Right up until the early '90s, the number of foreigners in South Korea struggled to reach even a paltry 100,000 for the first time.
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| 1985 Live Aid at Wembley Stadium. The crowd capacity was 72,000, roughly the number of foreigners in Korea at the time. |
Back then on the shiny, new, Seoul subway people looked at us in hushed, cautious awe - as if we were new zoo exhibits which might bite if disturbed. No doubt the locals were mindful of the words of their King Gojong who described all foreigners in the late 1800's as "uneducated louts … driven by lechery and sensuality". 100 years later that is still a pretty harsh reputation to recover from, even if you have a few months in which to try to set the record straight.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreigners_in_Korea
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| Foreigners fitting in; sometimes easier said than done, especially on the subway |
By 2016 the number of foreigners finally breached 2 million. This is still barely 3.4% of the total population but each year the national media uses the new census figures to stoke lots of wailing and gnashing of teeth with rhetorical questions such as 'How long can this go on ?' and 'Where will this end ?'. Short-sighted xenophobes are left gazing into their collective navel searching for answers how to preserve the Korean identity, unchanged, for ever.
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| The annual Seoul Lantern festival; invites nations from all over Asia to join an hours-long parade of lanterns through the city |
For many decades approx 50% of all foreigners in Korea have been Chinese. Many Koreans will tell you quietly but proudly that while Chinese businessmen usually outperform the locals in most parts of the world, the Korean govt wisely prevented the Chinese from owning property and businesses in Korea for many years, thereby stalling early Chinese domination of the fledgling Korean economy. However in recent enlightened times, these regulations have been relaxed so the Chinese appetite for property in the popular holiday hotspot of Jeju and in cities such as Seoul goes unchecked.
https://list.juwai.com/news/2017/06/juwai-reveals-chinese-buyer-sentiments-on-south-korea
This is not to say that all foreigners are in Korea willingly or that they behave well all the time. There are still approx 28,000 US servicemen in South Korea who wonder daily why a military truce has been allowed to fester unresolved for an amazing 65 years and still needs to be reinforced by Uncle Sam.
Seoul's Itaewon area has long been the favourite haunt of these servicemen and therefore also Seoul's other foreigners. Behaviour in Itaewon is not perfect but it is getting better; these days street-fights are generally limited to 2 people after 2 am and last for 20 minutes. Invariably they slog it out in one gruelling bout which gets progressively slower and more wearied until the pair are on their knees without the strength to lift either fist. At this point the police gingerly appear to politely offer the pair safe, secure and separate sleeping accommodation for the rest of the day. It may be bad behaviour, but it barely registers when compared with a typical Saturday night on the streets of most large cities in Europe or the US.
Aside from active duty servicemen, western foreigners are working in Korea for the usual mix of reasons. Those on single status often have a partner back home who cannot give up an equally important career and income. Others may want a little relief from the stress or tedium of what family life has become. Some are financing an impressive set of divorce settlements for which they urgently need the allowances, tax breaks, subsidised living costs, etc which sometimes come with a foreign assignment. I still recall the day a friend burst into my office complaining that his allowance had been reduced by 1 Euro per day. Naively I asked why this distressed him so much. He confided that he had 3 divorce settlements to finance which consumed his entire monthly salary. Consequently he was now living soley on his allowances and depended on this daily Euro to keep from starving. Ironically this foreign assignment, which was supposed to finance his divorces, simply served to introduce him to his future ex-wife No 4. On reflection this friend might have done better to stop working and simply go live on a beach.
Foreigners on married and family status are also abundant in Korea. They help to meet the demand for foreign teachers and also to drive the demand for good international schools. In such an educationally focused country, places at international schools are highly sought after by many families. So much so that many foreign schools limit applications to students with at least one foreign parent simply to stem the tide of applications.
Typically the schools follow international equivalents of the domestic syllabuses of France, Germany, US and UK, etc. As expected foreign sports competitions and cultural trips are regular fixtures in each school year. Academic standards are very impressive with the majority of students winning places at reputed international universities. With a steady and generous revenue stream, the facilities at such schools are envious and (sadly) beyond the reach of most schools back home, certainly the schools that most can afford to send their kids to.
Leaving aside the motives of Losers Back Home, Korea's culture offers all foreigners a chance to reset their views and values of the world they know. Furthermore it's geographical location makes it a perfect springboard for visiting nearby marvels in Cambodia, Vietnam, China, Thailand, Japan, Oz, India, Malaysia and Indonesia - to name just a few. These in turn afford the chance to meet fellow Losers Back Home who are busy doing all the things you have not yet had time to do yourself; honeymooning in Machu Picchu, driving up Mount Nemrut in the snow, diving through pearls growing in the sunken hulks of Japanese destroyers, tipping tea off your 7th floor balcony at -40°C to see it evaporate before it reaches the ground, boiling eggs in a lake inside an island inside a lake inside an island, pulling bottles of champagne from the mud inside war-time ship wrecks, night-clubbing in long-abandoned silver mines dug by the Conquistadors, lighting incense at the shrine of the 47 Ronin, finding peace in the ruins of Angkor Wat.
After the Chinese, the second largest group of foreigners (~33%) are migrant workers who come from all over Asia to work on the farms and in the factories. Initially invited to Korea on valid work visas, migrant workers earn low salaries but more than they could in their home countries. For this reason, when the migrant's work visa expires, the employers often take advantage of the worker's reluctance to return home, including the withdrawal of legal benefits and entitlements and official documentation. Without these the worker essentially becomes illegal; tied to the employer but without any job security or leverage to negotiate better employment terms. In this way migrant workers routinely slip into the huge, unregulated black economy, working exhaustive hours in poor housing conditions for increasingly disadvantageous reward.
Even worse, having overstayed their visa, migrant workers cannot return to Korea if they leave, so they stay year upon year without break or vacation. In many cases relationships break down between the migrant worker and the family they support back home. New relationships form within the workforce by default, creating new undocumented families locked permanently in the black economy. While such shenanigans may not be possible within the huge, well-regulated conglomerates that has it's name on your fridge or tv, each sqeaky clean chaebol is supported by a very broad-based pyramid of second and third tier suppliers and contractors which can operate as they wish from the shadows.
Meanwhile in a recent heartfelt piece by a Korean-American returning to Korea to re-connect with the country, the author casually described western foreigners (~13% or 340,000) by the unfamiliar abbreviation 'LBH'.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/ealexjung/korean-american-asian-american
A little fishing through the internet revealed this to be a derogatory term meaning 'Loser Back Home', or sometimes more fully; 'Loser Back Home, Alpha Abroad'. Deeper trawling revealed a firm conviction among some groups that westerners can only be working in Asia because they failed to make a career in their home country. These 'failures' then consider themselves successful Alphas when placed in charge of people or projects in Asia.
People who hold these convictions criticise LBH's for a wide range of professional and personal faults starting with the foreigners' job skills, down through their lazy work ethic and cultural insensitivity, right down to their lousy dress-sense, tasteless food preferences, unbridled alcoholism and their cavalier delusions of knighthood while trying to woo the local women. Derision of LBH's skills typically includes comments such as: "How much talent do you really need to teach your native language anyway ?". There is also much derision attached to the LBH's nationality. The term "shit-hole countries" was recently made infamous but such thinking is not only held in high office by people who are bald enough to know better.
Most Koreans are not well traveled beyond Asia and few will volunteer for a foreign assignment, even to a comfortable, culturally rich, socially vibrant city with a relaxed business environment somewhere in Europe. However Koreans will agree to go abroad for the success of their project, department or company or as a display of fealty after being hired as a newbie. It appeals to the innate Korean sense of duty to know that the company's success depends on their personal suffering to endure a miserable assignment far from home, even if it's a cushy little number in Madrid. Imagine therefore how counter intuitive it is for a Korean to hear that a western LBH not only volunteered to move to Korea but also brought the family to see something of the wider world. It is as totally baffling as it is highly unlikely. It is easier to believe the LBH was fired from every job he could find in his home country and has slyly duped his way into a Korean conglomerate where he will immediately set about inflating his ego by bossing around the minions assigned under him.
Meanwhile in a recent heartfelt piece by a Korean-American returning to Korea to re-connect with the country, the author casually described western foreigners (~13% or 340,000) by the unfamiliar abbreviation 'LBH'.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/ealexjung/korean-american-asian-american
A little fishing through the internet revealed this to be a derogatory term meaning 'Loser Back Home', or sometimes more fully; 'Loser Back Home, Alpha Abroad'. Deeper trawling revealed a firm conviction among some groups that westerners can only be working in Asia because they failed to make a career in their home country. These 'failures' then consider themselves successful Alphas when placed in charge of people or projects in Asia.
People who hold these convictions criticise LBH's for a wide range of professional and personal faults starting with the foreigners' job skills, down through their lazy work ethic and cultural insensitivity, right down to their lousy dress-sense, tasteless food preferences, unbridled alcoholism and their cavalier delusions of knighthood while trying to woo the local women. Derision of LBH's skills typically includes comments such as: "How much talent do you really need to teach your native language anyway ?". There is also much derision attached to the LBH's nationality. The term "shit-hole countries" was recently made infamous but such thinking is not only held in high office by people who are bald enough to know better.
Most Koreans are not well traveled beyond Asia and few will volunteer for a foreign assignment, even to a comfortable, culturally rich, socially vibrant city with a relaxed business environment somewhere in Europe. However Koreans will agree to go abroad for the success of their project, department or company or as a display of fealty after being hired as a newbie. It appeals to the innate Korean sense of duty to know that the company's success depends on their personal suffering to endure a miserable assignment far from home, even if it's a cushy little number in Madrid. Imagine therefore how counter intuitive it is for a Korean to hear that a western LBH not only volunteered to move to Korea but also brought the family to see something of the wider world. It is as totally baffling as it is highly unlikely. It is easier to believe the LBH was fired from every job he could find in his home country and has slyly duped his way into a Korean conglomerate where he will immediately set about inflating his ego by bossing around the minions assigned under him.
This is not to say that all foreigners are in Korea willingly or that they behave well all the time. There are still approx 28,000 US servicemen in South Korea who wonder daily why a military truce has been allowed to fester unresolved for an amazing 65 years and still needs to be reinforced by Uncle Sam.
Seoul's Itaewon area has long been the favourite haunt of these servicemen and therefore also Seoul's other foreigners. Behaviour in Itaewon is not perfect but it is getting better; these days street-fights are generally limited to 2 people after 2 am and last for 20 minutes. Invariably they slog it out in one gruelling bout which gets progressively slower and more wearied until the pair are on their knees without the strength to lift either fist. At this point the police gingerly appear to politely offer the pair safe, secure and separate sleeping accommodation for the rest of the day. It may be bad behaviour, but it barely registers when compared with a typical Saturday night on the streets of most large cities in Europe or the US.
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| Itaewon at night: peaceful, mostly |
Foreigners on married and family status are also abundant in Korea. They help to meet the demand for foreign teachers and also to drive the demand for good international schools. In such an educationally focused country, places at international schools are highly sought after by many families. So much so that many foreign schools limit applications to students with at least one foreign parent simply to stem the tide of applications.
 |
| Seoul Foreign School - 'outstanding' by any definition of the word |
Leaving aside the motives of Losers Back Home, Korea's culture offers all foreigners a chance to reset their views and values of the world they know. Furthermore it's geographical location makes it a perfect springboard for visiting nearby marvels in Cambodia, Vietnam, China, Thailand, Japan, Oz, India, Malaysia and Indonesia - to name just a few. These in turn afford the chance to meet fellow Losers Back Home who are busy doing all the things you have not yet had time to do yourself; honeymooning in Machu Picchu, driving up Mount Nemrut in the snow, diving through pearls growing in the sunken hulks of Japanese destroyers, tipping tea off your 7th floor balcony at -40°C to see it evaporate before it reaches the ground, boiling eggs in a lake inside an island inside a lake inside an island, pulling bottles of champagne from the mud inside war-time ship wrecks, night-clubbing in long-abandoned silver mines dug by the Conquistadors, lighting incense at the shrine of the 47 Ronin, finding peace in the ruins of Angkor Wat.
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| Angkor Wat - a place find yourself |
