Korean Job Discussion Forums

[scratchpiece]

Random question but I'm just really curious. I currently live in the second biggest city in Thailand (Chiang Mai) and see foreigners nearly everywhere I go. It seems like Seoul would have a very high population as well. When I go to the shopping center (Tesco Lotus), I'm pretty much guaranteed to see several. If I go out to the bars it completely depends on where I go. There are some bars where you would very rarely see another foreigner and others where they pretty much run the club/bar. They usually always travel in packs too, haha.


Is this the same for Seoul? How often do you bump into other foreigners when you go shopping, to the cinema, for food, out on the weekends. I very rarely go into a place in Chiang Mai where you get that "A Foreigner!!' look.

Just curious

[jrwhite82]

Same.

[sadguy]

seoul has changed a lot in a few years. just 4 years ago, it wasn't very common to see foreigners walking around, or in the subway. now EVERY TIME i go out, i see them everywhere. the expat community has definitely grown.

[nero]

I lived in Thailand too, OP. In the small, non-tourist town I lived in, I ran into about as many foreigners per capita as I do in Seoul. Unless of course I am in Itaewon!
You have to realise that Thailand has the kind of tourist industy that Korea could only dream about, hence the number of foreigners running around there. Most of the foreigners in Seoul are English teachers or SE Asians.

[Livewire]

I have never been to Seoul myself but I have heard rumors aound certain circles that there IS a foriegner in Seoul...

The word in the pojang machjas and the video game rooms I haunt is that there is a bar in a far flung outskirt of the city called Itaewon. The bar is non descript: no neon signeage and is in a basement on a quiet street with no other establisments nearby that are of any note. Were you however to walk down the steps and enter this basement esablishment, you might as you entered through heavy black felt curtains, and once your eyes had adjusted to the barely lit gloom - notice a cage in a dim corner adjacent to the bar, where a few wizened, sopllipsistic and sordid chracters sit sipping sophisicated cordials. The inhabitant of this cage (according to the rumour) is a Welshman named Simon who first set foot on Korean shores 16 years ago, some say as an esl teacher; other versions cast him as a debutant photojournailst; a tourist passing through to Japan; a magician or a seller of trinkets fashioned by the hands of remote Congolese tribesfolk.

Were you to make your way over to the bar through the heavy, soul piercing stares, you might be able to request a viewing. But don't expect much in the way of conversation as apparently over a decade living in his cage and being exhibited as a curio, being coerced into roles in perverse fantasies and twisted tableaus over the course of inumerable and unimaginable nights - in combination with over a decade of starvation of his native toungue - has left him docile and mute.

[daeguowl]

I see one pretty much every time I look in the mirror...

[eamo]

[interestedinhanguk]

[scratchpiece]

[PRagic]

We live in HongDae and there is a Korean language academy right up the road. Yup, I see other foreigners every time I walk out the door. No biggie.