Planning on traveling around Korea, but worried about getting sick or being milked by taxi drivers? The newly released safe travel guidebook by the Korea Tourism Organization offers useful travel safety tips, emergency contact information and information on how to report complaints to the police.

“Safe Travel in Korea,” available in English, Mandarin, Cantonese and Japanese, contains emergency contact numbers for the police, tourism complaint centers and the national 119 rescue team, along with useful Korean expressions to describe situations. It also offers useful travel tips to avoid taxi scams and not get cheated during shopping trips.

“The safety travel guidebook seeks to solve concerns about traveling safely in Korea and help them (tourists) consider South Korea a safe travel destination,” said Jeong Hye-kyung, director of publication at the KTO.

For a growing number of individual tourists, the guidebook offers safety tips for a variety of settings such as outdoor activities, including camping, skiing and watching performances. The booklet offers contact numbers to local clinics registered to receive foreign patients near popular tourist attractions. 

The safe travel guidebook is available for free at Incheon International Airport, major tourism information centers and hotels. The guidebook is also available for download from the KTO website (english.visitkorea.or.kr), and can be viewed in e-book format.

(wylee@heraldcorp.com)