All my friends that I've made here either come from a place where they also use similar transportation methods, or have traveled to places where these are used. My friends have also told me that Korea’s subways are a much better experience (safer and cleaner) than those in other states and countries that they’ve been to. The bus and subway announce the stops in Korean and English and things like signs are typically written with English underneath the Korean. For someone (me!) who is not fluent or strong in Korean, this fact makes traveling feel very safe and easy. The subway plays a little jingle/song when your train has is about to arrive at the destination station, which I thought was fun! It can be tricky using Naver-Maps, as sometimes the app. doesn't register the English name of places, so you may have to use online translators to get the Hangul (Korean alphabet) version of the address; usually, by copying and pasting a simple translation, you will get the correct address to pop up.
It absolutely is! Korea has lots of mountains and hills, so much of the infrastructure here is built around these things. Seoul itself is a big city, but there are clusters of businesses all near one another that make it easy to navigate this city. Public transportation is also very affordable and safe--even children are able to use it on their own. Another thing that I think connects Korean transportation to the culture, here, is the existence of places on subways and buses that are reserved for pregnant women or old people: no one else is allowed to sit in these seats.
