The flight is only an hour and fifteen minutes, but I need to take a bus from the Southern part of the island where I will live to the Jeju airport, which also takes over an hour.
Public transportation in South Korea is very efficient. The buses and trains are on time and tend to be very quiet. In South Korea, it is seen as rude to take phone calls or speak loudly on public transportation. Even when the trains and subways are full during rush hour, everyone stays quiet. Where I am from in the U.S., we only have one bus that goes to New York city. We don't have any trains or subways, so this experience was very new to me. I had nothing to compare it to. How do you think you would feel in a quiet train like this?
As I mentioned earlier, all roads lead to Seoul. So, while four hours may seem like a long time to get there, it tends to be easier to get to Seoul than other cities. For example, my friend who lives in a place on the mainland called Hwasun also needs to travel for almost four hours to get to Seoul. But, to get to Busan, a city much closer to her on the map, it takes over five hours by bus! Since Seoul is the capital of South Korea and where more than half of the population lives, the train system was built to help people get there. It is easy to go North from anywhere in South Korea, but going West or East is more difficult because there are fewer trains going West to East. That means you usually need to take a bus instead, which takes longer. More people need to go North to South than West to East, so the transportation systems focused on going North.
