Let's not split hairs : I don't speak Korean. True, over the past five years I've learnt a few chunks from my wife (her name is Her, btw), I can "read" -or decipher- Korean (but I don't understand what I read) and say a few basic things that only Her understands . Other people seem to not even realize that I'm trying to speak their language (to paraphrase Mark Twain, it looks like they can't even understand their own language). Five months after I settled down in Korea, I'm starting Korean lessons next months, but it will take time, and a lot of it, before I'm linguistically autonomous. It may be difficult or problematic sometimes. The other day, on the subway, I received a warning message on my phone. The only words I understood where "emergency alert". I freaked out for a few seconds before I noticed that no one around me seemd to mind. Then I managed to read the important word "mask" (마스크) so the penny dropped : they were warning us of a pollution peak, not a nuclear war or a tsunami.
Apart from that, there are a whole lot of things in my daily life that I cannot do without the help of Her (Getting my Alien Registration Card, choosing a phone plan, opening a bank account, and so on). But it doesn't really matter, as I've come to realize that you can easily survive in South Korea while being Korean-illiterate. A lot of my friends and family members back home ask me how I can live here when I can't talk to people or do much by myself. First of all, that English helps a lot, let's not deny it. Second of all, Koreans are very kind to foreigners like me, and I've never found myself in a situation where there was nobody to help me. Sometimes people even offer their help before I ask. The first time I went to the swimming pool in Yangsan (which I'll post about later), Her had to come with me because I had no clue where to go or what to do. But of course she couldn't be with me in the locker room. At some point, as I was trying to figure out the meaning of one sign on the wall, one man came to me and asked "can I help you?" This is just one example out of many, which makes me feel more comfortable than most people would expect. On top of that, a lot of Koreans say hello or hi in the street, some even ask me where I'm from (when I answer in broken Korean that I'm from France, the usual response I get is something about Emmanuel Macron, Napoléon, or Charles de Gaulle).
Still, it happens that I'm ignored by some people because I'm obviously not a speaker of Korean. Her likes it a lot when somebody who hands out flyers in the street shuns us to avoid talking to me. And it happens very often that I check out at the supermarket without the clerk saying a word or even looking at me. This, it seems, is because a lot of Koreans can't , or think they can't, speak English and the mere idea of having to talk to a foreigner in English terrifies them. A lot of TV commercials for English institutes play upon this fear, showing Korean citizens sweating bullets when they have to speak English. Take a look at this funny Korean commercial :
The song (on the melody of "Ring my Bell", by Anita Ward) says "영어 마비" (yeong eo ma bi), which means "English paralysis". And yet, if you ask me, Koreans are not as bad at English as they think, or at least not worse than French people, but that's just me. In short, I don't speak Korean, not all Koreans speak English, but I have Her, people are friendly, and it looks like I'm going to have a good time here!
