A practicalities and experiences of being non-native english teachers in korea by sardor akramov. A student of

 Experiences interacting with native Korean speakers
In contrast to the above, all participants expressed the feeling 
that, despite having become competent Korean speakers and 

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thereby enjoying social success, they were nonetheless treated 
as Others by some Koreans. Reactions participants described 
upon using Korean with some Korean native speakers were 
described as ‘awkward’ (Ian), though less so when the native 
interlocutor was younger, and/or they had already gotten to 
know each other. The awkwardness was said to take the form 
of disbelief that participants were able to speak Korean, as well 
as condescending behavior and assumptions made about their 
level of knowledge of Korean society. For instance, while 
participants all described getting good reactions for their 
Korean abilities, this was often disproportionate to their skill 
level at the time, and many interpreted such reactions 
aspatronizing: ‘I would stumble through broken sentences... 
and all the same, they'd be like,“oh, hankukmal jal hashineyo”.’ 
(Your Korean is so good) (Chris, interview, ]Such behavior 
related not only to displays of linguistic competence, but also to 
other actions that may be assumed to be unfamiliar to non-
Koreans. Jenny described a feeling of being ‘infantilized’, 
possibly for ethnic or cultural reasons: ‘I've been here seven 
years and people are still amused that I can use chopsticks... it's 
just tiring’ In a similar vein, Simon, a recipient of the highest 
grade on the Korean ability test, said that he felt arbitrarily 
grouped together with the other foreign teachers at his 
institution who could not speak Korean, and that he was 
treated as a ‘symbol’ of English, and a ‘commodity.’ His Korean 
co-teachers at the private English institute at which he worked 
would seem uneasy when he was speaking Korean, even if he 
was only in their vicinity and not talking to them directly. He 
also once sent an e-mail ahead of a meeting related to his 
graduate study. He wrote the message in Korean and used his 

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Korean name, but when he arrived at the meeting place he 
found the staff who had received the e-mail acted awkwardly 
towards him, as he ventures they had been expecting someone 
ethnically Korean. Simon felt frustrated by this behavior: 
‘What's the difference if I'm an ethnic Korean or not?’ He felt 
that, as a member of a non-Korean ethnic group, he needed to 
repeatedly demonstrate his abilities to work against 
assumptions made about him: You’ve got to battle those 
stereotypes.’