Have you recently moved to Korea for work or school and are you looking to build your community? Here are some of my personal tips for making friends in South Korea. Hold onto your hats because this isn’t short but it may be helpful. Listen to the BlogCast Don’t want to read? Listen to the South of Seoul BlogCast which provides accessible content through the use of AI technology. We don’t have time to read each article but we do our best to make more of our content accessible. If you would like to join our Accessibility Team apply to volunteer with South of Seoul. Please note that the pronunciation of some Korean words may be inaccurate due to AI technology’s limitations. My View of Friendship Like all my posts providing ‘advice’, I like to first share my experience with the topic being discussed. For example, much of my childhood was spent in isolation with only my family for most of the year. I also liked living very isolated, and I don’t have an intrinsic desire to have friends. Interestingly, such an extremely isolated life taught me the value of strong relationships and community. I saw that strong friendships provided added meaning and support in difficult times. Our rural community took care of each other even when we hated each other’s stupid faces. When I moved into society, I also learned the value of community when serving within a larger social system. So, even though I don’t often think, “I wish I had friends so I’m not lonely,” I do make friendship a priority. After my move to the city as a kid, I also learned the incredible amount of hard work and emotional labor it takes to create a community as an outsider within society. I couldn’t just expect to fit in or get invited to things. I had to study society and where I could fit into it. Great lessons for moving abroad. Additionally, since I would MUCH rather live alone than spend any amount of time around people that I don’t like, I have to be intentional about building community. I make building a community filled with people who share my values a priority even when I want to be alone. I see community as something very active that I build, foster, and maintain over time. Realities of Adult Friendships Also, let’s begin this post with some real talk about the realities of adult friendships. Yes, it’s easy to blame the difficulties related to developing friendships on a things like a new country or culture that’s not your own. The ‘other’ in our lives is always a great scapegoat for our own trauma. Also, there will be increased ‘cultural dissonance’ in a new country which makes building relationships feel especially overwhelming. That said, the truth is that finding adult friendships isn’t easy no matter where you live in the world. Even in your home country, if you move to a new city to start a new job it’s incredibly lonely. Just go on TikTok or Instagram for a hot minute, and you will find folks all over the world struggling to find meaningful relationships. In fact, my tips for making friends in South Korea are the same tips I used in my home country. That’s because of the following facts about adulthood friendships never change no matter where you live. Friendship and Community Changes with Time If you find yourself staying in South Korea, you will find that your relationships may ebb and flow with time. You will have periods when your community is small and times when it’s huge. It’s important to stay emotionally flexible and in the moment. Personally, I have my core group of friends in Korea that I’ve known for over a decade and then I have friends that rotate every 3-5 years. It’s ok that some friends come and go. That’s very healthy and normal. I’m sure that if you think back to your life at home, your core relationships changed pretty often. Maybe your longest relationship was 2-3 years because of changes in school, work, or family life. Jobs Make Friendships Hard Finding the time around work to make friends can be challenging. After work you want to sleep or watch Netflix, not put emotional energy into meeting new people. Money Makes Friendships Hard As an adult, sometimes it’s hard to find friendships that fit into your financial goals. You may find that some people simply cost too much to be friends with. Communication with New People is Hard It’s mentally and emotionally exhausting to build new connections. Each time we change friend groups it’s hard to uncover ‘hidden culture’ or differences in how we use language. It’s exhausting to stay present and aware of our words and personally accountable for our behavior. We all want to be able to just relax. About My Experience Making Friends in South Korea When I moved to South Korea in 2011 the online commentary promised me solitude, loneliness, and isolation. It sounded like my dream come true, and I chose Korea to be alone. South Korea seemed to have all the benefits of living in a society (like public transportation and not having to kill my own food) with the social isolation that I love. I could not have been more excited to move to a country where making friends would be next to impossible. I was like a kid at Christmas. However, I failed miserably at being alone from the start. How I Failed At Being Lonely I actively avoided making friends in South Korea. I didn’t race to foreigner meetups, language exchanges, or bar crawls. In fact, I wasn’t even friendly to people on the street or co-workers, and I didn’t join Facebook groups (which is funny to think about now). I literally looked up how people made friends in South Korea and, then, avoided those things. In fact, I was so against making friends I once met a chatty girl from California on the street in 2011 and immediately told her, “You don’t have to be nice and talk to me.” When she said we needed to be “best friends,” I replied, “I have enough friends.” Despite all this, she said, “No, we will be best friends. Give me your phone number.” I said, “Are you going to call me? Because if you are going to call me, you can’t have my number.” She said something like, “Just take my number then, in case of an emergency.” Well, a few weeks later, there was an emergency. This begins my advice for building a community in South Korea. 1. Show Up California girl (Norma Jean or NJ for short) and I did become BFFs because she showed up. Remember how I took her phone number? Well, I ended up in the hospital with multiple kinds of pneumonia in both lungs after a wild solo trip to one of Korea’s most remote islands during a typhoon. While in the hospital, I had no local friends and family, and I desperately needed somebody to show up. My Korean co-teachers visited me in the hospital on rotation during working hours, but eventually, the Korean co-teachers all had to go home for the day. When evening hit, I needed something from my home, so I contacted the head foreign teacher at my school (the only phone number I had for a foreign co-worker). She lived about a block from the hospital and my house. I asked for help but she didn’t feel like leaving her house. The only other phone number I had was NJ’s. I sucked it up and messaged her. NJ showed up within 30 minutes with everything I needed from my house and sat with me through the evening. When she was getting up to leave I said, “Thank you for helping me even though I told you I had enough friends.” She looked at me and said, “If someone far from home needs help, you show up.” She also said something like, “Now, you don’t have a choice. We are best friends.” If anyone needs you and it’s serious (even if they annoy you to high heaven), show up. Maybe you won’t end up besties like NJ and I, but you did the right thing for your community. Building community isn’t convenient. You show up when someone needs you. It’s like the golden rule of immigrant life. 2. Try Things You Think You Hate This leads me straight into my next piece of advice, show up for people and try stuff you think you hate. The first time I went to Mudfest I was VERY vocal about the fact that Mudfest was below me, and I NEVER wanted to do it. However, my friends were going to support other friends, and it was a personal request that I attend. To be clear, I hate everything about the concept of Mudfest. I hate the giant crowds. Lots of drunk folks in one spot piss me off. I hate being super dirty. It’s too noisy. It’s too expensive to rent a room. I hate staying up late. The whole concept of Mudfest is deplorable to me. Every time I see a Mudfest advertisement, I throw up a little in my mouth. That said, I have loved every Mudfest I have attended. The festival is the absolute best, and I lose my mind with pure delight. When I tell you that I had the best time ever, it would be an understatement. I am up ALL night, covered in all the mud, running around like an idiot. I’m not the only introvert that responds this way to Mudfest. Every non-social person I’ve taken there against their will didn’t want to leave. It’s weird. I can’t begin to list all the things I HATE doing in other countries that I LOVE doing in Korea. It’s happened so often that now if I see something that I HATE, I immediately go try it. The same activities managed in different ways in different cultures may create very different experiences. Additionally, that Mudfest trip became the foundation for some decade-long friendships. We stepped outside our comfort zones and showed up to something together. The bonding was immense. People I never thought I could be friends with became decades-long besties that day. 3. Eat Together Living abroad means that you do many of life’s daily chores alone, especially cooking and eating. After our Mudfest adventures together, I recommended to my new community that we start sharing dinners together in the following ways: ‘Family Dinners’ Family dinners have always been one of my favorite community activities. We would plan who would host dinner, assign ingredients, and help each other cook at each other’s homes to share in the work. It was so fun that we started doing it almost every night. When we all didn’t feel like cooking, we ate out together. Food Swaps Family dinners eventually turned into food swaps. At food swaps, we met with people from all over Korea for a potluck and swapped homemade items like beer, pasta, bagels, and more. Once again, some of my best friends for life came from these events. We ate like royalty and built long-lasting relationships. Holidays Holiday potlucks also became a big part of life. Nothing brings immigrants together like a potluck on Thanksgiving, Christmas, Ramadan, or another hometown holiday. We’ve packed 30 people into a studio apartment for a holiday dinner. NJ even made the turkey one year in a toaster oven, and I baked Christmas cookies in a cardboard box on a cooktop. Amazing memories and a lifelong love for others came from these events. 4. Create Space In Your Life Build a life that has space for friendship and community. Everything I’ve mentioned thus far takes planning, time, and energy. To do that you need to have space in your life. You may have to give up something to make the community happen. Sometimes people will say, “I can’t make...

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