I've lived in South Korea for 2 years [AMA]

To combat the derpy 'I'm from North Korea' troll thread I decided to make a legitimate Korean one.

Why did you decide to move to Korea? YOU'RE SO LUCKY!

My dream is to live in Japan or SK in the future.

To combat the derpy 'I'm from North Korea' troll thread I decided to make a legitimate Korean one.

Thats awesome!

South Korea is one of my must visit places; i have always wanted to go.

It's a really interesting country in the sense that Seoul is so modern and almost futuristic in some regards but the poverty and poor people can really be seen in some of the smaller towns.

I still get stared at like I'm an alien on a daily basis.

This country is definitely a very unusual place to live.

The original plan had been to move to Japan as part of the JET Programme [Japanese Exchange and Teaching]. I'd wanted to go since I was 16 or 17. I applied and had an interview at the embassy in Edinburgh but unfortunately I was put on the reserve list ratehr than a first list candidate. The April of the previous year had seen the Tsunami and Fukushima issues and as such many foreigners left Japan between April and June/July of that year. This resulted in many more applicants being upgraded that year than usual. What this meant was that the following year [my year] almost no applicants were upgraded because most people usually stay for at least 2 years.

ANYWAY. So before I found out the results of my interview I had looked in to applying to the Korean version of JET as a backup [EPIK - English Program in Korea]. During my 3rd year of undergraduate studies I wrote my dissertation project on the current issues in the media between Japan and South Korea over wartime reparations and the 'Comfort Women' or 위안부 who were taken as sexual slaves by the Japanese military.

I was successful in my Korean interview and was never upgraded on JET.

Japan or SK are not places where people generally settle long term because of the difficulties [especially in Korea] of being an outsider. Learning the language helped me to integrate much better than some of my friends though as it helps you understand cultural things too.

Don't let that stop you from living there for a few years though.

How would you say people have responded to you? Are they a friendly nation?

All I have to say is damn, you're so lucky! Sorry to hear that you never managed to get on the JET list though.

What did you do/experience in Korea? How do the locals respond to foreigners there, how did they treat you? (Foreigners that know Korean such as yourself?) I've heard that in Korea people just assume automatically that foreigners don't know how to speak Korean.

To understand whether or not Korea is a 'friendly nation' you have to understand a few things. In Korea there is something called 정, or jeong. Now, jeong is a feeling that exists between native Korean people. It's sort of like a 6th sense based around care [or so it is claimed] and a feeling of group mentality.

Example: If an old lady shoves past a Korean on the subway it's totally OK because there's unspoken jeong which means the young person will understand that her needs are greater than the younger individuals'.

Koreans want you to see the best things about Korea but they generally don't want you to stay here. It's very much a 'go and tell the world how awesome we are' kind of nation.

After 2 years people who work with me still comment 'YOU USE CHOPSTICKS SO WELL' or 'DO YOU LIKE KIMCHI? IS IT SPICY?'

This isn't make broad, sweeping generalizations, it has happened to literally every single person I know on a frequent basis.

Anyway. Back to the point. Korea is friendly to your face for the most part but often backhandedly somewhat racist in their policies. For example it costs foreigners way more to get a mobile phone than it does Koreans.

Young Koreans will often want to befriend foreigners to have a 'token foreigner friend' - if you ever brought up that you wanted to hang out or do something that requires any effort from them the majority will bail on you really fast. In the last 2 years I've gained 2 MAYBE 3 legitimate Korean friends.

How did the natives treat you?
How difficult would it be if you didn't know the language?
What's their view on larger/obese people?
Is it expensive to live there?

Wow thats a really interesting insight. Thanks. Is it possible to go to Korea and only speak English. And if so is that looked down upon? Thanks.

How did the natives treat you? - See above, if you want further information feel free to respond with a more specific question.

Korea is a very, very easy country to live in without knowing Korean.
Korea has way more English, from my experiences in Tokyo and Osaka, than Japan does.
Things are a lot easier as you'd expect due to knowing a conversational level of Korean though. Although living would generally by manageable as Korean English listening skills are actually pretty good.

Korea is brutal towards anyone who isn't a size 0 basically. Advertisements for diets and losing weight are everywhere. Basically if you have an ounce of fat you're considered disgusting and should do something about it. There are an increasing number of overweight people in Korea though but the fashion industry continues to not cater towards them and so many have to buy their clothes online. Korean plastic surgery results in basically every Korean model looking identical.

See: http://imgur.com/gallery/0MMzzLQ

Miss Korea 2013 candidates = look similar to anyone else?

Living in Seoul is a lot more expensive than the rest of the country but if you eat Korean food and drink Korean alcohol it's really not expensive at all. My phone bill is double my gas and electric put together.

My outgoings for a month are usually somewhere along the lines of 500-600,000 won which is about 350gbp (rent is free).

It's not frowned upon, it's basically expected.

Also, Koreans aren't used to hearing different accents so if you're new to speaking Korean they won't understand your Korean anyway. It took me a year before my Korean accent was considered an acceptable level to be understood.

Newbies to Korea will often have the experience of telling a taxi driver where they want to go in what they think is perfect Korean but the taxi driver has no idea. They'll then show where they want to go on a piece of paper and the taxi driver will repeat what they just said in exactly the same way.

It comes down to them having very little exposure to foreigners speaking their language, whereas in the English speaking world we are used to people from a multitude of backgrounds using our language.

Sorry for the bombardment of questions, but iv'e taken interest in the rise of plastic surgery within South Korea. I understand that more and more young Koreans are opting for surgeries such as double eyelid surgery. Would it not be wrong in saying that KPOP idols have had a huge impact in the way that our generation view themselves.

Now i am not exactly sure how widespread this is, of course i'm sure it is way more popular with young Koreans than it is with the older generations.

Eyelid surgery is basically the done thing these days (which I think is disgusting btw). Parents often get their daughters it as a gift for highschool graduation. Korean girls also refuse to wear glasses and instead prefer to wear coloured lenses so as to increase their iris size as they view 'black' irises as unattractive. Basically a huge part of the Korean image is fake.

What is notably interesting though is that Korean guys wear glasses for fashion, some without lenses even.

I would suggest that while it is true that KPOP idols have had an impact there has recently been a lot of interest in the terrible conditions KPOP artists are put under by their record label. They really have zero say in their songs, or image, or schedule, or where they're going to go or who they're going to talk to - much more so than the west at least.

How long are you planning to stay for? I'm half korean-chinese and I cannot stand the superficial culture there, I find the japanese and taiwanese have a much healthier attitude towards self image. They're so obsessed about projecting the same image that kpop celebrities popularize urgh

Also, what do you intend to do when you return to the glorious island of britain?

Finally, how have your views of britian changed now that you've spent some time in east asia?

When foreigners first get to Korea they're generally all gungho about not interacting with other foreigners and trying to have as 'Korean' an experience as possible - I was the same. However, the longer that you live here the more foreigner friends you will make and the more Korean friends will decide that you are generally too much effort.

My time in Korea has involved nights where I've blacked out due to Korean drinking and age culture, trips to beautiful hiking resorts, time spent on the beaches of the east and south coast, playing Ultimate [frisbee] in Asia's biggest non-competitive league.

Korean people generally straight up assume that no foreigner ever has ever been able to speak Korean EVER. Example: I go to a restaurant with my Chinese friends. The waiter/waitress assumes that my Chinese friends are Korean and speaks to them and ignores me. My Chinese friends look to me for help, the waitress becomes confused. I start ordering and talking to her in Korean. She then proceeds to answer and reconfirm our orders, again ignoring me and speaking to my Chinese friends who clearly don't speak Korean at all.

This happens during at least half of my meals with Asian friends.

Ah I see, that's unfortunate to hear that they treated you like that, I guess they're just not really used to foreigners speaking Korean so they're a bit biased. Probably why they say it's great to experience Korea but not live there forever.

What ethnicity are you if you don't mind me asking, and have you been to Japan? If you have, how was it like being a foreigner there too; were you treated similar to how you were treated in Korea?