Even during the COVID-19 period, the number of foreign students enrolled in universities that teach Korean every semester has steadily increased. The purpose of this study is to explore the lives of foreign students and to discover the main factors to construct a plan to help them adapt to their local area. To this end, in-depth interviews were conducted with foreign students as well as Korean language teachers who were in close contact with them. The reason for this phenomenon is that most international students have experienced Korean proficiency tests and grammar-oriented learning by rule memorization in their home countries. While in Korea, it is not only because they had to complete intensive classes centered on written language in a short period of time to enter a university but also because they experienced a sense of helplessness due to differences in class content and the local language outside of the classroom. The results of adaptation and maladaptation to Korean language classes were, first, a successful learning style in which students adapted to both social life and academic life; second, a learning style in which students successfully adapted to the school environment but which left them socially isolated; and third, a style in which the students showed immaturity in both academic and social life, which resulted in a failure in learning how to adapt to their locality. Through this, it can be seen that adaptation in Korean language classes leads to local adaptation and learning success. Therefore, in order to overcome the maladaptation phenomenon of Korean language classes, this study proposes to organize Korean language classes with topics and tasks considering locality.