Mistranslation. Okay, so a little linguistics never hurt anyone. A transference error is when something gets lost in the translation (think old Jackie Chan movies). This superbly hilarious phenomenon is not exclusive to Korean-English, English-Korean but it still is pretty funny nonetheless. One of my favorites is the whole "our mom" situation. 우리 어머니 is a way of saying "that mother in this context", "our mother" or "the mother that we both know". But when you look at it, even a newbie can be thrown off by the context. "What? Our mother? Dude, that's MY mother!" Good stuff. Why do you know my mom, man? :) How exactly is she your mom, too? Why don't we have "our" everything? This is one of those things that just doesn't translate... Show more

Hotels. Korea has got to be best place to immerse yourself in the culture. Where else can you knock on someone's door and ask to stay the night? Oh, and not get shot trying to do so? Well of course Korea has hotels. Big ones. Expensive ones, but we don't want to talk about that. Those are no fun. And overpriced. They offer a high quality product with a high quality product price that is to be expected in any major city or country. But thankfully, Korea has other options that have more character and are definitely something unique that most visitors are hard pressed to find elsewhere. Regardless of where you stay, as long as you can hold your own without blushing from Western embarrassment, you can almost always talk down the... Show more

Korean alphabet. Man, we didn't exactly put our best foot forward in creating the English alphabet, did we? I know firsthand what it's like to try to teach a child the English alphabet. "Okay, this little guy is called an "E" and he says a lot of different things. Sometimes he says his name /ee/, sometimes he changes a preceding vowel from short to long so long as the word is relatively small, and his friends "C" and "I" don't get along so he has to stand in between them so they don't fight, but if "C" isn't there, "I" likes to be in front of "E" because "I" is bossy. And please note that when "E" is next to "R", he is controlled by "R" because "R" is even more pushy than "I". Oh, and sometimes "E" says nothing at all. Come to... Show more

Tolerance of language learning. I find it so charming that foreigners can seriously slaughter a common phrase in Korean and still get a nice "한국말 잘 하시네요!". You just don't have that in America. Or France for that matter. In America, even though we recognize that there are more cultures and languages represented here than any other country, we still don't do so well in being forgiving with our language. We tend to have a mindset that if you are in America, you must speak English. The use of any other language is often subtly considered sub-par, if even acceptable. It's a little uncomfortable to admit all that, sure. But Americans haven't exactly been politically correct despite our long standing history of immigration. ... Show more

Video Games. Koreans seriously know how to play video games. Anyone young (or old) enough to play the online multiplayer FPS game Counter-Strike will remember just how horrific of a beating they received from anyone with a Korean screen name. Koreans take their video games quite serious. Almost too serious. In late 2007, Korea received a somewhat unique distinction for opening one of the world's first boot camps for youths with internet addiction. Many of the participants cited video games as one of the reasons for their addiction (spending upwards of 17 hours a day online). There is also a reported 240 separate Internet-treatment centers sprinkled across Korea to help battle the growing problem. Goodness, and I thought checking... Show more