#INTRO

This is my second column here, and before getting into it, I would like to thank everyone with a grateful heart for showering my first article with so much love. Through this series, I wish to continue sharing moments from my everyday experiences in Korea that may seem ordinary to some people, but have felt completely new and interesting to me as a foreigner. What feels familiar in one culture can feel surprisingly different when experienced from another perspective. And today, I wanted to talk about something that completely changed my experience of living here: Learning the Korean language and slowly understanding the culture around it.

Easing into the Korean Language

When I first came to Korea back in 2022, the only Korean that I could actually speak with confidence was “안녕하세요” and “감사합니다.” Well, maybe a few extra phrases picked up from K-dramas here and there too, though sadly none of them were actually useful in real life.

And so, I spent my first year in Korea focusing only on learning the language. I took Korean language classes for a year in Daejeon, which eventually prepared me to move to Seoul to start my Master’s degree. Looking back now, I think that one year in Daejeon was when I truly started understanding Korean culture beyond the version I had seen online. It was not just about learning grammar or memorizing vocabulary anymore. It was about trying to fit into an entirely different way of living, speaking, and communicating. The whole experience made Daejeon so special to me that even today, when someone asks me where I came from in Korea, I sometimes catch myself saying "Daejeon" — even though I actually live in Seoul now.

Learning Korean itself was a ride. Coming from another Asian country, pronunciation and sentence structure were not the hardest part for me. Vocabulary, however, was a completely different story. Sometimes one word seemed to have multiple meanings depending on the situation, tone, or context. Still, as a university student, conversational Korean felt enough. Ordering food, talking to classmates, surviving group projects, and even giving carefully prepared presentations in Korean became normal for me. For the next few years, I genuinely believed my Korean was enough to get by. But it didn't take long for me to realize how wrong I had been.

Classroom Korean to Corporate Korean

Joining the Korean corporate world made me realize that university Korean and office Korean were two completely different things. It all started during application season. Every interview felt terrifying. Sometimes I spent so much time focusing on my self-introduction and getting it right that I completely forgot to prepare for the actual interview questions. At one point, interviews stopped feeling like a test of my skills and more like a test of my Korean ability instead.

When I interviewed at Amorepacific, I remember the interviewers telling me that they understood Korean was not my first language and that it was okay if I fumbled a bit. That small reassurance honestly gave me a lot of confidence during the interview. And then I joined the company, only to realize — it was just the tip of the iceberg.

Once I started working, I realized how huge Korean corporate culture really was, right down to the language itself. Suddenly, the Korean I had comfortably used for years did not feel enough anymore. I still remember not understanding even simple office words like “공유하다” because throughout all my years of learning Korean, I had only ever used words like “보내다” or “제출하다” whenever I had to send documents or information. Moments like that happened a lot in the beginning.

That was also when I slowly started understanding the concept of “눈치.” I had heard the word for years, but I never fully understood it until I actually started working. To be fair, my home country also has its own version of 눈치, but here I felt it more strongly in everyday life. It was not always about what was being said directly, but also about reading the atmosphere, understanding timing, observing reactions, and knowing when to speak or not speak.

The Things I Learned Beyond Work Culture

I also learned so much through these experiences — not just about the language, but about life itself — and I genuinely feel like they helped me grow as a person. One of the biggest things I learned from living and working here is punctuality. At first, I simply noticed how seriously people treated time here. Meetings started exactly when they were supposed to. People arrived early rather than just “on time.” It wasn't just limited to the workplace either — even everyday life felt so structured and organized. I know it might seem like the most obvious thing to whoever is reading this, but to me it has always been so incredibly impressive.

Slowly, that mindset started affecting me too. I became more conscious of other people’s time, but also more respectful of my own. It made me appreciate preparation, planning, and reliability in a completely different way. Today, even after working here for almost nine months, I still feel like a newbie a lot of the time. Somehow, there is always something new to learn every day. Sometimes it is language. Sometimes it is how people work. Sometimes it is small things I notice while talking to my colleagues, who continue to teach me new and interesting things about life and culture here in Korea.

#OUTRO

Living and working in another country constantly pushes you out of your comfort zone. Some days are tough, some moments feel awkward, and there are times when you face the fact that there is still so much you do not know. But at the same time, there is also so much professional and personal growth that comes with it. And perhaps that is why, even when there is something new to learn every single day, it still feels exciting rather than overwhelming. What will I discover next? Stay tuned for my next column.