Korea - Anyone used Evergreen Mobile (KT MVNO) as a pre-paid SIM

First off, I have travelled to Korea several times and I am fully aware of the restrictions that have been in place for using foreign WCDMA compatible phones in Korea. Over the last 18 months, looks like a lot of those restrictions have been lifted. The providers moved from a whitelist to a blacklist of phone HW and you can get a prepaid SIM from KT with just your passport (no more Korean National ID requirement) if you are staying less than 90 days.

So I am heading to Korea again (Seoul) for 4 days at the end of this month and when I was booking my tickets w/ OZ, I saw this on their Web site:

http://chkin.flyasiana.com/English/Fly2007/Contents/util/news/view_news.jsp?seq=2002

Basically after Googling Evergreen Mobile is a KT MVNO which specializes in short term pre-paid customers. (like...me!) The advantage is that you can get a SIM at the airport (rather than having to travel to a KT Global Store in Seoul) and they tack on a extra 20,000KRW if you show your OZ boarding pass.

The one question I have is has anyone used these SIM's before and do they have a 3G data plan? (I have a unlocked iPhone 4) The Asiana promo just talks about how many minutes of KR-US calling you can use. I assume since it's all done in KRW there is just a rate (same rate as KT prepaid?) that will burn down the balance (which is fine).

I know Seoul is dotted with Wifi, but I would like a prepaid data to cover any gaps (don't make many calls, but use Google Maps and Google Voice/Skype pretty extensively) ;)

Thanks.

Are they same as the push-cart booth sales person selling SIM and pre-paid phone on Korean and Asiana boarding area?

Please let me know. I also intend to get a USIM for myself when I arrive on Sep 1 for 5 days.

Yes I used them back in May. You can get data but it is at a high rate. I recommend you use your google maps and skype where there is wifi because it gets expensive. Wifi is everywhere (think coffee shops, bakeries and subway stations - which all three are prolific in Seoul). At the KT or SK Telecom booth in ICN they have a paper they give you with the rates. If you don't need the phone right away I recommend you get a SIM at some store (although you'll have to find someone who speaks your language).

The one question I have is has anyone used these SIM's before and do they have a 3G data plan? (I have a unlocked iPhone 4) The Asiana promo just talks about how many minutes of KR-US calling you can use. I assume since it's all done in KRW there is just a rate (same rate as KT prepaid?) that will burn down the balance (which is fine).

Thanks.

Yes for the 3G on the iPhone 4 and yes it is done in KRW. They send you texts letting you know your balance as you use.

No, I have plenty of minutes to use with 40,000 KRW but my SIM does not allow me to use 3G data service nor Text on my unlocked US AT&T iPhone 4. I was very disappointed. For the international calls, you have to 080-870-7899 instead of +1.

Simply very inconvenient and nothing to brag about. Perhaps, KT offers a better SIM card from their own shops? I don't have my first hand experience on that but Evergreen is thumbs down.

Quote [Yes for the 3G on the iPhone 4 and yes it is done in KRW. They send you texts letting you know your balance as you use.]

I had to take two trips to Seoul - one with family, one with colleagues.

Parents took CX. On presenting a CX BP the K Books woman refused to have anything to do with me - literally chased me out of the shop. I rented a SK router but the battery couldn't be recharged so I had to use my 5,000mah battery pack and drained that in 8 hours.

Colleagues took OZ. We were able to wrangle two SIMs out of K Books - a micro for myself (iPhone 4s) and a mini for colleague (galaxy sII). We were in a hurry so we didn't try a router - colleagues were trying to make a dinner booking for a place which was pretty crap anyway.

My micro sim worked like a charm. Even was able to tether, but my iPhone is jailbroken and has tetherme.

My colleague's mini sim works for 2g and 3G voice but not data. I put the mini sim in my own backup phone (palm treo pro) and a colleague's iPhone3gs but none of us got data to work.

My samsung galaxy SII colleague also tried my micro sim in card holder but couldn't get data on her phone either

So I've become her and her colleague's walking wireless router.

Any ideas why the mini sim doesn't work? It doesn't automatically configure APN so I copied settings from my micro sim (alwayson.ktfwing.com). But it still doesn't work with the APN. Anything else I'm missing?

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_1_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9B206 Safari/7534.48.3)

We figured it out.

The Evergreen Mobile hotline works only 9am-6pm mon-fri. And the hotline blacks call when traffic is heavy.

But when I finally got thu I found their operators quite understanding (when I spoke mandarin). They told me my colleague's mini sim data mode was turned off, and they turned it on for me. Probably something the k book lady forgot to turn on but we were telling her to hurry up (being told to hurry up ourselves)

I also found calling them is my only way to get my days balance (the ivr can give voice balance).

The card is okay once you get it working, but troublesome to set up.

Oh - its IMEI locked to the mobile phone it was used on. We tried putting the SIMs in different phones - voice will work, data will connect but no data can uploaded or downloaded - so we can't pass the SIM to friends heading to Korea later. Damn the Korean data laws.