Have you ever been asked the same questions over and over again? After a week off so we could travel to Busan (we know you were wondering what happened), LIKE IT is back and man do we have a topic in store for you! ^^

Foreigners in Korea get asked a lot of questions. A lot of these questions tend to be the same repeated questions over and over again. This isn’t limited solely to Korea however, and when we go home we also get asked what seems like a bajillion questions. This is something that we actually try to overlook as much as we can because frankly, it can get annoying. But they are a lot of great basic “get to know you” style questions – though some may be culturally inappropriate for someone who’s not used to Korean culture.

This suggestion actually came from a new Korean friend that we met at the wine-tasting party (at the end of the Namdaemun video.) She was talking about how she gets the same questions over and over again about where she learned to speak English, and said that she wanted to know more about what foreigners get asked a lot in Korea and that she thought it was an interesting topic. We agree.

If I could explain the phenomenon any way, it would be similar to that of someone who just started dating, just got married, just started college or hit some other major milestone that piques others’ curiosity.. Except this is all the time! Ok, maybe not all of the time, but it is a very commonplace thing. If I had 1,000 won for all of the times I had a basic – “Where are you from?”, “Teacher?”, “How old are you?”, “Boyfriend?” conversation, I wouldn’t be rich, but I’d probably be able to buy dinner. One thing I didn’t include was all of the matchmaking adjusshi’s I’ve encountered over the years who after finding out (in the past) that I wasn’t married offered to introduce me to a son or a nephew that was “really handsome.”
But that’s beside the point!

The point of the story is, as a foreigner staying in Korea for any length of you will get asked a ton of repetative questions. I’ve found however, that if you can look beyond the basic tiny annoyance that is answering the same question over and over again, that you can have some pretty cool encounters with Korean people. So bring on the interrogation!