By J.R. Breen
Contributing Writer
An expatriate moving to Korea usually comes armed with a guidebook. But because they are aimed at backpackers and short-term visitors, they don't help in the search for a house, a car and other basic survival situations the average tourist would probably never encounter.
Writer Jonathan Hopfner hopes to plug that gap with his "Expat Guide to Korea," part of a new series of Moon guide books -- Living Abroad -- aimed at people looking to live for a while or settle overseas.
"The book is intended as a how-to guide for expatriates looking to settle in Korea for the medium to long term," Hopfner said.
Hopfner, an editor at the Thomson Reuters Seoul bureau, said the series is aimed at a brand new market.
"It's part of a series that Moon Handbooks launched a couple of years ago to serve the growing number of people who are leaving their home countries for reasons of work or choice," he said.
"It covers a host of things that would only be of interest to longer-term residents (like) finding housing, banking, taxation, education and employment. I also tried to write the sections on local culture and society bearing in mind someone who lives here is going to interact a lot more with both than a person visiting for a couple of weeks."
The book covers every major city and areas with the highest concentration of expatriates.
"Destinations covered within Korea were chosen because they were the most likely places for expatriates to end up, not based on their interest to tourists," Hopfner said.
"I visited most of the destinations covered to get a sense of their recent development and real estate markets, and spent a lot of time going over government Web sites and expat blogs."
Hopfner, who lived in Korea eight years ago before coming back in 2008, said that the fact he was going through the life of a new expat as he was writing the book meant a lot of research came from his personal experiences.
"A lot was based on my own experience, especially since I moved to Korea for the second time and went through all the red tape, house hunting and so on just a few months before I started writing the book," he said.
"I have seen a couple of other guides to Korea for expatriates but they were only produced locally and either are out of date or much more limited in what they covered."
Moons have published similar guidebooks on countries such as Panama and Canada, as well as China and Japan.
"I would say making it among the first Asian living abroad titles is an acknowledgement of how South Korea is gaining prominence as a place for foreigners to live and work," he said.
Although Hopfner said it was inevitable there would be room for improvement, he says he is happy with the completed work.
"I hope to spend more time in destinations outside Seoul and cover them in more detail, and perhaps even add a few that I missed out on the first time around," he explained. "Most importantly, I want the book to be a starting point for some kind of dialogue -- I hope to hear from readers and residents, new or old, on what they thought was missing or could be improved and use some of the feedback to produce better future editions."