Haru / Questions
Questions people actually ask me
What Korea is really like, from someone who lives here. Honest answers — the ones I’d give you on a call, not the ones that sell best.
About Korea
Asked by people coming for a week, and by people moving here.
Enough that you’ll be fine, and less than the internet implies. Signs, subway and menus in tourist areas — yes. A taxi driver, a market stall, a small restaurant at 9pm — often not.
The real gap isn’t comprehension, it’s willingness. Plenty of Koreans read English well and are anxious about speaking it, which is a feeling you may recognise. Ten phrases from you changes the entire tone of the exchange.
Yes, and this is the thing visitors are most surprised by — people leave a laptop on a café table to go to the bathroom and it’s still there.
The things to actually watch for are ordinary ones: drinking culture that escalates faster than you expect, and taxi scams at 2am near Hongdae or Itaewon. Not danger. Just friction.
Barely. Korea is close to cardless — card or phone works in almost everything, including street-food carts and buses.
Keep a small amount for traditional markets and older places, and get a T-money card on day one for subway and buses. That’s the one piece of physical infrastructure worth having.
Less than you fear, and different from what you’d guess. Nobody minds that you don’t know the etiquette — you’re visibly a guest.
The ones that register: pouring your own drink when someone older is at the table, taking something handed to you with one hand, sticking chopsticks upright in rice, being loud on public transport. Tipping isn’t rude, just genuinely not done — leaving money can create confusion rather than goodwill.
The most Korean word there is, and the hardest one to translate. Roughly: reading the room — noticing what people haven’t said and adjusting before they have to say it.
It’s why the same sentence can be perfectly fine at one table and wrong at another. You don’t need it as a visitor. You need it if you’re going to work here, and it’s most of what separates fluent-sounding Korean from correct Korean.
Because Korean grammar has to know. The verb ending changes depending on the relationship, so age isn’t small talk — it’s the information needed to speak to you at all.
It stops feeling intrusive the moment you understand it’s a grammatical question, not a personal one.
It used to be. It isn’t now — 혼밥 (eating alone) is completely normal, and much of the city is built for it: counter seats, single-portion sets, order screens.
A few places built around shared grills or stews still assume two people. Not a rule, just a menu design.
Honestly, none. You can have a great week in Seoul with zero Korean.
You’ll have a different trip with about thirty phrases. Not a smoother one — a different one, where people talk to you. That’s the whole reason I built a pocket guide instead of a phrasebook.
For the job, sometimes not — there are English-speaking roles, especially in tech and international teams.
For everything around the job — the lunch, the messages in the group chat, the thing that gets decided before the meeting — yes. That’s usually the part people underestimate, and it’s why the people who move here end up in my coaching about six months in.
No, and it’s much less of a problem than it was ten years ago. “I don’t drink” is accepted at almost any table now.
What’s still true is that a lot of relationship-building happens at dinner. You don’t have to drink. It helps to stay.
Not a tour. A day with me: contemporary Seoul, the older city around the palaces, or a night out in Hongdae — depending on what you’re curious about. Filmed, so you keep it.
I take individuals, small groups and companies.