Living in Korea as a Foreigner #1

Let's say you live in a rather secluded part of Germany - in a community with some 300 odd people. To you, a town like Chemnitz will seem pretty big already. And then, you fly 8000km around the globe and life in Incheon, South Korea, a city with some two million inhabitants that is directly connected to Seoul, a city with ten million inhabitants. The difference is night and day.
It seems a little bit surreal when you think about it like that, but it's not all that bad. I recently spent four months in Korea on a semester abroad, where I did some research for my upcoming Masters degree. In this post, I wanna share some of my experiences with you.

As a German, there are a few things that will raise a brow when you first arrive. Everything is extremely modern and almost clinically clean. A lot of it has to do with Korean history. After the Korean War and the Miracle on the Han River, Korea turned from a poor, rural society into an economic powerhouse. Korea is a young country, which certainly shows in the architecture and general look of the cities. It has a certain charm to it: you go from hilly country side right into a metropolitan area full of skyscrapers and infrastructure.

Life seems more hectic in Korea. There are people all over at any given time of day. The whole of Korea is about the size of Bavaria, and given the fact that Korea has a population of 74 million, you will get a lot of people and relatively little space. For someone from the country, this can sometimes be hard to get used to, but you just have to deal with it. It took me about 3 weeks to settle in and feel more comfortable in the large crowds.

My living quarters were in the University dormitory, a somewhat cheap and comfortable alternative for a poor university student. The room had all you would expect from a Western room - a regular bed, desk and bathroom. I shared my room with a French guy who luckily had a similar sleep schedule and interests to me, so we got along well. Space was very limited though: Two people on 12m² is not much if you can believe it. This seems to be in the vein of Korean space saving: get as many people into as small of a space as possible.

To round things of for my first post, here's a picture of some dudes doing Korean things, credit goes to the photographer.