Fitting in with locals when you can’t speak the language

By: Raphael Li

Coming to Seoul, there are so many different experiences you can have even as an exchange student. Some people make only exchange/international friends. Some students make many great Korean friends. Some students even have only Korean friends. I do find that making friends who are born and raised here is much harder if you can’t speak the language. Many times you will make friends with Koreans who want to meet foreigners.

I came to Korea, expecting very little in making Korean friends. I’ve taken 0 Korean before here and looking back, summer is a great time to start learning Korean so that when you arrive here, the journey to partial speaking is much easier.

I realize the best way to make Korean friends is:

HOBBIES

I played frisbee in college for about 2-3 years now. I’m not a great player by any means, but I look like I’ve played the sport here. I knew I wanted to play frisbee in Korea; it’s a sport I love, but I had no clue if it was even possible. I looked around (using the Kakao talk open group chat search feature) and found some Korean pick-ups leagues around the Seoul area. Note: Seoul doesn’t have many open fields so finding field space in Seoul is HARD. 

Eventually, I found that Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU) had a frisbee team. Yonsei didn’t have one and to my knowledge it was the only college in Seoul to have one. So of course, I found out when practices were, dropped the class that conflicted with practice, and made my way down to play with the team.

They were a very new team with a few players who had prior experience. I went to one practice on a whim and enjoyed it a lot. Soon enough I was going to every practice and started getting lunch with the team after. In the beginning, it was just me and another exchange student (shout out Lauren) who talked to each other since most of the team struggled with English but after a while, frisbee became our language. Playing every week together made us have a mutual understanding where we both would try to get to know each other despite the difficulty to communicate.

One thing led to another and I joined a team for the Korean November National Club Championships. Here, I met other people who played in Suwon (about a 2 hour transit out of Seoul) and eventually I was also going here monthly to play in pick-up games/practices. Throughout all of this, I still can’t talk to them that much, but I know if I ever visit Seoul, I'll message them and we’ll hang out.

Friendship is made in many ways and just because you can’t speak the language doesn’t mean you can’t connect with the others. Breaking the initial barrier and being in company is the most important thing.