Before I moved to Korea I found out any Costco membership is valid worldwide, regardless of where you made the membership card. This was great news since I have been a Costco member for quite a while and was happy to find out I could continue to reap its benefits in Korea. For those that do not know, Costco is a wholesale membership club similar to Sam's Club and BJ's Club Warehouse. Most of what Costco sells is bulk goods in order to give discounts to members. In the USA membership costs around USD 50 per year...I will most likely have to renew here in Korea so I'll let you know the rates at that time.
Costco stores take up a lot of land so you may be thinking that Seoul would not be the optimal place to build such a store. However, instead of spreading the store out horizontally like in the USA, here in Seoul the store location I went to was multiple floors (food, other goods, parking). The street level floor was home to the electronics, clothing, and most non-food items. The first basement level was the cafeteria and all food items (bakery, meat, seafood, etc). Beneath the first basement were more basement levels for parking.
I hear that Costco often enforces that a member can only bring up to 3 guests with them but it didn't seem that this was heavily enforced the day I went. I went on a Monday and it was still very busy and I hear on weekend days you can barely move your cart through the aisles. Like USA Costcos, there are quite a few free sample stations located around the store. But unlike the USA, people were queuing just to get a sample...like 8-10 people deep queue.
Speaking of food, my friends and I ate at the cafeteria. They had the hot dog combo and pizza and some other items (ice cream, what looked like calzones or something) but I'm sure depending on where your Costco is the item selection varies. I don't think they would have Bulgogi pizza in the USA but here at the Korean one they do :D The tables were so close to each other you had to step on the bench seats to slide into place...this probably violated fire code but...welcome to Korea! The cafeteria, like the store itself was packed with what looked like a shopping cart graveyard right in front of the eating area. We luckily were able to retrieve our cart after eating.
As far as the store itself goes, the item choices were actually fairly similar to the USA. There were plenty of Kirkland branded items and decent deals on meat and seafood (slightly more varied than USA stores due to Korean tastes). They even had bulk boxes of Soju and Korean brands of beer. A couple of items that I was surprised to see were Reece's peanut butter cups, Salsa, and bagels! I didn't actually walk around the street level floor much but I plan to do that soon.
As for checking out. The only forms of payment offered at Korean Costco are the Samsung Costco credit card or cold hard CASH. No debit cards like in the USA. I even asked just to be sure and was met with a prompt "안 돼요" (Not possible). Basically saw a bunch of people paying in large amounts of cash but a few had the branded credit card.
I only bought one item that day and it was quite heavy but I did manage to get it back to my apartment from the subway. I will be going again soon so I'll update this post if I find out anything else!
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