The Questions You Should Be Asking at Every Networking Event in Seoul

Seoul has a specific networking event circuit that most foreign professionals discover within their first few months in the city. The international chambers of commerce, the startup community events in Gangnam and Mapo, the alumni association gatherings. The food is usually good. The name tags are usually unreadable. And the conversations follow a remarkably consistent pattern regardless of the venue.

Two professionals meet. They exchange cards with two hands, which is correct. They ask each other what they do. They give polished versions of their job description. They nod. They part. Neither of them will follow up meaningfully.

What Most People Are Doing Wrong

The standard networking event approach optimises for breadth: meet as many people as possible, make a positive impression on each one, collect contact information, follow up later. This approach produces a large number of weak connections, which is useful in some professional contexts and nearly useless in Korean professional culture, where 인맞 (inmak) is built through depth and repeated genuine interaction rather than initial impressions.

The foreign professional who attends ten Seoul networking events and meets fifty people at each one has five hundred contacts and no 인맞.

Questions That Open Real Conversations

Most networking questions are status-gathering exercises dressed as conversation. What do you do? How long have you been in Korea? These questions produce information but not connection.

The questions that produce genuine conversation invite the other person to share something they are actually thinking about. What are you currently trying to figure out in your work? What has surprised you most about working in Korea? What do you wish someone had told you when you first started in this industry here? Research on professional networking effectiveness consistently finds that conversations involving genuine self-disclosure produce significantly stronger relationship formation outcomes than conversations that remain at the level of credential exchange.

The Seoul-Specific Considerations

Networking in Seoul carries social dynamics that most foreign professionals navigate imperfectly until they have enough experience to calibrate them. The seniority gap matters more here than in most Western professional contexts. Approaching a senior Korean professional with the same casual directness that works in a San Francisco startup event is a calibration error. The appropriate register for a first approach to someone significantly senior is warmer and more deferential.

The 늘치 (nunchi) dimension is also relevant. When a Korean professional’s responses become shorter and more formal, that is usually a signal to close the conversation gracefully rather than to push harder. This is one of several things foreigners get wrong in the first ten minutes at Seoul networking events.

The Follow-Up Is the Actual Work

The event is not the networking. The event is the introduction. A follow-up message the next day that references something specific from the conversation is significantly more effective than a generic “great to meet you” message. “I have been thinking about what you said about the gap between Korean and international content strategies, and I came across something relevant” is a follow-up that continues a conversation. “Great to meet you at the event last night” is a follow-up that says the event happened.

In Seoul specifically, a follow-up that suggests a specific, low-pressure next step within the week of the event lands better than one that leaves the next move ambiguous… the same principle that separates cold outreach from a warm introduction in Korea. The 꽉준함 (kkujunham) of consistent, specific follow-up over time is what builds the 인맞 that the event introduced the possibility of.

If you are new to Seoul’s professional network or preparing to build your presence in the Korean market, Matthew coaches professionals on communication and networking strategy. Work with him here.

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This article is part of the complete guide to job hunting in Korea.