The official language spoken in South Korea is Korean. Many Koreans speak English especially the younger generation due to English being taught in schools; however, the older generation tends to struggle with the English language. You will find that staff at most tourism-related venues (hotels, restaurants) speak English, we suggest you get a good English-Korean guidebook and familiarize yourself with common phrases such as hello, goodbye, thank you, excuse me and the numbers 1 - 10.