How to Use Naver Effectively in Korea
Naver is an impressivley poorly designed app for a tech conglomerate in 2025. Sadly. You have no choice in Korea. It is the only english language navigation app in korea. Here is how to use this atrocious app and use Google Maps 80% of the time. What you will use Google maps for: 1. Walking directions for short distances in Alleys. It does not do point to point guidance, but is easier to use than Naver when navigating alleys and small streets 2. Restaurant reviews. Naver does not have review scores for most restaurants, so you cannot sort by review and it will not translate all the reviews for you the way Google Maps does, so just use Google maps, catch table, or Michelin guide for reviews. 3. Find your destination on Google Maps and once you’re ready to navigate there, first try to put the name into Naver. Naver needs an EXACT match to its database, so a place like “The Matcha” will not show up on Naver because on Naver it is called “The Metcha.” You could never know this, so you will first try the place name from google, then copy the places address, then try the names and addresses of places around your destination till something shows up in Naver. Yes, I’m serious. This is a big reason why Naver is a one star app. When to use Naver 1. Point to point directions with a car, public transit, or walking longer distances across larger roads. 2. When walking, know that Naver seems to just put you on the road, so it won’t cut through parks. Like in Namsan it told me to walk 20 minutes along the park perimeter like a car would instead of taking the 5 minutes along walking path inside the park. Luckily Namsan tower park has maps so you can figure out. And cause you’re reading you know Naver walking directions are garbage. 3. When walking, know that Naver estimates are super inflated. A 30 minute estimate is likely 15-20 minutes max. You’ll see on the map it treat walking like a car with u-turns etc., so you can easily shave off a third just by looking where actual pedestrian walking paths are. 4. Getting to the airport. This messed me up badly. Naver will tell you how long the Airport bus normally takes if you take the optimal bus. So it will tell you 1 hour. But when you hit start navigation, Naver will recalculate and it might actually be 2 hours which is what happened to me. The night before the estimate was arrive at 1:10 if I leave my Airbnb at 11:50. Then at 11:50 I hit start and it tells me I will actually get there at 2:30 because it’s
