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I felt the same way about Japan when I first visited it in the late 1990s. Japan has stagnated badly since then, and due to the demographic crunch, it's essent

I felt the same way about Japan when I first visited it in the late 1990s. Japan has stagnated badly since then, and due to the demographic crunch, it's essentially certain that Seoul in 2040 will look like Tokyo in 2020. (Unless North Korea transforms it into a smoking crater in the ground, that is, since the entire city is within artillery range of the border.) Also, in my experience, Koreans speak even less English than the Japanese do. Seoul is still OK, maybe Busan, but out in the sticks there's zero signage and very few speakers.

eatonphil 5y ago
Not to discount your experience at all, but I have been outside of Seoul too and I still didn't feel too overwhelmed. Specifically I spent a bit of time in Bundang (a suburb of Seoul), Busan and Jeju. One more massive advantage Korean has over Japanese is that Korean has a fairly simple alphabet so you can read and pronounce words after only a little practice. In contrast, it takes quite a while to be able to read Japanese with their three writing systems and Kanji in particular.
- Aperocky 5y ago
  > In contrast, it takes quite a while to be able to read Japanese with their three writing systems and Kanji in particular. On the other hand, if you can read Chinese.. then reading signage in Japan is like having half Chinese half weird squiggly stuff but the Chinese half would still mostly make out most of the sense.