It happened during a trip to Japan, in the middle of a notoriously complex station when my Google Maps GPS went dead and I was left standing there lost. As I was staring intently at the map, someone approached me kindly to give directions.

When I asked for directions in Japanese, his eyes went wide, and he kindly walked with me all the way to my destination. One thing led to another, and we ended up spending the entire day together.

Feeling reluctant to say goodbye, we exchanged contact information, and after keeping in touch every day, we eventually became a couple.

Now, we are in a long-distance relationship, traveling back and forth between Korea and Japan.

Even though I can speak Japanese well enough that it would be much more comfortable to just talk in Japanese, he insists on trying to convey his feelings in clumsy Korean whenever he comes to Korea. He starts off confidently saying, "I'm good at Korean!" but his pronunciation gets all tangled, and when he gets flustered by mixing up formal and informal speech, Japanese accidentally slips out.

Then, looking embarrassed by his own mistake, he gets red all the way to the tips of his ears and doesn't know what to do, which is just incredibly cute.

He writes down Korean words I've taught him, like "I missed you," "I love you," and "It's delicious," in his phone's notepad so he won't forget, and practices them over and over, muttering with a pout.

He always tries to use the words he's memorized so hard on me first, and even if his pronunciation is wrong, he struggles to speak in Korean until the end.

What am I going to do with this lovely boyfriend who presses every single syllable of his sincerity into clumsy Korean, even though I understand everything he's trying to say?