What’s this?
Random thoughts about my trip to Korea. Do you know how explaining a technical issue to colleagues brings you already halfway to the solution? In the same way writing this here helps me sort my thoughts. Also collecting this to get opinions from friends on some of these points.
All here is just reflecting my personal impressions and thoughts, someone else with different background, or just hitting different situations in Korea will feel differently about things.
Trip background
…is heavily influencing how I see things, so here some pieces: I was born in socialist East Germany, lived for many years in Munich and since 2 months in Tokyo, evaluating if my Japanese level is good enough for the work with customers.
In this setting, the "golden week" was approaching, a chance in Japan to take just a few days of holiday (2 this year) and line them up with national holidays. I had forever wondered what Korea is like, and now living in the vicinity I decided to have a look.
Arrival
As German citizen I got my visa for Korea onthefly when entering Korea, option to stay for up to 3 months. After arrival at the ICN airport near Seoul I purchased a SIM card at the airport. These have by law to be registered to the purchasing person, here the shop owner did this for me with my passport. Also a phone number is assigned to the card, phonecalls are possible. For 30€ one gets up to 1GB of usable internet data. For comparison, an internet-data-only SIM for 3GB in Japan costs 45€, needs no registration and can be ordered for shipment directly to the airport for the traveller to be picked up. Ofcourse, best would be for finally getting things together and require sane roaming costs to be setup internationally - but that is not in sight. Even when I go back to Germany I will have to purchase a data-SIM or stay without internet while on the road.
Language
I know German and English, a bit Japanese and a few pieces of Russian. The airport personal was quite good with English, but in Seoul the English level is lower, same as in Japans big cities. In Asia, I have only been in Japan so far. After some time in Japan, my canonical attempt to communicate was always Japanese - but this is not widely spoken in Kore. Many signs in Seoul are in Korean/Hangul and English, to lower degree in Japanese and English.
Hangul are expressing voice, like Japanese Katakana or to some degree Romaji, the alphabet used for English or German. All names of train stations or city areas can be expressed in both Hangul and Romaji. Looking up a location on google maps on the phone worked mostly: train stations are found when entered with Romaji. Computing the best way to destinations via train works to some degree: google maps did leave me without guidance in some situations; apparently not aware of all trains. After having entered the desired destination, google maps also only shows the stations in between in Hangul: this is enough for comparison with Hangul displayed on the train, but does not help to match how the name sounds.
In Japan and Korea, when not beeing able to read Hangul, Kanji or Katakana, one can simply rely on google maps destination time: get off at station <unreadable> at 11:23, the trains in Japan and Korea are sufficiently to the point.
Also, this dependency on the phone is dangerous: so far I resisted to purchase a mobile battery to recharge the mobile on the road, but in Korea this would have provided more freedom.
I had looked up the connections from the airport to the hotel already in Japan and taken notes. Yet, completely not understanding the intermediate station names was not expected, no Romaji versions were provided either. Using GPS from the bus and following the location that way helped getting off at the right station.
Transport
…is as convinient as in Japan. One can purchase oneway tickets, but RFID cards which can be charged with money are much more convinient. The bus to/from the airport is pricey with 10€ one way, but in Munich this is 14€. Riding bus/train inside Seoul is very cheap, the government is paying half of the price. The convinience of RFID-cards come to a price: movement profiles can be setup. Atleast the RFID cards are not mapped to single persons, as far as I know.
Cars drive at the right side like in Germany, in contrast to Japan. Power plugs are compatible to my equipment brought from Germany, for Japan I need adapters.
People
My first impressions were not the best: people speaking loudly on the bus, not taking care of others. This was on the same level as in Germany, but is extremely rarely seen in Japan. People seem to be more outgoing in average, compared to Japan. This is seen in average conversations beeing louder than in Japan, couples kissing, car drivers often honking. Also the tv series from Korea and Japan are seen across the country borders; rumour has it that some Japanese like Korean series for the direct expression of everything they feel.
I think I sensed a lower degree of perfection than I see in Japan and Germany; the urge to bring things to completion in the proper/perfect way. My hotel room had a bathtube and several other garments which were of good quality by itself, but were apparetly installed in hasty and unproper ways. It takes something for even me to notice.
People are friendly and approachable. Not knowing Korean is ofcourse a barrier, also having a character like me who is not fast in making friends. I was lucky to meet up with a friend from Tokyo who now lives in Korea, and got introduced to meet Korean and Taiwan people. All of them speaking multiple languages, my Japanese level beeing by far the lowest of all.. thanks for keeping up with me! A fantastic experience, that is what one is learning languages for. I hope very much to see you guys again, in Japan, Korea, Germany or somewhere else ;).
I came up with the comparison of Korean relating to Japan a bit in the same way Italy relates to Germany.
Ethics
Low crime rates. I was very surprised to learn that Korea has dropping birth rates, even lower than Japan and Germany (while Germany compensates with immigrants). The internet counts up possible reasons, not far away from Japan and Germany.
What’s what "one is just used to", or what has humanity background? We from all countries agree on killing people is a bad thing to do, this is a common line of understanding. But for example in Germany we have mixed sauna; men and women beeing in a room in the nude. This is already differently in Great Britain, people use swimming suit there in the sauna. Also in Korea and Japan almost all bathes and sauna are strictly separated nowadays.
Another example of this is seeing living squid beeing thrown into hot water for cooking, then eating it. I ate, the scenary beeing unusual for a German, but understanding this as something which has no deeper meaning, apparently other people are living fine with experiencing this often.
Environment
More trash is stacking up than in Japan where one is rather taking the trash back home than throwing it onto the street. Many more poor people are seen than in Japan or Germany.
Attractions, country
In Seoul, many palaces, gardens, temples, museum and town districts are worth to be visited.
Much technology is everywhere, just like Japan and to lower degree Germany. My hotel turned out to be love hotel for main business and just as side business also take longer term visitors like me.
Nice technology already in the room: 5 speaker surround sound system, a huge Samsung plasma TV - Samsung was one of the companies last stopping to take bets on the plasma technology. A PC was also there, with a windows installation which was resetting itself with each reboot.
As for attractions, using the bath and sauna is also quite popular in Korea, but I think not as common as in Japan. Japan has many wells of hot water, this seems not to be the case in Korea. In exchange, Korea experiences almost no earthquakes. This also allows floor heated houses, the waterpipes would break with quakes.
Government
Korea like Japan is known for good internet connections, this relates to latency to in-country-servers and bandwidth. While serving I was confronted with a redirect to http://www.warning.or.kr/ - the Korean government is running proxies and restricting internet access. The picture ontop seems to be served only inside Korea.
This was a very frightening experience. Restriction of free speach is one of the things North korea is getting called out for, yet here the citicens of South korea get censored. Restricted sites include for example http://www.northkoreatech.org/ which informs about North Korean technology. More details: Wikipedia. A really frightening experience, not known from Germany and Japan.
Also, much police is around. The relation to North Korea is an interesting topic to discuss with Koreans, especially with me beeing from East Germany and seeing the country reunite. Also trips to the border area are offered, after seeing some advertisements I decided it was not worth the time for me.
Prices and food
Food is much cheaper than in Japan, there are lunches for ~4 or 5€. When sitting down in a restaurant and deciding for a meal, I did not understand the waiter explaining that the meal was for 2 persons. After getting the meal I realized, but the price was just 11€.
Meals seem to have bigger shares of meat than in Japan. Pickles (漬物) are served along with meals, as well as Kimuchi. Meals are more spicey than in Japan, and garlic is used quite often.
Computer pieces are not exceptionally cheap to my experience, one has probably go to Taiwan or China for this where hardware is produces. A huge variety of electronics is available. As souvenir for myself I bought a led lid keyboard, with Romaji and Hangul.
Outlook and conclusion
A fantastic experience all in all, I met some very nice people and hope to go back at some point. When I do, I will invest a bit of time to learn some Korean words and Hangul. As for where I fit in best, I think that is Japan at the moment :)