A Russian woman moves to Seoul and talks about life in South Korea

Do you think it’s easy for a foreigner to live in South Korea? Blogger Svetlana Son told her own experience and showed that nothing in this life is impossible. She was born in Yakutsk, Russia, and at the age of 16 she went to Vladivostok to study. There, she met her future husband, a Korean man. Today, Svetlana lives in Seoul and tells her followers about life in that country.

O awesome.club found the perception of a foreign woman about the reality of people in South Korea very interesting. The stories are really unexpected and very interesting. Check it out right now.

If, on the one hand, the cosmetic industry in South Korea is incredible, the same does not happen, for example, with aesthetic treatments. In the country, it is very difficult to get a good manicure, pedicure or get someone who knows how to put on false eyelashes.

One day, I spent a long time waiting for someone to try to draw a half moon on my nail. The professionals in this area don’t know how to give a good shape to the nails and don’t do a good treatment, they just cut, file and apply a fixative. So I once came home with really ugly nails and $200 less in my pocket.

You might already know that in South Korea people love to eat and talk about food. One of the most popular hashtags in the country is #먹방 (food). If you type that word into Google — as it’s written in Korean — you’ll find over 20 million posts related to eating food in front of the camera.

In South Korea, it is not considered good form to eat alone. As a result, food bloggers record videos of themselves eating and become very popular, as people turn on their cell phones and eat in front of them, as if they were with someone else. This trend also spread to social networks and was called ‘muk-bang’ – videos that show only bloggers eating. Likewise, all influencers make noises with their mouths when they chew. For them, this is not a sign of bad manners, but just a demonstration that the food is good.

Want to know what surprised me most about my husband’s habits when we first started living together? That he only showers in the morning. However, after a while, I realized that this happens to everyone in the country.

Children shower in the afternoon, but adults always shower in the morning. In the cold season, people go outside with wet hair, that is, they do not change their habit. They do it to feel good at work and to wake up.

We were invited to the wedding of one of my husband’s work colleagues and my task was very simple: to dress as simply as possible, as if I were going to the mall. Typical code for a Korean wedding includes black pants and a white shirt. Long dresses and extravagant hairstyles are not accepted.

A wedding is not a party for you to get drunk, with music and dancing. The entire party lasts a maximum of two hours. There is a ceremony, a photo op and dinner. Dinner is awarded only to people who give an envelope with money as a gift. When giving the gift, you write your name in a notebook and get a coupon that entitles you to dinner.

Korean men are not usually very romantic and my husband is no exception. On our first Christmas, he gave me a hair dryer. Yes that’s right.

I started with subtle hints, like “It’s Christmas soon, let’s start thinking about presents”. If I hadn’t said that, most likely I wouldn’t even have received a hairdryer.

Getting all the tasks done is an eternal race. In the country, everything happens very quickly: everything is done quickly, just like weddings (I already mentioned), and a doctor’s appointment doesn’t last more than a few minutes – I’ll talk about that later.

One must do everything, i.e. complete tasks, no matter how efficiently. If a company shuts down, another quickly opens in its place. One coffee shop is replaced by another, one brand leaves, another enters, and so on. O ppaleun ppaleun does not forgive anyone. You need to know how to adapt to this frequency; otherwise you get run over and you’re left with nothing.

Koreans love dogs, but not like we’re used to. There are malls where people walk peacefully with their animals and no one says anything if the pet does its business halfway through. Also, dogs are taken in strollers.

One day, we were near an elevator with our daughter and a couple arrived with their dog. He was white and fluffy, and he was inside a baby carriage from a famous brand. Our daughter was also in a stroller, but one much more humble than that real ‘throne’ where the dog was.

In South Korea, a person’s character is determined by their blood group. A European or a Brazilian usually ask what the sign of the other is to get an idea about their possible temperament. In South Korea, people ask what their blood type is to try to decipher their interlocutors.

South Korea is becoming the country with the lowest birth rate in the world. Couples no longer want to have children and it is very rare to see pregnant women on the streets. Furthermore, the average age of women who give birth to their first child has already surpassed 32 years.

Couples behave very pragmatically about the birth of a child because they understand that it is not easy to support a child. Families have between one and two children. In addition, there are few daycare centers in the country. It is almost impossible to get into one that is public and low cost and the waiting lists, despite the few births, are huge. The monthly fee for a day care center in the country varies between the equivalent of 800 and 1,000 reais.

It is logical to think that there are no tanning centers. After all, Koreans are against sunbathing. You can find spaces like this at Itaewon-dong, a Seoul neighborhood filled with foreigners.

Want to know how Koreans travel? Very fast. For them, three to five days are enough to visit faraway Europe, for example — there are more than 12 hours of flight time between Seoul and Berlin.

The average Korean vacation length is two weeks a year, but they almost never manage to take that much time off at once. Instead, they divide the 14 days across the year. Sometimes my husband goes on vacation for a day and a half. And he already had half a day of vacation.

In South Korea, housing expenses are very high. For example, a new apartment in Seoul costs the equivalent of at least 3.2 million reais — the country’s currency is the won. In trendy neighborhoods, the value can be even higher.

As a result, approximately half of Koreans live in rented properties. They need to pay between 1,600 and 8,000 reais in rent per month. In addition, expenses with services vary from 800 to 1,2 thousand reais per month, not counting the 200 reais with insurance — in won, of course.

This is the seoul botanic park (Seoul Botanical Park), a very popular place that has received more than one million visitors since its opening. Seoulites need spaces like this to breathe fresh air.

The need for places of this type is a consequence of the great contamination of the air, which is getting worse. The fault lies with industrial production and Chinese factories, which release gases that are carried by the wind to South Korea.

In general, every two years I have a sinus attack. One day I had to go to the doctor close to home. Even if the queue of patients is long, people don’t have to wait very long because consultations last between two and five minutes.

In South Korea, the doctor is in charge of examining, the rest is the work of the nurses. Also, everything happens virtually, without any paper. Treatments for non-serious illnesses are not expensive. On the day I needed to go to the doctor I had to pay the equivalent of 52 reais for the consultation, an amount that also considers the prices of medicines.

It is very curious how some things that in the West are considered ugly in South Korea are seen in a completely opposite way. In my childhood, I suffered a lot from having ears that were too big and I received many nicknames for it.

When I met my husband, I remember one of his compliments: “You have beautiful ears”. It was then that I discovered that in Asia having big ears is a sign of beauty.

Korean festivals have a strong traditional character. Their main objective is to unite the family. Even in the New Year, it is important to respect traditions and pay homage to ancestors and older generations.

During the holidays, children receive nice cash gifts from adults and spend the amount on whatever toys they want.

Never let yourself be guided by the way Koreans dress in winter. Women can walk the streets in summer shoes and without a hat, even when the thermometers read −10 °C — and, yes, Seoul is a very cold city, where it often snows. I don’t know if this is just a way of expressing a style or if they just don’t feel cold.

My children are always more sheltered than Koreans. The teachers were really impressed when they saw my little ones wearing long underwear one day. They couldn’t understand how a child could wear something like that. The scariest thing is that despite this, South Koreans rarely get sick.

Hundreds of movies and series are filmed in South Korea every year. Koreans love cinema and are really critical. In addition, they have infected the world with their love for series called doramas. Viewers are often so hooked on the series that they make authentic pilgrimages to the places where they…