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Fun fact: western ride sharing apps don't work in South Korea, and this company also makes the leading rideshare app in the country. I was forced to make an ac

Fun fact: western ride sharing apps don't work in South Korea, and this company also makes the leading rideshare app in the country. I was forced to make an account on the mobile chat app in order to log into their rideshare app, on a recent trip to Seoul. The UX was not great... not to mention that it was mostly in Korean. I had a lot of trouble. They didn't strike me as the most professional operation..

unsupp0rted 2y ago
It’s an everything app suite with single sign-on: KakaoTalk, KakaoTaxi, KakaoBank even (bank obvs not for foreigners without local ID numbers). The Kakao Metro map app is the best of its class too.
- laz 2y ago
  When did Kakao Bank start offering accounts to foreigners with ARCs? Last I checked it did not.
  - unsupp0rted 2y ago
    Some foreigners claim they have KakaoBank accounts, but they may be confusing them with KakaoPay accounts, or maybe the account is in their spouse’s name or whatever. Suffice it to say: for foreigners without a Korean ID number it’s a definite no and with a Korean ID it’s a likely no. And good news: they’re not called “ARCs” anymore. No more “Alien Registration Card” extraterrestrial stigma. Now it’s just the regular stigma.
    - BlockerBrews 2y ago
      This is correct. I live in South Korea and I’ve never heard of any foreigners with kakao bank accounts. That was never offered as far as I know.
      - seoulbigchris 2y ago
        I (living in SK for twenty years) do remember reading within the last year(?) that the government corrected the legal regulation that prevented foreigners from joining an online bank like Kakao Bank (it was a catch-22 situation, the rules required the bank to verify an account holder's ID using a system that only worked for citizens... the procedure to verify a foreigner required face-to-face verification with documents, but online banks by law were not allowed to have brick-and-mortar offices for customers to visit). However, I have yet to read that any of the online banks have changed their procedure to take advantage of these changed regulations.
alxlu 2y ago
Uber works in Seoul
laz 2y ago
Uber works in S Korea now. It also accepts non-Korean credit cards, while most online apps in South Korea do not.
indoordin0saur 2y ago
One thing that surprised me about SK is that they have so many local alternatives for tech products that I thought were global. And the global/US version has almost no market penetration. An example of this was Google, at least when I visited in early 2015.
- localfirst 2y ago
  It's great that American software monopolies do not have access to Korean data and that Korean companies can create jobs hiring Koreans and add to the GDP. ALL sovereign countries should practice sovereign software and safeguard PII of its citizens It's rather inconvenient for non-Koreans but you were never the intended audience nor is there much care for foreigners these days-there is growing hostility towards foreign tourists who have flocked to Japan and Korea in recent years.
  - hiccuphippo 2y ago
    I don't know about SK's privacy laws, but wouldn't a country's government have more power to tap into the data of local companies?
    - dingnuts 2y ago
      yes, and they also have the power to tell multinationals where they are allowed, geographically, to store the locals' data. the grandparent has invented a fake problem (data regionalization, as though it cannot be addressed with regulation) and has conflated a nationalist-socialist desire to replace a foreign private enterprise with a nationalized public one. it's nationalist because it assumes that the nation needs to own it, and socialist because at the national level a public solution is proposed. the solution, in turn, doesn't actually solve the regionalization problem unless the state organization running the nationalized ride share app is required through further legislation to keep the data local -- the same legislation that would be needed to regulate private entities, except now it's the government regulating itself since the public national ride share app is operated and owned by the government, and is now open to all the problems of corruption that plague every command economy. But by all means, be more like North Korea, South Korea. Just nationalize everything. You don't want American influence. Those American monopolies and American dollars have really made you worse off in the last seventy years. /s
setopt 2y ago
I lived in South Korea some years ago, and it was interesting how they had a separate ecosystem of apps and services. “KakaoTalk” and “Naver” had approximately the roles that WhatsApp/Meta and Google have in the West. I think it’s great how these managed to thrive, despite increased competition from multinational companies. In many other countries, local tech companies seem to have become nearly irrelevant over the past decade, which is a sad to see.
- Quinner 2y ago
  It's the result of protectionist government policy. The policies are protectionist not just against foreign entry but also against entry of new products into the market. The government picks technology winners. Unsurprisingly, the government doesn't do a great job of this. Infamously it mandated usage of ActiveX and Internet Explorer for banking long after ActiveX had its time in the sun (the government made this the mandate in 1996 and didn't reform it until 2021!)
  - setopt 2y ago
    When you mention it, as a Linux user at the time I struggled a lot with the ActiveX thing… Eventually I think I gave up. I had no idea that stuff was government-mandated.
    - throwaway2037 2y ago
      It didn't work on Wine?
      - SuperNinKenDo 2y ago
        Running IE in wine wasn't always the easiest thing in the world, and when you were specifically running it to try and use weird integrations even less so.
        throwaway2037 2y ago
Algemarin 2y ago
> The UX was not great... not to mention that it was mostly in Korean. I had a lot of trouble. They didn't strike me as the most professional operation.. What does the seemingly very common-sense fact that a South Korean app was "mostly"(?) in Korean have to do with the UX or with it not being "professional"? What language were you expecting the South Korean app to be in, French?
- jszymborski 2y ago
  Surely there's no obligation to internationalize your app, but taxis are commonly used by tourists so you'd imagine it would be a good business decision.
  - throwaway2037 2y ago
    What percentage of online taxi rides are booked by tourists? I would guess less than 1%. "[I]t would be a good business decision": I disagree.
    - smabie 2y ago
      Well maybe more people would book taxi rides if they added translation..
- lurking_swe 2y ago
  multi language support is pretty standard in many popular apps. it’s not even that hard. Imagine supporting the most common language in the world. CRAZY right? https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode/supporting-multiple-languages-in-your-app https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode/supporting-m...
  - Algemarin 2y ago
    > Imagine supporting the 2nd most popular language in the world. CRAZY right? Why are you fixating on supporting the 2nd most popular language, shouldn't it support the 1st most popular language first? Or why not jump straight to the 3rd?
Xeamek 2y ago
As others already mentioned, Uber does work in SKorea (or at least Seoul), altough it's not really an uber, afaik its just a proxy for kakaotaxi while using Uber's interface
- BlockerBrews 2y ago
  Korea uses KakaoT as a ride hailing app. But all it does is hail taxis. Uber in Korea just hails Uber branded taxis. I have no idea if they are officially affiliated with Uber or not.
- tkazec 2y ago
  Uber operates through a local JV with Tmap called UT. Taxi drivers typically sign up for both Kakao T and UT, except when exclusively branded. (Kakao T and Uber both operate branded taxis.)
permanent 2y ago
Kakaotalk is in English, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Thai, Traditional Chinese, Turkish, Vietnamese (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/kakaotalk/id362057947 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/kakaotalk/id362057947)
seoulmetro 2y ago
They are professional. They just don't have to care about foreigners.
a_t48 2y ago
When I went ~5 years ago, I was completely unable to use the taxi apps due to lack of Korean bank acct. This lead to being unable to even hail a cab at times - they mostly seemed to pick up fares from the apps. At one point I managed to get one of their attentions - and was told that he wouldn’t drive me because I was an “outsider”. Not sure if he was actually xenophobic, didn’t want to deal with a cash fare, didn’t want to deal with my lack of Korean, or just had a misunderstanding. A later “successful” cab ride put me going halfway across the city through the mountain. I had to call a date I’d had and get her to explain to the driver that we were going the wrong way. The perils of going to new country underprepared I suppose.
- kevintb 2y ago
  It’s not because of xenophobia, overseas Koreans without a Korean bank account have also faced this before.
tkazec 2y ago
Uber has operated in Korea for the past couple years through a local JV with Tmap called UT. It's the next most popular taxi hailing service after Kakao T.
kevintb 2y ago
> The UX was not great... UX patterns are different in Asia by the way. Also majority of tourists to Korea do not speak English, so it’s a little weird you think English should be prioritized over other Asian languages
- Dylan16807 2y ago
  > UX patterns are different in Asia by the way. I would be interested in elaboration on this. > so it’s a little weird you think [thing they definitely did not say they think] Uh huh.
neom 2y ago
I totally don't understand the comments under this comment or this comment, apart from about 8 months when Uber was being sold to SK, uber has worked just fine daily for the past 5+ years for me? Even during the "government crackdown" phase, X stopped working but although the press said uber shut down, uber worked just fine, only X shut down. I hear this comment time and time and time again and I wonder where it comes from, I'm happy to show literally years and years of uber receipts from South Korea.
teen 2y ago
ive used uber in seoul many times

unsupp0rted 2y ago

It’s an everything app suite with single sign-on: KakaoTalk, KakaoTaxi, KakaoBank even (bank obvs not for foreigners without local ID numbers). The Kakao Metro map app is the best of its class too.

laz 2y ago
When did Kakao Bank start offering accounts to foreigners with ARCs? Last I checked it did not.
- unsupp0rted 2y ago
  Some foreigners claim they have KakaoBank accounts, but they may be confusing them with KakaoPay accounts, or maybe the account is in their spouse’s name or whatever. Suffice it to say: for foreigners without a Korean ID number it’s a definite no and with a Korean ID it’s a likely no. And good news: they’re not called “ARCs” anymore. No more “Alien Registration Card” extraterrestrial stigma. Now it’s just the regular stigma.
  - BlockerBrews 2y ago
    This is correct. I live in South Korea and I’ve never heard of any foreigners with kakao bank accounts. That was never offered as far as I know.
    - seoulbigchris 2y ago
      I (living in SK for twenty years) do remember reading within the last year(?) that the government corrected the legal regulation that prevented foreigners from joining an online bank like Kakao Bank (it was a catch-22 situation, the rules required the bank to verify an account holder's ID using a system that only worked for citizens... the procedure to verify a foreigner required face-to-face verification with documents, but online banks by law were not allowed to have brick-and-mortar offices for customers to visit). However, I have yet to read that any of the online banks have changed their procedure to take advantage of these changed regulations.

alxlu 2y ago

Uber works in Seoul

laz 2y ago

Uber works in S Korea now. It also accepts non-Korean credit cards, while most online apps in South Korea do not.

indoordin0saur 2y ago

One thing that surprised me about SK is that they have so many local alternatives for tech products that I thought were global. And the global/US version has almost no market penetration. An example of this was Google, at least when I visited in early 2015.

localfirst 2y ago
It's great that American software monopolies do not have access to Korean data and that Korean companies can create jobs hiring Koreans and add to the GDP. ALL sovereign countries should practice sovereign software and safeguard PII of its citizens It's rather inconvenient for non-Koreans but you were never the intended audience nor is there much care for foreigners these days-there is growing hostility towards foreign tourists who have flocked to Japan and Korea in recent years.
- hiccuphippo 2y ago
  I don't know about SK's privacy laws, but wouldn't a country's government have more power to tap into the data of local companies?
  - dingnuts 2y ago
    yes, and they also have the power to tell multinationals where they are allowed, geographically, to store the locals' data. the grandparent has invented a fake problem (data regionalization, as though it cannot be addressed with regulation) and has conflated a nationalist-socialist desire to replace a foreign private enterprise with a nationalized public one. it's nationalist because it assumes that the nation needs to own it, and socialist because at the national level a public solution is proposed. the solution, in turn, doesn't actually solve the regionalization problem unless the state organization running the nationalized ride share app is required through further legislation to keep the data local -- the same legislation that would be needed to regulate private entities, except now it's the government regulating itself since the public national ride share app is operated and owned by the government, and is now open to all the problems of corruption that plague every command economy. But by all means, be more like North Korea, South Korea. Just nationalize everything. You don't want American influence. Those American monopolies and American dollars have really made you worse off in the last seventy years. /s

setopt 2y ago

I lived in South Korea some years ago, and it was interesting how they had a separate ecosystem of apps and services. “KakaoTalk” and “Naver” had approximately the roles that WhatsApp/Meta and Google have in the West. I think it’s great how these managed to thrive, despite increased competition from multinational companies. In many other countries, local tech companies seem to have become nearly irrelevant over the past decade, which is a sad to see.

Quinner 2y ago
It's the result of protectionist government policy. The policies are protectionist not just against foreign entry but also against entry of new products into the market. The government picks technology winners. Unsurprisingly, the government doesn't do a great job of this. Infamously it mandated usage of ActiveX and Internet Explorer for banking long after ActiveX had its time in the sun (the government made this the mandate in 1996 and didn't reform it until 2021!)
- setopt 2y ago
  When you mention it, as a Linux user at the time I struggled a lot with the ActiveX thing… Eventually I think I gave up. I had no idea that stuff was government-mandated.
  - throwaway2037 2y ago
    It didn't work on Wine?
    - SuperNinKenDo 2y ago
      Running IE in wine wasn't always the easiest thing in the world, and when you were specifically running it to try and use weird integrations even less so.
      - throwaway2037 2y ago

Algemarin 2y ago

> The UX was not great... not to mention that it was mostly in Korean. I had a lot of trouble. They didn't strike me as the most professional operation.. What does the seemingly very common-sense fact that a South Korean app was "mostly"(?) in Korean have to do with the UX or with it not being "professional"? What language were you expecting the South Korean app to be in, French?

jszymborski 2y ago
Surely there's no obligation to internationalize your app, but taxis are commonly used by tourists so you'd imagine it would be a good business decision.
- throwaway2037 2y ago
  What percentage of online taxi rides are booked by tourists? I would guess less than 1%. "[I]t would be a good business decision": I disagree.
  - smabie 2y ago
    Well maybe more people would book taxi rides if they added translation..
lurking_swe 2y ago
multi language support is pretty standard in many popular apps. it’s not even that hard. Imagine supporting the most common language in the world. CRAZY right? https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode/supporting-multiple-languages-in-your-app https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode/supporting-m...
- Algemarin 2y ago
  > Imagine supporting the 2nd most popular language in the world. CRAZY right? Why are you fixating on supporting the 2nd most popular language, shouldn't it support the 1st most popular language first? Or why not jump straight to the 3rd?

Xeamek 2y ago

As others already mentioned, Uber does work in SKorea (or at least Seoul), altough it's not really an uber, afaik its just a proxy for kakaotaxi while using Uber's interface

BlockerBrews 2y ago
Korea uses KakaoT as a ride hailing app. But all it does is hail taxis. Uber in Korea just hails Uber branded taxis. I have no idea if they are officially affiliated with Uber or not.
tkazec 2y ago
Uber operates through a local JV with Tmap called UT. Taxi drivers typically sign up for both Kakao T and UT, except when exclusively branded. (Kakao T and Uber both operate branded taxis.)

permanent 2y ago

Kakaotalk is in English, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Thai, Traditional Chinese, Turkish, Vietnamese (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/kakaotalk/id362057947 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/kakaotalk/id362057947)

seoulmetro 2y ago

They are professional. They just don't have to care about foreigners.

a_t48 2y ago

When I went ~5 years ago, I was completely unable to use the taxi apps due to lack of Korean bank acct. This lead to being unable to even hail a cab at times - they mostly seemed to pick up fares from the apps. At one point I managed to get one of their attentions - and was told that he wouldn’t drive me because I was an “outsider”. Not sure if he was actually xenophobic, didn’t want to deal with a cash fare, didn’t want to deal with my lack of Korean, or just had a misunderstanding. A later “successful” cab ride put me going halfway across the city through the mountain. I had to call a date I’d had and get her to explain to the driver that we were going the wrong way. The perils of going to new country underprepared I suppose.

kevintb 2y ago
It’s not because of xenophobia, overseas Koreans without a Korean bank account have also faced this before.

tkazec 2y ago

Uber has operated in Korea for the past couple years through a local JV with Tmap called UT. It's the next most popular taxi hailing service after Kakao T.

kevintb 2y ago

> The UX was not great... UX patterns are different in Asia by the way. Also majority of tourists to Korea do not speak English, so it’s a little weird you think English should be prioritized over other Asian languages

Dylan16807 2y ago
> UX patterns are different in Asia by the way. I would be interested in elaboration on this. > so it’s a little weird you think [thing they definitely did not say they think] Uh huh.

neom 2y ago

I totally don't understand the comments under this comment or this comment, apart from about 8 months when Uber was being sold to SK, uber has worked just fine daily for the past 5+ years for me? Even during the "government crackdown" phase, X stopped working but although the press said uber shut down, uber worked just fine, only X shut down. I hear this comment time and time and time again and I wonder where it comes from, I'm happy to show literally years and years of uber receipts from South Korea.

teen 2y ago

ive used uber in seoul many times