Emotions and feelings - Korea

[yeti08]

I'll provide some advice that I follow myself and keep my time here fairly comfortable.

Buy your own housing - take the housing allowance and never get stressed over losing your job = being homeless.  In addition, as your housing goes up, you save more money when you sell it in the future (my home increased in value nearly 250M since I bought it) and the feeling of incorporated savings while you get paid to live where you live and watch your value go up is an awesome feeling.  You can also tell your employer to **** off and get a new job w/o the stress of moving.

Buy a car - keeps you warm in winter, dry in summer and avoids the stress of public transportation as well as those who sneeze and cough w/o covering their mouths.  Can be quiet and peaceful while you travel alone and overall is far cheaper than taxis.

Spend money to get comfortable - furnish your place with enough to relax and be happy.  Your home should be your stress free zone, so don't be stingy and get some stuff you need to enjoy your place for a year or two.  If you don't, you'll hate being at home and spend far more money entertaining yourself while you try to avoid your crappy housing rather than just enjoying it when you're off work.

Buy a proper TV - cheaper than alcohol over a year, and people will buy it when you leave.  A decent 42" TV is cheap and matched with Skylife can entertain you during those long rainy weeks and keep you sane.

Decent computer w/net connection - nuff said.

Washing machine - cheaper than laundry shops over the year.  You can get new ones on sale now and then for less than 400k for a large unit.  You'll have clean clothes all the time when it's super hot and you've been chaging clothes so much from sweating.   Also nice to have clean clothes when you wash daily.  In addition, you can sell it to another expat cheap quickly and get most of your money back.

Stop wasting your time in bars - same scene, never changes though peopel will come and go.  After awhile you'll soon realize it's a waste of time and existence as well as your money.  Hopefully you havne't spent all your savings by then.

LIVE here - meaning do what you'd normally do at home.  That may mean you spend some money, but you're happy doing what you love and life becomes a lot better.

Over time, you'll enjoy this place as it no longer represents the negative stress of home and work but more of what you enjoy doing.  That is a huge difference in how many people live here.

MC

^ This.

I'll add that the car extends your ability to get away from what is bothering you.  I really can't take being in the city all the time for the obvious reasons.  My wife and I don't use the car for much everyday driving, but getting out of the city is FAR easier with a car. 

And the bar scene is awful.  My first year I went to the bar 2-3x's a week, all I did was gain weight and waste money.  Get a hobby, drink outside of the convenience store with friends, etc. 

I'll add learning to cook Korean food.  It's far cheaper than cooking western food and your friends back in your home country will be quite impressed. 

[DWAEDGIMORIGUKBAP]

But honestly, if you were to do what MC said, you'd have to want to be a long termer here and have a decent mount of cash beforehand.

Let's face it - about 99.5% of us do not have enough cash to buy a house and if we did we wouldn't be buying it in Korea...   I'd be gone in a shot if I had that much, heck I'll be gone once I have 20mil....

[Spongeblob]

Each person is different to me.  I'm not the type to whine and do nothing.  I whine and do something.    Give me a host of problems and I work at it to find my own comfortable solutions.  In fact I like the challenge and the strife.  It feeds me and makes me stronger.  Bwahaha.  One thing I've noticed (over the years) is that successful survivors or thrivers in Korea are the people who adapt in their own ways.  What works for some will not work for others.  Countless conversations about how miserable life is or apologizing to extremes are nonsensical distractions from my own happy existence and I've learned to take them for the worthless babble they are.  My advice is to take your own advice before someone takes it from you.  Welcome to the human race.  (Blows out a match and the scene fades to black.)

[sheikhnguyen]

Every country has it's idiosyncrasy's.  In the countries I've lived in, there's been things that I both hated and loved about them.  Korea is no different to me.

I do find it amusing when westerners talk about how kind they are treated when they visit the Philippines or Thailand or some other poor Asian country.  Yes, they do because that's simply survival for them.   They don't actually like you for you, they want your money and business.  In Korea, they will not treat you like royalty just for being from a western country.  Although, in my experience, they've still been relatively polite to my face.

I am not sure if the above is directed at me, but I lived there for a number of years and know the place pretty well. I wasn't a back packer passing through. I'm well aware of the nature of tourism in developing countries. My experiences there with colleagues, neighbors and friends was that they were a kind, welcoming people, in a way that say Koreans, or Germans are not.....

[confusedsafferinkorea]

'I do find it amusing when westerners talk about how kind they are treated when they visit the Philippines or Thailand or some other poor Asian country.  Yes, they do because that's simply survival for them.'

Cinamon, sorry to say this, but that is horse manure. I have been  to the Philippines 10x and I am married to a Filipina and I can assure you that I have spent time there with people that have nothing to gain financially from my spending time with them and they treated me like royalty.  When I am there I make it my business to go and meet locals and they NEVER try to extract money or anything from me, they are just keen to learn about Korea and my home country and I have made some amazing friends that way.

Please don't also stereotype the Philippines and Thailand as 'poor' Asian countries. There is a lot of wealth in those countries, sure there is poverty, but there is also wealth and if fact the Philippine economy has been doing a lot better than Korea's in this time of economic turmoil.

[woman-king]

Great thread, Saffer, I've wondered this a lot myself.

I have no personal experience living in any other Asian country, I've thought about teaching in Thailand or Taiwan or southwestern China for a year after Korea because I love warm weather and have perused a lot of Internet message boards from those countries.  From what I gather, I'd agree with posters who say that the feelings are more low-key and criticism tends to center on specific things they'd like to see change or develop in the country, instead of a visceral dislike to the entire cultural structure.  There's no message board out there that compares to Dave's Korea one, with its two opposing groups of people who either 1) See any criticism of Korea as bigoted, unfair, or ethnocentric and have long-winded, bizarre social theories they trot out to defend the country, and  2) people who find completely pointless, insignificant little details to be obviously signs of deep hatred and resentment towards all foreigners, everywhere, all the time, by all Koreans, and who believe there's absolutely nothing to be enjoyed about the country at all.

Another dimension here, I think, is that you tend to see these extremes more in Korea's longer-terms expats, as opposed to the 20something-I-came-after-the-recession crowd.  Since Korea offers the best buck for your bang right now for people with just a B.A., I'm thinking it got the bulk of the economic migrants who headed to Asia in that 2009-2011 recession window.  I'm squarely in that group and while you do get a few people with very strong feelings about Korea one way or another, most tend to have a more neutral take on things.

[confusedsafferinkorea]

Yes, I agree with all you have said Woman-king. I guess it is here and on Dave's that you get these radical love or hate comments/threads.  I started this because I have my own ideas though I haven't spent time in other Asian countries, other than the Philippines and I just wanted to see how near or far I am from hitting the bullseye with my ideas.

I think what I can say is that Korea is a country of extreme contrasts and that takes some getting used to.  Sometimes these extremes/contradictions boggle the mind and seem to have no logical explanation and I think that is what I have struggled with the most here. I intergrate easily so for me it is ok but for some it must be a huge, huge mountain to climb.

I would like to give some examples, this is not in order to break Korea down but just to explain what I have perceived.

The fact that it is frowned upon for ladies to show any cleavage or shoulder but it is acceptable to wear the shortest skirt (sometimes no skirt) showing everything you have to offer and that is perfectly acceptable.

The unbelievable kindness shown to me by my co-teachers and friends compared to being spat on, shoved and stared down.

The honesty of children in the classroom (elementary) in that if you tell them to remember how many candies they have earned, they will be completely honest or if you lose something, it will in all likelihood be returned compared to how many business think nothing of ripping you off simply because you are a foreigner, and the incredible corruption in the country.

I could go on but it is not my purpose to be negative here, just to point out that these sort of things are amazing (extreme) contrasts and I truly believe it leads to some not insignificant negative feelings by foreigners here.

Thanks for your input, I would also like to try out Taiwan some time and I am kind of hoping somewhere here in this thread I will pick up some comparative comments between here and Taiwan.