In August, I wrote a post about the top 10 reasons why I love living in South Korea. I thought I would balance that in this post with 5 things that annoy me or irritate me about living in Seoul. The reason that I only choose 5 is that I truly love living in Korea. And the reason that I pinpoint Seoul instead of South Korea is that there are things that annoy me more often in Seoul that you wouldn't see in the suburbs or in the countryside. Seoul is like New York City, although I like Seoul a lot more. I want to be as objective as possible, not disrespect Koreans, and just give you an honest review of the things that I annoy me. So onto the list we go. They are ranked from the least worst to the worst.
5. There is little regard for strangers. There is an exception to this rule which I will mention later. However, if you fall down, people might look at you and will probably walk away. They don't want to shame you supposedly. If you're behind someone going into a shopping mall and someone opens the door, people will rarely open the door for you. The older generation are especially guilty of this. They will open the door just enough for them to get through and not care who's behind them. Thankfully this is not as bad as it used to be.
If you see an open seat on the subway, you better go fast or someone else will take it. Ajummas (middle-aged women are especially guilty of this). They'll rumble through you to get that seat. It can be a free-for-all.
Another example is when people are walking on the sidewalk. People are not aware of people behind them and they'll walk slow without realizing someone is trying to get past them. Sometimes young ladies will block half of the sidewalk while talking to each other.
The exception to the rule is when you're asking for directions. Most people are more than willing to help you and Koreans speak English better than they think they do. In Tokyo, Japan people will try to help you and will go to great lengths but they can't speak English well at all, generally.
4. ATM transactions are done slowly in Seoul. Koreans are generally fast when it comes to delivering a product, making kimbap, or fixing merchandise. However, for some reason, when 6 ATM machines are being used at the same time, it takes a long time for each person to finish. People use their bank books, check their balances, double check the amounts, deposit or withdraw cash, and do whatever else they can do on the ATM machine. For me, I go to the ATM to withdraw some cash, and I'm done. You rarely see people get done at the ATM within a minute.
3. When people sneeze, some people cover their mouths, many don't. Even the Korean media criticized Koreans for their poor etiquette when it comes to sneezing and coughing in public. You can see the article here. Just yesterday I saw one guy sneeze 5 times inside Gangnam Station while he was walking towards Exit 11. Not once did he cover his mouth. Those kinds of situations just help spread germs and they're really inexcusable.
2. Customer service pales in comparison to back in the U.S. There are many times where there is good customer service (e.g. Starbucks, Olive Young, and convenience stores). However, on the whole, customer service is a lot worse than in my hometown of Los Angeles. I'll give you some examples. Ironically, I usually don't complain about service but there have been incidents that you'll see below that forced my hand to complain. The biggest difference is that people don't tip in Korea and in the US, you do. But I don't mind paying a tip if it means good service.
Incident #1: I went to a seollung tang (soup made from ox bones, brisket, and other cuts of meat) restaurant where I was a frequent customer. To complement your W6,000 soup, you are usually given kimchi and a jar of chopped green onions. There were only two customers in the restaurant: me and another one. I never liked this particular server, since she was never that friendly to me (On the other hand the owner who was there at night, was very kind). She gave the kimchi and chopped green onions to another customer but not me. After that, she was busy playing with her phone. I should have just asked, but I didn't want to interact with her and I was curious to see if she would eventually realize that she had forgotten. I had been there many times before and she should treat a frequent customer well. I told her at the end in Korean that she didn't use common sense and I left.
Incident #2: Once again, I went to a restaurant where I was a frequent customer at. We went to a traditional Korean restaurant which served various dishes at reasonable prices (between W4,500 and W6,000). This time I brought NINE of my friends from church. The server would not serve side dishes unless ALL nine of us ordered something. One of us wasn't feeling that well and not very hungry. But he ended up ordering to appease her. Then at the end as we were paying, she tried to rush us out, which was the last straw for me. I told her in Korean that she was rude and walked out.
Incident #3: Five years ago, I went to a cheap Korean restaurant. Notice the pattern here. The cheap Korean restaurants that serve good food have the worst service. Anyway, I can't remember what I ordered but I found a piece of GLASS in my food. My Korean friend said she was going to treat me and she still paid despite the glass in my food. I was pretty annoyed with my Korean friend that she paid because I could have really had a serious problem if I ate the food with glass in it. Korean restaurants don't usually offer refunds if you find hair in your food. It's common to replace the dish but that's all. However, this was a bit more serious than that.
Incident #4: I went to Latte King near Nakseongdae Station about two months ago. My friend found a LONG strand of hair in it. Normally, I wouldn't complain about hair in my food. When I started cooking, I realized how easy it was to get hair in it. But this was a really long one, so I told my friend that he should get some sort of reimbursement. He didn't want to take it back, so I did. I told her in Korean that my friend should get a discount because he found hair in his food. Fortunately, she gave him a 20% discount. It wasn't much, but it was better than nothing. A couple of months later, I thought I would give this place a chance again. I ordered a sandwich from the older woman that worked there. I told her in Korean "No mayonnaise please." She understood. Five minutes later, the younger women (in her 30s) served me the sandwich. I opened my sandwich to find out that there was white stuff all over it. I took it back and the woman in her 30s said that it wasn't mayonnaise, it was ranch dressing. But common sense would tell you that ranch dressing is made mostly from mayonnaise.....I took it back to my table, but I just couldn't eat it. The older woman realized that I didn't seem to pleased and she probably heard from the younger woman that I complained that there was mayonnaise on it. She came back and asked what kind of sauce I wanted on it originally. I told her that I preferred mustard. In Korean, she said she could do that for me. I assumed that she would give me a new sandwich. She brought half a sandwich over to me and was working on the second half, so I was pretty sure that was what she was going to do. When she brought the first half over, the ranch dressing was still on it and she just added mustard to it. She did the same for the other half. She was more worried about losing a profit of a sandwich than she was at pleasing her customer. I ate half of it reluctantly but had to throw the other half away. I've stopped going there and I'll just go to Subway near my workplace if I want a sandwich from now on.
Incident #5: I walked into a Hi-Mart. No customers were in the store and the sales staff looked bored. I wanted to buy a rice cooker but instead of anyone asking me if I needed help. They just focused on their phones and said nothing to me. Maybe they were afraid to approach the "foreigner" but there was no "hello" or "welcome", so I just walked out.
1. Seoul drivers are selfish. You'll see that I mentioned this in a previous blog post. Drivers constantly break traffic laws. People run red lights, people are impatient and love to use their horn even if the car in front of them is waiting for pedestrians to cross the street. Cars will try to make a right turn and get around pedestrians that just stepped off the curb to cross the street. Bus drivers are hit and miss. Sometimes they're friendly and sometimes they won't let you on after they already closed the door, yet are waiting at a traffic light. Or they drive like they're in a NASCAR race. Taxi drivers sometimes drive like speed demons and won't let you in especially if you use your blinkers. When you use your turn signal indicators, people will inch up and NOT let you in. People with black Chairman or black Equus cars (usually middle-aged men) with tinted windows speed down narrow streets with a lot of pedestrians almost hitting them. If they're not doing that, they might park illegally or be driving the wrong way on a one-way street. All that is supposedly forgiven if they have their hazard lights on. Translation: "I'm being an idiot but since I have my hazard lights on, you'll let it slide." I could go on and on and as you can see, this drives me nuts. It's obviously not as bad as China, but com'on. This is a developed country. Get some patrol cars or motorcyle cops out there to do their jobs.
Overall, Korea is a great place to live in. Thankfully the positive experiences outweigh the negatives. No place is perfect, but can you imagine how amazing Korea would be if these things could be fixed?
Scott Worden (The L.A./Seoul Guy)
Instagram: l.a.seoulguy
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