's

I took the express bus from Dongdaegu to Ulsan, and it took a little longer than expected. The bus to the whale museum stops right in front of the bus terminal ACROSS THE STREET from where the express bus terminal is. Buses 246 or 406 will get you there. My Cashbee card worked happily on the bus. The bus ride is pretty long, and you may get the feeling you've missed your stop when you go past big whale signs and whale sculptures. Do not be fooled. Ulsan is full of whales. It used to be full of real ones, but let's just blame Japan for that too, ok?

  

When you finally get to the whale museum, you'll see its big modern buildings standing out against the relatively nothing-ful town/dorpie it is in. It's right on the water, which is nice. Tickets were pretty cheap - we got the packagee deal which included the whale museum, the whale experience building and a 4dx whale movie. 

The immigration office

The bus stop is in front of the Ulsan Immigration Office, where nice whales can get their passports stamped before being brutally murdered and served for lunch at the restaurant next door.

Yum

Wait, what? If you don't want to eat whale, there's a convenience store that sells squid, nuts, fruit, junk food and ramyeon. They also have fried chicken cunningly hidden by the door.

The museum is more of a museum about whaling rather than an environmentally friendly save the whale kind of place. It didn't seem to pass much negative judgement on whaling; instead, a cute cartoon is shown to kids about how whalers were death-defying heroes who struggled to bring in the whale that would help their village survive through the winter. Fair point, I guess.

Happy fun dolphin time!

There are lots of cute and fluffy things about this museum. There's even a whole section about how Korean Dokdo is. But there are non-cute and fluff-less things as well, like porpoise fetuses in jars and the contents of a whale's stomach.

Best viewed before eating lunch

There are also some friendly, poopy dolphins playing in a tank for you to watch. They poo a LOT. The 4DX movie... Well, telling you anything would result in spoilers and I take a firm stand against that.

Ready for some 4D experiencing

Finally, between April and October you can go whale-watching/water-staring on a boat for about 20 000 won, next to the museum.

Whale watching info. Click to embiggen

We didn't have the nerve to eat whale meat this time, and the whale watching season was over, so I think we'll have to go back to stare at the sea and hope to catch a glimpse of our lunch in the wild next time.

Take me out to the ball game, take me out to the crowd...

Last night I ticked off another item on my bucket list: Eat dried squid, fried chicken and drink soju at a baseball game. Bonus points for figuring out how to cheer along.

It wasn't my first baseball game, but it was the first time I completely satisfied the criteria of it. And now I'm going to tell you how to do it.

Step 1: Acquire tickets in the party section. You can buy tickets for the 'free seating' area at the stadium, but the party zone usually sells out quite quickly. If you want to sit around and watch the baseball seriously and be glum, and the very idea of fun repulses you, you'll like the free seating area.

My first baseball game, sitting in the free seating area. I still had fun, though! 

If, however, you want to get the full Korean baseball experience, then there's really only one place to be: the 'Blue Zone'. Party central. This is the area that has sexy cheerleaders, free stuff, a lot of shouting and singing, beer challenges, kiss cams, cutey dance cams, couple dance cams, and so on. If you're a foreigner, there's a good chance of you appearing on the screen, especially if you're decked out in the paraphernalia of your team.

I got a free towel! YEAH!

And if you're in team gear and going for it with the cheers, then the Koreans around you will love you. And they'll befriend you, and give you food, and stuff like that. Last night I was given chicken and dried squid, which is the closest thing I can get to biltong in this country, although it tastes completely different.

Eating ramyeon with new friends. We kept hitting him with our thundersticks, by accident. 

So, yes. The party seats are DEFINITELY worth it and they only cost about 1000 won more. Ticket prices vary depending on who's playing. You will need to buy them online, using something like ticketlink (which I'll write about another time because I don't know how to do it and I rely heavily on a fabulous friend who buys them for our group).

Step 2: Acquire food and beverages.

An awesome thing about Korean baseball stadiums is that you can bring in whatever food and drink you like. I've seen people walk in with huge boxes of pizza, chicken, hamburgers... Last night the group in front of us had a mountain of sushi. You can also bring in whatever booze you like, as much as you like, and no one cares. But you cannot smoke in the seating area of the stadium. You can smoke in the back, by the toilets, if you want to. You can also buy snacks (anything from ddeokbokki to squid to ramyeon) at various stores within the stadium. DO bring your own toilet paper. 

Step 3: Find your seat

As you walk into the stadium you'll see a map. Check where your seat is - make sure ALL the numbers match up. Remember that Korean addresses go from biggest first to smallest. When you find the seat that has all four numbers matching the four on your ticket, in the same order, sit there. 

Time for the game! Now, as a South African, I know an awful lot about cricket and rugby but absolutely nothing about baseball beyond a particularly American song that's been stuck in my head for hours. Here is my own Koreanised version of it:

Take me out to the baaaaall game

Take me out to the crooooowd

Buy me fried chicken and ddeokbokki

Mekju, soju and makgeolli

Let me root, root root for the home team

If they don't win it's a shame

Aaaah, for it's one, two, three strikes - you're out!

At the old ball game.

Anyway. I think I'm starting to get the hang of this, so here goes:

A Brief Guide to Baseball for People who are Less Free than 'Muricans.

There are two teams and they take turns throwing and hitting the ball. 

They're trying to hit it hard so that it goes far away, so that they have more time to run to the next sandbag. The sandbag is called a base. Once a player has made it all the way around from base to base, and back home to the dugout, he has completed a run. A run is one point. If they make it all the way around with just one whack of the ball, then that's a home run. If the ball goes too far to the side of the field, it doesn't count. 

This is how you watch baseball.

If the pitcher (the thrower) throws badly a certain number of times, then the batter just walks to the next base. Sometimes batters who are on the bases try to sneak a bit closer to the other ones so that they can quickly run there when the ball is hit. The pitcher can turn around and throw the ball to the base they were supposed to be on and that's irritating to watch when they do it too much. If the batter misses the ball three times, they are banished to outer Mongolia. If three batters are out, then the teams switch places. This switch happens nine times - that is one inning. There are nine innings. Top of the inning - the away team is batting. Bottom of the inning - the home team is batting. 

The team with the most runs wins, like in cricket.

So now you understand the game, or at least you know when it's good and when it's bad. This means you can cheer. YAY!

My students support the team and chose their shirt as their outfit for sports day. 

Step 4: Cheering along in Korean

On the screen and scoreboard is a list of the names of the players. If you can read hangul, this will help. If you can't, it's good practice and you'll see their names briefly in English on the screen. 

The most basic cheer is (Name) ANTA! Which apparently means 'Hit it low'. That way it will bounce and they won't be caught out. 

If you copy exactly what the cheerleaders and cheer guy are doing, it will help. In the Blue Zone, you can see them easily. 

Sexy cheerleaders. Also notice the emptiness of the free section and fullness of the party zone. Because that's exactly what you're looking at, right?

Some players have their own songs or cheers specially for them. Even if you don't know the song, it's pretty easy to clap and wave along, and you can join in when they say the player's name and ANTA or HOME RUN!

When our batters go out, we sing them a little goodbye song, waving them off the field with a sort of bunny gesture. 

A little bit like this.

And that's about it. I love baseball, I love going to games, and I love that my team, the Samsung Lions, are the undefeated champions. They've just reached number 1 in the country's league stats, which is awesome, and they absolutely decimated the Seoul Twins last night with 9 home runs! Bad asses. Samsung Lions! Yes, Keep Going!

Yeah, I realise their catchphrase is cheesy as hell. Cheesy is classy. Pictures in this post were edited using powerpoint, in lieu of photoshop, gimp or paint. Lolly is a goat.

Seeing a Korean ENT

The first time I was sick, it was a public holiday, so the 이비인 across the street from my alley was shut. I trudged all the way up the stairs to find the door locked. I was very disappointed. But, it worked out in the end when a nice stranger drove me to a doctor and I got a jab in the bum.

Now it's yellow dust season, and I'm starting to get sick again. I think my body just isn't used to the cold, and the killer Korean germs. Yellow dust is basically chinese sand mixed with pollution that blows down over the rest of Asia and makes us all sick as dogs. When it rains it leaves chalky yellow marks on the ground, apparently. You can check the yellow dust levels online; right now they're still pretty low, so I think this cold I have is more a result of the sudden cold front that has hit us. 

The end is nigh! 

In Korea they have a saying: 꽃샘추위. My co-teacher told it to me when we first met. It means, "Winter is jealous of the flowers blooming in Spring, so it's cold again." Thus while cherry blossoms are blooming early, it's snowing in the countryside. And I'm a cheapskate who stupidly slept with my ondol turned off the night the cold front hit. 

So yesterday after school, I hopped on my bike and headed off to the 이비인 I hadn't been able to see before. Once again, I waited for the lift that never comes, and trudged up the stairs. This time it was open! The receptionists didn't speak any English, and looked terrified the moment I walked in. I handed over my ARC and had a seat. A little girl came in with her mother, and said hello to me. Seven times. Then I was ushered around the corner to see the doctor. 

I spoke to him in bad Korean and looked up 'flu' in my phrase book. I coughed, mimed having a sore throat, covered my ears and sniffed loudly. He said, "Would it be easier if we just speak English?"

He asked me all the normal doctor questions. Usually this is the point where doctors whip out the ear-thermometer. 

Oh, no. This is Korea. This is where it gets interesting. From a table next to me covered in what looked like gifts from a torturer's birthday party, he grabbed a sort of gun thing with a long, thin nozzle. He used this to spray inside my nose, before tilting my head back and peering up my nostrils. Then, with my head in a vice-like grip, he twisted it and peered inside my ears.

"Aha!" said the doctor.

"Errr..." said I.

He retrieved a long, slender, hooked implement. Usually the doctor says "Oh, there's a bit of waxy build-up" but does nothing and lets you go on your way with your gunk-filled ears. My dad taught me never to stick anything in my ears smaller than my elbow. 

This hook was definitely bigger than my elbow. In my mind. He ordered me to sit very still, because he was going to remove the wax from my ears.

This was a distinctly unpleasant experience. 

After removing Paris Hilton and a Buick from my ears, the doctor prescribed a cocktail of pills and regular saline rinses. No bum jab in sight!

get me out of here!

I headed on my merry way, suddenly amazed at the magical gift of hearing he had given me. 

On my way home I bought a kilo each of strawberries and melons from the guy in the truck with the loudspeaker. If you hear someone shouting things over a loudspeaker, don't worry. It's not the authorities ordering a mass evacuation. It's a guy advertising a discount on delicious fruit. 

Strawberries + melons: W15 000
Doctor and medicine: W15 000

I love Korea's healthcare system. I love Korean melons too - they're the yellow stripy things. They taste like sweet spanspek. :D

If you want to see this glorious English-speaking ENT yourself, go to Chimsan Junction (tell the taxi driver Chimsan Negiri), and stand facing the bank next to the big church. Turn 180 degrees and look across the road for a sign with an elephant on it that says  이 비 인 . The doctor is on the third floor of that building. 

Getting a phone and a bank account without your co-teacher, in Daegu

As I've said before, my co-teacher is ridiculously busy. I also may have mentioned how expensive that first week in Seoul was, and how I brought enough money to last a month but didn't really count the weeks properly, or factor in the expense of a week-long party. 

Anyway, last week I found myself down to my last ₩50 000 and the lack of a phone on top of that was making it very hard to coordinate with my friends, and co-teacher. As it stood, I would send her an email and then hope that she would check it and reply, and then I'd have to be home and near my laptop to see it... Eh. Not great.

On top of that, being that broke meant that I was avoiding spending money like the plague. Taking the bus downtown? Oh, don't mind me. I'll walk. It's only a 40 or so minute walk, after all. I even figured out how to get free food 7 days a week: 

Monday - Friday: Eat in the school cafeteria. Eat a lot. Eat until you're stuffed. At least you won't have to have dinner. Make sure to store all the free cake and treats you get in your school. 
Saturday: Eat your week's stash of freebies. 
Sunday: Not religious? Who cares? Go to church. They serve a full lunch, such as Bulgogi. 

Cake and a Ferrero Rocher? Breakfast of champions. The best free staffroom food so far has been a burger and a coke.

Alternatively, make friends with a co-worker and let them treat you to a five course meal.

So, walking everywhere and eating for free, and trying not to spend all my money on beer, I've been able to stretch out that last ₩50 000 and live quite comfortably. But I want a bicycle, and I needed a bank account before payday, and, well, there's a reason EVERYONE has cellphones these days. They're quite handy. 

My co-teacher had tried to take me to the bank, but they wouldn't accept my ARC certificate of application, even though they were supposed to. They said they wouldn't accept it without picture ID, and my co-teacher took that as a flat-out no. I wasn't so sure, but I didn't want to be with Daegu Bank anyway, because I want to travel all over Korea and having an account with a national bank is a bit more convenient. Also, I had heard about all the perks foreigners get with KEB, like the cheap rates for sending cash home, and I have a big loan to pay off. Not to mention online banking in English. 

So I took a walk to the nearest branch of KEB during my lunch period. It was a 20 minute walk. It looked much closer on the map. Whoops. I got there, and the very nice clerk told me that they couldn't do anything without TWO forms of picture ID as well as my ARC, and all I had was my passport. So, not one to give up, especially after teaching a week of "Never Give Up", I took a cab home, fetched my South African ID, took a cab back, and got a bank account. 

Except they couldn't give me a card or online banking until my ARC arrived. Well, I was willing to wait for that. At least with a bank book I could get a phone.

How to get a smartphone in Daegu, without a co-teacher

1. Email Eliza at auikorea (at) gmail (dot) com. She speaks fluent English and she will save your life. Ask her for any information you want, and set up an appointment. My lovely friend Rene had heard about her on an online forum, and she'd gotten several phones from Eliza. 
2. Make sure you have a bank account. Even if you don't have a card yet, or any money in it, you just need an account number and your bank book. 
3. Visit Eliza (near Kyungpook University Hospital) at this building.

It's on Google Maps.

Stuff you should take with you:

ARC card or certificate
Passport
ID
Bank Book
Some money (About ₩60 000 , although you probably won't have to pay anything).
A book to read, or something to keep you busy. It takes her a while to set everything up. 

4. Once you're inside the building, head to the right, to the elevators. Take one of the three elevators on your right. The ones on the left don't go to the 10th floor, which is where you're going. 

5. Step out of the elevators and go into this office:

It looks like this inside: 

Have a seat, chat to Eliza, and drink some tea while she sets everything up for you. 

She'll lead you from there, and then, you can enjoy your shiny new smartphone. I got an amazing discount, and my monthly bill is about ₩55 000, which is a hell of a lot cheaper than you would pay for a Samsung Galaxy S3 in most other places. Eliza gives you the discount, and she also throws in a bunch of freebies. She's lovely.

You have to sign a 24 month contract, but if you're only planning to stay for one year then contact her before you leave so she can organise to transfer your contract to someone else, so she doesn't lose money and you don't have to pay a huge fine for ditching your contract. Basically, don't screw her over.

No queues. No upfront fees. No language barrier. This was the best thing ever, and I could never have done it without my friend Rene's help.

My phone once belonged to Edward Cullen. 

Now that I have my phone, I took lunch today to go back to the bank and update them on the existence of my ARC card (it arrived on Monday) and my phone number, without which my dad couldn't send me money. I got back to the office and set up online banking, at which point I discovered...

I have been paid early! I gave my bank book to the admin wizards the day I got it, and they made a copy and put it on file, and paid my settlement money sometime between then and now. So this whole week, I've been living on free staff room dduk, when I could have been eating steak every night. It's like the worst episode of Secret Millionaire ever. 

I could have been using that money to fill out my pants

Just in time, my bills have arrived, so there goes a chunk of my money already. Except, it's Korea. So my bills are only $7 and $30 each, for electricity and gas. And that's ridiculously cheap, when you're a millionaire. So I don't mind. 

The Daegu Map

I've been slowly but surely making a map of interesting places in Daegu. I pulled some data from some old expat maps, and have been adding in updated information as and when I find it.

You can view the map by clicking the link up there on the navigation bar. Alternatively, you can click this (link).

If you think something is cool in your area and should be added to the map, send me a link to its location on a google map, in a comment on this post, and I'll add it to this one. Because of Korea's phobia of street addresses, that's really the most certain way of me being able to find it as well.

Go forth and explore! And then share so we can all enjoy the city.

Also, this is my 100th post! Hooray! :)

Finding Home

My plan for today is to see a doctor, although I think I need my ARC certificate for that, and clever-clogs over here left it in her co-teacher's car, along with all her other important documents, and the textbooks she's supposed to be going through. Maybe they'll accept my passport for now - surely they treat tourists, and you're supposed to apply for your ARC within 90 days of arriving, so this can't be a first... But there's no knowing for sure with bureaucrats and I don't want to walk all the way there for nothing.

Anyway, I'm still not entirely sure where my apartment is, in relation to the rest of the world. Neither google maps nor Naver maps have ever heard of my sparkly vampire building. So I marked home on my GPS and grabbed the coordinates from that.

Now I know that I'm about 100m from the river I've been wanting to walk along. So maybe after my co-teacher (hopefully) brings my stuff, and I've seen the doctor and been medicated, I can go for a gentle stroll down the river. I still have a lot of unpacking to do while I wait for my co-teacher to reply to my email, but I doubt she's even awake yet.

I've been up since 5. Need to unpack so I can find my own medicine and self-medicate. I think I might have a kettle.

The vacuum cleaner only works for about 2 minutes at a time. But alternating between vacuuming and scrubbing, I think I've gotten most of the hair and gunk out of my flat.

Navergating Daegu

For months, I've been hovering over Daegu. Soaring above it, silently observing it from a distance. 

"They look like... tiny, tiny little ants from up here."

Despite what some people may think, I am not the Bat Man. I was using Google* Earth, and this was pretty much as close as I could get to seeing what my city looks like:

If only I could see what it looked like at street level... 

All I wanted to do was see it on Google Street view, but unfortunately the Batmobile Google* car never made it to Daegu. So instead I resigned myself to Googling the Hangul place names and finding out what sorts of things there are in my neighborhood. My browser is set to automatically translate Korean, but it's not very good at it. This can sometimes have hilarious consequences, such as the restaurant whose name mistranslates as "Interpants". I plan to visit it as soon as possible.

I started marking interesting locations on a custom Google Map*, as well as the locations of my friends' schools, as they find them out. There are a few expat maps that have been made over the years, and I've tried to compile them into one general map of Daegu. But I can't verify the info until I get there. Challenge accepted. And I think that will probably give me something to do during desk-warming season.

Some of the places on the map are out of date, such as the Champs Action Bar which closed about a month ago, replaced by something called Caliente's (which sounds like it may be Mexican food). An expat currently living in Daegu told me about this. And then he told me something which blew my mind.

He said, in one tiny little facebook comment, "http://maps.naver.com/".

BEHOLD!

Street view of the stadiums from the Google Earth photo.

Well, it makes sense if Korea has their own massive search engine and mapping company that they'd have cut Google out, or made some sort of a deal. And when you get past the sea of incomprehensible Hangul, Naver Maps works in basically the same way. So here's a brief rundown on how to use it, based on my own fiddling.

First, open Naver maps by either clicking the link above or copying and pasting it into the address bar in your browser. I'm assuming you know how to use the internet if you've gotten this far, but we have to start somewhere. It will spit you out in Seoul, to begin with.

It should look like this. I've labelled the basic functions you'll need (in red, of course).

Click to see a bigger picture.

Some things that stick out to me:

Weather - now that is a useful feature, and it seems to live-update.
Subway and train information.
The cutesy aerial view button - oh, Korea.

It seems a bit cluttered but I bet it wouldn't if I could read Hangul a bit better.

To get to the city of your choice, type its name in the Location box. Hit enter. Thereafter the navigation is basically the same as Google maps or Google earth  - double click to zoom in, right click to zoom out. You can drive around in the Navermobile on the roads, or, and this is my favorite, tour your city's bike routes on the Navercycle.

I decided to check out the bike path along the river that bisects Daegu. To navigate street view you can either click around or use your arrow keys. For interest's sake, the red and green lines show the subway lines in Daegu.

Clicking street view makes blue lines appear on all the roads where you can explore. Click somewhere on one of them. 

Let the cycle tour down the river begin!

Apparently drinking in playgrounds is perfectly legal.

Korea's ajummas are actually superfit ninja warriors. She walks here from Busan every day.

Another way to stay fit for free is to use outdoor exercise equipment. In a country full of highways and overpasses, putting a gym underneath seems like a genius use of space to me. Provided the fumes don't kill you. 

Delivery mopeds have right of way everywhere. End of story.

March of the Ajeossis.

 I can't believe how great Naver Maps is, though. If you're not intimidated by all the Hangul then it looks like it can be incredibly helpful for getting around. So, yeah. I could spend hours doing this. But I can't wait to do it for real.

*This post was not sponsored by Google or Naver. If you work for Google or Naver and would like to offer me money for all this free advertising, please leave a comment and I'll get back to you.