Julia moved to Seoul eight years ago on a student program. Now she is married to a Korean classmate, calls the country her second home and recalls the time when she mastered this new culture for herself. At the same time, the girl, oddly enough, considers dates to be the ideal way to get to know the nuances of local life. We publish her story.
No one better than a local resident will show you how the country works from the inside. Therefore, when I first moved to Korea and started studying at the university in language courses, I willingly met with young people on weekends.
The dating culture itself here does not suggest that your meetings, even if very frequent, oblige you to something. This is exactly the moment when it seemed to many of my acquaintances from Russia that a young man was cheating on them, since he was seeing someone else.
According to local tradition, until a man has proposed to you to meet, having said this directly, and you have not accepted his offer, you are just friends. An important stage of a date is scrupulous preparation for it. Many foreigners underestimate this: it seems to us that a detailed meeting script, more like a business plan, does not allow spontaneity and thus kills romance.
Meanwhile, in South Korea, a man is carefully prepared to make you feel as comfortable as possible. You will be asked in detail: in which area of the city you want to meet, what place you want to visit.
Most often, the date takes place in a restaurant, and then the young man will ask what you want to try. When choosing an institution, you should be especially careful. Help your friend and say what kind of food you would like to choose.
After all, he understands that you, most likely, will not be able to appreciate the majority of traditional Korean dishes: either too spicy, or the products will turn out to be unusual and even strange. Get ready to see a real questionnaire in the messenger: do not be surprised by this, and even more so do not be ironic. He may take your polite offer to completely entrust the choice to him as a signal that you are not interested in the meeting.
The main part of a Korean date is the restaurant. Dinner is paid in half. However, if a young man likes a girl, he is likely to pay for her. If this happens and you, in turn, want to continue communication, according to the unspoken rules of local etiquette, it is important to invite him for coffee.
Therefore, the next point of the date is a visit to a coffee shop. Most Koreans love Americano and drink it even at night. The advantage of this date-ending cup of coffee is that you are already relaxed and can enjoy the conversation.
If you live in Seoul and a guy offers to meet in your area, that’s a noble act. In this large metropolis, it may be inconvenient for you to return back. However, this sometimes turns out to be just a cunning move.
After sitting up late, when the subway and even night buses stopped moving, in Seoul you can also face the fact that the taxi driver will refuse to take you to the other end of the city. This is a ploy that some young people use to stay overnight at your place in any way.
If you meet far from your home, a man who cares about you, knowing the features of local transport, will begin to say goodbye to you closer to eleven in the evening.
Koreans, especially residents of metropolitan areas, spend a lot of time in online correspondence. Foreigners are surprised at such an obsession with messaging. This is due to the fact that life in big cities is very stressful: people are focused on work and spend a lot of time commuting to and from the office. They find it difficult to find time for frequent meetings.
Therefore, you didn’t have time to wake up, and in the messenger you are waiting for greetings and questions: “How did you sleep?”, “Have you already had breakfast?” It’s like our “How are you?”. If you ignore such messages, the man is worried, because for him this is a signal – you want to interrupt communication. This is exactly what Korean women do.
At the beginning of a relationship, you may experience mismatched expectations. You are in the mood for romance, and your friend seems to be more pragmatic about communication. Rather, it’s like meeting with a partner with whom he will not spend time aimlessly (from the point of view of a Korean), but will be able to extract something useful: he will be able to master a new hobby together, go in for sports, visit new gastronomic places. This creates the feeling that Koreans are not romantic at all.
This is partly due to the fact that we do not immediately read the codes of the local culture. It would seem that such an unobvious moment as your compliments to the food and the restaurant that the partner has chosen indirectly confirms your sympathy for him.
This is exactly what Korean women do, motivating their partner to take further, more romantic steps. After all, the “bouquet-candy period”, inherent in our culture, exists in South Korea as well. Koreans willingly give their girlfriend flowers and small gifts, tokens of attention.
But this happens only after the man’s direct offer to “be together” and the girl’s consent to become a couple. Up to this point, you can meet for a long time only as friends, gradually getting to know each other.