Yeh, just easier to cover yourself. The assumption for some is that if you don't credit them, then you're claiming that they're your own.
I sometimes feel illiterate being in a foreign country,
It's a completely different form of writing to ours as well! Do you know a bit of Korean? It must be quite daunting. Is it a permanent move for you?
It's been about six months here and I'm learning how to read Hangul, their alphabet. Almost all the signs are also in English, and nearly everyone wears shirts with English on them. The first time I went into E-mart, their equivalent of Walmart, it felt really weird to see so much English, like they had it all just for me. I haven't seen a foreigner outside of my family in that store in the whole time I've been here.
I only know hello, yes, no, and thank you basically. Every word is extremely phoenitic, which is why you'll notice a lot of words are really long. The proper form of "hello" is 5 syllables.