Wednesday, April 25, 2012

What a wonderful helpline it is!



Today, I would like to introduce one of public services the Seoul government provide as I think it's quite interesting and useful to know.

A couple of years ago, the Seoul government integrated all help lines including borough offices into one line and made 120 Dasan call centre.

Logo of 120 Dasan one-call service

What is a barrel of laughs point of it is that this service is operating 24hours a day, 365 days a year, year after year and you can get any answers you want to know like where is a good place to go out with my girl friend?, Where can I get a part time job? How do I get to Gyeongbokgung(Palace)? etc from professional counselors. This service is also operating with text message,sign language, online chat, SNS and smart phone application. Besides the service is provided in different languages such as English, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese and Mongolian even though the service operation time is shorter than Korean service.

Information of 120 Dasan one-call service
I believe you will find it useful if you visit Seoul.


Why did Seoul office name this service Dasan?

Dasan(茶山) is a pen-name of Jeong, Yak-yong who was a great thinker, philosopher, author, poet, scientist and engineer back in the 18th century. ( I want to call him the Korean Leonardo da Vinci). He taught Justice, Integrity to the public and many were touched by his lessons. To emulate his footsteps, the Seoul Government named this public service  Dasan.

If so why 120 ??
This is one of the emergency numbers in Korea. Below is all the helpline numbers.

Emergency numbers in Korea
You can call 111 if you ever find North Korean spy and can get up to 0.7 million won. Funny haha and also sad,, isn't it?







I hope you find this information interesting and useful for your Seoul trip. :-)

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

MY FIRST FOOT PRINT ON THIS PLANET



As a lot of people have thought like me, what I really want to know during travelling are what the local people eat on special days and where they go on vacation and to what they spend their money for their living.

However, just like most of Korean people did, I have also used package tour travel agencies provided;
I have traveled not to experience a real life of local people but to go banal tourist spots or the places where the agencies squeeze more income from their customers.

This blog is for who speaks the same language as me. Therefore, I am going to show you the latest Korean trends about tourist attraction, goods, entertainment etc.