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by tylerpachal 3044 days ago
I moved from Canada to Korea.

The most difficult part was getting a phone, which depended on having a bank card, and the bank card depended on having my residency card. No individual part was difficult, but each step took time ("come back in a week to pick up your ID card") which was frustrating and lengthy.

If you are moving to a country where you don't speak the native language, hopefully you will have some friendly coworkers that are willing to help you through some of the language barriers (going to the bank was a big one). Additionally, try to live an area of the city where you might meet some people that also speak your language. In my case I lived in an older area of the city where there was a small American military base, so there were lots of English-speaking people around, which makes day-to-day tasks a lot easier (pharmacy, doctor, haircuts, etc).

Also lookout for some non-obvious cultural differences. I had a friend that was vegan, and she had a very hard time going out to eat (which is big part of the Korean culture) because vegan food was hard to find (meat and fish are very popular there).

1 comments

I've been to Korea too. Are you a developer there? How's it like?