Kakao Map works in English. That is the short answer, and it is worth stating plainly because plenty of pages hedge it.
The longer answer is about what it does not do, and that part actually decides which app you open first.
Two languages, not four
The App Store lists KakaoMap’s languages as English and Korean. The separate KakaoBus and KakaoMetro apps say the same thing. Two languages each, and no more.
Naver Map carries four: Korean, English, Chinese and Japanese. Korean reporting has called it the only domestic map service to support all four, and that is not a small gap. It is the whole decision for a large share of visitors to Korea.
Three apps instead of one
Naver gives you a single app that does maps, transit, arrivals and place pages. Kakao splits the job.
KakaoMap is the map. KakaoBus handles live bus and subway arrivals. KakaoMetro is the subway on its own. All three come from Kakao, all three are English and Korean, and all three were updated within a week of this being written, so none of them is a stale leftover.
The split sounds like a nuisance and is the reason the bus side works so well. A bus app that only does buses opens on the thing you need while you are standing at the stop watching for a number. There is no place page to scroll past and no search box expecting a restaurant.
Where Kakao earns its place
Every guide on this site that mentions buses eventually points here, because live arrivals are the piece that turns a Seoul bus from a gamble into a schedule.
That is the argument for keeping KakaoBus on your phone even if Naver is your main map. Plan the route in the app that reads best, then track the actual vehicle in the app built for it. The city bus guide covers the rest: the five-digit stop ID on the sign, the colours, and why you board with a card.
If you are moving between subway lines rather than waiting for a bus, the exit numbers matter more than the app does.
If it opens in Korean
Before you go digging through settings, check your phone.
Kakao’s transit apps have been reported to take their language from the device rather than offering a switch inside the app, so a handset set to Korean gets a Korean app no matter what you tap. Most visitors never notice this because their phone is already in English. If yours is not, that is the setting to change.
What to actually install
Put Naver Map on first. It reads better in English, and it is the only one of these that speaks Japanese and Chinese at all.
Add KakaoBus if buses are in your plans. That is a real gap Naver does not fill as neatly, and it costs you nothing to carry both.
Neither of them needs an account, a Korean number or a Korean card, which is the unusual part of this whole category. And whichever you choose, it will beat the alternative you arrived with: Google Maps cannot give you directions here, and no setting fixes that.
The language lists for KakaoMap, KakaoBus and KakaoMetro are from their App Store listings, read on 14 September 2026, which gave English and Korean for all three, with versions 6.28.4, 5.10.0 and 1.5.2 and updates within the preceding week. Naver Map’s four-language support, and the description of it as the only domestic map service carrying all four, come from Korean press coverage from January 2025. The device-language behaviour is reported for Kakao’s transit apps rather than documented by Kakao, so treat it as the first thing to check rather than a guarantee.
