It’s impressive how little English Koreans speak. In Korea’s largest and most global city, my girlfriend and I met Airport workers, international mall, and global beauty specialists who spoke little to no English. It’s noticeably less even than China or Japan.
It made my life harder, but honestly, I respect it. Korea is an autonomous cultural unit. From my experience, it’s more culturally self-contained than any modern country I’ve visited. They also have the cheapest and fastest Ubers in the world, whose drivers are managed by another company called Kakao. It’s truly another level. 1-2 minute pickup in any major city area. The cleanest Ubers in the world. On time. No bullshit delays where cars take twice as long to arrive as the estimate.
My subjective Uber / Uber equivalent Tierlist
Seoul has a combination of major roads and narrow streets — almost alleys, but with enough room for a truck to pass through. I like the narrow streets. They make for fun and enjoyable walks. They feel like there’s a new mystery around every corner, like a video game landscape. Some neighborhoods have very steep hills, like San Francisco or Chongqing. This was the most fun part of exploring Seoul for me.
Korea does have a certain postmodern consumerism that makes it suitable for i.e. Byung-Chul Han and Bong Joon Ho. I saw a lady who looked 70 - walked hunched with a cane - trying out makeup and wearing trendy clothes. People are ‘aura farming’ in their social interactions, seemingly moreso when in customer-facing roles.
It’s postmodern in the sense that their business practices are not optimizing for customer success in the American sense. There was a common pattern with the airport workers, secretaries, and other public-facing workers. One airport bus driver drove off with half the seats empty rather than let us and ten other passengers board, seemingly because they were running late. One hair salon mistakenly told us to go to another building because they had two secretaries who apparently didn’t share data.
They were trying hard, but they weren’t trying to get present or future customers. They had a different energy than Europeans, who are just lazy. They were tense, awake, clearly paying attention to the real world. They acted out the stereotype of their job in the most rigid and professional-looking way, even when it was worse for business. I had dinner with a Korean AI researcher friend and his theory is that “it’s all for appearances”.
Korean food is excessively saucy and salty for my taste. Their bread quality falls well below the east asian standard. It seems like a demand problem. Most bread is filled with way too much sauce. At that point, does the quality of the bread even matter? In general, Korean food has insane amounts of sauce. They are the Asian country that is closest to matching American fast food, especially stuff like fried chicken and hamburgers. They’re actually more extreme than most of America. I didn’t spend long in Seoul, but to be honest, food Korean food outside of Korea tasted better than the food I had there
Korean tourism is in its infancy. Japan too was like this, now look.
We had the opposite experience re: English and Korea vs Japan. Pretty much every Korean we spoke to in Seoul spoke enough to help us.