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LIFE IN KOREAPosted by Lucas 🇫🇷 France · 1 month ago
What surprised you most in the first month?
not the tourist stuff. the small daily things that nobody puts in a guide.
what did you have to unlearn or get used to
what did you have to unlearn or get used to
11 comments
OFFICIAL ANSWER
MinjiALLO TEAM
Korea local tips · Seoul
The things students actually mention, rather than the guidebook list.
What surprises people pleasantly:
1. How safe it is. Leaving a laptop on a cafe table while you go to the toilet is normal. Walking home at 3am is unremarkable. This takes about a month to believe and then it is hard to give up.
2. Delivery. Everything, everywhere, fast, including to a park bench or a riverside. And the food arrives on real dishes at some places, which you leave outside afterwards.
3. Public transport. Clean, punctual, cheap, with phone signal in the tunnels. The T-money card works on buses, subways, taxis and in convenience stores.
4. Cafes as workspaces. Nobody will hurry you out after four hours with one americano.
5. How good and cheap ordinary healthcare is.
What takes adjusting to:
1. Age determines the register of every conversation, so you will be asked yours immediately. It is not nosiness, it is grammar.
2. Directness about appearance. Comments about your weight, skin or tiredness are common and are not meant as insults. This is the one that stings most for people from cultures where it is off-limits.
3. Group over individual in social settings. Ordering for the table, sharing dishes, everyone leaving together. Eating alone is increasingly normal but group meals have a rhythm you have to learn.
4. Drinking culture, if you encounter it. Pouring for others, two hands, not filling your own glass. Declining is easier than people fear — "못 마셔요" is accepted — but the pressure is real in some settings.
5. Bureaucracy is paper-heavy and in person, in a country that is otherwise extremely digital. This contradiction never stops being strange.
6. The pace. Fast, and impatience is expressed openly. 빨리빨리 is a real thing.
7. Recycling. Genuinely complicated, and you will get it wrong for a month. Food waste is separate, bags are district-specific, and your neighbours will notice.
And the one nobody expects: how much of your energy the first month takes. Not the language — the constant low-level effort of not knowing how anything works. That fades and you stop noticing it around week six.
What surprises people pleasantly:
1. How safe it is. Leaving a laptop on a cafe table while you go to the toilet is normal. Walking home at 3am is unremarkable. This takes about a month to believe and then it is hard to give up.
2. Delivery. Everything, everywhere, fast, including to a park bench or a riverside. And the food arrives on real dishes at some places, which you leave outside afterwards.
3. Public transport. Clean, punctual, cheap, with phone signal in the tunnels. The T-money card works on buses, subways, taxis and in convenience stores.
4. Cafes as workspaces. Nobody will hurry you out after four hours with one americano.
5. How good and cheap ordinary healthcare is.
What takes adjusting to:
1. Age determines the register of every conversation, so you will be asked yours immediately. It is not nosiness, it is grammar.
2. Directness about appearance. Comments about your weight, skin or tiredness are common and are not meant as insults. This is the one that stings most for people from cultures where it is off-limits.
3. Group over individual in social settings. Ordering for the table, sharing dishes, everyone leaving together. Eating alone is increasingly normal but group meals have a rhythm you have to learn.
4. Drinking culture, if you encounter it. Pouring for others, two hands, not filling your own glass. Declining is easier than people fear — "못 마셔요" is accepted — but the pressure is real in some settings.
5. Bureaucracy is paper-heavy and in person, in a country that is otherwise extremely digital. This contradiction never stops being strange.
6. The pace. Fast, and impatience is expressed openly. 빨리빨리 is a real thing.
7. Recycling. Genuinely complicated, and you will get it wrong for a month. Food waste is separate, bags are district-specific, and your neighbours will notice.
And the one nobody expects: how much of your energy the first month takes. Not the language — the constant low-level effort of not knowing how anything works. That fades and you stop noticing it around week six.
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11 comments
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You can still post anonymously after signing in.the safety thing genuinely rewires you. i left my laptop at a cafe table for 20 minutes and nothing happened and i felt insane for being surprised
31
you will. and then you'll come home and have to un-learn it, which is worse
11
everyone says this and i still don't quite believe it
9
the comments about appearance. my teacher told me i looked tired and had gained weight, in front of the class, warmly. it took me months to stop taking it personally
22
korean here, i'm sorry, it genuinely is meant as concern. we say it to each other constantly. i understand why it lands badly though
12
this is the number one culture shock for western students by a distance
7
the recycling. i got it wrong for six weeks and my landlady eventually came up and showed me. food waste is a separate bag and the bags are district specific
17
the most digital country on earth and you still have to physically go somewhere with paper documents for everything official. i never got over that
14
and the paper form is often a PDF you have to print. it's beautifully absurd
6
cafes. four hours, one coffee, nobody says a word. best study environment i've ever had
11
the exhaustion in month one is not the language. it's not knowing how anything works. that's the part that surprised me most
9
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