I fit this category perfectly when I was staying in Korea over 10 years ago. I ended up being there on a tourist visa on and off for a few years. I never had any trouble as a white foreigner but did have a hard time making Korean friends, only because my Korean was fairly basic and I didn’t work in an office or go to university. However, everyone I met was very accommodating, whether I was in places frequented by foreigners like Hongdae or Itaewon or in my now partners hometown which is small enough that most Koreans couldn’t place it on a map.
I walked into the government office a couple times and tried to find a path to a legitimate visa and was told each time I couldn’t do it. I found that the longer I was staying, the less comfortable I was with my status. If there was a path for me to be a legitimate resident, I may have stayed longer than the 3 years I was there.
> According to a survey conducted by the National Human Rights Commission of Korea among foreign residents in South Korea in 2019, 68.4% of respondents declared they had experienced racial discrimination, and many of them said they experienced it due of their Korean language skills (62.3%), because they were not Korean (59.7%), or due to their race (44.7%).
I've been or seen people denied entry to bars/restaurants/stores based on their skin color, but it's very rare and that's about as bad as it gets. It's not like Japan where you can't go into a sauna if you've got a tattoo.
It's more of a dress code thing or they just dont want to serve foreigner. Not necessarily because they are racist but due to language barrier they dont want to stress about it.
I (white guy) wouldn't say I was discriminated per se, but in a country that's probably 99.5% monoethnic you do end up feeling like a distinct outsider from time to time. I found that people were generally friendly and helpful, but I also studied Korean hard before I moved there and during my stay.
Businesses can arbitrarily reject you as there are (seemingly) no protections. I saw a (white) guy from Uzbekistan get rejected from a club for no reason other than his nationality.
Black people definitely experience racism in Korea. Not exactly like in the US obviously but it's a real phenomenon that people tend to dismiss.
I didn't say it was better or worse, just that it wasn't exactly the same. I just pointed it out because it's something that tends to get dismissed when people discuss SK issues.
Foreigner living and working in Korea. Racism isn't a problem in Seoul, but as a courtesy I would strongly recommend signing up for Korean lessons while here.
The biggest complaint foreigners have is foreigners tend to only stay for a few years, so you're always losing your close friends. My recommendation is to make sure your friends aren't other foreigners, but it can be hard to find English speakers (especially outside major cities)
> My recommendation is to make sure your friends aren't other foreigners, but it can be hard to find English speakers (especially outside major cities)
Korean is not the easiest language for Europeans to learn. But having learned a second language as an adult, I find that speaking the local language is amazingly useful when functioning in a foreign country. It's like, hey, I can talk! And I'm literate. Everything suddenly becomes much smoother and easier. I can hang out with people, make friends, go shopping, navigate an emergency room, and even hire skilled professionals who don't speak English. I can even take college level STEM courses, although it's brutal.
Expat bubbles are weird places. They're certainly useful for people who won't be around for more than a year or two. And getting good at Korean is a much bigger commitment than hopping between Romance languages. But if you're moving between related languages, then you can see significant payoff after 350 hours of work, and you can be able to function as an adult after 1,000 to 1,500 hours. And that's not all classroom time. Some of it can be watching TV, or just hanging out with people.
For any kind of extended stay, I feel like learning the local language is absolutely worth it.
Nope it does not. Koreans are one of the most closed societies on earth. They are not necessarily racist or anything like that but everything in korean culture is centered around relationships that you built in army, school, work or other activities. Even if you speak korean very well you will never be part of that culture.
Kind of, it depends on your ethnicity. Koreans tend to treat white people pretty well. There’s a lot of anti Chinese sentiment, and some anti Japanese. If you have African ancestry they won’t mistreat you but they have very strange stereotypes. There’s currently a “crisis” regarding South East Asian illegal immigrants plus drug smuggling, so if your ethnically from that region keep that in mind.
Korea is not as open to foreigners as for instance Thailand. It’s similar to Japan, being more easy to make friendships but having less State services that are foreigner friendly. Most documents are available in English, and most freeway signs are in both Hangeul and English.
I'm married to a Korean and we've spent a bit of time there off and on. I've studied up on ancient to modern Korean history and have a better than normal understanding of cultural norms. My language skills are sadly still a mess.
I would say that, broadly speaking, yes. Korea today is a bit more welcoming than nearby countries like Japan, China, or Taiwan, etc. Since the last dictator in the late 80s, there's been a general consensus understanding that for Korea to survive as a civilization (being next door to more dominant and better known cultures from Japan and China), it must integrate with the rest of the world, and produce meaningful cultural exports and become valued by the international order. The rise of Korean media is not an accident but part of a long-term series of programs to build viable industries in film, music, food, etc. and have those industries take root outside the country in order to create export markets -- very important when your entire economy is built on being export driven. Almost all of the Koreans I personally know, regardless of industry, would jump at the chance to work with a foreigner if it meant they could do some international business.
Korea is pretty small, so you quickly exhaust domestic travel options. As a result, the average Korean, while being somewhat parochial in outlook is pretty curious about the rest of the world, many now have the means to travel abroad, and they do so pretty often. It's not uncommon to be at the Louvre or the British museum and see tour buses of elderly Koreans unload. The succeeding generations, being better educated and often with better foreign language and cultural skills often just skip the organized group tours and go on their own.
When I first went to Korea, even seeing any signage in English was rare. Today, in Seoul you can usually find "ok" English signage around tourist spots, and it's not as impossible as it once was to find somebody who can have a very basic English conversation. Many vendors will have English language signs and it's atypical to be given "tourist" prices. I'd say in those respects it's easier to get around Seoul than Tokyo for example. If I had to sum up the Korean approach to dealing with foreigners is that "your money spends just as well as anybody else's".
Housing costs, especially in Seoul, can be high. If you are from a U.S. Coastal urban megalopolis area, they'll be comparable. If you have lots of cash on hand, the Jeonse (Key Money) practice can be helpful in helping set a low monthly budget. Outside of Seoul, housing is much more affordable, and to be honest, I find the smaller cities much more enjoyable and they aren't far from all that Seoul has to offer by bullet train. But locals may not be happy if an influx of nomads drives housing prices up. If I had to pick, I'd probably choose either Jeonju or Gwangju to live in (cheaper COL, great food, nice chill vibes in the southwest) or maybe Daegu if you like proximity to hiking in the mountains, and not far from the beaches in Busan. But I'm old, if you want nightlife, Seoul is where it's at.
All this combines to make being there pretty decent for the average foreigner, but not necessarily "cheap" like you might find in Thailand or other typical digital nomad countries. You'll always find assholes or grumpy old people like anywhere, but on the average you'll find most people on the day to day easy enough to interact with, and eager to do business with you. That being said, there are very few protections against discrimination. If something ends up with the police, it's pretty typical for the foreigner's account to be dismissed still -- so there's still some growing pains there -- it's not uncommon for media plotlines to revolve around some ill that a foreigner brought in with them.
With the demographic crash happening, and Korea becoming more of a destination country for foreigners (a little over 4% of the population are foreign and it hosts one of the largest American immigrant populations in the world), I expect there will still be quite a bit of social development occurring as the nation figures out if it can really welcome foreigners in a way that aligns with national aspirations -- but it's likely that we'll see a more cosmopolitan country in the future. The changes just in the last 20 years have been phenomenal to see first-hand.
If you want to see what pretty normal interactions are like with Koreans, I'd recommend the youtuber "Where is Dan", who's on a mission to visit every district in Seoul and practice his pretty basic conversational level Korean with as many shopkeeps and people on the street as he can get on camera. But the interactions are 100% authentic and typical of what a foreigner might find there. https://www.youtube.com/@whereisdan/videos
