Anyone who is in Korea, or has been...

[honeybadger]

If you don't want to publicly respond that you're currently there, can you PM me?

I have some questions!

[basilosaurus]

I was there last year. What do you want to know?

[panicked]

PM sent!

[audette]

I might be heading there before too long. Maybe. I'd love to see orders at some point, so I know if I'm included.

They are having a town hall for families to ask questions about the potential move next week. If you have a specific question I could try to get it answered...

[kpol]

We just got here last week! PM sent!

[misshark122]

For those that have lived in Korea, did you LIKE it there?

We could very easily get to Korea but I really don't want to. I can't explain it, but I just don't want to live there. If we could go back to China I definitely would go.

[basilosaurus]

Hmm, did I like it? Sorta yes sorta no. Now, we were in rural Korea, so that had a lot to do with it. I think I could happily live in Seoul. There's a fairly strong expat community, a really good subway, and there's some excellent international food (I may be the one person who really dislikes Korean bbq, so I only really ate int'l food if I was in the city). Plus, the temples/palaces are actually pretty amazing. Sure, it's not the forbidden city or summer palace, but apparently it's nearly as impressive according to H.

For me, the biggest difficulty was that I'd previously lived in Japan. Japan is so clean and orderly and quiet. Korea is kind of the opposite of that. I don't mean that in a judgmental way; China is like that, too, and you obviously still enjoyed it. It's just that it was a hard adjustment, going from a country where the subway ads implore you to be polite to a country where people spit on the floor of the train. In Japan, you wouldn't dream of breaking a traffic law, but in Korea it seems like they're regarded as mere suggestions. Red lights? Suggestion. Sidewalks? Good place for scooters to escape traffic.

So, basically, it's a lot like my minimal experience in China. Also similar, you may not see the sun through the haze of pollution.

Overall, I know it sounds like I'm bashing it, but I really would happily go to Seoul for an assignment. I could probably do Osan, too, at least as NCS so that the tour would only be 1 year.

[misshark122]

Sibil - it sounds like China! Which brings me to my next point - at least I speak Chinese! if I had to deal with ALL of the hard China stuff PLUS not knowing the language, I think that would really suck.

I've heard that about Japan. I didn't get the chance to go to Taiwan but I've also heard that Taiwan is a lot more orderly than mainland China, none of the spitting, people wait in line, etc.

[basilosaurus]

On the plus side, it's super easy to learn to read Hangul. I did it on a night shift. The hard part, though, is that apparently no one could understand my speaking. The sound of korean was harder to emulate than Chinese, or at least we were both less effective at it.

[misshark122]

Jul 8, 2012 23:13:22 GMT -5 basilosaurus said:

On the plus side, it's super easy to learn to read Hangul. I did it on a night shift. The hard part, though, is that apparently no one could understand my speaking. The sound of korean was harder to emulate than Chinese, or at least we were both less effective at it.

That is very interesting, especially because many people have such a hard time with the tones in Chinese, and Korean isn't tonal (from what I remember). I wonder if it could be that the Chinese in big cities are more exposed to foreigners trying to speak Chinese?

[panicked]

Korea was awesome, I'd go back in a heartbeat. While Seoul, Daegu, and the other big cities are nice, I think I actually would choose to live in rural Korea again.

[basilosaurus]

Jul 9, 2012 8:45:02 GMT -5 misshark122 said:

That is very interesting, especially because many people have such a hard time with the tones in Chinese, and Korean isn't tonal (from what I remember). I wonder if it could be that the Chinese in big cities are more exposed to foreigners trying to speak Chinese?

Given that I don't speak Chinese, take this with a rock sized grain of salt, but my understanding is that while tone is part of the language, it's unlikely that people would confuse what you're saying if you get it wrong b/c of the strong contextual clues. Like, I know how to say I love you in Chinese, and I'm sure I butcher it, but everyone's still going to know what I'm saying.

Korean seemed to have sounds that I either couldn't hear or couldn't pronounce. When I would listen to language cds in my car, every time I repeated I know I did something different.

I also think part of the issue was that they expected us to be speaking English, so they were trying to figure out what English words we were using instead of hearing them as attempts at Korean.

[misshark122]

You're definitely right that Chinese is contextual but sometimes that doesn't help. We have pretty good pronunciation and tones but sometimes we'd say something, get a blank stare, and say it again trying it with different tones, and a lightbulb would go off in them. When I first started studying Chinese, it all sounded the same to me regardless of tones. Now, if someone says something to me in the wrong tones, I don't know what they are trying to say, because it really doesn't sound anything like the word they intend. If that makes sense. which it probably doesn't.

[basilosaurus]

No, it makes complete sense. I'm coming from the angle of people who say they could never learn such a hard language b/c of the tones, and the answer to them is that it's not as important as they're making it out to be, and they'll still have a good chance of being understood.

I've studied music since I was a little kid and have done a lot of singing in choirs, so I hear the differences even without knowing the language. But I've always wondered how the tone deaf fare.

[honeybadger]

Sorry for not responding in my own thread, ha.

I was just curious about getting CS after you've signed paperwork declining the option to apply for it.

I was having a bit of a melt down and second guessing if we should have gone ahead and tried for CS. He is going to look into the information when we get there but I am just doing my best to have confidence in the decisions we've made. And trust that the pay off, the base we wanted, will be so worth it.

[kcr1972]

I went and spent a year Non CS. If you have any questions please feel free to let me know.

[basilosaurus]

I was also NCS. It's not even an option where H was.

I don't think I'd go NCS when pregnant and with a school age child. I couldn't even get the clinic to sign off on my paperwork for the next OCONUS move. I had to pay OOP to go to the local hospital (an hour away), where they couldn't even read the form, and beg them to sign it anyway.

[audette]

Jul 9, 2012 17:03:08 GMT -5 honeybadger said:

Sorry for not responding in my own thread, ha.

I was just curious about getting CS after you've signed paperwork declining the option to apply for it.

I was having a bit of a melt down and second guessing if we should have gone ahead and tried for CS. He is going to look into the information when we get there but I am just doing my best to have confidence in the decisions we've made. And trust that the pay off, the base we wanted, will be so worth it.

I went to a briefing on moving to South Korea today.

They indicated it is possible to apply for Command Sponsorship even after the soldier arrives over there, so I'd say you probably still can apply. The only thing that seemed to bar the option of at least applying for it (that was mentioned) was if the spouse moved home/somewhere other than the previous base when the soldier was moved to Korea.

I'm really hoping DH can get command sponsorship for me. The more I learn, the more I want to go.