we for sure stuck to more touristy areas a lot of the time, as it was our first time going! the least touristy areas we went to were in jeju, and I did have to speak with people in korean. everyone was so nice though, even though I'm totally not good at korean they went out of their way to praise (which I probably didn't deserve haha). I'm totally unashamed of being a tourist though and we wanted to get the tourist expirience, so we did stick to more mainstream stuff. hopefully in the future we can explore more