Last year, Seoul ranked second to Moscow as the most expensive city in the world. This year, it is now “just” third. I’m not familiar with the methods used for ranking cities, but I don’t think Seoul is that expensive, except for its real estate. One would need lots of moolah to buy an apartment (we’re shopping and the cheapest I’ve seen for a 33 pyeong unit is about $300,000 – one pyeong is about 3.3 sq meters) in the city. Mortgage lenders abound here! I could have a mansion with a swimming pool with that amount of money back in the Philippines!
Well, to give an idea of how much it is to live in Seoul…
village bus ride – 600 won ($ 0.64)
a subway ride – 1,000 won ($ 0.93) — > $2.00 in New York
taxi’s flag down rate – 1,900 won ($2.00)
McDonald’s meal – 5,000 won ($ 5.37)
simple hair cut – 8,000 won ($ 8.60)
a liter of fresh milk – 1,800 won ($ 1.93)
a kilo of pork – 9,000 won ($ 9.67)
a kilo of beef – 30,000 won ($ 32.25)
a whole chicken – 4,000 won ($ 4.30)
ten eggs – 2,500 won ($ 2.68)
{ 1 trackback }
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
wow beef is really expensive in Korea. The rest seem to be fine when compared to US prices.
hi! your blog articles are really interesting. i have always been fascinated with korea. i especially love koreanovelas, as what we pinoys call it. although i’m already living here in sydney, i still miss watching korean soaps. the last one i saw in the phils was the “stairway to heaven”. gosh i love it! i cried buckets of tears! my pinoy friend here in sydney lent me a korean dvd, “bean chaff of my life” was the title, and i also loved it! can you recommend any korean tv series that i can watch? sorry for the long comment, can’t find your email address in the “contact me” section. i hope to visit korea someday. cheers!
forgot to tell you to reply to my email address re my question. thanks!
wow…i never imagined that it was that expensive living in the Korean lifestyle!! I tried converting the prices from dollar to peso and I got really shocked especially the price of the beef which is about Php 1,000+ if converted to peso…woah!! really expensive!!!
for mia…i could recommend watching “Coffee Prince” and “Princess Hours”…you would certainly love it!!! Here in the Philippines right now, Korean dramas are everywhere and you can buy one single Korean drama in “banketas” for only Php50 for a whole fully-loaded Korean drama…nice right…^_^