Here's an audio documentary in two parts from CBC Radio's Ideas, on being and becoming Canadian, and the experiences of one Korean family.

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.

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.