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Living abroad will help you get over culture shock but there are certain aspects of your adopted country's culture that you just can't seem to get used to. I will pinpoint one culture in Seoul, South Korea that I will probably never get used to. People in Seoul are addicted to their cell phones or other forms of technology. Cell phones and tablets seem to be an extra limb for people that live in a country that has the fastest internet in the world. And it's only going to get faster according to this article, which will probably just make people want to use their cell phones more. Samsung is also introducing a folding phone in order to continue competing against Apple's latest I-Phones. One of my students says that her son wants this phone badly, so that he can play games on it. However, she knows the addiction that it might cause and has denied his frequent requests up to this point.
I'm just one expat living in South Korea who feels this is a problem. Another expat's viewpoint of cell phone addiction in South Korea can be found here. And if you want a perspective from Koreans, a very short Korea Times article written by two Koreans can be found here. One interesting tidbit is that 1,042,000 people could have been addicted to smart phones in 2016. The population of South Korea is 51,047,000 people. That means about 1 in every 55 people is addicted to their phones. Yikes.
I take the subway twice a day since I work on a split shift, so I see people using their cell phones all of the time as I'm walking from home to the subway, commuting on the subway, walking from the subway station to work, and walking from the subway station to home. And it's not just the subway. I see addiction to technology at cafes, restaurants, the bus stop, etc. Here are just a few instances that show how much people in Seoul are addicted to their phones or other forms of technology:
1. My biggest pet peeve is when people drive while on their cell phones. It's bad enough when people are talking to someone on their phones. Furthermore, it's even more frustrating when someone is texting someone while driving on a very narrow residential street. I actually gestured to a guy in his 30s to get off his phone because he was texting someone while he was driving near Nakseongdae Station. Worse yet, a woman was backing out of a parking spot while talking on the phone. When I said "dangerous" in Korean, she was embarrassed and immediately realized it was wrong. Sadly, even though it's a law in Korea, not driving while using a cell phone isn't a law that is strictly enforced along with other traffic violations.
2. One situation that I see quite often is people walking while using their cell phones. What other people do is not my business until it starts affecting my commute to work. Sometimes women in their 20s are sending Kakaotalk (Korea's version of WhatsApp) to their friends or young teenage boys are playing Overwatch or Fortnight. I get it. I'm sometimes guilty of texting while walking myself. However, in Seoul, people are not aware of people behind them and when they are on their phones, they walk at a snail's pace. This situation can get very irritating when you're on a crowded subway behind someone going up the stairs and they're playing with their phones. This happens so often that I can't even count how many times I've experienced it.
3. Another instance which is irritating is when parents use their cell phones as a distraction tool for their children. One time I was at Suji's and the mother and father were eating. After the kids ate a little bit of food, the parents gave them both a tablet and let them play on it for about a half hour while the parents talked. If the kids were a bit older, I could've understood it but the kids were about 6 and 7 years old respectively. Two months ago, I was at Starbucks near Samseong Station. A whole family was sitting there: a mother, father, son, and daughter. All of them were on their cell phones and none of them were talking to each other. On occasion, you'll see people on a date but focusing on their cell phones more than their dates.
4. As I have mentioned in a previous blog post, selfies are huge in South Korea. But it's pretty crazy when ladies use their cell phones to take selfies at the weirdest places. I saw four girls taking a few selfies at McDonald's. I didn't know McDonald's was a venue that would help me get more "likes" on Instagram, but I might have to try it! Last year, I saw one woman at Coffee Bean taking 35 selfies. How do I know it was 35? Well I started counting after I heard a multiple amount of cell phone camera clicks. I guess you can say 35 was a conservative estimate. It must have been more like 50 shots.
5. An irritating thing I see at work as a teacher is when adult students come to practice their English. Our academy promotes small class sizes. Our main classes have between one and four students in an Encounter class where the teacher evaluates their performance. Since the students determine the class based on their schedule, they don't always have an Encounter class with the same students. Due to that, students constantly meet new students, although in Korea, students don't enjoy talking to each other in English in the Encounter class. They prefer to only talk to the native English speaker. As a result, two students might get to class before the teacher does, but they don't introduce themselves to each other. They just play with their smartphones until the teacher gets there. However, it's even more annoying when they actually met each other in a previous class, but still prefer being on their smartphone instead of talking to that student.
Overall, cell phone addiction is a worldwide problem, but it's definitely a more serious problem in Korea. Why is that? Technology is everywhere here and the internet speed is the best in the world. On top of that, Koreans don't generally enjoy talking to strangers, so Koreans will always use their cell phones to shield themselves away from awkward experiences with people they don't know. I hope and pray that people can realize that addiction to technology is a serious problem in South Korea and that something gets done about it. People need to enjoy lives without staring at our screens all of the time and that includes me as well.
Scott Worden (The L.A./Seoul Guy)
Instagram: l.a.seoulguy
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