If you have a GSM SIM card that can roam you can use it in Seoul but they charge you full roaming charges which are an arm and a leg. This exactly is my point, they do have the service and are capable of providing this service but refuse to do so
People there are too patriotic is most likely the reason
Alright. Seriously. Grow Up. All I asked was if you could use an iPhone in Korea, but you reply by flaming an
entire country in this and other threads just because you can't get a simple SIM in Korea because, as you claim, you're caucasian. Obviously, you do not understand the regulatory system in Korea.
Many of my friends, which include Vietnamese, Pakistanese, Indian, and
Caucasian (Canada, USA, Australia) are able to use Korean phones here with Korean SIMs. First, this shows your lack of effort to even try obtaining a SIM without some research. The reason why these foreigners are allowed to have Korean phones on the Korean telecom system is because they have records stored in the Korean government's database. Unlike websites in the US, Korean websites require a unique Social Security or Foreigner's Identification Number (they work here, so they were issued identification numbers) in order to register. The same applies to handsets. I do not know exactly why they have this regulation, but according to a friend who works in the government, the Korean government uses this information for tracing purposes. Obviously, they want to make sure they know
who exactly is using a phone in their
own country, so it's not prejudice, but more of xenophobia.
Secondly, how the hell do you buy a GSM SIM card in a country that predominantly uses CDMA/WCDMA. If you conducted even the slightest research, you would have known GSM is not a natively supported cellular network in Korea.
Thirdly, unlike the US, we don't have a
frigging prepaid SIM card service. SIM Cards in Korea are predominantly used to: 1) Activate phone 2) Identify the User (using the unique social security number tied to the SIM) 3) Track usage. What I suggest you do is, if you are visiting the country just once for a set period of time, buy one of those cheap, disposable cellphones, obviously those that do not use SIM cards, sold on several cellphone outlets and ask for cellular service where you postpay and use minutes charged to that particular cellphone/cell number. I know this works because my collegue visited Korea for a month, so he just needed cellphone service for one month. If memory serves, he used KTF.
Seriously, stop your whining of how you feel discriminated against because you're caucasian. You aren't. In fact, Koreans welcome foreigners, often because they envy the fact that you can speak English fluently and well and will often try to engage in a coversation with you
if you look and sound friendly enough, which through your posts, you obviously don't. This isn't the Korea portrayed by several foreign media outlets decades ago. The discimination you may have experienced may have been conducted by an older generation of Koreans, who are still suspicious of strangers - a generation torn by the Korean War. Korea has changed much in the past several years.
Now onto my question. I am aware that the iPhone supports UMTS/HSPDA (Japan), and I've read that UMTS is the same cellular structure as WCDMA, which Korea supports, so I was wondering if it is possible to use a Korean SIM in the iPhone and call, after changing APN (what's this?) and MMS settings as retroneo suggested.
