11 South Korean Customs I Learned Living in Seoul

My name is Irina and I lived in South Korea for three years. I started to study the Korean language as a hobby. In my country, you can receive free courses organized by the South Korean embassy. Everything happened quickly. I decided to travel and spend 6 months in Seoul, to really learn the language. But I ended up staying there for 2 years and, after returning home, I understood that I wanted to return to that country. And once again I’m in Seoul.

I wrote especially for the awesome.club my observations about different aspects of life in the country and some peculiar characteristics of Koreans.

Letters in the Korean language are joined by syllables in columns (maximum 4 signs): the first and second letters are at the top from left to right, the third and fourth at the bottom. In newspapers and scientific texts, Chinese characters are still used, but this is decreasing every year. If you are going to Korea to stay for more than a week, it would be good to learn the alphabet as it makes reading city signs and maps easier. You can learn online, and with a little practice, everything will be fine. But this is not necessary: in tourist places and transport, the signs are also in English.

The names also have Chinese writing and meaning. These usually consist of 3 symbols (rarely 2 and even rarer 4). The surname is the first symbol and everything that comes after is the name. When transliterating the name into the Latin alphabet, most prefer to write it in three syllables (Mun Je In). The Western-style spelling system (the name in one word) is widely used, and for the variant of the name, the hyphen is used. Writing the name together can raise questions about how the name should be read (eg Dongyeon is Don-gyeon or Dong-yeon), so many prefer syllable division.

The question I am often asked (after the question of whether I live in North or South Korea) is whether Koreans eat dogs. My answer is yes. Although now dogs are not on the menu of most restaurants and for young people it is something that is frowned upon. There are few restaurants offering dog meat soup and Koreans are ashamed of this issue because of Western censorship. I believe that within 10 years this dish will no longer be available. It’s hard to find restaurants that serve traditional dog meat, but Western fast food advertising is found literally on every street corner.

I often see comments that the food all over Korea is spicy, too simple and too weird.

In fact, there is a lot of spicy food, but you can ask them to prepare many dishes to your liking andPlus, there are plenty of pepper-free options. Everyday food is really not complicated to prepare, but there are so many different and sophisticated dishes and 150 kinds of appetizers, I really can’t say Korean food is simple.

I don’t know why Korean food is considered weird. Cereals, vegetables, fruits and meat are the same as anywhere in the world. The exception is dog meat, which, as I mentioned, hardly anyone eats, apart from beetles, very popular there.

The Lunar Calendar New Year or the Call seol-nal it is one of the most important celebrations of the year. On the table you will find many traditional dishes, but, first of all, you must eat soup with a ball of rice flour dough. One plate equals one year. If you ate a portion, you completed another year. Children sometimes eat too many servings to mature quickly. When I was offered a second serving, I declined, saying I didn’t want to get old and the Koreans liked my joke.

In supermarkets and stores, like anywhere else, there are a plethora of products that are common to all of us at very affordable prices. The total invoice for this purchase is in South Korean won; 1,000 won is worth less than 1 dollar. The total bill above was 47,110 won, which corresponds to almost 50 dollars.

The traditional Korean food that I like the most is the dough with ice. It is very pleasant to eat it in the summer. It’s better than other thirst quenching dishes. This helps a lot in June and July, when it’s very hot and the weather is stifling.

The Korean company Kakao won over Korean citizens for the popularity of its services. Absolutely everyone except babies uses Kakao Talk messenger. In offices, everyone uses this system to talk to each other. It is also used in various chats, such as family members, among others. In addition, Kakao offers an app for subway and bus routes, an interactive map of Seoul, food ordering services, hairdressing locations, shops and many other services. The company also has very cute and popular pets and 90% of Koreans have at least one object with an image of one of Kakao Friends’ heroes.

The plastic surgery fad is slowly fading. Or taught how to do it in a better way, almost imperceptibly. At least I see fewer puffy cheeks and cheekbones every day. Koreans are skilled in the production of cosmetics and skin care products. The new trend is to put on less makeup and have healthier skin, an encouraging proposition. However, the fashion of having thick eyebrows, like a caterpillar, or like those of “children”, looks like it will remain for a few more years.

Koreans highly value collectivism🇧🇷 “We” is the national peculiarity. They don’t even say, for example, “my mother”, but they say “wow”. Our mother, our son and our home. The pronoun “my” is used less frequently. This way of speaking in the first person is very much reflected in Koreans’ adoration for all things fashion and trends. Especially among young people, who wear the same types of pants and the same makeup trends.

Koreans don’t fear lines or wait. There is often a long line to enter a restaurant, where they sign up for a list and wait quietly to be called. They can wait for an hour at a restaurant, even if the branch of that same restaurant is about 15 minutes away on foot. Koreans can form silent lines a few days before the start of sales of some product and even camp there. In the photo you can see a line of people who wanted to buy the new Nike Air Jordan 3 sneakers. They used blankets, heaters and sleeping bags a day and a half before the event. The curious thing is that the shoes were delivered by lot and did not depend on the queue. Before the spread of the Internet, on the eve of the holidays, a real crowd would form in front of the train station, as many people wanted to buy tickets to travel to the countryside, to their parents’ house. But no one tries to cut in line “just to ask something”.

In everyday life, South Koreans rarely mention their northern brothers, only if they start talking about a specific subject. In the environment of young Koreans that I communicate with, they hardly talk about it, but it seems that most would be in favor of uniting countries if they could choose. Meanwhile, on the streets of Seoul, you may come across this clone of a world-renowned leader.