Expats in South Korea
Chapter 7: Predicted Factors that impact Expat Satisfaction
10) How out-going and adventurous you are?
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scenario is when an expat has neither good personal connections with locals or other expats; this can lead to a feeling of being excluded and isolated.
10) How out-going and adventurous you are?
Throughout my research and observations, I have noticed that the expats that are very adventurous tend to be the happiest living abroad. Many of these expats participate in activities such as biking, hiking, sight-seeing, rock-climbing, exercising, community events, etc. This doesn’t necessarily mean that people that don’t like outdoor activities are unhappy, but it’s about how curious they are to constantly explore. Usually what happens when expats are not content where they are is that they lose interest in
exploring the country and they often feel that there is nothing new that is significant for them to see. But many expats that are happy living abroad will admit that they are very adventurous and like to explore, they often find exploring the new culture to be
exciting; in their case, adapting to different cultural norms and values is exciting and interesting.
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Chapter 8 Conclusion
From the surveys and statistical information conducted in this analysis, I was able to get a lot of useful information to test whether my hypothesis as well as the literature were
applicable to modern day expats in Taiwan and South Korea. In terms of overall satisfaction levels as an expat, Taiwan did rank the highest from my survey data. Out of 30 expats in Taiwan 71% of them rated their overall experience in Taiwan as a 3 (which means amazing), while 25.8% of the expats rated their experience as a 2 which is ‘good, but not necessarily amazing’, and only 1 person (3%) mentioned that their experience was not good. However, in South Korea 17 out of 30 expats (which is 57%), rated their overall satisfaction living in Korea as a 2 which means ‘good, but not necessarily amazing’. The remaining 40% rated that their overall experience was amazing and only 1 person (3%) mentioned that their overall experience was not good. Out of all of the independent variables tested, the two that had the strongest impact on expat satisfaction levels were ‘level of friendliness’ and ‘level of interest in the culture’.
Taiwan also scored the highest in the category of friendliness; 75% of all the expats surveyed rated friendliness as a 3 (very friendly) while the remaining 25% surveyed ‘somewhat friendly’
and there was no person who rated ‘not friendly’. However, at the same time the majority of expats (68.75%) also said that the Taiwanese society was ‘somewhat socially conservative’; so based on these statistics, the appropriate way to describe friendliness in Taiwan is “friendly but somewhat socially conservative”. In South Korea, the majority (60%) of expats rated that South Koreans were ‘somewhat friendly’ and the remaining 30% rated a 3 (very friendly) and only 3%
rated ‘not friendly’. When it comes to friendliness, there are a couple of rationales that could justify the reason why Taiwan ranked higher in terms of the overall friendliness category of the
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local people. The primary reason for this is because of the historical and cultural differences.
Throughout South Korea’s history everything that is affiliated with notion of “foreign” is not regarded in a positive way, with the exception of the USA support during the Korean War; as a result of this South Koreans had to use nationalism as a way to protect their identity
throughout history. In the South Korean society there is more xenophobia and stronger distinction between being “Korean” and a “ foreigner” than in Taiwan. Another reason for differences in friendliness is also the differences of lifestyle and population. Seoul has a very dense population which is much larger than that of Taipei. Anytime there is a city that is densely populated the lifestyle is going to be a lot more intense, competitive, fast-paced and people are not going appear to be as friendly; which is the case in Seoul. South Korea also has a very high suicide rate, the second highest suicide rate in the world according to the world health organization (WHO); this implies that the lifestyle pressure of local South Koreans is higher than the Taiwanese24. The data shows that the higher the level of friendliness and interest in local culture, the higher the level of overall expat satisfaction. Another interesting observation is that from the data, it has been shown that there is no correlation between language proficiency and expat satisfaction levels. The surveys showed that most expats level of Korean or Chinese proficiency is either at a beginner or intermediate level. However, despite their level the majority of expats still rated their level of overall satisfaction as a 3 (high
satisfaction). Based on my experience of living as an expat in Taiwan and South Korea I strongly agree with the results of these statistics that language proficiency does not have a major influence on expat satisfaction. The reason for this is because language ability is just a tool that
24 Yoon, Minsik. South Korea Still Has Top OECD Suicide Rate. The Korea Herald, 30 Aug. 2017.
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can enhance your experience if you have it but it is not the primary factor of expat experience.
Since English is the most commonly studied language among locals in Taiwan and South Korea many expats are able to get still adapt well even with English alone. Expats can still participate in many activities and bond closely with local people even if they can only speak English;
especially in the capital cities of Seoul and Taipei there are always English services available somewhere to assist foreign expats if they need help. Also they way in which an expat is perceived and treated by locals of Taiwan and South Korea is not always influenced by their language ability even though it will be greatly appreciated. The way you an expat is treated and perceived by locals is more influenced by factors such as nationality, socio-economic status, educational status, personality and sometimes even race; language proficiency is just an enhancement tool that can make expat life easier. So in contrast to my prediction and claims from literature, I now feel confident to claim that language proficiency levels do not have an impact on how satisfied an expat is living in Taiwan or South Korea. Some of the similarities between expats in South Korea and in Taiwan is that, for the question of ‘how easy is it to make friends with other foreign expats’, even though the majority both said that it was very easy the data showed that there is no correlation between this variable and overall expat satisfaction level. In terms of duration of stay, for the expats of Korea the data showed that there was no correlation between duration of stay and expat satisfaction levels, but for expats in Taiwan it showed that the expats who stayed longer tended to be more highly satisfied as an expat in Taiwan. For the question of ‘how adventurous are you’, even though I predicted that the more adventurous and expat is the higher their overall level of satisfaction will be the data showed that there was no correlation between these two variables. The majority of expats in Taiwan
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and South Korea both rated that making friends with the locals is “not easy, but not hard”. So from this data analysis we can see the differences and similarities of overall expat satisfaction levels in both Taiwan and South Korea.
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