Korean Apps for Travel and Living in Korea: 18 Apps Checked for English

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Lists of essential Korean apps are everywhere, and most of them stop at the name and a one-line description. Before you install anything, whether for a week-long trip or a move to Korea, two other things matter more. Can you download the app from your home country’s app store? And does the app say it supports a language you read?

I checked both for 18 Korean apps on October 12, 2026, using Apple’s public App Store lookup for the US, UK and Korean storefronts. For each app I recorded whether it was listed in each store and which languages its listing declares. This guide groups the apps by the job you need done and gives those results, with links to our longer explainers where we have one.

Messaging: KakaoTalk

If you install one Korean app, make it this one. Friends, landlords, colleagues and shops use KakaoTalk for messages, group chats and a good deal of everyday business. Its listing declares English plus a long list of others: French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese, Spanish, Thai, Turkish and Vietnamese. It was available in all three stores. Our explainer covers what KakaoTalk is and why Korea runs on it.

Getting around: maps, taxis, subway and trains

Google Maps has long fallen short on turn-by-turn directions in Korea. A February 2026 government decision on map data started to change that, but slowly, as we explain in where Google Maps stands in Korea. The local alternatives are Naver Map and KakaoMap. Naver Map’s listing declares English, Japanese and Chinese. KakaoMap’s declares English only alongside Korean.

For taxis, Kakao T is Kakao’s taxi-hailing app, and its listing declares English and Japanese. For the subway there are two common choices: Kakao Subway, which declares English, and Subway Korea, a third-party app from Malang Studio that declares English, Japanese and Chinese.

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Trains turned up the clearest difference in the whole check. Korail’s app, listed in the Korean store as 코레일+ (Korail+), declares English, Japanese, Chinese, Thai and Vietnamese. The SRT app, for the separate high-speed line running out of Suseo station in Seoul, declares Korean only. If you plan to book SRT trains, expect the app to be in Korean.

Translation: Papago

Naver’s Papago declares English and ten other languages, and was listed in every store I checked. It does text, voice and camera translation. Google Translate does the same jobs, so the practical advice is to have both and compare when a result looks off, especially for menus and signs.

Food delivery and shopping

The three big delivery apps all declare English. Baemin and Yogiyo also declare Japanese and Chinese, and Coupang Eats declares English only alongside Korean. For online shopping, Coupang declares English and Chinese.

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The secondhand marketplace Karrot, known in Korea as Danggeun, was the one app whose availability varied. Its listing came up in the US and Korean stores, and a search of the Canadian store found it too, but it was not in the UK store when I checked. If you are setting up from a UK account, check before you count on it.

Money: Toss, KakaoBank and KakaoPay

Toss had the longest language list of any app in the check: English plus Khmer, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Russian, Chinese, Spanish, Thai, Uzbek and Vietnamese. KakaoBank and KakaoPay each declare English, Chinese and Vietnamese. My reading of languages like Uzbek, Khmer and Vietnamese is that these apps are built with foreign residents in mind as well as tourists, though the listings themselves do not say so. For background, see what Toss is. Be aware that banking on a computer in Korea brings its own hurdles, covered in Korean bank security programs.

The full results

Every app except Karrot was listed in the US, UK and Korean stores. Chinese is counted once in this table even where a listing declares both simplified and traditional.

What the store page will not tell you

Downloading is the easy part. Signing up is where most foreigners get stuck, because many Korean services verify your identity through a Korean mobile number registered in your own name. That system, and the workarounds that exist, are covered in Korean identity verification for foreigners. If a form asks for your number in a format you do not recognize, our guide to the Korean phone number format explains 010 and +82.

Search is its own story. Many Koreans search on Naver before Google, which changes what you will find and where, as we explain in Naver vs Google in Korea. And for AI chat apps built in Korea, see our round-up of Korean AI apps.

Before you download

Can I download Korean apps without a Korean App Store account?

For 17 of the 18 apps checked here, yes: they were listed in the US and UK stores. Karrot was the exception in the UK store.

Which Korean apps work in English?

Every app in this check except SRT declares English. Content such as reviews and listings may still be in Korean.

Which map app should I use in Korea?

Naver Map or KakaoMap for directions. Naver Map declares more languages; both declare English.

Did you test each app’s English interface?

No. This check covers store availability and declared languages only. How complete each translation is would need hands-on testing of every app, which this guide does not claim.

Sources. Store availability and declared languages come from Apple’s public App Store lookup, checked on October 12, 2026 for the US, UK and Korean storefronts, with an additional Canadian search for Karrot. Listings and language support change with app updates, so check the store page before relying on a specific language.