A Gyopo In Korea: First Days In Seoul, Language Barrier

I’m Dylan, a 3rd generation Korean-American, and I’ll be living in Seoul for three months. In that time, I hope to improve my near non-existent Korean skills and experience the culture that I’ve been removed from. In this series, I’ll be detailing those experiences.

When I first arrived in Korea, though obviously foreign to me, there was a feeling of familiarity to it. At home in central California, though I never really spoke any Korean with my parents and didn’t see many other Korean people throughout my life, I was fortunate enough to be treated to certain aspects of Korean culture. Maybe it was because of that; of all the K-Dramas I watched with my family, or of the food my mom would cook for me, and all the Korean grocery stores and restaurants I’ve been to throughout my childhood, that I had this feeling. Each bite of food was like home to me, and despite barely being able to understand a few words or sentences here and there, just being surrounded by the Korean language, something I rarely experienced as a child, made me feel happy.

I was very nervous before coming here. In the months before, I was anxiously trying to brush up on my Korean. I was scared to meet people without being able to speak the language they expected me to know, that I felt I was supposed to know. I’d had more than a few experiences like that in America, especially once I got to my international boarding high school and I met other Koreans and their parents.

This fear is something that a lot of other foreigners may not relate to when they come to countries like Korea. (If they are not Korean and don’t look Korean, why should they know or be expected to know Korean?) I certainly don’t feel it visiting other places like Italy or Greece. So while other tourists were speaking their foreign languages freely, I felt a tinge of embarrassment whenever I spoke English with my family out in public.

I’ll offer a piece of advice to anyone who is also painfully self-conscious and may find themselves in similar shoes to me in the future. Though it may seem obvious, you have to get over that initial fear of embarrassment as soon as possible. If you try and avoid it by never going out or talking to anyone, you’ll never improve, and if you try to pretend that you can in fact speak their language, that embarrassment will only find you quicker and in more devastating ways.

Here’s an example. The other night, I went to a GS25 convenience store. These were my goals: to buy a bottle of water and some instant Shin Ramyun, and to get in and out without giving away the fact that I was American (less because of the embarrassment, and more because it was a goal of sorts, like it was something I had to prove to myself). At the counter, the clerk asked me to put my card in, that much I understood. She then put a pair of wooden chopsticks on top of my ramyun and said a sentence that I could not even begin to make out. Rather than explaining that “oh, I don’t speak Korean well” and asking her to repeat slowly, I began to panic. I could feel her confusion washing over me and burning my ears as I grabbed my things, gave a small bow and my thanks, and quickly turned around and left the store.

Outside, I realized that she was probably telling me where I could make the ramyun. In Korea, convenience stores have a little station to cook your food and a small sitting area for you to eat in. It was a fact I knew of but had forgotten in the moment. And if I had asked her to repeat herself, I could have told her simply, “No, it’s okay, I’ll do it at home.”

There are a couple of other moments, but this is the most painful of them. I swear; I know it doesn’t sound that bad, but for me it was. I’m sure I’ll still be cringing at this memory twenty years into the future.

The first thing you have to realize is that no matter how little you say, you’re not going to sound like a fluent speaker. Not at the stage I’m at, anyway; it’s just not possible. If it doesn’t feel completely fluid coming out of your mouth, chances are that people will pick up on that. But again, this is okay; you’re only learning, after all, and you will improve. If people do pick up on it, they will speak in a way that’s easier for you to comprehend, but if they don’t, there is absolutely no shame in telling them that you don’t understand them well.

I’m not saying I’ve mastered this already. I’m far from it. The other day I paced back and forth out front of a burger shop because I knew that they would ask if I wanted it to-go (I made sure to walk the whole length of the sidewalk so as to look like less of a maniac), but I had forgotten to look up what the word for “to-go” was after a similar situation happened to me in a fried chicken place (it’s still embarrassing how quickly they know to switch to English). But I’m getting more and more confident, and slowly but surely I’m learning more Korean words, “to-go” and “shopping bag” being some of them, so that I have all the bases covered when checking out with a store clerk.

All in all, my first week in Korea has been a wholly pleasant one. I haven’t met a single person who has looked down on my Korean or treated me with disdain because of it—so far. And I enjoy all of the bowing and formalities—the always receiving things with two hands and the making sure to pour drinks for your elders first, and whatnot. I think I’ve sort of romanticized those and other parts of Korean culture because of my time watching Korean dramas. I can say with certainty that I look forward to spending my next three months here.