The Seoul airport itself is very nice and modern – make sure you get information here if you do not speak Korean, since most Koreans do not speak English. Pre-planning will be key to your trip because of the language issue. From the airport, it is an easy trip on the rail to get to the city center. Also, taxis are reasonably priced in comparison to subways.
We made sure to print out copies of our apartment location in Korean (we stayed at an airbnb), along with a map and instructions for taxi drivers to get there. We decided to stick with using taxis because of the complexity of the subway – the Korean characters are hard to memorize or recognize. We spent a lot of time looking for a reasonable and accessible airbnb. After asking a few different hosts to measure the doorways, we found one that could fit a manual wheelchair, and the pictures also looked like it would work. However, once we got to the apartment, the bathroom was smaller than expected, and we had some problems, which we eventually worked out. Not sure I would recommend it for others, so It may make more sense to stay at a hotel, especially if you are a power wheelchair user.
Like other places in Asia, there is typically a step or two to get into some restaurants, and if there’s a ramp it’s not up to US standards. You may have to ask an employee to help lift you into the main dining area. Alternatively, there are street markets with food and other goods readily available.
Museums and malls are a safe bet for being wheelchair accessible. We spent some time at the National and War museums of Korea, as well as shopping districts, like Gangnam. The national palaces are also worth going to, but are a little hard to get around with in a wheelchair due to the cobblestones.
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Hi Vic,
Thank you for reviewing your trip to Korea.
Im planning to introduce the wheelchair accessible places in Korea on my blog.
I haven't started blogging yet, but do contact me when you are visiting Korea again.
Have travelled to Seoul a few times, heading for my 4th trip this week. The subway system in Seoul is great, has English translations on each station and announces each stop in English (as well as displays it onboard on monitors). Most tourist areas I have managed to get buy without being fluent in Korean, thanks to things like phone translation services, etc I have always managed to work it out. Many stations are completely accessible some are not. There is a govt run site you can check access to each station with visual maps and location of elevators and wheel chair lifts. Trains are very cheap in Korea and great way to travel. There is also a guide that Korea Tourism has for Korea on access to most areas including, monuments, buildings, major tourist areas etc. The public toilet access for wheelchairs in Seoul I found much better in some instances than in my own country Australia, especially at train stations.