When I first got to South Korea, I thought I had it all right. I knew how to order in a restaurant good enough, knew the customs, knew that I would probably need to go up to a till after I’d eaten, all things like this. However, as I sat in my AirBnb, stomach rumbling, I couldn’t bring myself to leave to go and get myself something to eat. I had no excuse, there was a convenience store directly under where I was staying and a shopping mall, with far too much restaurant choice to choose from, less than a 10 minute walk away. So what was my problem??? Surely I’d done everything right. I talked myself up in the mirror, had my hand on the door handle and would run back into the room and curl up on the bed. Why was this so hard? Like everyone else in this day and age, I turned to the one person I thought would have the solution to my problems… Chat GPT. This didn’t help though. I just didn’t have the courage to face that interaction. I had gone out to go and do activities, see sights and experiences but every restaurant I found myself at the door of, I would just turn away, stomach still growling. For 3 days all I had was a protein bar I failed to have on the plane on the way to Seoul. Looking back, it’s sad how paralysing language anxiety is. Especially in a country like South Korea where there is a natural Western fear of getting something wrong, offending someone, not getting customs and traditions correct.
So how did I do it? How did I get over the language anxiety? How did I go from paralysing fear of Korean to wanting people to speak Korean to me at every opportunity? I certainly knew I couldn’t survive 7 weeks with no food and I’m sure everyone in my life would have been in absolute disbelief if I went all the way to Korea and didn’t eat any of the amazing food we hear so much about in the West. So… how did I do it?
Well I certainly didn’t make it easy on myself. Rather than going to a restaurant which I knew would have an English menu or a kiosk-style service I went to a small family-run restaurant near the Olympic Park. I took a deep breath and walked into absolute silence. There was no one there except for the women who ran the restaurant who swiftly pointed to a table that I sat down at. The menu wasn’t in English but luckily there were pictures next to some of the menu items. At this point I could read Hangul but not proficiently enough to be able to understand what was on the menu. Another deep breath and I called over one of the women and said (in Korean of course) “this please” pointing at the menu item. During this time, a local girl walked in, sat herself down and ordered which I became incredibly grateful for when suddenly my table was half full of all of these side dishes I had no idea would come with the meal. I stupidly started to panic, staring at each plate wondering what to eat first, was there an order, what was that soupy looking stuff, am I supposed to wait until I have the rest of my meal??? I started side eyeing the girl in my view, and was able to copy how she ate things. Luckily, from my research prior to coming to Korea, I knew where I’d find the chopsticks, otherwise I really would have looked like an idiot. Once my table was full of food (despite only ordering one item!), I was able to enjoy one of the best meals I’d ever had. It was fried ramen with ttobokki and fish cakes. Once I was done, I followed what I remembered and paid at the counter by the door and had to do a double take when she only asked me for the equivalent of £4 for all that food! So I paid, left and for what felt like the first time in forever, let out a massive breath. I did it. I’ve never been the kind of person to take the easy route with things and going to a restaurant where no one spoke English was definitely diving in the deep end but I knew after leaving that restaurant that I had done the ‘worst case language scenario’ successfully. From then on, it would be easy. And it was.
Some restaurants would talk to me in English immediately after seeing I was a foreigner, some only spoke Korean but the little bit of broken Korean I had allowed me to survive in any situation. I managed to get so confident in the restaurant scenario that I went to as many local restaurants as I could, fighting the urge to play it safe and go to KFC or Lotteria, both of which I knew had kiosks with English translations. I haven’t really answered the question of how to get over language anxiety and I wish I had a solid answer to provide but I do have a few words of advice if you ever feel yourself falling into language anxiety:
You aren’t the first or last person to struggle with the native language. Especially in cities like Seoul, they will be more than used to having people who don’t speak their language so don’t think you are alone in this experience.
Learn the basics. I can’t stress this enough. I will probably do a separate post on how to be a ‘good’ foreigner in another country but to get over language anxiety, you need to at least know the very basic hello, goodbye, thank-you and please. Just to show respect if nothing else! Also, locals appreciate you trying so don’t feel guilty for not knowing enough either.
There is a blissful ignorance in speaking English fluently. Again, I may make a separate post on this but as an English speaker, I had a privilege over 75% of the other foreigners there in the sense that the ‘middle-language’ was my own mother tongue. I heard people from all over the world using English as the language to communicate with Koreans. Germans, Russians, Japanese, Chinese, French, Spanish, all used English as the language to order at Starbucks. I’m unsure as to why this surprised me so much but it brought a major comfort when I realised my broken basic Korean was more than most foreigners come to the country with!
English is everywhere! I speak specifically for Seoul here but English is literally everywhere! The subway system for instance. All stations have the Hangul and English names (sometimes even Japanese or Chinese as well!) and all train announcements are done in Korean and English, minimum. I feel confident in saying that you can navigate Seoul without knowing a word of Korean or being able to read Hangul.
Learn how to read the language system! I’ll do another post on how I learnt Hangul so quickly but this is honestly one of the biggest helps when it came to the language and navigating Korea. Hangul is the writing system that Koreans use and is 90% of the time the Korean that you will see. Being able to read Hangul meant that I could read shop names, street names and menu items even if they weren’t in English. Its not a necessity but makes Korean a lot less scary when you know you can read it (even if you don’t know what it means just yet!).
Talk to yourself. Bear with me on this one, I know it sounds stupid. The first time I went to the convenience store, I must have spent at least half an hour before leaving the flat practicing how to ask for a carrier bag!!! But this helped a lot, I had a script I knew how to follow. I still have the piece of paper which I wrote how to say my Starbucks order on. I look at it and smile knowing how much time I spent practicing it to get it perfect but it worked. I’d even talk into the translator to make sure I was pronouncing everything correctly before going and allowed me to hear how I’d sound speaking it.
As I said earlier, language anxiety is paralysing at times and I in no way recommend starving yourself in order to gain the courage to finally go into a restaurant out of pure hunger but just remember that little wins are little wins. I remember I burst into tears when I bought something in a shop and did the entire shop-keeping experience without a word of English because I was so proud of myself. By the end of my trip, it felt as though I’d have to adjust to speaking English in Starbucks again because speaking in Korean for those interactions became so second nature to me. If you told me at the beginning of my trip that I’d end up that way, I’d have laughed.
If you have any questions about getting over language anxiety or just solo-travel in general, please do reach out as I’d be more than happy to help! Happy Travels :)