HUGE FREAKING BAGS OF CHILI PEPPERS, BABY! If you visit (or even try to live and work in) Korea, be mindful that if you've eaten so-called "Korean barbecue" in your own country and actually enjoyed it, more power to ya, but remember that, just like "Chinese food" that you can get just about everywhere in America, what you're eating isn't necessarily authentic local cuisine by any stretch of the imagination.
So if you come from a country where you're not used to oodles and oodles of spicy food, and end up having to sit down to a table where practically every single dish is red (even cucumbers and other vegetables are often doused in hot sauce in South Korea), you may find yourself quite dismayed at the genuine lack of culinary variety.
Yes, American style pizza is a big hit in South Korea (even though they tend to load ALL pizzas down with corn nibblets and/or onions --- whether you actually asked for copious amounts of those toppings or not), as is fried chicken, and Tonkatsu (Japanese style pork cutlet -- a food even the Japanese got from Americans, who got it from European Germans and Austrians), but even "Chinese food" in South Korea is pretty limited.
There are basically only two major kinds of so-called "Chinese food" available in South Korea, and those are most certainly NOT what most Westerners are used to. Basically, in Korea, there's Jajang Mien, which is sort of an oriental style spaghetti with almost no meat, doused in a thick, dirty looking brown sauce that you'll probably be able to stomach just fine the first few times you eat it, but it doesn't do real Chinese food any justice whatsoever, believe me. In fact, a Taiwanese friend told me once, "Oh, yeah, Jajang Mien. They eat a lot of that in Korea, I hear. We don't eat that much in Taiwan though. Only if we go to a Korean restaurant!"
The only other type of "Chinese food" that is typically consumed in South Korea is Tong su yook, which is basically sweet and sour pork. It can look and taste a little different, depending on which restaurant in Korea you find it in, but for my money, it's no where near as tasty as Americanized Chinese sweet and sour ANYTHING.
So... if you get sick and damn tired of eating Korean pizza with extra onions and corn nibblets, fried chicken, Japanese style pork cutlet (and there are literally ZILLIONS of South Korean restaurants that serve Tonkatsu almost exclusively), or the ONLY TWO kinds of "Chinese food" that most South Koreans choose to prepare, there's always fatty pork -- that is also, not surprisingly, typically served with loads and loads of SPICY CHILI SAUCE!
To be fair, my favorite Korean food is Ginseng Chicken Soup. It's GREAT, and is NOT spicy. There's also "gimbap," which is basically just a kind of Korean sushi, but... you can't eat that every day either. Many Koreans do though, I take it, because it's usually very inexpensive and mostly nutritious. After that, it's back to that most Korean of super foods, KIMCHI: morning, noon and night, at every single meal.... And CHILI PEPPERS! And CHILI SAUCE! Mountains and mountains of CHILI SAUCE! Added to just about EVERYTHING. Yep.
Oh, there's also McDonald's and Burger King, but the Korean run versions of those restaurants tend to have dirty floors and customers who can't (or simply won't) wait in line for their orders. And alas, man cannot live on burgers and fries alone.
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