By I know before setting foot back in Korea that there are some changes that make life a lot better for expats than when I first taught ESL in 1996-2000: The growth in the Internet and its availability would have made things much easier back then.
Red pepper wasn’t introduced into the Korean diet until it was discovered in the New World and made its way to Asia, but I can’t for the life of me imagine what Korean food must have been like before then, because red pepper is so essential in most Korean cooking.
PC Bangs are the same way. There are some readers here who are familiar with Korea before 2000 and can remember back to a time when internet access in Korea was scarce. Most people might find it hard to believe considering how unbelievably wired Korean society has become.
That changes things for the expat a good bit.
Now, thanks to the Internet, you can download pretty much any American or Western movie or popular TV show and often sporting events you want.
You can also easily keep up with news around the world.
And since I figured out recently how to read in full pretty much any book previewed in Google Books, access to reading material in English is wide open.
It also keeps friends and family back home easily accessible. I’ll probably buy a couple of computer cams for some family members with cable modems before I leave, and I plan to buy a desktop computer early on with one for myself in Korea.
All of this makes being an expat in Korea much less of an isolation than it was in 1996.
It is the sad reality. No mistake...
2:32 pm on June 9th, 2009 1
interesting perspective. more than half of your post is about how easy it is to access English media. why bother living outside the US in the first place?
2:47 pm on June 9th, 2009 2
Seriously?
Do you think someone living abroad has to "go native"?
And that "going native" means you cut yourself off from the rest of the world?
If my Korean language skills were fluent, I could get my news and TV entertainment from just the Korean-language sources. But they aren't.
I can guarantee you, when I taught in Korea from 1996-2002 and when I was back for the 2nd half of 2002 —- I spent a hell of a lot more time out and about immersed in Korean society than the average ESLer.
Most teachers tended to stick together in a group going out to places to meet other ESLers and other foreigners and spending their free time in places like Itaewan. I spent most of the time with my adult students the first 2 years in country than the rest traveling around with my (Korean) wife.
You can watch American movies and TV shows and read books in English and still spend your time immersed in Korean society….
4:48 pm on June 9th, 2009 3
Thing that have not changed.
You still cannot get internet service in your home unless you have a Korean put their name on the account.
You still cannot get a non-phonecard Mobile Phone unless you have a Korean put their name on the bill.
Etc Etc. Things are changing slowly in these areas but Korea is still extremely unfriendly to expats in the areas of daily business as they still seem to think that foreigners are more likley to rip you off than a Korean… which if we looked at the actual statistics we would probably see that it is actually the reverse.
4:59 pm on June 9th, 2009 4
point is: you may feel fairly isolated even though foreign media (in your own language) are easily accessible.
(admit that my first comment was a little provocative)
5:51 pm on June 9th, 2009 5
That is good to know. And something I'll have to get straightened out quickly if/when I get over there. The large amount of PC Bangs mean you don't have to have a setup at home, but for some of the things I have in mind to do , I'll need to be able to do some work and upload things.
And come to think of it, without a connection at home, it might be difficult to download TV and movies from a PC Bang unless you could get them to allow you to install some of the file sharing software…
steffen, no problem. Didn't mean to sound bitchy myself.
My point in the post is that when I first went to Korea in 1996, there were a lot of things an expat couldn't do that they wanted to do.
AFKN was your only basic entertainment option for television, and a phone was the only way to keep in touch back home. And the first year or so in Korea, the international phone rates Korea charged were through the roof until they cut them.
5:52 pm on June 9th, 2009 6
On TV, I did rent a lot of movies at my local video store after I bought a VCR.
5:55 pm on June 9th, 2009 7
On PC Bang help, that is one thing about being a Western expat in Korea. Despite all the anti-US stuff that is routinely taught, you can get better service than Korean customers get.
It was less so in Seoul where people were more used to meeting foreigners, but I imagine I could probably get to know people at a local PC Bang and get them to help me download or upload things I want.
10:12 pm on June 9th, 2009 8
[quote]
You still cannot get internet service in your home unless you have a Korean put their name on the account.
You still cannot get a non-phonecard Mobile Phone unless you have a Korean put their name on the bill.
[/quote]
Not entirely true. I have home internet service and I'm not married to a Korean. You need to go through either a realator or your hagwan owner. Its not that their discriminating against you, its that they don't speak English and you probably don't know how to setup your bank to pay the bill.
For the phone thing, LG recently started offering service to non-Koreans. For the phone companies its their computer systems and bill generation systems. Their setup to use accounts based on KID numbers, and since foreigners don't have a national KID number their computer won't take the account. Two years ago I tried, the guy was gonna sell me a nice phone, got all the way to the computer part.. and BAM wouldn't take my SSN, it NEEDED a KID to create the account. But recently I got a service plan through LG with them auto-billing my credit card instead of a Korean bank.
10:15 pm on June 9th, 2009 9
"You still cannot get internet service in your home unless you have a Korean put their name on the account."
"You still cannot get a non-phonecard Mobile Phone unless you have a Korean put their name on the bill."
You must be talking about North Korea.