1) There is a LARGE amount of American food, including Hot Dogs and Donuts, that are present on every street corner
2) Koreans eat almost as much meat as Americans do. Between Korean BBQ, Fried Sea Food, and Korean Hot Pot, meat, especially pork, seems to fill 80% or more of every meal
3) Everything is Red and Green: The alcohol is green (beer bottles, soju, martian alcohol), and the food is red (spicy sauce, meat, kimchi).
4) If you don’t know a word in Korean, guess it in English, then in Chinese and you have a good chance of getting it correct. Words like “computer” (English), “bank” (Chinese), and many others are just a slight phonetic transformation away from their Korean counterpart.
5) People are extremely polite. I mean REALLY polite. I knew that the language was polite, but they have many other polite actions, such as holding their elbow when giving you change or pouring your drink.
6) People bow. Yes, that’s not a typo. I pictured people bowing in China, but now I know that it’s actually Korea and Japan that are the bowers. It may have first started in traditional China, but it’s definitely migrated and stuck in Korea. Greeters at restaurants will bow to you as you leave. I haven’t been there long enough to see the full extent, but I guess that there are many other circumstances that require a bow.
7) The Korean language uses a LOT of Chinese characters. I always knew that some things used them, but I thought that it might be archaic and that young Koreans probably don’t know them. How wrong I was. I see Chinese characters on buildings, in the newspaper, and even while hiking up a mountain and everyone knows them. Many of the characters look exactly like like the simplified characters I learned in China, while others are the traditional form (which luckily I can read thanks to 3 months in Hong Kong). This helps out a lot when I can’t understand the Korean.
8 ) Korean culture does not look favorably on talking to random strangers or talking too loud in public. In the USA and China it is very common at a restaurant or a bar to meet random people, but Koreans prefer to keep to themselves. I was told by my friend to whisper on the subway, and once while drinking I tried to talk to some random guy standing next to us and my friends told me that it was very weird and that I shouldn’t do that. Koreans prefer to have a reason to meet someone.
9) Koreans are not extra distant from foreigners. It is a common misconception that Koreans prefer to only socialize with Koreans, but what I’ve seen so far (I could be wrong, it was only a week), is that in actuality they simply prefer to keep to themselves and their own group. If you are a part of the group, either by being introduced somehow or are a classmate, then there will be no problems socializing. If you are not a part of the group, it is very hard to get in. You just have to find that first VIP card 
10) Korea has it’s own version of EVERYTHING. They have their own fast food restaurants that are very similar to the American ones and almost exclusively use domestically made phones, cars, computers, etc. No one uses Google, they use Naver instead. They support their own country to an extreme that I’ve never seen before; however, international business still fair pretty well, especially Dunken Donuts, Baskin Robins, Starbucks, McDonalds, Burger King, etc.
