First Impressions of Korea

The first time I visited Korea I was traveling with my wife.  It was exciting to fly overseas, even though the flight was a good twelve hours.  The announcements on the plane were all done in English, Korean, and Mandarin Chinese.  For each meal, you had your choice of a Korean meal of a Western meal.  The service was fairly decent and the movies were pretty good.  We even got some decent sleep on the flight.  After we landed at the Incheon International Airport (it is actually outside of Seoul), we made our way towards the customs and immigration area where there were only two large signs:

KOREANS                             FOREIGNERS

That pretty much sums up how it is: Korea is a homogenous society with one language, culture, food, etc., and everything else is foreign.  That is what makes it so interesting to visit Korea as a foreigner, at least for me!  Everything is so different than anything in America.  Anyways, I remember seeing these signs and thinking, “Well, now I will be a foreigner for once so I will know what it is like.  This should be interesting.”  After passing through immigration, we collected our baggage, changed a few dollars into won, and passed into the large atrium at the ground transportation level.  For me, this was like passing into another world!  Everything was in Korean- Korean TV, Korean announcements, Korean advertisements, Korean snack shops, and everybody speaking in Korean.  I was so happy I had my wife with me, because it was a little disorienting, but amazing nonetheless.  If I was on my own that first time visiting Korea, I think that it could be overwhelming without having a good knowledge of the Korean language.  The other thing I noticed right away was how many people were there.  It was packed!  There were so many people gathered and I didn’t realize how sparsely populated America is until I experienced this crowd.

We purchased tickets for a “limo bus” that would bring us to the neighborhood where my in-laws live where we would be picked up by my brother-in-law.  The seats reclined on the limo bus, so it made for some smooth riding and we even caught a few winks of sleep.  Looking out the windows, all of the road signs were in Korean.  Everything, I mean everything, was in Korean!  I saw a speed limit sign with the number “120” on it and I just about panicked!  I asked my wife, “Do the buses really drive 120 miles per hour?”  She just smiled and said, “They sure do.”  I thought for a minute, then realized that Korea must use the metric system, at which point my wife burst out laughing!  It was a pretty good joke, albeit at my expense.

I don’t remember a whole lot else, since I fell asleep pretty soon after that, but I do remember these three things from my first trip to Korea:

1.      Everything is different from America.

2.      It’s crowded.

3.      They use the metric system.

More adventures to follow from my trips to Korea.