Korean Job Discussion Forums

[John Stamos jr.]

I can only speak to my experiences... but I traveled to a few smaller cities in Korea with my girlfriend at the time when I wasn't working this last summer, and we got gawked at, laughed at, pointed at, people were unfriendly to us, and we didn't usually have a good experience with the locals... except, in Donghae.

For some strange reason, just about everyone we met there went out of their way to help us: Giving us rides in their cars, bus drivers talking with us for 15 minutes during the trip, everyone we stopped to ask for help or information about something would try to give us the utmost detailed information to near exhaustion, but in a very polite manner. People would approach us and act enormously friendly, especially the ajosshis! I'd cut my foot earlier so we went to get some band aids, and this boss ajosshi we were talking to at the bus stop on our way back home, who directed us to the place where we could get some band aids, had been holding up the bus driver to make sure we didn't miss it when we got back.

The funniest experience was when we took the bus to see some (unremarkable) cave... and a really old Korean war vet came up and started trying to speak English with me, though he mostly spoke in Korean to my girlfriend, and EVERYONE was listening. He said the cave sucked right off the bat, which was comical, because it did. But, when we exited the bus, we started walking the wrong way up the street, the bus driver honked and literally three or four people leaned out of their windows to yell at us that the cave was the other direction. They all knew where we were going.

That was not the Korea I'd been used to experiencing, especially in a small town with a mixed race couple. I'm still curious if that was some series of consistently flukey events, or if there's something different about that town. People seemed happy there, smiling, helpful, etc. I remain curious about that particular week, and she was much more perplexed about it than I was. I don't know, it was just so strange. Was Donghae a former Philippino colony? I wonder if anyone else has been there and had a similar experience.

[PatrickGHBusan]

Koreans are different from region to region and from large city to small town, that is for sure.

Attitude will differ, dialect too sometimes.

As for foreigners, the main difference I noticed from place to place was due to the size of the FT population. In Seoul there are FTs all over the city so there is no real "FT community" that is tight knit. There are sub-groups of FTS based on where they live (that is my experience anyway).

In Busan, it is an in-between as the FT population is a bit smaller but as the city grew and diversified in terms of things to do, the FT pop. grew and started showing up in different parts of town. It went from a tight knit smaller community to something closer to what happens in Seoul.

Finally in smaller towns, the FT population can be quite low so I suspect the meeting places are fewer and FTs know each other a bit better...

[jaytee8432]

Ulsan is starting to become a bit less appealing and Daegu is becoming more appealing after reading the posts here. I was thinking Ulsan might be too small for me anyway but the real draw there was that it has a beach or beaches. I'm still not ruling out other 1 million plus cities such as Daejeon and Gwangju so if anyone has any experiences related to the people living there feel free to post.

[stever1000]

[Jimskins]

I lived in Daegu for 3 years and have been living in Seoul now for just over 2. Despite it's size, Seoul is such a boring city. I can't put my finger on why, I have lot's of stuff going on (band, Korean, football, cycling, running, Korean, wife's family etc) but maybe it's because compared to Daegu I feel a bit trapped in Seoul. In Daegu I could ride into the countryside from downtown in less than an hour whereas in Seoul heading to the countryside is more of a day-trip; let's face it, Seoul is not the most aesthetically-pleasing city to walk around.

Even though I prefer having 3 or 4 close friends rather than dozens of hanging out buddies, the sense of a 'community' amongst the foreigners in Daegu definitely makes you feel more at home.

Koreans in Daegu will indeed all be voting for the wicked witch but that doesn't really affect your day-to-day life ( for historical reasons a lot of the positions of responsibility in Seoul are filled by people from Gyeong-sang-do anyway); people there are reasonably friendly.