“The reason foreigners struggle with language in Korea is that it is not really a means of communication, but a tool used to maintain a status-based system…”

I agree up to a point. But surely language is many other things as well? Given the acute differentiation in status that is at the very core of Korean grammar, syntax, and usage, it is almost a non-sequitor to say it’s a tool used to maintain a status system. On the other hand, in my (somewhat limited, I agree) experience, Korean is actually a much more verbal and loquacious linguistic culture than Japanese. What I mean is, people actually put more self-expression, content, individuality, and pungency into their language. Japanese is almost all very heavily formularized, programmed, scripted… and very few people actually can or will attempt to say anything other than the totally expected and overused scripted phrases. Language is not a vehicle for self-expression the way it is in loquacious cultures like the English, French, Irish. Creativity in Japan is overwhelmingly directed towards the visual and not the verbal. My feeling is this is somewhat less true in Korea.

With the obsessive emphasis in Korea put on acquiring English fluency, it would also be unreasonable to expect Koreans not to try to use English to increase and maintain their own status. Previous posters have commented on this, no need for me to elaborate. But what about foreigners looking in the mirror on this one? In my experience, whether in Korea, Japan, China, Thailand, or Indonesia (and certainly in France!), foreigners who have some facility in the local language often self-define their own status by how good their language mastery is, and look down on those less fluent. Understandably, to master another language, especially one as difficult for Westerners as Korean, Japanese, or Chinese, is an acheivement and represents an enormous investment in time and energy. There’s a great satisfaction in being able to function in that language, in that culture… it’s part of the sense of adventure that makes life rewarding for some expats. But I suspect it also leads to some hubris… Americans in particular seem to have rather low expectations for what constitutes ‘fluency’ and to exaggerate their own abilities, even to themselves (naturally this does not apply to any Marmot’s Hole posters! I’m talking about other people, of course…) Certainly in Japan I observed many young and not so young foreigners eager to show off their language skill (obviously picked up mostly in bars and from girlfriends), when they would have been wiser to keep their mouths shut, listen, and learn… I’ve been guilty of this myself many times in both Japan and Korea. It took me years to learn (re Stefan’s advice above) to answer the phone in English… because even though I could handle phone calls in Japanese or Korean, by starting out in English I was making the caller hit a speed bump, slow down, and think a lot more carefully about what they were going to say. Let them do the work for a change!

A final aside… my ability in spoken Chinese (putonghua) is really quite rudimentary compared to my Japanese or Korean, but I too have found, like some other commenters, that the Chinese in general are extremely patient with bad pronunciation, inaccurate vocabulary, and halting speech, and I too ascribe this to the multicultural, multi-dialect, melting-pot nature of Chinese culture.

Lol, no, neither of the above, just a straight shooter.

By the way, I did use Korean as my first - and sole - language in the workplace in meetings, in reporting, for everything. And since I had been away from Korea for so long, I did have to pick up a great deal of new language because Korean is a very dynamically changing language, very trendy. New phrases are coined daily and, you’d better jump on them right away lest you be deemed ignorant.

One of the newly coined phrases that made me laugh was “salarydent” - a student earning a salary on the side.

The most difficult words for me by far were the English Korean words. A new English phrase would suddenly come into vogue and people would use it repeatedly although its meaning was definately at variance with the true English meaning.

After a while I discovered that the people using the phrase didn’t really understand its import at all but were simply parroting it for effect.

For example, at one point the Division began to extol the concept of “Top down brainwashing” as some wonderful organizational tactic. Most people assumed that it was something American. Of course, if I were to point out the fact that in US distribution channels, leadership was drawn from the bottom up and that brainwashing was a pajoritive term - well, I would have been dispissed as ignorant.

Much like American companies, there are a lot of people who justify their existence in the organization through double speak. In the bloated mens clubs that are the chaebols in Korea, it is just more widespread. Speech is not a means of communication, but a means of delineating status.

There was even a large volume given to each employee to instruct them in the proper format for making written reports to management. A certain number of Chinese characters and English phrases needed to be used. Reading these reports, I was often amazed at the simultaneous degree of detail and lack of actual content.

The same goes for the endless, meandering. droning meetings, at which nothing was said - but said very well, and nothing ever resolved.

Reporting existed for the sake of reporting. I often joked that the product of the company was reports, but there is a great deal of truth to this.

Finally, let me say that I was advised more than once that my weakness was in speaking Korean fluently, and that, since I had been hired from overseas, had I pretended not to speak Korean, it would have been better for me. I don’t believe that this was true, but it was a general perception nontheless.

Whenever a foreigner was hired on as a consultant they were effectively marginalized and isolated by reporting to a lower level employee who would report their statements up the chain of command until, when they emerged at the top level, they were so effectively edited that they reflected no more than the personal biases of the Exec VP.

The reason foreigners struggle with language in Korea is that it is not really a means of communication, but a tool used to maintain a status-based system.

I have encountered the “deer in headlights” situation, as well as most of the other McDonald’s situations and such mentioned by others.

I find that becoming a regular at a place where you feel comfortable makes the whole situation better. There was a pizza place on the way home from my school, so my co-workers and I ordered from there fairly regularly, on the way home and over the phone. We loved them and they loved us in return. They were really patient with our pronunciation, which helped us, and they got to listen to different people speaking Korean, which arguably helped them.

Of course, man cannot live on Im-Shil Cheese Pizza alone, so venturing out is a must.

And they most fervently don’t want foreigners to have any more than a surface familiarity with the nation and the culture. They should just know enough to mindlessly parrot that they love Korea and that it’s so surprisingly excellent. Once they dig in deep enough to see the warts, it becomes much too embarrassing, and it’s time to move them out.

To me this is what sets apart Korea from the rest of Asia. They are practical about things and they don’t go running around expecting things from others.

The Japs and Chinese resent white folks from my personal experience.

Basically, there’s another factor to consider: one of my Korean brothers-in-law actually advised me to always use English in professional settings, since the dynamics of speaking in Korean would put me at a disadvantage, both conversationally and perceptually.

My wife, aka He-Who-Should-Be-Listened-To-More-Often, says I should use English for a similar reason, but seen from the other side of the table. She says that using English would provide my Korean clients fewer opportunities to argue, since their English skills are limited, at best, and would say “Yes!” to me more quickly, just to make the pain of speaking English go away.
Of course, the fact that many of my Korean clients can’t make a full sentence in English without resorting to major web browsing makes this solution a bit of a moot point, but I do enjoy the fantasy of quiet, tongue-tied clients…

On the other hand, being able to quote paragraphs from a contract in Korean to the client did make my life easier quite a few times…

I’ll say you are!

/me looks suspiciously at this statement, but will assume it was positive…