Ask A Waeguk, Vol. 8

Today's questions come from the self-styled Notorious ACG, who asks:

1) Now that you've been in Korea for a while, are there any aspects of your day-to-day waegukian life that are not what you expected to experience?  (Besides the food, of course.)
2) What is the social life like for and among waeguks?  
3) What advice would you have for potential waeguks?  
4) When travelling to Japan and China, did you find that passing through customs was any different that what you would have expected to experience had you been arriving directly from Canada?

The Waeguk Responds:

1) Apart from the food, there haven't been any major divergences from my expectations, but there are various little things that jump to my notice every now and then. Line-ups, for example, do not receive the same attention and respect they do in Canada. It's not uncommon to have someone jump line without so much as a backward glance- or recriminations from others in the queue.

Movie theatres here have assigned seating, so when you go to see a movie, you don't just buy a ticket, but the ticket vendor shows you which seats have already been reserved, so you select from those that are free. This is useful, in that it allows you to come to the theatre, pick your seats, and then wander around in a leisurely manner until 5 minutes before the movie starts, at which point you go to your prime seats - assuming you arrived early enough to book them in the first place.

The subway stops running at roughly 11:30 each night, which is quite early by most standards. However, taxis are very cheap (it can often be more economical for two or three people going a short distance to take a cab), and plentiful, so late-night carousing isn't as limited by this as it might otherwise be. This brings us to question 2, the social life.

2) For many waeguks, the social scene in Korea is not dissimilar to the university experience: live for the weekend, head to the bars, and drink. Because the bars are open until 5 or 6 in the morning, they may well sleep the day away, rising only to repeat the experience of the previous night. While I've had my share of early morning taxis home, I generally make an effort to be conscious by noon.

In a city of four million people, the number of waeguks is still quite low, relatively speaking: I'd guess there are only a couple of thousand in Busan. What this means is that there's a fairly high incidence of interconnectivity - when I went out with some friends on Saturday night, I ran into three or four people at the bar whom I knew from different places.

Beyond the bar scene, of course, we also go to movies, museums, hike mountains, and do all the other things done by well-rounded people with a variety of interests.

3) For potential waeguks, the best advice I can give you is this: do your research. Find out how long your workday will be, where the school is located, what the neighbourhood is like, and so on. Ask if there are any other waeguks at the school you can talk to. There are some great English schools here, and there are some that most definitely aren't.

Ask yourself why you're thinking about moving to Korea. Is it to get teaching experience, to travel, to earn some cash, or a combination of the three? What kind of city do you want to be in? Would you feel uncomfortable being the only Westerner within 20 km, or do you want to fully and completely immerse yourself in the Korean culture (something that's much harder to do if most of your friends are waeguks as well)?

Most importantly- and this is cheesy and clichéd, but bears repeating- do your best to come with an open mind. This isn't North America, but that's also one of the reasons you're here.

4) In terms of going through customs, I can't think of any real differences that there might have been compared with arriving straight from Canada. I think the sheer number of young Westerners traveling around with Korean stamps in their passports is something to which customs officials in both Japan and China have become accustomed, so for them it's pretty much par for the course.