I arrived just over two years ago. Since then I’ve gone from knowing almost nothing about Korean culture to having experienced tons of it. I came here not knowing much about the history of Korea and now I’m relatively knowledgeable. One of the most fascinating things for me is how quickly Korea went from an agricultural society to world-class within fifty or so years. The rapid economic progress is absolutely amazing. However, this economic development has sometimes greatly outpaced cultural and social development. Look at the difference between a twenty year-old Korean and a forty year-old. It’s an enormous gap. Social values, work ethic, wants and desires are generally very different. Now look at the difference between them and an eighty something. There’s just a colossal gap.

It would seem that many older Koreans seem to be stuck in the past as far as social values go. If you’ve been living here for longer than a week you’ve probably noticed that old men seem to be at the top of the social order and young women are at the bottom. Thanks to Confucianism this is the case. A lot of older Koreans supposedly have their minds made up about things and have no interest in listening to a lower social order individual’s opinion on things.

Lots of these older men are lawmakers and politicians and journalists. As a result, laws have gotten passed based on  biased statistics and poorly-researched newspaper articles and television programs without much consideration about the logic behind the laws. Also, individuals consuming Korean media may see a poor picture of foreign teachers here than what is reality due to poor reporting and researching.

However, in my experience, the Koreans that I’ve met and interacted with show no such signs. When I first arrived people were curious about my home country, what I ate, and other things that they may have heard about but are not sure about. As I lived here longer, learned Korean, made Korean friends and girlfriends, I still saw no signs or incidents of conflict between myself and the people that I interacted with. I’ve always felt welcome, safe, and free to speak my mind about things. The worst that happens is the occasional stare when walking with a Korean woman down a busy street but it seems more out of curiousity than out of anger.

I’ve adapted here and adjusted for the Confucian aspects of this society within reason. I’ll pour alcohol for my seniors, address them in honorifics, and bow. But I’ve never felt any need to defend myself or separate myself or justify the actions that have been reported by the media.

So, though the media often has many articles and reports about “foreigners behaving badly”, I’m not going to focus on these things unless they are particularly newsworthy or deserving of attention.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 14th, 2010 at 01:12 and is filed under Culture, Social. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.