Living in Singapore for Two Years: What It Actually Does to You
A Korean marketer's honest take on two years of living and working in Singapore: culture shock, multicultural workplaces, and what changes when you're far from home.
I’ve been here two years now. I keep waiting for it to feel like a long time and it doesn’t, really.
It’s a Weird City to Land In
Coming from Seoul, I thought I knew what a dense, fast-moving Asian city felt like. Singapore humbled me pretty quickly. Not because it’s harder (in a lot of ways it’s easier) but because I had zero context. No network, no sense of how things worked socially, no read on what people actually meant when they said things.
That last part took the longest. I’d be in a meeting thinking everything went fine, and then later realize I’d completely misread the room. Singaporeans, Malaysians, Indians, expats from everywhere, all in the same company, all with different ways of communicating what they actually think. I made a lot of quiet mistakes in year one.
Working in a multicultural environment in Singapore isn’t just a line on a resume. It forces you to recalibrate constantly: what reads as assertive versus aggressive, what silence means, how decisions actually get made versus how they’re presented.
What Living in Singapore as a Korean Expat Is Like
The Korean expat community in Singapore is easy to find and easy to disappear into. I spent some time in it, then deliberately less time in it. Not because anything was wrong, but because I’d moved to a different country and I wanted to actually live there.
That choice made things harder in the short term. Finding a rhythm, building new friendships, not having a default language to fall back on. But it also meant I got more out of being here: more discomfort, more adjustment, more of whatever it is that actually sticks.
On Confidence
I was pretty risk-averse when I got here. I’d second-guess decisions way more than I should have, mostly because I didn’t trust my instincts in an environment I didn’t fully understand yet.
At some point I got tired of waiting until I felt ready. So I just started doing things without the safety net: owning decisions, running with things without checking in constantly. Some of it worked, some of it didn’t. But that back-and-forth is what actually built something.
I feel more settled in my own judgment now. That probably sounds like a small thing but it’s not.
Two Years Later
I don’t have a clean conclusion. I’m still figuring things out, same as before. But I think I’d be a lot less honest with myself if I didn’t say that living here changed something, not in a dramatic way, just in the way that time and friction tend to do.
Seoul taught me a lot. But it also let me get away with a lot. Singapore didn’t.
If you’re a Korean thinking about moving to Singapore for work, or already here and trying to figure it out, feel free to reach out. I don’t have all the answers but I have some of the questions.