Tolerance of language learning. I find it so charming that foreigners can seriously slaughter a common phrase in Korean and still get a nice "한국말 잘 하시네요!". You just don't have that in America. Or France for that matter. In America, even though we recognize that there are more cultures and languages represented here than any other country, we still don't do so well in being forgiving with our language. We tend to have a mindset that if you are in America, you must speak English. The use of any other language is often subtly considered sub-par, if even acceptable. It's a little uncomfortable to admit all that, sure. But Americans haven't exactly been politically correct despite our long standing history of immigration. ... Show more

Video Games. Koreans seriously know how to play video games. Anyone young (or old) enough to play the online multiplayer FPS game Counter-Strike will remember just how horrific of a beating they received from anyone with a Korean screen name. Koreans take their video games quite serious. Almost too serious. In late 2007, Korea received a somewhat unique distinction for opening one of the world's first boot camps for youths with internet addiction. Many of the participants cited video games as one of the reasons for their addiction (spending upwards of 17 hours a day online). There is also a reported 240 separate Internet-treatment centers sprinkled across Korea to help battle the growing problem. Goodness, and I thought checking... Show more

Turns out the fire was on the school's playground. Fire drills were always fun when I was a student.  It usually meant at least a few minutes out of class.  As a teacher, they were a bit more inconvenient.  Chances are it would happen right when you were saying something important, or a student was REALLY close to understanding something. If you are not familiar with an American fire drill,  let me briefly explain. At sometime unknown to students (but usually the teachers knew)a bell would ring during classes.  We would all line up quietly at the door, and walk outside usually to a field.  Then we would stand in line for a few minutes watching everyone file out.  The goal was just to practice evacuating quickly and smoothly.  Then a... Show more

Time. Koreans can be terrible about it. I have been stood up more times than I'm happy to admit, but not by dates, but by Koreans. Oh sure, times are changing... but historically, Koreans haven't faired well with keeping appointments on time. It's not their fault. Maybe it's my fault for being punctual. Maybe I make too big a deal of this. I mean, all other Americans think similarly (only we aren't as homogeneous as Koreans and thus, many Americans are remorselessly late too). Maybe I never really questioned it until now? Those of you familiar with Mexican culture will know that MexicoTime is about +1 hour past the time agreed upon. By comparison, KoreaTime is usually +15 minutes past the time stated. Not bad. But there must... Show more

I'm sure you are all aware that 띄어쓰기(spacing) in Korean is just as important as in any other language (with the exception of Japanese and Chinese where spacing isn't necessary). I'd like to introduce some of the most commonly mentioned examples of the confusion that spacing errors can bring about. ^_^ The first one. Let's say you want to write, "My father is going into the room." - father = 아버지 - room = 방 - to go into = 들어가시다 (honorific) So this becomes 아버지가 방에 들어가십니다. But if you change the spacing a little bit and write, it becomes "아버지 가방에 들어가십니다." (My father is going into the bag.) Haha. And here's another interesting example :) Let's say you want to say "I bought a tree... Show more