This thread is aptly timed. I just ten minutes ago returned from my first major "all public, all the way" trip around soul. Me and a buddy, both of us having just gotten to Korea a couple weeks ago, finally decided to figure out the public transportation so we could actually go out and do stuff. We learned three major lessons.

One, Korean bus drivers are apparently convinced that they are driving extended rally cars through a closed course where traffic laws/signs/lights have no meaning to them. They are also oblivious and/or simply do not care that most of the passengers are standing. It is an experience.

Two, Go for the young folk when in a foreign land and trying to figure out the subway system for the first time. We got a very helpful older gentlemen with exceedingly poor english to help us, and after ten minutes a younger cat with far superior dialect managed to fix us up in about 30 seconds. It took another ten minutes to explain to the very helpful older gentlemen that we knew where we were going now, and he did not have to excitedly lead us to the track.

Three, public transpo is pretty awesome once you know what you're doing. It takes a little longer, but over here at least it's cheaper than dirt. It cost us less than $2.50 american to bounce all over Seoul via subway, and the hour train ride to seoul in a reserved seat (as opposed to standing) was only about $10 either way. We could have done the same trip entirely by subway from where we're at, but it came highly recommended that we take a train for the major jaunt first, as the subway results in standing for 2 hours and the train has a comfy seats and took 45 minutes less time due to less stops. I highly enjoyed myself, and am definitely looking forward to using the ever loving piss out of it over the next year.

We also learned that the local rock climbers are embarrassingly strong and will make you look like a total chump. They will laugh at your failures in a totally friendly, pleasant way. We shamed our entire country, sorry USA.