Korean phrases for tourists: the taxi, the counter and the convenience store

You are probably a month or two out. The flight is booked, the room is booked, and somewhere between those two tasks the thought arrived: I should learn some Korean. Then you opened a language app, collected a streak, learned a sentence about an owl, and never got round to the sentence for asking for a bag at a till.

The job is narrower than most apps assume. You are not trying to discuss the weather with a stranger. You want to be polite rather than fluent, and you want to stop being the traveller who points and hopes in the handful of moments where pointing stops working. In Korea those moments are unusually easy to name, because a short trip puts almost all of its spoken Korean in the same three places.

Why those three places

A taxi, an order counter and a convenience store share one feature: someone is waiting for you to say something, usually with a queue behind you, often in the first hour after a long flight. Everything else on a Korea trip can be done with a screen, a card and a nod. These three cannot, comfortably, because each one asks you a question back.

That is the whole argument for a destination-shaped phrase set rather than a beginner course. You are not learning Korean. You are learning about twenty lines so well that they come out of your mouth while you are tired, in the right register, without a pause for mental translation.

The taxi

Start with hello, 안녕하세요 (an-nyong-ha-se-yo), because a greeting buys you patience for everything after it. Then the destination. The practical move is to show the address on your phone and say 여기로 가 주세요 (yo-gi-ro ga ju-se-yo), which is roughly "please go here" and lets the screen do the hard part. Getting out is 여기서 세워 주세요 (yo-gi-so se-wo ju-se-yo), stop here please. Paying is 카드로 할게요 (ka-deu-ro hal-ge-yo), I will pay by card. If the boot is shut on your bag, 트렁크 열어 주세요 (teu-rong-keu yol-o ju-se-yo).

Five lines. That is the entire taxi, and the one that matters most is the second one, because it is the only one with a consequence if it fails.

The order counter

Coffee, a kiosk, a counter with a queue. 저기요 (jo-gi-yo) is how you get attention without being rude. 이거 주세요 (i-go ju-se-yo), this one please, carries an enormous amount of weight when paired with a finger. Add a number and you have most orders: 이거 두 개 주세요 (i-go du gae ju-se-yo), two of these please. Then the fork in the road every counter asks: 여기서 먹을게요 (yo-gi-so mo-geul-ge-yo) for eating in, or 포장이요 (po-jang-i-yo) for taking it away. If chilli is a problem, 안 매운 거 있어요 (an mae-un go i-sso-yo), do you have something not spicy.

The convenience store

This is the one people never prepare and use every single day. 봉투 주세요 (bong-tu ju-se-yo), a bag please. 데워 주세요 (de-wo ju-se-yo), please heat this up, which is the line that turns a cold packet into dinner. 젓가락 주세요 (jot-ga-rak ju-se-yo) for chopsticks. 얼마예요 (ol-ma-ye-yo) when the label is in a place you cannot read. And 괜찮아요 (gwaen-cha-na-yo), I am fine, for the receipt, the bag and the point card.

You will get one of these slightly wrong. That is fine. The second attempt is usually the one that lands, and the staff member has already understood you by then.

Plenty of counters in Seoul will switch to English before you finish your sentence. That is not an argument for skipping the preparation, it is an argument for aiming at a short correct line said quickly, rather than a paragraph delivered slowly. The first half of your sentence is usually all anyone needs.

You do not need to read Hangul to use any of the lines above. It is worth half an evening anyway, because it is an alphabet rather than a set of characters, and once the letters click, station names, menu items and convenience store labels stop being decoration. Phrazl shows the Korean script with a romanised pronunciation guide beside it, so you can work either way round.

Two honest notes about what you are buying. The phrase audio is a synthesised voice, not a native speaker, and the app says so on the screens where you hear it. And a set is scenario-shaped, so if your trip needs all five situations, that is the full bundle rather than a single trip pack.

The companion page on Seoul transport, restaurants and asking someone to repeat themselves goes further on the subway, the transit card and the recovery lines for when a reply arrives faster than you can parse it. If Korea is one of two trips this year, the coverage page lists every destination the phrase sets include.