Being a foreigner in Korea (NOT SC related) - Page 3

On May 28 2011 13:19 SojuSeed wrote:


I'm teaching English down south in Pohang. Where are you?

Long post incoming...

Okay, OP, first rule when reading/watching those comments on South Korea is that people often only talk about that stuff to blow off steam so it's often very skewed in the negative. Way back in 2004/5 when I was leading up to my first trip to Korea, I had the same reaction. I had read so much stuff on Korea (eslcafe.com is a good resource for general Korean living questions) that I almost changed my mind. You read a lot of negative things (and in your case watch) because how many people really go on and post with regularity about how great their Korean experience is? Not many. So it begins to look more and more bleak. But that's simply not true.

I've been here 4 years now (non-consecutive, I went home for awhile and came back) and my experience (as a white person) has been 98% positive. But, let's address some of your specific issues.

Foreigner treatment:

Almost without exception, you will be treated as you treat others. I've had some black friends who have been on the wrong end of discrimination and that sucks, but I've never seen a black person regret coming here or have such a miserable experience that they wouldn't come back. A good buddy of mine, a black guy, got a job at a uni in Dajeon a few months ago and is having the time of his life. He loves it here. He gets the discrimination from time to time, but he seems to accept it as just part of doing business in Korea.

If you show respect then you will be respected in return. And if they see you speaking Korean, they will practically gush on you. I had dinner with a friend of mine last night at a korean meat place and I ordered in Korean, asked questions about the menu in Korean, etc. and the adjummas (korean for older woman/married woman) were so tickled that I spoke Korean and understood them that they took turns cooking all our food as we sat and talked. No one else in the restaurant got that service. And my friend is from Staten Island but is of Indian descent and has very dark skin. If he stays out in the sun too long, he'd pass for black.

As for getting attacked, unless your a douche bag, I can say with authority that you will never be attacked. Every so often a korean adjosshi (counter to adjumma, means older Korean man) will get shit-faced and want to get a bug up his ass about some foreigner with a Korean woman but it is extremely rare. I've dated Korean women exclusively since I came here and I've gotten a couple of looks, mostly from the adjosshis, but it's never escalated. I just laugh about it and so does the girl I'm with. I've been in bars where drunk adjosshis get angry that the bartenders (always beautiful girls) because they pay so much attention to foreigners, but the adjosshis are in foreigner bars (not exclusive to foreigners, for sure, but largely frequented by them) and that's their primary business. Foreigner bars, as a rule, don't like Korean men coming in and getting drunk because after a couple of hours, when they're nodding into their beer mug and trying not to sick up, they want to start shit. I've heard stories of adjosshis getting in the face of some poor Korean girl out with her boyfriend or of some foreigner getting yelled at and poked but it's always second/third/fourth hand and I've never known anyone that's experienced it. Even my black friend. He's a straight up player and while he draws more looks than I do if he's out with a girl, he doesn't have that kind of trouble either.

There are places that won't deal with foreigners. Some friends and I wanted to go to a Korean night club once and we were turned down because we weren't Korean and we had no Koreans with us. We went back again later with a Korean friend and we got in. If you're a fan of the ladies of the night (read: hookers) some of them won't do business with foreigners either. And, as someone said, where you live makes a big difference. A few bad soldiers can spoil it for everyone else. However, if you don't look like a soldier, sometimes they'll let it slide. Places like Daegu, Soul, Busan or Ulsan, where there are a lot of Army, Navy and Marines running around, you can run in to more resistance because they have developed a bad reputation over the years. Sometimes it's not always deserved, but other times it's very deserved.

To sum up, I'd say don't let this bother you. It's not something you'll likely ever experience. Assuming you're not a douche bag, that is.

The Language:

Should you learn it? Yes. Is it easy? Hell-to-the-frelling-no! Korean is a bitch. Reading it, easy. You can learn to read it in a couple of days and, assuming you practice, you will pick up speed over a few months. Understanding it takes a lot of time and a lot of effort. But the rewards are incalculable. Whether it's more difficult than Japanese or not is irrelevant. If you want to come here, your experience would be vastly improved, the more Korean you speak. The same is true for Japan, I'm sure. That being said, you actually don't have to learn it at all. You'll need some stock phrases of course, but I've known foreigners that have been here for years and never got beyond those stock phrases and they do just fine. I don't think much of them myself, but it's not really my business. Koreans don't think much of them either, but they leave them alone.

I have studied off and on in my four years here but it was never a concerted effort. This year I decided to really put the time in and I've improved a lot. I still have miles to go, but every time I recognize a new word, it makes it worth it. I'm at the point now where I'm able to date a girl that speaks almost no English. We can't talk about politics and things like that, and it is a struggle at times, but we are able to communicate. At this point, I speak more Korean than almost any foreigner I have ever met in Korea. And the Koreans that deal with foreigners recognize that and I get a lot of respect for it or, as in the case of the restaurant last night, a little extra service. Last saturday I was at a bar and I was speaking Korean to the bartenders and they went to the other end of the bar to tell the other people how good my Korean was. They love it! And it made me feel good. And I could tell that the bartender was impressed and if I wasn't with my girl, I could have been with her.

Koreans are very nationalistic and they're very proud of their country, their language and their heritage. So when you show that you appreciate it, respect it and want to learn more about it, race for most of them almost becomes a non-issue (if it even was before, which it's not for most Koreans.) They want outsiders to love Korea as much as they do and they want to share it with you. The language is the first step.

Someone above me mentioned taxis and the difficulty in Korea. That, unfortunately, can be a reality. But if it makes you feel better, it's not only foreigners that that happens to. Koreans have that problem, too! The Korean language does not tolerate accents very well. And Korean accents can be very thick and unintelligible to other Koreans. I was actually just talking to one of my adult students yesterday and she said when her and her husband travel to Seoul, she has to do most of the talking when it's time to conduct some kind of transaction, because the people in Seoul can't understand his thick accent. And he's Korean!

As an English speaker, this is hard for us to grasp. Idioms aside, someone from Canada can understand someone from the U.S., South Africa, Australia, etc. and vice versa. And not only that, we can understand non-native speakers from other countries who speak heavily accented English. Koreans have trouble understanding each other even when they're separated by only a few hours drive. The best way to get around this is try to mimic the accent of whatever area you live in. My Korean most likely has the Gyungsan Bukdo accent (where I have lived in my time here) but my Korean teacher speaks with a Seoul accent (a recognized accent, and considered standard) so that's helping. I'm not good enough yet to really distinguish accents though, this is just want I'm told.

So there will be bumps on the road. If you're just patient and repeat it a few times, usually the cabby will know what you're talking about. One time I ran in to a group of Marines getting out of a taxi after having circled downtown for 20 minutes, trying to tell the cab driver TGI Fridays when they were only three blocks away. It was funny and sad.

The Job

The debate between hagwons vs. public schools is as old as the debate between which country has the hotter girls. Both have their pros and cons. I personally like hagwons because I've found a great boss and I like the small class sizes. My biggest class is 8 students and I have a good relationship with some of them. I've been teaching some of these same kids for 2 years and I get to kind of watch them grow up. You won't get that kind of thing in a public school. Not to mention the class sizes, which can range from 20 to 40 students. But public school teachers get a lot of vacation time in the winter and summer. Standard hagwon vacation is three days and a weekend in summer (total of 5 days) and the same in winter.

And yes, there are bad hagwons out there. You might not be paid on time, your apartment might be a shit-hole (my first one was), they will make outrageous demands, want you to work overtime, change your schedule without notice, try to hold your passport (never give it up except for when absolutely necessary, which is sometimes is, but always demand it back!), put restrictions on what you can do when you're off the clock... The list goes on. But these situations are easily avoidable if you do your homework. Rule number one is never trust a recruiter. Rule number two is always always talk to the last teacher that worked there. If the hagwon says they aren't available or they don't have contact information, whatever, pass immediately. The school might be awesome but there's no sense in risking it. Following those two rules will eliminate 80% of your problems. After that it just comes down to the management skills and people skills of your boss and coworkers. But that's no different than in the West.

Living in Korea has been very rewarding and I really like it here. If you are polite and friendly and take the time to learn a few things, Korea will welcome you. From the way you talk, that doesn't seem like it will be a problem for you. I can't offer any advice on Japan because I've only gone there once or twice for a visa run. It was cleaner than Korea though, that much I can say. Korea can be dirty.

Sorry for the length, but if you have any other specific questions fire away. And I hope this was helpful.

-S-