Comments on: 10 things that irk me about Seoul

By: Chris import

Chris import — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 00:19:00 +0000

Kosaru,
Yes the universities are a completely different story – most of them require their students to have a high level of English proficiency (and where some or all of the classes are taught in English). While the irregular English is cute, and perhaps even fashionable in the States, part of me almost wonders if they even know what it says… I wondered the same thing when people in the States wore shirts with Chinese characters on them.

By: Kosaru

Kosaru — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 23:57:00 +0000

actually i love the weird English– I’m buying as much of it as I can to wear when I get back to the states. it’s brilliant.

By: Kosaru

Kosaru — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 23:56:00 +0000

I have only been here about a month, but have experienced most of this too. I can’t really complain about people not speaking too much English (though at the universities that’s different), they are probably more justified to complain about my horrible non-conversational Korean skills, haha.

By: Murasakibrit

Murasakibrit — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 08:30:00 +0000

There is a huge reason for no “one stop” places for information in Korea….there is a black market alive and kicking. Also, in Asia there is a general fear of the internet for some transactions (such as real estate). They prefer “face to face” contact. I know this from Japan. After you get to know the system (or lack of one), you’ll find that word of mouth is quite powerful in Asia.

There is a belief that the person-to person contact should not be by-passed by the internet. However, perhaps we expats can somehow create our own centralized information source!