I'm a native English speaker employed in a South Korean company in Korea. 90% of my work that I do on a day to day basis is in Korean. Even if I'm reviewing English materials I still produce reports and communicate to my coworkers in Korean only, aside from non-work related conversations with the other non-Koreans in our free time. We never speak English if other coworkers are around as we don't want them to feel alienated even if they can understand some of it. Also I've only been in this company a few weeks and it's completely unrelated to my degree so I'm really putting a lot of effort into new vocabulary and concepts. So far no one has used my foreignness against me and no one has babied me.

However, there's a new girl in our office who is Korean but spent the last 1 year at our office abroad (she was working in Korean still and working in a non-native English country). I've only interacted with her twice but both times have left a bad taste in my mouth.

Firstly, a week ago, I had some down time and another team wanted some English material reviewing before it was published. Her supervisor told her to ask me and instructed her that she can communicate with me in Korean, but she responded, "No, I want to practice my English." She approached me and asked me to do the task in very broken English and I struggled to understand her but I got the gist. She had used ChatGPT to translate and wanted me to check it was correct. She sent me the material over in, again, broken and non-professional English, and I did the work and sent it back in professional English in return, to try and prove a point (I was feeling belittled). If I used such casual Korean language in emails I would get berated.

Today, my other foreign coworker invited her, myself and another foreign coworker out for lunch as we are all a similar age. I am the only native English speaker and the others speak Korean very comfortably as we all graduated and work in Korea. As soon as we ordered food the girl insisted we switch to English to feel more "comfortable". The other two seemed surprised as they aren't native English speakers, either, and Korean is just as comfortable. We mainly speak it together because it makes more sense since none of us are Korean and they've learned English longer. She insisted and we didn't want to make a scene so we switched to English. However, she couldn't understand our conversation, even when we slowed down and explained what we were talking about. She didn't understand my accent nor my coworkers as they speak with heavy accents (Slavic and Southeast Asian). She also acted like we don't know anything about Korea (talking about Korean vs Western age because she didn't understand we already were using those terms - we've been here almost 5 years) and when we had to use Korean so she could follow the conversation she acted as though she couldn't understand any of us. Words that are completely unlike were "misunderstood" and she kept pushing for English despite it being the reason we couldn't have conversations deeper than a simple question and yes/no answer. None of us have had any issues with our Korean in the office and our company has strict standards for speaking Korean before you can get hired. I wrote my damn thesis in this language I can follow a basic conversation about hobbies! I spoke to my foreign coworker about it after and she said she felt as though the girl wanted to show she's better than us by "flaunting" her English.

As a native English speaker I often get people wanting to practice English with me even when it hinders communication. I don't want to feel like a walking English teacher at work. I also want to get used to the company jargon and language quickly and enjoy the exposure. So, even if she has good intentions, WIBTAH for asking her to not speak English with me? How can I approach it without insulting her English and making myself the snobby foreigner?