Wearing orthotics in Korea: where do you actually have to take your shoes off?
A traveller who needs orthotics in their trainers asked on the Tripadvisor Seoul forum: where do you have to take shoes off, just the odd temple or every palace too? And would fabric overshoes worn over trainers be acceptable instead?
What the replies said
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Only if you go inside a temple building. Palaces work the same way, but visitors rarely enter many palace buildings anyway.
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Shoes also come off in other Korean-style spaces: some hotel rooms, private homes and similar buildings. It comes from how the buildings are designed.
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Bringing your own indoor slippers with the orthotics inside is fine, and nobody is likely to object.
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The clearest explanation: the rule is about keeping outdoor and indoor footwear separate. Indoors means socks or slippers, not bare feet, and whatever you wear should be clean and kind to polished wooden floors. Rubber-soled slippers are fine, as long as they look like indoor slippers and not like outdoor clogs.
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One reply linked a hotel's ondol room as an example of a heated wooden floor where shoes stay at the door.
The thread settled quickly: slippers that obviously stay indoors solve the problem.
Desk note Ondol is Korea's traditional underfloor heating. Wikipedia notes that Koreans are used to sitting and sleeping on the floor and eating at low tables, and that almost everyone now uses modern versions of the system. A warm floor people sit on is the practical reason shoes stay at the door.
Where in Korea did a shoes-off rule catch you by surprise?
Original thread: Tripadvisor Seoul forum — where shoes come off · Reference: Wikipedia
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