Opening Hours

Generally the opening hours are from 9am to 8pm, for normal shops, bigger chain stores like E-mart and Lotte Mart are open from 10am till mid-night - which is very convenient if you suddenly need more shampoo or a hammer at quarter to 12! Though even in Osan on weeknights there seem to be a large number of stores that are still open at 10pm. From my experiences it would seem the majority of restaurants still serve till around 10 or 10:30pm though this may be later in Seoul as it is much busier than little Osan! There are even a number of restaurants that are open 24 hours meaning that if you have had a little too much to drink or are getting in from a late flight and desperately need that fix of Galbi at 3am...you can have it! A large majority of the convenience stores are open 24 hours, 7 days, and the people who do the night shifts seem to be remarkably cheerful! Convenience stores are also everywhere, 2 or 3 to a street, and on every corner (again I am referring to the area from Osan in towards Seoul I am sure there are places in Korea where they are hard to find). They sell a very random selection of items, offer facilities to re-charge your T-money public transport card, and a good friend mentioned that they will even re-charge your cell phone battery for less than 1 Aussie dollar. Basically everything here is geared around people that work long hours, my lovely co-teacher, Yun, once said to me that she liked that she finished work at 6 or 7pm and she could still have a life after work. Given a lot of people here work till 9 or 10pm then it makes sense that things would be open later!