So let me start at the start by saying that now I have been a long-term foreign resident of Korea. I’ve been here over 10 years. And it’s interesting the way that different foreigners who live in Korea identify themselves and think of themselves. I have some people who I know who have lived here in Korea as foreigners, meaning they’re not Korean, they come from a different country.

And they’ve lived here for longer than I have—15 years, 20 years, really long-term residents in this country. And some of them think of themselves as expats, expats. “Expat” is a word in English that I guess is short for expatriate. But we don’t really ever use that, we only say expat.

And what expat means is it’s just a term that we give to people who live overseas that have moved away from their home country and live in a different country, usually to work or play. Sometimes, you know, if you’re retired, and you’re not really working anymore, you’re just kind of hanging out and doing your retired lifestyle. You can be an expat in that situation as well.

But I think the word expat is usually associated with a kind of short-term stay, like an expat has a goal of eventually returning back to their home country. I think that is at least the feeling, the nuance that I get from the word. And it’s interesting, we have this other word in English, which you are probably more familiar with. And that is immigrant, immigrant.

And of course, an immigrant is a person who leaves their home country and goes and works or studies or retires in a different country as well. But I think the difference between an expat and an immigrant is just the length of time that you will stay.

Like an immigrant, of course, at any time, for many different reasons, somebody can move to a different country and then go back home, go back to their home country, right? Of course, that happens all the time.

But to me, the difference between these two words, it’s like an expat is thinking about going home at some point in the future, whereas an immigrant is like, “I’m going to a new country, I’m going to settle down here, I’m going to plant some roots, I’m going to create this new life for myself, and I’m going to live in this country.” That’s like, their long-term plan is to stay there for a long time.

So, when I think of myself, I think of myself more as an immigrant than an expat. Now, immigrating to South Korea is not very easy. And maybe that’s a whole different topic for a different episode.

It’s not a really immigrant-friendly country the way that some other countries in the West are like Canada or the USA or Australia, where it’s, as far as I know, a lot easier to immigrate to one of these countries than it can be to a country like Korea or China or Japan—some of these countries in Asia, it’s actually quite difficult to immigrate to, right.

But my mindset is more of an immigrant mindset, I think. And maybe that’s another thing that separates an expat and an immigrant. And guys, I’m just going here, when I’m describing the difference between these two words, I’m going off my feeling, not necessarily the dictionary definition.

So, I’m going a little bit deeper with explaining the meaning here than you would see in the dictionary, just to give you a real true sense of the difference between these two terms, expat and immigrant. So, my mindset is more of an immigrant mindset. I don’t have any plans to return to Canada in the near future.

I’ve married a Korean woman, we’ve settled down here, we’ve created a life for ourselves here. We own a house here, we have no plans to leave the country anytime soon. And as much as possible, I try to integrate into Korean society. Now, of course, this is nearly impossible. As a foreigner, I will always be a foreigner, I think in the eyes of Koreans.

But I tried to adapt as much as possible, a kind of Korean way of thinking, a Korean way of life, and kind of getting rid of my home country bias. Sometimes it’s really easy to think as a foreigner, I think here in Korea, but probably any country that you might move to, probably people have this tendency.

And that’s that they compare their home country with the country where they’re living now. And it’s really easy to be like, “Why do you guys do it this way? We do it this way back home. And because that’s the way that I’m used to, that feels most comfortable for me, and that’s the best way.”

As much as possible, I tried to get rid of that bias, get rid of that attitude, and just be open minded to the way of life here in Korea. If I’m going to live here, then I need to adjust and I need to live the way that Korean people live. Now, of course, I still am a foreigner, I still am Canadian, and I still have my Canadian way of thinking. But I don’t try to impose that on my life here in Korea.

As much as possible, I’ve tried to just integrate and adjust and adapt to the way that life is here. And that includes the language as well, that includes the people that I surround myself with, that includes so many different things, adjusting to the food and adjusting to the lifestyle, and I can go on and on and on.

But anyways, as an immigrant—I’ll call myself an immigrant here in Korea—one of the things that happens again and again and again, one of the things that you just have to get used to, especially if you hang out with expats….

OK, this is why I started the story with defining the difference between an immigrant and an expat, at least in my opinion, because one of the things if you’re friends with expats as an immigrant that you’re going to have to get used to is saying goodbye, because expats have this kind of short-term thinking.

Now, like I said, they might stay here for a year, five years, 10 years, it might be a very long time. But the ultimate goal, I think of an expat, is to go back home. And also, to me, my feeling is that an expat doesn’t try as hard to integrate into the local culture, they’re more OK with just keeping the mindset, the way of thinking, the lifestyle of their home country.

So maybe they’re not super, super concerned with learning the local language or super, super concerned about making friends with the local people. And they’re more than happy just to kind of ghettoize and to spend time with people from their culture or people who speak their language.

At least that’s what I’ve noticed as a long-term foreign resident here of Korea, some of these differences between expats and immigrants. And if you guys disagree with me, or agree with me, let me know in the comments for this episode, because this is just my gut feeling, just what I’ve noticed. And I would like to hear what your thought is as well.

And yeah, some of these opinions, I’m flexible with and they might not be 100% right or accurate. So, I would love to hear what you think. OK, so anyways, what I was trying to say here is that one of the things as a long-term foreign resident that you have to get used to if you are friends with expats is that eventually they are going to go home.

And so that means eventually, you have to say goodbye to many colleagues and many friends, many people that you have come to know during your time as a foreign resident. And so, as I get older and older, it seems like I’m doing this more and more often. A lot of the friends who I first met when I arrived in Korea over 10 years ago, almost all of them have gone home now.

I still have some friends from that way back when period, but most of them have gone back to their home countries now. Of course, my Korean friends are still here. So, that’s one of the wonderful things about Korean friends is they are much, much, much less likely to leave. Although I have had some Korean friends who have moved as well. But much, much, much less likely to leave, right?

But your expat friends, they tend to go back home. And this is what I had to do over the weekend, I had to say goodbye to another one of my expat friends, who has decided to go back home. He’s lived in the country for over 10 years, a long time, just like me. He has a wife, he has children. And he has decided that it’s time for him to take his family and to go back to his home country.

And this is why I think it’s a good thing, like he’s got a new job back home, and a new opportunity awaiting him. He’s very excited to return home and for this new opportunity in his life. So, I think that’s great. I’m very happy for him, of course, and proud of him and wish him the best. But at the same time, it’s really sad to say goodbye to another friend, another colleague.

And yeah, you just get used to doing this again, and again, and again as a foreigner living in Korea. And yeah, many of the people who I’ve become friends with over the years now have almost all gone back home. And the thing is, it seems like your friend pool gets smaller and smaller and smaller.

And the people in your social circle gets smaller and smaller and smaller the longer that you stay here. And I think the reason for that is many of the people from English speaking countries that come to Korea in the first place do so for one or two reasons. I can think of really only two reasons. Of course, tourists come all the time.

I’m not talking about tourism, I’m talking about long-term living for maybe over a year. The first category of English speakers who come to Korea, come to Korea to study. So maybe people want to learn the Korean language, maybe they want to do a study abroad or an exchange semester, something like that.

There are many, many foreign students that you can see all through Seoul that are here for like a year or two years, maybe longer. Some people will do their whole four-year degree, but at least from English speaking countries.

I’m not talking about all of the world’s population that come to Korea because there are people from all different backgrounds that do come to this country, but I’m just talking about English speakers in this example. So that is the first category of people. And yeah, usually you could imagine students are very young, right?

Not always, sometimes you get some older folk that want to come and study, but for the most part, university students are in their early 20s, right? So that kind of group, that demographic is not the demographic of people who I would usually hang out with in my personal life, right? I’m too old to hang out with young kids in their 20s. Not saying that I’m against that.

Of course, I could hang out with anybody from any age. I’m happy to do that, but it’s not the kind of demographic that I spend too much time with usually. So that is the first group. And the second group are English teachers, right? That’s how I first came to Korea.

That’s how a lot of the English-speaking friends that I have in this country, they all came the same way as English teachers working either at a private academy, maybe working for the public school system. That’s how I came to the country first. Some people are working at universities, some people working at companies.

There’s all sorts of jobs in Korea for native English speakers related to the English education industry. But again, many of the people who have these jobs, they do them for like a year, a couple years. There are some cases like me where you stay in the country for over 10 years, but that is not so common these days. And it’s not rare at the same time, but not so common.

I would say maybe 10% of the people that I’ve met during my years in Korea end up staying long term. And the other 90% will stay for a year to maybe four or five years, and then return home back to their home country.

So, you have this constant cycling of English teachers, you have new people coming in, and then they stay a year or two, then they go back to their home countries, and then new hires come in to replace those teachers.

And most of the new teachers, they come here… I mean, there’s many different reasons why people are motivated to try teaching English. I think a lot of people these days are interested in Korean culture and K-pop. And so, teaching English is like a good way to be able to spend some long-term time here in the country.

So, if you’re really interested in Korean culture and the language, and you want to spend some time living in Korea, even if you’re not really motivated to teach English, well then, it’s a nice way to do both. The requirements for teaching English here at a kind of beginner level, sort of the entry level job, maybe it’s a better way to say it than beginner level, but entry level English teaching job, you need to have a four-year university degree.

And I think that’s about it, it doesn’t really matter what you studied at university. Oh, you also have to be a native English speaker from one of seven different English-speaking countries. I think that includes America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the UK, and Ireland. OK, so I don’t know how many was that?

Those countries I believe are the countries that you can come from. And yeah, I think those are all the requirements. So, it’s pretty easy just to get a job. And yeah, the jobs really vary from not so good to not so bad. And so many people just come over for a year, and they, they do their job, they get some experience living in the country, and then they return home.

So that’s the first kind of case that you might experience. Secondly, there are people who are interested in teaching. And that was my case, I wanted to get some experience teaching, I was thinking about maybe doing that in the future, like it was in the back of my mind. I also wanted to maybe go to China and, and study the Chinese language.

And Korea was kind of a stopping point for me, I thought I can get some teaching experience. And then maybe after one year, it would be an easy transition to go to China and to study at a Chinese university. So, I had, I guess, various different reasons why I came to Korea for the first time, that were all sort of mixed together.

But getting some teaching experience is a nice way… is it’s a nice way to do it here in Korea is just to get a job easily come over here, teach, see if you like it or not. And then you can move on to go back home and pursue a full-time teaching career or whatever you would like to do after the time. So that’s another reason why some people come to Korea to teach English.

And yeah, I mean, some people want to do it just for the travel, right? Like, it’s really awesome that you can move to another country so easily and get a job fairly easily. The pay is not super great. I have to be honest, it’s not that great at all.

But as a young person in your early 20s, to have a full time job to be able to live in another country, maybe to save a little bit of money, but even if you don’t save any money, you get that experience of like, living in a different culture and doing something new and meeting new people trying new foods, all of these things, it’s really exciting, right?

So, you have lots of people who are always coming into the country to teach. And then maybe after a year or two, they’re moving on or moving back home, and they’re leaving. So, you get this constant cycling, the people who are leaving are, yeah, leaving for many different reasons.

But the people who are usually coming into the country are quite young, they’re usually fresh university graduates. And I would say most people are under 30 years old, who are coming in. So, what I’m trying to say here, in a very roundabout, indirect way, I’m sorry, guys, but I’ll get to my main point here.

And that is the older that you get as a long-term foreign resident, it means that the pool of people who you can become friends with, is smaller and smaller and smaller. Because like I said, I’m 40 years old now. So, it’s not so likely that I would befriend and become close friends with a younger person who is coming in either to study or do their first teaching job, right?

In their mid to.. early to mid 20s, just not very likely that that would happen. And then also, as you get older, more and more of your expat friends are slowly going to leave to go back home. So, the end result of these two things happening at the same time is like your social circle just naturally gets smaller and smaller and smaller.

And yeah, the people that you can hang out with that you share the same culture with and share the same language with just becomes that much smaller and smaller and smaller. And I’m not saying that this is a good thing or a bad thing. It’s just a fact. And so yeah, over the weekend, I said goodbye to one of my expat friends who is moving back home.

As I mentioned, he’s got a new job, a new opportunity in his home country, and we had a goodbye party for him. And it was fun. You know, I’ve known him for several years now. So, we got together with some of our other mutual friends who are also long-term immigrants slash expats living here in Korea. They’re not from Canada. So, they’re all from different countries.

But yeah, we still share the same culture, the same language. And it is fun to kind of chew the fat with those guys. Every once in a while, because we do have like different perspectives on life here. And we all approach it from a different way of thinking and way of looking at things.

And yeah, at the end of the day, from time to time, it is nice to have that group of friends who are from a similar culture as you and a similar language as you. And yeah, so what we did was, I said to my friend, I said, “OK, it’s—you’re going home soon. You’re almost done here with your time in Korea.

You’re the boss for planning this little get together that we’re having.” We were planning to meet up for dinner and then have a beer after. And so, I said, “You choose the neighborhood, whatever neighborhood you would like to visit before you go, it’s cool with me.

And you choose the restaurant as well. I mean, I can help you find a restaurant, but let me know what kind of food you would like to have and we’ll hook it up.” Because in my mind, I was thinking, “If I were in this position, where I was moving back to Canada, I would be trying to eat as much Korean food as possible.

Because I know that when I get back to Canada, there’s not going to be those food options, it’s going to be like the end of Korean food.” Of course, there are Korean restaurants in Canada, but not to the same extent as here in Korea, right? In Seoul, like this is the best place in the world for Korean food. So, I was expecting him to be like, “Oh, I want to eat this, or I want to eat this.”

And so, in my mind, I was like, “Nice, we are going to have like a very delicious Korean meal here for this goodbye party.” But he told me that he just wanted to eat pizza. And hey, I have no qualms about that. I love pizza, it’s one of my favorite all time foods. So, I was like, “Hey, you want pizza, I’m down with pizza.”

But at the same time, I did think that it was a little bit funny that just before going back to his home country, which is a country that makes really great pizza, I thought, “OK, you don’t want to try Korean food for like the last time before you go back?” But yeah, anyway, so we had pizza, and we had a beer.

And it was just nice to like kind of reminisce about the times that we’ve spent here in the country together. And also, to talk about some of his plans for going back to his home country, about settling into his new job, about buying a house, about getting a car, about the things that he’s really looking forward to—just fun to talk about those things.

And yeah, I’m really happy for him and his future opportunities for his family. And I’m glad that he’s able to do this. He’s been wanting to go back for a while. But finally, everything fell into place, and he’s able to make the move. So super happy for him about that. But at the same time, I’m sad to see another friend go.

And it just made me realize like, the longer that I stay here in Korea, the smaller and smaller and smaller, my social circle of expat and immigrant friends is ultimately going to become. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. These days, to be honest with you, most of the time, if I do have some free time, I just hang out with my wife.

I don’t even have that much time where I can go and hang out and see my friends anyways. So, it’s not even something that I really notice. But yeah, at the same time, it’s always sad to say goodbye, right? It’s sad to say goodbye to people who you’re close with. And yeah, it just is what it is. And with that being said, everyone, I think it’s time to bring this episode to a close.

So, thank you for studying English with me today. Guys, keep up the amazing work. You’re doing what you need to do to reach your fluency goals. You’re putting in the time, you’re putting in the effort, you’re spending time with English, you’re listening to English, all of these things are going to pay big dividends in the end. So, keep up the good work. I’m proud of you as always.

And before I let you go, I’m going to leave you with this week’s completion code. Since I had to say goodbye to one of my expat friends, let’s use the completion code: “Goodbye.” “Goodbye.” And that will be our completion code for this episode.

So, you know what you have to do. Go, go, go leave a comment in the Instagram or YouTube or Discord community for this episode and use that keyword “Goodbye.” It will signal to me and signal to our entire community that you made it all the way to the end of this episode. All right. Well, I guess it’s time for me to say goodbye as well.

So, everybody, please take care. Have a great week of English learning up ahead. And I will talk to you in the next Culips episode. OK. Goodbye.