about secondhand stores in Korea

You can find anywhere in town for secondhand stores. You can find shop name with "Je-hwal-yong centre 재활용 센터". So if you want to ask to Korean, you can ask with secondhand stuff as " Joong-go-poom 중고품 or Joong-go mool-poom 중고물품" or secondhand store as "Joong-go Sang-jum 중고 상점".

But problem is that store was quite complicated because some shop selling the furniture only, some shop selling the home electric only. Some of them selling the mixed up with anything. So it will be difficult to find what you wanted.
And price was not that reasonable. Because you will find out that new one wasn't that expensive.

If you didn't buy the stuff with carefulness, it will probably break or explode.


From
^_~ Ara

 

 

* added at May 19, 2026
As you can see from the date of writing, I wrote this in 2009.
Now it's 2026.

Things have really changed. Korea now has a widely implemented recycling system, and some people will throw away (through the recycling system) very good conditioned secondhand items.
So items like these will probably go to a secondhand store.

At that time, 중고나라 (the Joonggonara cafe on Naver) was probably the only place.
But smartphones became a thing, and the 당근마켓 (Karrot) app also helped this secondhand market grow a lot.

Foreigners can almost never access 중고나라, but it seems a number of foreigners are using 당근마켓. With the help of AI translation, foreigners can use not only 당근마켓 but also 중고나라, it seems.

I think nowadays you can find more 재활용센터 than in 2009. You can easily find them on Google or Kakao Map. 

vegetarian food for Korean word

When I heard about this, I didn't even come up with 'Chasik juui' which is exactly same meaning as vegetarian.
Because you can't find any vegetarian around any town in Korea. Yes, it will probably exist somewhere but it is very very rare.
That's why I couldn't think of that word.

Korean didn't think of vegetarian food so we mistakenly wrote down the vegetarian food, Bibimbab which is mixed vegetable with rice and put in the mince beef.
There has beef in it but they didn't realized it because not many Korean fully understand English and we don't have many vegetarian.

Yes, there has Buddhist monk. I also couldn't realized it.

So if you are vegetarian and then you wanted to explain to someone, firstly you said them to I'm vegetarian which is Korean for "나는 채식주의입니다. Na-neun Cha-sik-ju-ui ib-ni-da."
Secondly you explain to them food which eaten by Buddhist monk "Su-nim-i muk-neun um-sik ga-tun-gu-yo. 스님이 먹는 음식 같은거요."

Korean don't much use that 'Chasik juui' word and your Korean pronunciation won't much to help. So not many Korean will recogniz it so if you explain about the Buddhist monk's food, it will help to understand by Korean.


From
^_~ Ara