Korean Sim Card Posted by Roger Keays, 24 August 2010

One of the most frustration things about staying in Korea was not being able to use my mobile phone. It's a Samsung phone - made in Korea, but it doesn't actually work on the Korean cell phone system because they don't use SIM cards. Instead their subscriber identity is hard coded into the handset and that phone is linked to a specific company for good (and I thought SIM-locking was a pain in the butt).

Since I didn't want to carry two phones with me everywhere, I went in search of the best travel / roaming SIM card which works on the Korean networks. The downside is you don't have a local number, so no one wants to call you, but you can still receive calls from home and make outgoing calls. I forward my home number to the SIM.

Here are the products I checked out. I went with the GoSIM card because your credit doesn't expire. It's been fine so far, and it's convenient when you change countries because you don't need to be too fussed about getting a local SIM.

Prices are in USD unless specified. Everything is billed per minute.

	Go SIM	OneSim	Passport	Passport Lite	TravelSIM	TruPhone	Yackie
price	$31,20	$29,95	$29,00	free	49.95AUD	$25,00	$59,00
postage	$15,96	$3,00	$49,00	?	15AUD
credit included	$16,00	none	$10,00	$5,00	5AUD	$15,00	$25,00
free number	estonia	estonia	UK	UK	estonia	US	none
US redirect	35c	35c	19c	30c	-
korea in	0	0	0	89c	0	$1,29	18c
korea mobile	48c	45c	84c	$1,49	52c	$5,28	19,5c
korea sms in	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
korea sms out	58c	40c	69c	79c	47c	56c	54c
korea data	$3,36	$3,42	$2,50	$2,50	$3,42	$1,04	$3,00
call type	callback	callback	callback	callback	callback
connection fee	0c	0c	35c	?
credit expiry	none	10 months	9 months
recharge amt		$25,00	$30,00

Just one thing - if you are going to forward your home number to your roaming SIM, check that your phone company will connect calls to Estonia. Some VoIP telecoms don't service Estonia because of the high amount of fraudulent activity relating to that country.

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