Here's a screenshot tour and commentary for a popular parking app in Korea called Modu Parking (모두의주차장).
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| 모두의주차장 - Modu Parking by Socar |
Background
I don't often go into Seoul but when I do I usually need to drive. I'm actually not very familiar with Seoul so it can be a pain to figure out where to park near certain places if I'm there for personal reasons and I have been hit hard a couple times by expensive parking lots.
So I was interested when I noticed a coworker using an app called Modu Parking (모두의주차장 - "Everyone's Parking Lots"), a parking lot search, pricing, and reservation app made by SOCAR (the car sharing company). He uses it frequently when visiting a new area to take the guesswork and stress out of finding a cheap place to park. I never even thought about something like this. So I joined and thought it can be pretty useful to other expats too. Maybe you're taking the family up to Seoul or needing to meet up with someone and you want to get a handle on the parking situation beforehand.
This app can both help you find parking lots, get a good idea of how much each charges, and also lets you reserve and/or pay for your spot in-app. There's currently no English at all, but it's navigable if you know some basic stuff (or follow along here).
So let's take a screenshot tour to see some examples of how it works.
Checking parking locations and pricing
The easiest thing is just to look around the map in the area you're wanting to visit. For this example let's say you want to visit Bakchon and take all those Instagramable pictures on the hill overlooking Seoul with all the classy hanok houses on the sides.
Let's say you plan to park for about 3 hours. So I adjust the dropdown menu up in the search bar to show the pricing for 3 hours. You can adjust as needed.
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| Checking parking locations and prices in Modu Parking |
In the first picture, I can see that a public library near there has parking, and it would be 9,000 won for the 3 hours. There's no special bright color or anything there, meaning that's just the normal price. You don't actually need to use this app to pay: it's just reporting the pricing for that lot. Honestly, this is 90% of what I use the app for: not to actually pay for parking but just to get an idea of where I can park at and about how much it would be.
There's also that bright blue box showing 49,000 won. When the prices are in blue boxes, it means the app has some special feature available, i.e. you can use the app to reserve a parking time or pre-register so you can just drive in, drive out, and the app will charge you. In this case, the blue box is showing a price for "월정기권(야간)". The 월정기권 part means you can buy a monthly pass in-app assuming you will be parking there regularly. But be careful, the (야간) part means it's only for night time parking (6pm - 8am), not daytime.
It's a Kakao T run parking lot anyway, so I might actually be able to pay (or get a better deal) in the Kakao T app.
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| Parking lot information shown in Modu Parking |
Let's look at some information about that parking lot.
Looks like it runs 24 hours, and they charge 250 won for every 5 minutes. That makes 3,000won/hour so that 9,000won for 3 hours seems right. There's also a limit at 30,000 won for the day, so if you got lost and left your car there for 20 hours you wouldn't be hit with a 60,000 won bill. That's nice I guess.
You can click through too to get an image of what the parking lot entrance looks like to help you find it.
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| Some filtering options |
There are some filtering options for what shows up on the map since it can get pretty overwhelming. On the map itself you saw the buttons on the right side for hiding/showing 월정기 (monthly passes available), 공유 (shared parking, like some guy rents out his personal home parking spot while he's at work), and 주차권 (parking pass in-app).
The filter settings shown above let you specify other criteria like if you want to include coffee shops or supermarkets that let customers park for X amount of time and whether you need parking lots that have electric car chargers.
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| More parking locations and prices |
Here's another option that looks nice. This blue box at this K Twin Tower building shows I can get a 12-hour weekday pass for 13,000 won. That's pretty good. And I can buy it right here in the app too.
Taking a closer look there, I can see the other parking passes available:
- the 12 hour weekday pass
- an all-day weekday pass (I'm just guessing but maybe that 12 hour pass is only valid for future dates i.e. you're reserving the spot)
- monthly parking pass for nights and weekends
- full monthly pass
Buying the parking pass
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| App sidebar showing my balance |
Since this was my first time using the app, as a trial I just loaded 10,000 won into the app. It doesn't seem to just deduct from your card automatically. You have to keep the app balance charged. It can auto-recharge for you when you get below a certain limit you specify but I guess that's par for the course in apps these days. Starbucks app is no different.
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| Starting the process of paying for parking in-app |
So for my situation, I decided to get a 3 hour pass at a parking lot at nearby Anguk Station, which was 9,000 won. I click the blue button for it and get this page on the right with a list of basic warnings: it's only for Monday-Thursday, the machine will let me in and out based on my license plate, can't be combined with any other discount coupons etc. Fine. Let's purchase: 구매하기.
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| Basic reminders about using the app |
Oh no, the little red siren is big and now you've screwed up everything. Just kidding! This page is just more generic warnings that are covering their liability in case you have zero common sense. Stuff like this pass won't be valid if you are somehow already in the lot (duh), you can't just go in and out during the 3 hour period (duh), etc. Just say you understand by tapping the big blue.
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| Schedule an arrival time |
Finally we get to the nitty gritty. I'm paying for 3 hours: I should choose during what block of time I am going to be entering the lot. Pretty self explanatory. Luckily there's some leeway there in the red lettering saying this isn't completely required. You can still arrive when you want and get your normal 3 hours as long as there's nothing weird.
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| Check the cost |
Here's the total cost, I'm coming around between 11:30-12:00, I input my car's license plate...
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| Pay |
And now I just hit blue and congratulations, I'm ready to park.
Standalone web app version
For this you'll want to pay attention mostly to the white bubbles but it gets the job done in a pinch if you just want clear simple parking pricing and don't want to fidget with Naver or Kakao.
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