Costco Yangjae in Seoul: What a US Membership Gets You in Korea

Last stop of day three in Seoul, after the library inside Starfield COEX Mall, and we ended up at a Costco. Not a market, not a palace. A Costco, in Seocho-gu, twenty minutes south of everything else we did that day.

I had heard my membership would work here and I wanted to see it happen. Costco’s own member conditions say the card is valid at any warehouse worldwide, which is easy to read on a website and strange to watch actually work in a different country. The card scanned. Nobody looked twice.

Inside, the first thirty seconds are disorienting because nothing is different. Same concrete, same steel racking, same pallets, same lighting. If you dropped me in through the ceiling I would have guessed Fontana.

The TV Aisle Was the First Real Number

I do this everywhere, so I did it here. Find the TV wall, read the tag, do the math out loud.

A Samsung sitting on the riser above the boxed stock was 899,000 won. May 2025 averaged about 1,392 won to the dollar, so dividing by 1,400 like I did on camera is close enough. Call it $642.

That is not a bad number, but it is not a Korea number either. It is a Costco number. Which turned out to be the theme.

The Galaxy S25, and Why the Cheap Price Was a Trap

I had already priced this exact phone earlier the same day. A 256GB Galaxy S25 at the mall in Gangnam ran about 1.1 million won, which is around $790 at the rate I was using here. In the Starfield post I quoted the official list price instead, which sits a little higher.

The Costco shelf tag said 1,079,000. Then I found the sticker underneath it: 999,000 won, about $714.

Here is the part I did not catch until I looked at my own footage later. That tag shows 80,000 won off, dated 2025/05/19 to 2025/06/01. It was an event price, not the shelf price. We happened to be standing there during a two week window. If you walked in the following week the phone was back to 1,079,000, and the gap against the mall is small enough to stop caring about.

The S25 Edge next to it was 1.4 million won, roughly $1,000, which made me feel better about not wanting one.

I use Google Fi for international data, and that is a referral link, so we both get credit if you sign up through it. The reason it keeps coming up is that my upgrade pricing through Fi beat every number on that table, and my phone works the minute we land. I did the full comparison in the Starfield post.

Kirkland Exists Here, Which I Found Weirdly Reassuring

There is an aisle of American products, and it is less exciting than it sounds. Mostly things you would ignore at home.

Then the Kirkland stack, in Korean packaging, exactly where it would be at home.

Paper towels, 34,990 won for twelve rolls at 160 sheets each. On camera I said “a little over $20” and moved on. I was low. It is closer to $25, about $2.08 a roll.

Not cheap. Not a rip-off. Just paper towels, which is my point about this whole place.

The Building Goes Up Instead of Out

This is the part that actually got me, and it is the reason I would tell you to walk into a Costco abroad even if you buy nothing.

To get to the lower floor you do not take stairs and you do not take an escalator. You take a ramp, a long ribbed moving walkway, and you push your cart onto it.

The ribs are not grip texture. The cart wheels seat into them and lock, so the cart cannot roll away from you on the incline. You still hold on, because you are a person and it feels like it should roll. It does not.

Downstairs is refrigerated, frozen, and the food court. So the warehouse is two shopping floors, stacked.

I said on camera that in the US it is only one floor and wide. Almost right. Two American Costcos have two shopping floors, both in New York: Brooklyn, which was the first, opened in 1996, and Port Chester. Two out of six hundred plus. In Korea, Taiwan and Japan, building up is just what you do when land costs what land costs.

The Hot Dog Is Cheaper. That Is the Whole Headline.

I came into this warehouse with one real question and it was not about televisions.

Two thousand won. Hot dog and a soda, the same combo as home. Divide by 1,400 and you get about $1.43, against $1.50 in the States.

Seven cents. I know. But the $1.50 combo is the most defended price in American retail, the thing Costco keeps as a promise rather than a product, and here it is in Seoul quietly undercutting itself. That math hits different when you are 6,000 miles from the nearest one you have been to.

Same dog, same wrapper, same condiment pump. Ketchup, mustard, relish.

What We Actually Ordered

We over-ordered, which is the correct way to do a food court.

Mushroom soup, which came with a spoon and also a straw, and I still do not know which one I was supposed to use. A chicken bake. A chocolate chip cookie that was warm and genuinely one of the best things I ate that day. Then pizza.

A slice of cheese, and a slice of bulgogi, which is the one thing on that menu you cannot get at home.

It is a Costco pizza with marinated beef, peppers and onions on it, and it works exactly as well as that sounds like it would.

A Few Takeaways

• Your US membership card works. Bring the physical card if you can, since staff sometimes have to hand key a digital one.
• Payment is the one thing to plan. Since May 2019, by Costco Korea’s own notice, the warehouses take Hyundai Card or cash and nothing else among Korean issued cards. Foreign issued cards are widely reported to go through, and ours did, but Costco Korea does not say that anywhere official, so carry some cash as a backup.
• Go downstairs even if you are not buying groceries. The cart ramp is the single most interesting thing in the building.
• Read the shelf tag dates before you get excited about a price. Mine was an event that ended on June 1.
• Eat first, shop second. The food court is on the lower floor, past everything.

Four stops on day three and this is the one I keep describing to people. Not the palace, not the library. A warehouse in Seocho-gu where my card scanned, the paper towels cost about what they cost at home, and the hot dog was seven cents cheaper.

That is day three done, from Bukchon in the morning to a food court tray at night. The whole run starts back at Incheon if you are picking it up from the beginning.

This post is based on our travel vlog. Watch the full video above for the walkthrough, the price tags, and the cart ramp in motion.