On a community website where I spend a lot of time, someone asked recently for advice on how to deal with his noisy neighbours. He doesn't live in Korea, but he thought that the couple next door was Korean, and that when they were shouting at each other in the wee hours, they weren't shouting in English. He reasonably took this as an indication that some knowledge of their cultural background could come in handy if he girded his loins enough to talk to them about it.

I can count on one hand the number of English teachers I've met in the ten years since I first came to Korea who were actually certified teachers back in their home country. If the proportion topped 2%, I'd be shocked.

In this consciousness of the relationships between people and its effect on your own wellbeing, rather than the 'correctness', 'objective truth', or self-interest of an individual or his arguments, there is a minefield of potential misunderstanding. Most foreigners to Korea trip through it over and over again, myself included, before they realize that putting the kibun of the people around you first, even in a situation of confrontation, will bring results.

It’s interesting how the Korean laser-like focus on appearances, frequently at the cost of much interest in substance, manifests itself in some areas of life and not others. People are generally fastidious about their personal appearance. The face they present to the world must be as affluent as possible. Women are still...