Guide to Studying Abroad in South Korea: Getting a Sim Card

There are many ways to get a sim card that will work while in South Korea: at a cell phone store in Korea, preorder to pick up at the airport, and preorder and have it shipped to you before you leave (or when you're already in Korea). I will be focusing on the last option as this is what I did.

I got my first sim card while I was completing my mandatory 2-week quarantine in Seoul from the organization I was quarantining with. I used it for a while after I got out of quarantine, but the thing with these sim cards is that they are meant to temporary. They only last 90 days (the length of the average tourist visa), and if you want to continue using it you need to attach your ARC to you sim card. This is important to do because once you have your ARC attached to a phone number, you can do so many more thing (i.e. order food delivery, buy things online, etc.). I couldn't figure out how to do this with the sim card I already had, so I bought a sim card through Trazy and had it shipped to my apartment in Seoul. I bought this sim card, which can be shipped to you abroad or domestically and allows you to chose various types of plan (I chose the premium lite plan). I found the process of attaching your ARC really easy.

Once you set up your sim card account, you will be given access to a portal where you can pay your bill, connect your ARC, change your plan, and many more things. It will look something like this:

There are of course many other ways of getting a sim card or phone plan while studying in South Korea, but I found this to be the easiest way without needing to know any Korean. But one thing to be mindful of is, if you have a newer iPhone you might not be able to change the sim card. Check your phone before leaving for Korea to see if you are able to change the sim card yourself, or else you might need to find an alternative way of having a functioning phone while studying in Korea.