I had a follow up visit downtown for my laser treatment, so I decided to head over to my wife’s school to pay her a visit. She had forgotten her subway card, so I needed to stick around to give it back to her so she could travel home with me. As I was walking into the school, I noticed the non-unattractive female coworker of my wife talking to a Korean man in the parking lot of the school. They were way too far to be in listening range, so I walked in and took a seat in the teacher’s office.

This particular coworker has been in the country nine months now. It’s long enough that the optimistic "Korea is great! I love everything!" aura most new people bring here has worn off. Now you can start picking up on the resentments and problems facing people that have gotten over their home sickness and now need to adapt to the culture in other ways. She came into the office and struck up a conversation with me about the Korean man outside.

She said that the man she was talking to had an annoying habit of getting annoyed when she told him that she couldn’t understand Korean very well and they he needed to talk slowly. Koreans rarely do the "talk louder to people that don’t understand" thing, but occasionally you will have people that refuse to slow down their speech even if you can’t understand a word.

I don’t envy young single foreign women in Korea. I might have to deal with the occasional strange taxi driver asking me, "Do you like Korean woman? Eh? EH?" but I don’t get some of their problems. Men, like the man I saw outside, frequently ask her if she is Russian, which is more or less a code word for "Are you a hooker?" She was telling me that during many of her conversations with Korean men, they will ask about her finances. Basically, they are asking her if she needs a little extra money, then suggest that maybe a little prostitution would help make the bills meet. Disgusting. She’s said this has happened multiple times with complete strangers and she no longer has much of a reaction to it. Some women even take it as a compliment.

I can only imagine the extreme reaction this would get if foreigners tried the same thing to random Korean women on the street. Documentary shows, news bulletins, pissed off netizens everywhere calling for our departure if the situation were reversed.

Living in a foreign culture means you need to develop a thick skin.