From the plane, I look down at the coastal city of Busan, lit by the orange glow of sunrise. It is just after eight in the morning on 24 February, and we are landing in the most distant country from Czechia I have ever visited. As I step out of the plane, a strangely heavy, polluted air hits me.
At the relatively small airport, we join long queues and wait about an hour for passport control. I look around and it is obvious that Kája, another Czech student, and I are almost the only Europeans at the airport. We have barely slept, so I try to fix it with an iced Americano, a popular drink among Koreans. Later, I learn why: it is cheap, quick to make and low in calories. In a fast-paced society focused on performance and strict beauty standards, it makes a lot of sense.
I quickly realise I won’t be able to get by without Korean and that I must quickly pick up where I left off after about six months of self-study five years ago. Whenever I ask anyone for help at the airport, including staff, they reply only in Korean. “Haksengi anida,” repeats the woman at the bus ticket kiosk when we try to buy a student ticket she says we are not entitled to. I understand the phrase, but when I want to ask whether discounts apply only to Korean students, I have to use a translation app. And once again, the woman answers only in Korean.
The landscape we drive through on the bus feels rather monotonous: dry brown grass, distant hills and tall grey apartment blocks that all look the same to me. The whole scene is shrouded in a grey haze – or perhaps smog. I arrive in my new home, Ulsan, a city roughly the size of Prague. With one million residents, it is the seventh-largest city in South Korea, a country of fifty million people. It is best known as an industrial hub, home to major car manufacturers and factories.
Locals say that Ulsan is boring, but I disagree. There is beautiful nature, riverside promenades, plenty of restaurants and cafés – including ones with board games – as well as karaoke rooms and bars. Clubs are harder to find, but our group of friends prefers karaoke anyway – or sitting by the river with some soju, a popular local alcoholic drink, and chatting. There are also beaches and the sea. I have not visited them yet because they are far from campus, but they are there. It is hard to be bored, especially with such a lively social life right on campus.
As soon as our bus stops, we head to the dormitories with our heavy luggage. We walk through the large campus, which feels like a city within a city, and soon admire our rooms. To our delight, each room comes with its own bathroom. Our social life begins when we meet a friendly German girl in the corridor and that same evening, we meet a large part of the other exchange students at dinner.
The first days are full of paperwork, introductions and getting used to Korean food in the canteen, along with the excitement of a first trip to the capital, Seoul. Before I know it, the semester begins.
The first month: unexpected lessons and culture shocks
When people think of studying in Korea, they may imagine long lectures, students frantically taking notes and a strong focus on theory, concepts and memorising. That is what I expected too, and I worried there would be little time left for travelling. After arriving, however, I found that my timetable can only fit Korean language classes and three courses taught by the same British professor. His teaching style is far from what I expected. It is highly interactive, full of group work and discussions, and strongly focused on debate. I enjoy it, although Korean students do not seem entirely used to it. In group discussions, they mostly stay quiet, and most are not comfortable speaking English.
What subjects do I take? They are not closely related to journalism, but they give me a broad overview, which I need as a future journalist. I study green business and sustainability, global affairs, geopolitics and energy security. Alongside that, I take Korean. We have already learned solid basics in the first month and are getting faster at reading Hangul, the Korean script, which fortunately has only 40 characters.
I was already somewhat familiar with Korea – during the Covid pandemic, I watched dozens of Korean series and spent hours listening to K-pop – but many things still surprised me. For example, convenience stores, which truly live up to their name. They are frequently open 24 hours a day, have tables and microwaves inside, and offer a range of food that tempts you to try everything. Another surprise is the lack of rubbish bins in the streets. You can find some in the Seoul metro and a few in parks, but they are rare, so you often end up carrying your rubbish in your pockets for hours.
A bit of paperwork and a lot of fun
A long-term stay outside the European Union involves a lot of red tape. I already experienced that during my Erasmus stay in Istanbul but when I was there, we had to fend for themselves and it took forever. Over here, they seated us in a large classroom during orientation day, explained everything, handed out a detailed printed guide, and even provided coffee and snacks.
Although getting a residence card requires several steps, the process moves quickly. I had completed part of it back at the Korean embassy in Prague when I first applied for my student visa. On arrival, I filled in a lot of forms with help from university staff, set up a Korean bank account – which makes things easier and cheaper – and within a month I was holding both my Korean ID and a payment card.
Apart from that, life here feels simple. It is easy to settle into a daily routine, and I do not have that many assignments. That leaves plenty of time for fun and travel. With other students, I go hiking and for walks, visit nearby cities such as Busan, and join some of the many student clubs, such as a running club. We regularly run in parks or along the river – there are many beautiful places to run in Ulsan.
Many Korean students seek contact with international students. Several have approached me and my group of friends to suggest meeting up. Fluent English is not very common here – while they study it, they often lack speaking practice, and many also learn Chinese or Japanese. They also tend to be rather introverted and spend a lot of time studying, so I am only meeting a few so far on a more regular basis.
Even more travel and working on my Korean
Even though each of my days in Korea is full to the brim, I still have many plans. I want to visit as many cities and natural areas as possible, improve my Korean enough to stop relying on a phone translator for every slightly trickier sentence, and make more Korean friends, because it would be very easy to spend time only with other exchange students.
At the same time, I am becoming more aware of how quickly my stay is passing. And yet being here feels so natural – almost as if I had known my new friends for years.
I am curious to see what the coming weeks will bring – which places I will visit, who I will meet, and how close I will get to a culture so different from my own. And, last but not least, what else I will discover about myself in the months ahead.
The author is a student at the Faculty of Social Studies and a member of the student editorial team of Magazine M.