How is the life in Korea?

Hi all

Since i discovered korean dramas i got addicted to them w00t

, am starting to like everything about korea. My dream now is to travel to korea and experience the life there, meeting some celebrities would be greate too Laugh

. what do u guys think , is it worth it, i mean is korea as greate as i think it is?

Posted: Thu Jul 05, 2007 7:39 am Post subject: Post Rating: 0

uhh, dunt know I live in the US..Never been to Korean but just like you I would love to go there!

Posted: Fri Jul 06, 2007 10:50 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0

Think of every Korean drama where the main characters are superstars.
Now, try to remember all those semi-mediocre looking girls (and guys) chasing them.

That's how crowded it is on a normal day in Seoul.

Then again, it's only Seoul Smile

The rest of the country is generally quiet

Posted: Sat Jul 07, 2007 6:37 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0

Hey there

first of all thanks a lot for replying to my question. salut

My wish to go to korea has become an obsession Goggle eyes

. i love there language and i actually started to learn it. i guess its easy to learn something when u want to Big Smile

and who knows, maybe its going to become handy when i finally visit the country ...... eh~~

Posted: Sat Jul 14, 2007 4:28 am Post subject: Post Rating: 0

Posted: Sat Jul 14, 2007 5:30 am Post subject: Post Rating: 0

I've also started to learn korean because of my addiction to korean dramas. I don't know if it's a valid reason to begin learning an entire language but so far I like it a lot and it's extremmelly fun to learn especially since I'm learning it in University but when I'm home I'm still learning it trying to watch dramas first without subtitles then whith subtitles ^^

Fortunatly for me, last september, just when I started learning it at University, my college got a partnership for student exchange with the National University of Seoul. So I'm planning of first getting a licence ( 3 years still 2 years to go) and going there as anexchange student. Places are limited but though we were around 70 students in the beginning of the year, only around 15 remained at the end of the second semester and among those 15, only 7 attended classes regularly. I don't think the rest gave up because of difficulties, but I have to admit it was quite boring learning it the first year, especially the first semester I almost learnt nothing as I had been studying it in the summer to get agood start. My korean friends ( French koreans) who are also studying it ( actually they speak fluently but they say there's lots of things they need to learn as they're only used to speaking and familiar speech) said me the second year is gonna a lot tougher as we'll be starting learning Hanja, so I'm pretty excited ^^

Anyway to come back to your question, I don't know if you speak any french, but for the frenchspeakers here's a few blogs done by French people living in Korea:

http://hankuk.over-blog.com/ : This one is a french student in economics who after having spent a semester in Japan ( he's quite addicted to Japan actually but he did fall in love with Korea when he went there) went to study to KDI for a year. It's really fun to read as having been in Japan and being French, he likes to compare differences between our countries but in a fun way ^^

http://fabichou-en-coree.blogspot.com/ : This one has just started, it's actually a french researcher spending three months in Korea so there's probably more to come...

http://agnesseoul.blog.lemonde.fr/ : Finally this one's my favorite. It's a blog created by a french banker. She went back and forth between Korea and France for 5 years and finnally she said she felt so good in Korea why not live there. She speaks of lots of stuffs we don't see in France, so her articles are truly fun to read. One of her last articles for example is about the streets in Seoul extremelly large but which has a rough yellow strip dividing the pavement in two and going inside the tubes. Quite surprising eh? Well She said it's actually used for blind people. They should do this in France too, that's an idea... Well I guess we can't since our pavement are not really large most of the time...

Posted: Sat Jul 14, 2007 5:58 am Post subject: Post Rating: 0

I live in Korea. Smile

Though I JUST moved here, I am scheduled to stay here for at least a year.

Korea is very interesting. I have started a blog, www.neavanille.com, but so far I haven't included anything about different aspect of Korea and is only a personal diary of what I am doing. So, there's not much about Korean culture in it yet, but then I haven't really done much yet apart from meeting people, eating food and hunting for a room.

Well, if you have any specific questions, I am happy to answer them! I think I have a fairly good grasp of Korea as I've lived here before. Just ask about anything you are interested in! (hey that would give me ideas to write about in my blog as well. heh.)

Smile

Posted: Sat Jul 14, 2007 7:57 am Post subject: Post Rating: 0

Posted: Sat Jul 14, 2007 2:27 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0

Well since I'm learning it at school, I can tell you it's not that difficult actually... Like every language, the more you practice and listen to it, the more you learn. Though French is my mothertongue I can tell you it's wayyyyyyyyy more difficult. Moreover, something really nice with it is that once you know one word, you can know lots of them.
For example : 빵 means "bread" 집 "house" 빵집 bakery.

You also have lots of words coming from 하다, once you know a name, you put 하다 behind and you can get LOTS of verbs or adjectives from just using that, from this same name, by just adding some other suffixes you can get adverbs, adjectives and so on... , you can even just change the end or conjugate a verb to change the meaning :

쓰다 : to carry , to raise etc...

Present : 모자를 써요 : to raise a hat

Past : 모자를 썼어요 : to wear a hat.

So well, once you get used to that, understanding the general meaning of words is quite easy.

Another thing, is that for example they form new verbs by just putting two verbs together...

For example : 따르다 : to go with 오다 : to come 따라오다 : to follow

so if you know the two first, you can deduce what the third one means.

Honestly, to me what's the most difficult is not really to understand them when they speak ( as long as their speech is slow enough of course which is fact quite funny since my teacher who teach us in conversation classes speaks extremelly fast for us "to get used to it" but I'm sure it's just to have fun with us answering something completely out of what she said. The worst for me was the day she asked my name but she had spoken so fast I gave her the date and hour Glare

). You always have to think about what suffixes is good but most importantly the tints between their different kind of "but, however .." and so on is quite difficult to grasp.

If the sentences are long, it's real hell to remember what's what, you really have to make your memory work as it's like in Japanese.

But coming back to the person who told you if you're not native there's no way you can speak fluently, well I can tell you it's wrong. I know someone who spent an entire year in Korea not knowing a single word in the beginning and he started class with us at the beginning of the year to get a true diploma. After 3 days he moved to the 2nd year and he was still bored. My korean friends told me you can hardly hear his accent and he's extremelly fluent except when it comes to read adult books. Well he may have some facilities, but seeing this, it's quite encouraging isn't it?
Speaking about that guy, he was so bored, he packed up before the end of the second semester and moved all his stuffs in Korea. He speaks in the Daum café my conversation teacher has created to help us keep on training during the holidays, unfortunatly I have some trouble getting in it, that idiot doesn't remember my password and i can't give him my telephone number ( you have to get a special code to register that you get by a korean voice in your phone) as I'm actually abroad and my mobile doesn't work...

Even the pronounciation is doable. It took me some time, but my pronounciation is quite correct when I take my time... except for the ㅈ/ㅊ, I have trouble not only to pronounce but even to distinguish them when I hear. Unfortunatly, it's so hard I think I may have trouble with that my whole life; still I have hope... You never know.

PS: I yeah... My mom was not against me learning the language but to go there is another story. Still, I managed to convince her by saying that in our society, if you learn a language and don't go to the country, you're sure you're never gonna get a single job.
She has valid reasons though, she was born in Madagascar where there is an important chinese community living over there for more than a century, but their attitude towards native malagasy, that is to say black people is extremmelly negative and direspectful. Having lived her entire childhood and adolescence there, being underestimated by asian people, she was afraid I would get the same treatment by going there. And I can tell you, it's not because of any racist idea or whatever because we have chinese people in our family, it's extremelly mixed, I must have at least 4 or 6 nationalities mixed for just two generations... Actually we're so mixed we don't really know from where we're from.
But coming back to that, Madagascar is Madagascar, Chinese people may be educated to behave like that over there, they should change that's for sure however Korea is Korea with Korean and Korea is not China.

Yeah well you may find this idea ridiculous but I know a whole bunch of people who when they hear "blacks" think just "blacks in Africa or American Blacks" the farther they go is maybe India and that's it.

Posted: Sat Jul 14, 2007 9:33 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0

Only one ㅈ in Home. 집.

ㅊ is pronounced with a stronger starting sound (the sound is ofcourse similar). The difference isn't always audible but it's there (depends on the position of the letter in a word).

Posted: Sun Jul 15, 2007 3:54 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0

Ah yeh Sorry I didn't see that mistake when I wrote it, I'm gonna edit. But referring to what you said. I know the difference in pronounciation but still I can't do it correctly. The problem is not when the ㅊ is in the middle of a word but when it's start with ㅈ or ㅊ.

I know there's some tricks like ㅈ sounding "dj" whereasㅊ sounds "tch" in a sentence when the speech is fluent or between two vowells.. But it's still difficult..
The only solution I found for the moment was to ask my korean friends to check every words I write... It's annoying though, for them as for me.

Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2007 4:25 am Post subject: Post Rating: 0

I was wondering since korea is such a homogenous country, is there a lot of discrimination against those of different races? (Like Japan for example)

Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2007 5:37 am Post subject: Post Rating: 0

I just recently visited Korea within the last couple of months and as a disclaimer, I am Asian (in fact, a lot of the people there confused me for being Korean until they heard me speaking English) so I may not have had the same experience as someone who is clearly not asian. I spent about a week in Seoul, two days in Busan, and another week on Geoje Island.

Anyways here is a list of random obrservations in no particular order (please correct me if I am wrong in any of this):

1) First, the service over there is light years ahead of what we have here in the States. As a side note, you don't have to tip over there because apparently, it's taboo. Now someone please explain that one to me.

2) They drink all lot in the evenings (seriously, there are bars everywhere). So much so that nothing is open until about 10:00 am the next morning. I don't know how they get breakfast, or if they even eat it.

3) There is shopping all around. I think this is one of my favorite aspects of Korea (at least in Seoul). Everywhere you go, there seems to be "communities within the larger community." It's almost like everywhere you get off on the subway, there is a shopping district nearby and all of the amenities are well within walking distance.

4) That brings up my fourth observation. You don't really need a car. Like I said before, you can pretty much walk to everywhere you'd want to from a subway exit. Also, as someone pointed out before, public transportation is dirt cheap. Just be aware that if you've never been outside of the States, the way people drive over there (especially the taxis) might be a bit scary at first but you get used to it. And let me remind you that there are literally millions of walking the streets of Seoul at any given time, so expect to see an insane amount of people out walking around.

5) Although there are a lot of shopping areas, the majority of people there just like to window shop (at least that's what I've been told). Try to imagine Chinatown in San Francisco and multiply that by twenty or so.

6) Young women there are always traveling in pairs. Can anyone from over there please provide some insight as to why? I'm curious.

7) When a new store opens, it's an event. No, really it is. They will hire dancers and singers to promote the grand openings. I actually recorded one such event. You gotta see it to believe it.

Cool

The air quality there is brutal. Also, in some places, you can actually smell the sewage from below.

9) Even when I was up and walking about around midnight, I never once felt like there was anything to be afaid of. Whereas, over here, I won't dare go out after ten.

10) The people were really friendly and more than willing to help me out. Keep in mind, I knew absolutely zero Korean, I was still able to make my way around jut fine. I've been told that the younger people like to practice their English with foreigners and we ran into a few that were pretty fluent in English and very helpful. On the subway I even ran into a pair of really nice old ladies who were even joking with me. I was able to visit the Shinsegae area, La Festa, the Seoul Auto show, the Dongdaemun area, the Korean National Museum, the War Memorial and more.

11) They love gaming over there (especially starcraft). Internet cafes are almost as abundant as bars.

12) Most service occupations are performed by women. Since I'm a twenty-something male, I certainly don't mind, but where are all of the guys?

13) As you travel the countryside, you'll notice that there is still a lot of rural life and that doesn't really change until you hit the big cities and then everything becomes industrialized. One thing I still wonder, is where are all of the houses that I've seen in the dramas. Within Seoul, most people appear to live in high-rise apartments. I didn't see very many "homes" except in the outer regions of Seoul. Someone please clarify.

14) Expect prices on goods to be similar to what you would expect in the US.

15) The Korean economy seems to be controlled by a few major conglomerates (Samsung, LG, Lotte, etc.)

I hope this gives you some sense of what to expect. Keep in mind that I knew no Korean whatsoever and just used the aid of maps and the locals (also, most signs are also in English). I will definitely go back once I find the time to go back.

Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2007 6:08 am Post subject: thx Post Rating: 0