Bring the wrong envelope to the wrong event in Korea, and it’s not a small mistake. A condolence envelope at a wedding, or a celebration envelope at a funeral, reads as a genuine error rather than an innocent mix-up. Korean wedding and funeral money etiquette runs on a specific set of rules — the envelope, … Read more
Give a Korean friend a gift wrapped in white paper and you may get a puzzled look before a “thank you.” Give them exactly four of anything and the pause gets longer. Korean gift giving etiquette runs on a handful of specific, learnable rules — and almost none of them are written down anywhere a … Read more
A business card in Korea is handed over with both hands, angled so the recipient can read it right side up, and — this is the part visitors miss most — it does not go straight into a pocket. Korean business card etiquette treats the exchange as a small sequence with its own rules, and … Read more
Korean convenience stores are not the same category of business as convenience stores in most countries. They are closer to a combination of a small grocer, a fast food counter, a cafe, a parcel office, and a place people genuinely eat meals — often at a counter by the window, at two in the morning. … Read more
Korean restaurant etiquette involves a handful of conventions that nobody explains, because everyone here grew up with them. Most of them are the opposite of what you would expect coming from a Western restaurant, and getting them wrong tends to make visitors more cautious than they need to be. The Side Dishes Are Free, and … Read more
Everyone knows you take your shoes off in a Korean home. Most guides stop there, as though it were an arbitrary custom you simply have to remember. It is not arbitrary. Koreans remove their shoes because of a heating system invented two thousand years ago, and once you understand that connection, a great deal about … Read more
Watch a Korean hand something to someone older and you will notice it: both hands on the object, or one hand giving while the other touches the giving arm. It happens with glasses, money, business cards, documents, phones, anything. Foreign visitors usually learn this as a rule to imitate. It is worth understanding why Koreans … Read more
Search for Korean table manners and you will find lists of twenty or thirty rules, presented as though breaking any one of them would cause offence. This is not how it works, and following such a list will make you look stranger than not following it. The truth is that a handful of things genuinely … Read more