Kyobo Bookstore

Kyobo is well known as one of, if not the biggest bookstores in Korea. Generally, if I want to buy a book, I go What The Book in Itaewon, but on Monday, after visiting the Police History Museum, we were in Gwanghwamun and decided to take a peek.


Due to the holiday we were greeted with a massive wave of people, mostly concentrated around the stationary section, though there was no lack of people in the book sections either.

I was trying to find a corner rounder to take the sharp edge off of laminated flashcards. Unfortunately, the crowds in the stationary section were a bit overwhelming and making it impossible to find anything. So we moved on to books, where there was a little more room to breath.

Kyobo has quite a large room (probably bigger than all of What The Book in Itaewon) dedicated just to English language books. You can find lots of bestsellers, nonfiction, US textbooks (way cheaper than in college bookstores), Books for learning English, travel guides and books on Korea among others. They even have a whole section dedicated to learning Korean in this area too! I found my text book, and was thankful to find out that my hagwon is not overcharging me on books, believe it or not.



Then we went over to the children's section to try to find me something that I was capable of reading. I found a nice little book about a caterpillar that I was understanding about 50% of... when the boyfriend found some other book he was sure would be more entertaining and convinced me to read that instead. It was not more entertaining though... because I couldn't barely understand anything.... so much for the little caterpillar....

We got bored of my struggling to read children's books after a while, and without any better ideas we went out and headed home. It wasn't quite the amazing long weekend I had hoped for, but you can't ask for everything. I'm now planning my amazing long weekend (only 3 days) in May in which I hope to go to either Kyoto or Fukuoka Japan. Tickets are already sold out for flights, but, this far in advance, we should be able to put our names down for a reservation and get it... I would hope...