Making some effort to learn the local language can also go a long way in smoothing out some of the rougher edges. In Seoul, many restaurants have English menus and road signage or public transportation information is either posted or announced in English. But, asking a question to a waitress, bus driver or convenience store clerk might not get you very far.

The Korean alphabet, Hangul, is surprisingly easy to learn and mastering a few basic expressions are a good start. But Carruth cautions that reaching a basic conversational level requires a lot of effort and anything more advanced could take years of academic and independent study.

Working life

Even though South Korea is called the Land of the Morning Calm, it’s a highly competitive society and that extends to the expat job market, which is very limited for those who don’t speak Korean.

It’s a “rigid” process to bring an expat over to Korea, says Duncan Harrison, who heads the Seoul office of recruitment firm Robert Walters. Headhunting agencies have to prove to the authorities that they tried to hire a Korean for a given position first, but could not find the right candidate, he says.

There is some demand for monolingual foreign professionals in the IT, engineering and computer programming fields, the British expat adds.