On weekends I drive in to work, just to get away from the hour-long train ride that I do everyday. Streets in Seoul are heavenly on Saturday mornings, like smooth flowing rivers instead of the gnarled and twisted byways they become on weekdays. With the heat on to fight off the winter cold, I sail along listening to the one all-English language radio station that exists in the country. And I feel at home.

All right, it isn’t the only English broadcast. There’s AFN, the military station that caters to U.S. troops stationed here since the start of the Cold War. I used to listen to that, thinking how much that little slice of Americana must mean to young men and women who are otherwise alienated from their surroundings and “utterly bored,” as one GI recently told me. But it always made me feel more alienated. I’m neither Korean nor a GI, and I just couldn’t really relate to the Thanksgiving ads for turkey parties on base or the cheesy humor.

In some ways, AFN made me feel like I was somehow at the farthest reach of America’s empire, but that’s another story.

Last month South Korea launched TBS FM, the country’s “only all-English” radio station that plays a variety of culture, music and news programming. Granted, some of the programs are a bit rough around the edges, and the style can get borderline stupid. One host complained that she had to forego church to come to work. I cringed. Hourly news broadcasts are done with this terrible discoesque muzak in the background. “Today, dozens were killed (cue synthesizer)…”

But the station’s very existence makes me feel more a part of society, like somehow my presence here has been acknowledged and that it’s worth it to let me in on the conversation. Me and all the other stray Westerners that have landed on Korea’s shores and have yet to master the language.

But there’s the caveat, because actually the majority of foreigners living in Korea aren’t from the West. They’re workers from places like China, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and the Philippines. They’re foreign brides from Vietnam or illegal migrants from Thailand or Africa. Often these men and women go a lot farther in the Korean language than us ex-pats, but they remain on the fringes, seen as having nothing to offer but their toil. I don’t believe there’s a station here for them.

Still, the station has given me a new lease on my commute. Last night I listened to a listing of family friendly Christmas events going on around the city, something I was completely in the dark about until then. It’s that sense of directly addressing the needs and interests of a minority community, much like the role ethnic media plays in the U.S., and linking that community to the larger picture. It’s a bridge and a welcome addition to my daily life here in Korea.