Do you know the language? Is it necessary to in order to feel that life is as fast-paced as you mention?

It's definitely easier if you speak the language. Koreans don't really hold your hand and tend to bombard you with long, fast-spoken sentences even if you try to explain that you don't speak the language :p At the same time it's very easy to make friends that don't mind giving their broken english a try in order to make a conversation with you.

I am not fluent in Korean (still very far from becoming) but still consider Seoul as one of my favorite cities (if not my favorite) period

Once you can read/speak (not necessarily understanding much) then you can get around pretty well. The translation apps are really good and I didn't find myself using them often. I found young Korean people to be pretty good at English with decreasing ability up through the ages.

Absolutely. I would not say Korea is a good place to be in as a developer. Mostly dominated by Korean corps. Some companies started my foreign ethnic koreans. They are good and nice places but pay is ...mediocre.

Koreans are also a bit racist but if you do not mind it's fine.

I studied abroad in Korea and asked about expected salaries for SE from the Korean CS Dept. They said 60k would be incredibly high and 30-40 would be normal. That is also in million won which doesn't translate perfectly to a dollar, actually less.

However, if you are working remote you could probably be taking in a nice US salary and live very very well. 100k and you'd live like a king/queen there.

> but pay is ...mediocre.

sure, it's no Silicon Valley but you can get decent/well paid jobs with a bit of trying. My salary was even slightly better than what I made in Germany before

I saw small/medium company offering 60k $ for normal position. How much do you make ? What kind of company ?

Any recommendations for developer jobs in Korea? Working at a Korean company and thus in their working culture (long hours, treated like a slave by higher-ups) and low developer pay is not recommended from what I hear.

Yeah that's the tricky part. You can subscribe to job alerts on stackoverflow careers and linkedin and hope for something to pop up. Alternatively I would say find a remote contract job and do that for a few months while being in Seoul. Go to local startup meetups and you will almost certainly find something nice as your first stepping stone

How's the work life balance?