I have an older Korean friend who moved from Korea to Sydney at 9. He’s 27 now, basically hasn’t been back to Korea since, grew up here without his parents and says English is more comfortable for him. But after knowing him for over 5 years, I’ve genuinely never once had the feeling that I’m talking to a gyopo. Not even when I first met him.
He did basically all of his schooling after age 9 in Australia, went to uni here and works here now. His parents stayed in Korea and his grandmother looked after him to some extent, so it wasn’t even the typical Korean immigrant household where your parents constantly speak Korean to you at home.
His English is completely native and most of the knowledge he’s accumulated in life is in English. I’ve seen him around his English speaking friends plenty of times too so I know that side of him well.
But when he talks to me, we basically only speak Korean.
I’m 21 and came to Australia myself at around 15-16, did Year 10 to Year 12 here and I’m now finishing my third year of uni before moving back to Korea after graduating. I’ve lived here long enough to meet a lot of Koreans and other Asians who grew up overseas, so I’m pretty familiar with the differences you usually notice.
My English wasn’t as good when we first met so Korean probably became our default early on, but my English is completely fine now and he knows that. We could easily speak English to each other if we wanted to, but we still almost never switch.
The only recent time we spoke a noticeable amount of English was when we were drinking with his girlfriend and a non-Korean coworker, so everyone was speaking English. I was pretty drunk and ended up speaking some English to him, and he spoke some English to me too lol. Even then it felt unusual because that’s just not how we normally talk.
His Korean was already very natural when I met him around 2020. He later dated a Korean girl and his current girlfriend is Korean too, and he says his Korean improved a lot through that.
I once told him I thought it was impressive how he basically never got gyopo-fied despite moving here at 9. He just laughed and joked that some people end up not even knowing their own country’s culture.
I’ve seen very different outcomes at similar ages too. I knew a Korean guy who moved here at around 11-12 and by high school English was already his dominant language and his Korean was noticeably awkward. I also knew a Chinese guy who moved here at 9 whose Mandarin sounded mainland native and who never really gave me the typical Chinese diaspora vibe either, but he said culturally he felt like he was basically stuck at age 9 when it came to China.
So how unusual is this actually?
I don’t mean “a gyopo with really good Korean.” I mean someone you can know for years and genuinely never once feel like you’re talking to a gyopo.
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