In S. Korea there is no shortage of cloth to choose from, accessories to accessorize with, or shoes to prance around in; unless your 6 ft tall and wear a size 13 shoe! Then Good Luck.
I thought, with what seemed like a limitless selection, it would be quite easy to find a nice, fashionable pair of shoes while in Korea. And I would have been right, if I was 1 whole shoe size smaller. And even with that I would have had to goto the specialty stores.
When packing to go to Korea I was allowed only one (1) checked bag. This bag had to be less than 20kg (roughly 44 lbs). This is no problem except I’m packing for a month. And from what I had read before is pack cloth because they are a smaller people and nothing is going to fit me. What I didn’t take into consideration was shoes too. Actually I didn’t take a lot of things into consideration but shoes was one of them. So for the sake of saving weight I packed, what I thought were sensible shoes: two (2) pairs of Converse high tops in black; because black goes with everything. and some sandals because i knew it was going to be hot; even though I hate my toes. Shortly after arriving it was apparent that there was going to be a lot more hiking than just walking in this part of Korea and a strong shoe was necessary. Plus if you wanted to get all cute (which is the thing to do in Korea) and get matching shoes with your girlfriend/boyfriend, than the hunt for shoes is endless.
For Korean couples it’s easy for them to find matching clothes, shoes, accessories because they are pretty much the same size. I would be surprised if they couldn’t wear each others clothes, but not me. The simple fact that I wear a size 13US shoe made it impossible to find a pair of shoes that fit. Even trying to order them seemed impossible. A size 13US translates roughly to a size 300 Korea. The closest I could find was a size 290 which was just snug enough to be uncomfortable.
So morale of the story is that I didn’t get my matching shoes, nor could I find a pair of good hiking shoes. I just sucked it up for the duration of the trip. Now I was told that I could have gone to a shoe maker and had them make me a pair of shoes but I felt like that was asking too much. But next year when I move there, that might be an option.