"Another 50 Things I Learned Whilst Working in Korea" (Part 2/2)

DISCLAIMER this list is based on my experience, it might not reflect everyone's experience, also there's two sides to every situation :-)

1. Even if job title doesn't matter to you, it matters to many counterparts, who want to be respected, by working with someone of similar level title
2. When you offer a price, it is usual to be asked to offer a discount (without even stating a reason)
3. Because prices are usually requested to be cut, the initial price is usually inflated to accommodate a relationship building discount (see one above)
4. Business events MUST have a banner, event name, date, organisers and supporting companies named
5. Professional Breakfast meetings / events in the morning are not very common
6. Employees generally don't have much freedom to attend conferences or business related events even if industry related, but can be sent by the boss
7. Even if you get all the right body language and verbal signals that someone is understanding you, they might have a very different interpretation
8. Academic credentials are very highly coveted, graduates of famous universities often get a carte blanche for referrals
9. Managers are expected to pay cash contributions to team's births, deaths, weddings etc (the amount varies by relationship proximity)
10. Managers are expected to attend team's family funerals and colleagues' weddings, your presence adds relationship value
11. Managers can optimise company dinners atmosphere by encouraging everyone to attend but leaving promptly or early to allow team members freedom to spend time without the presence of the boss
12. It's very easy for employees to leave companies, one month notice is the norm, with unused vacation a lot of employees are gone with 2 weeks
13. It's relatively hard to fire employees, the formal dismissal process is lengthy and onerous leading to cash payoffs being very common
14. The cash payoff (see above) is traditionally called a yellow envelope (????) because that's what cash wages used to be paid in?
15. Whilst the world runs on Google, for Korean businesses you need visibility on Naver as well, it indexes in a different way
16. Korean resumes are templated, basically one format which is a grid box of information
17. Cover letters in Korea are more like personal statements and can be very unique, often an adage of hardship or some meaningful experience is quoted
18. Many Korean employees have a secret bank account from their partner which their bonus is paid into. It's called "???" (slush fund for miscellaneous)
19. IP rights are very difficult to enforce (from personal experience)
20. Customer relations still rely heavily on calling by phone, often you need to show the extra commitment to the personal touch compared to email.
21. Korean language is not well suited to direct marketing, the form of address required makes it relatively harder to approach with familiarity?
22. There a deep seated risk aversion, therefore taking a tiny risk on a new product/service with a mindset of "why not?" is incredibly rare. Would you like to try this (new thing)? "No, thanks".
23. Conversely a very strong and rapid yes is acquired when a personal recommendation passes it on, sometimes to the point of lack of due diligence
24. Koreans are generally more comfortable with American English and often find British English quite different due to the pronunciation
25. Konglish reflects the dominance of American English with spellings usually taking the American form (e.g. ??? hot dog)
26. Traditionally because companies cannot fire at will they would isolate that person, removing all tasks and direct reports, perhaps even their computer to work on, after months of doing nothing the person has found a new job or gives up
27. There's strong discrimination against contractors, the perception is that fixed contract work is reserved for lower level, less skilled jobs
28. HWP is Hangeul Word Processor designed for Korean characters by Hancom. Notoriously incompatible with MS Word and other doc formats. Still used by many Korean Government agencies
29. Often an observational comment or question such as “that new restaurant that opened looks good” is understood as a request or suggestion to act on the comment. Perhaps because Korean is more indirect so this is interpreted as such, or because Koreans love to be hospitable?
30. There's an undercurrent in work that nothing should be acquired/achieved too easily. If so, then it's suspicious. Some shortcut was taken or some unseen support was received.?
31. To ensure you get the right recognition, it is often necessary to emphasise how “difficult/hard” something was (see no.32)
32. Better to say that it was not easy to do but you got it done (honourable) rather than a 'walk in the park' (too easy) and not hard going (see no.30)
33. Fitting in is generally preferable to individual style/flair, cars in Korea are almost all white/grey/silver/black
34. Don't be surprised with a high level of appointment cancellation, often office workers have their time controlled by others and cannot help
35. You can survive living in Korea without decent Korean but I think that THRIVING is incredibly difficult and working (unless in a specialist or very junior role) in Korea without Korean is even harder
36. Gift Giving is common practice in Korea, from manager to team members, from company to employees, from service providers to clients. Certain times of year companies offer special gift promotions such as Korean Thanksgiving (Chuseok) and Lunar New Year (Seolnal)
37. Thank you gifts are also very common, and are easily and frequently given via Kakao Talk (Korea's main messenger), instead of purchasing the physical item yourself you are buying a coupon for the recipient go and redeem themselves, so if you've forgotten someone's birthday you can do it instantly!
38. There are Korean versions of most major apps, instead of Whatsapp there is Kakao Talk, instead of Uber there is Kakao Taxi, rather than Google Maps it's Naver Maps or Kakao Maps (see the thread of Kakao here?!)
39. A lot of internal office communication happens on Kakao Talk instead of official communicators, that lead to regulation trying to reduce out of hours messages sent by manager and also unnecessary group chats where each day 100s of messages are sent not relevant for everyone
40. There is a lot of price differentiation since imports and exports have been very heavily controlled in the past (and in some sectors continue to do so). Korean products not available outside Korea are usually much cheaper in Korea, however many Korean products are most expensive IN Korea since they are considered "Premium"
41. Depending on the weather you will find yourself eating certain dishes, hottest days (Boknal) chicken soup, rainy days Korean pancakes and Makgeolli (Korean rice wine), not to mention other days that have certain foods associated with them, birthdays, moving house day, exam taking day etc
42. Emails are generally replied to very fast, certainly within 24 hours. If no reply within the same day then probably no email reply should be expected (generally but not always)
43. Korea still has a relatively large proportion of the workforce who work
44. With business cards playing such a big role in Korean business, there has to be a good system for managing them, organising them, sharing them etc. A lot of Koreans use an app called Remember, often after meeting someone you will get an email from them to connect via Remember
45. When you start a new job in Korea, there is an unwritten rule about the first 100 days being a period for getting used to the culture, building relationships, understanding how everything works, then the real work begins. As opposed to onboarding and getting straight into it
46. You will often hear Koreans peppering their Korean presentations and meeting conversations with English words, this seems particularly prevalent in Consulting and Legal Sectors (others too?). For some people they are simply trying to show their education level and/or international experience! Not sure this trend is increasing?!
47. Leaving work "early" is called ?? or sharp leave, but this still usually means 6pm or 6:30pm or for some long hour working professions even later!
48. There is no statutory paid sick leave in Korea, if you have a reason to be off work then you must use your holiday, if that is all used up then you must take unpaid leave. This might of course negatively affect your status/position in the company (of course it should not...). I do think companies are proactively moving on this and offering it, certainly many global companies in Korea do already
49. A lot of interviews (especially conducted by older people) are still interrogations of why the company should hire you and granular detail of your background including education rather than skill/results based and/or two way dialogues
50. Lastly working in Korea as a foreigner brought me a lot of pleasures, I learned a lot, I certainly expanded my capacity in every sense, being a novelty is nice to an extent but ultimately objective credibility based on performance will always feel more rewarding, my eyes have been opened to being an extreme minority and being treated as such (both positive and negative).

Readers who already saw the part one with the first 50, then I hope you enjoyed this one. I realised that each point got longer and longer, looking back at the first set maybe I should have provided a bit more context to my points to explain why I shared that point.

Should you wish to see the first set you can click here:

https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/50-things-i-learned-whilst-working-korea-gordon-dudley-7a9hc/

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