Blatant tourist scam or cultural differences ?
I've been studying in korea for more than 2 months. I usually go hiking alone on most week ends so I don't encounter many people. The other day I was at a much more touristic and crowded place (Namsan tower) when 2 korean girls ask me to take a picture of them. The younger one (I think a little older than me (21)), had perfect english and after that despite discussing for only like less than 15min she invites me to meet again next week at a subway station near hongdae, and messaged me a few time for superficial chat since then.
Is this some kind of elaborated scam targetting lonely clueless foreigner or am I just scared for no reasons because I'm a little associal ? I'm a little ashamed to ask this and I'm sorry if this question sounds stupid as I don't really know what I risk aside from being taken to an accomplice overpriced food stall.
EDIT1 : thank you for all your answer. Even if there's a ridiculous number of red flag I'll roll the dice, that's the only way of knowing and from what I understood I'm not at risk of anything and I would feel bad being wrongly suspicious
EDIT2 : All things considered I decided to go despite the astonishing number of red flags. Things wen't well for ~30min until we sat at a cafe and she asked me "have you heard about karma ?" I instantly died inside because I really hoped it wasn't like this in the end ... (technically my first reflex was to irl-shitpost by answering "yeah it's really hard to play against in toplane and it has always been a top competitive pick in proplay with ezreal") After that she made like a presentation about karmic beleifs and all (can't remember in details). I somewhat fiegned cluelessness but kept discussing by introducing some general other philosophical concept.
The call to action was "by the way if you want to experience korean culture, there's this big karma harmonisation ceromony (might have been a different name tbh can't remember) that you can only do one time in life, even foreigner can attend, wanna try it ?" I was a little affraid to get a cold reaction after politely declining but that wasn't the case.
After that we kept discussing for some time about other topic before parting ways.
In conclusion I'd say I had disproportionnate concerns. It wasn't that bad and she wasn't too pushy at all considering I played along and talk about philosohpy too (maybe I enjoyed myself too much by talking about hardcore materialism and determinism answering about "destiny"). She admit she was sad that I wasn't interrested in the ceromony right before leaving each other. Had I shown interrest in the ceromony and stayed for longer who knows what would've happened ? Well I left this to discover for someone more adventurous than me but I'm not rolling the dice right after a critical failure.
In the end it was just a small enjoyable afternoon hangout, I don't regret going, made a friend. And I would've felt bad being unstrustful and not knowing the truth. My depiction here only reports the "cult related part" so it may sound bad but in reality it wasn't only about it.
My advice to anyone in a similar situation is to read similiar experiences like the answers to this post and trust your guts. I mean be careful, but crowded place and generic cafe are safe I guess. Tell some friends where you're going and have a gps tracking enable with your phone, better safe than sorry. (this only applies if you know you're not psychologically vulnerable, I mean for me I was very confident I wasn't in danger at all in the mental side). Oh Check the map and pick something to do near if it goes bad so you don't regret coming. I also did that because it wasn't that late.