I hadn't really planned on going to Korea, but it's a short flight from Mongolia, and besides, I now had friends there that I didn't have before starting this trip. I met Su Wol in Chile and then MinYoung and GaYoung in Bolivia. Su Wol and GaYoung are back in Seoul, while MinYoung is still traveling South America. MinYoung was kind enough to electronically introduce me to her best friend Sun.
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| From Korea |
For me, Korea was a strange place. It's one of the most homogenous cultures in the modern world resulting from a historically unbroken national identity, geographic isolation, and the continuous threat of foreign invasion. Like every Asian country, there is a dichotomy of embracing western culture and holding on to traditional values, but Korea seems especially polemic. Koreans are inhaling western culture but remain leery of westerners. Good Ol' American Baseball caps and gangsta rap are all the rage with the college kids, yet a club bouncer, younger than me, screamed at me when I tried enter because it was for "Koreans only".
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| From Korea |
In a city of 10 million people, there is a quiet efficiency to everything and a conspicuous absence of society's disenfranchised. But smiles and random interactions with people are hard to come by. The success of Korea's hard-working, older generation has paid off for a now successful younger generation who hardly has time to enjoy it, as they've also inherited the obligation of 60 hour work weeks. I spent three and half weeks wandering the streets, trying to make friends and trying to pin down the Korean psyche.
Finding random people to talk to on my travels has never been a big problem for me. But for some reason my time in Seoul started to make me feel uneasy. I kept looking for people who might be interested to talk with me, but kept coming up empty. It was the eye contact. I kept looking for eye contact and no one, and I mean no one, would give it to me. So what's the deal? It turns out there are a lot of web postings on this topic. From AskAKorean.blogspot.com:
So basically, I spent a good deal of my time in Korea being rude to people. But at least I'm not alone here. One comment to this post:When is it ok to Make Eye Contact?
Dear Korean,
In the U.S. I'm used to looking everyone I meet or speak to in the eyes
to show respect and that I'm listening. I was told that this is not
proper in Korea when in certain settings. What settings would this be?
Is it ever okay to look someone in the eyes for a prolonged amount of
time? Can you ever look superiors in the eyes or is it only family and
people younger than you? Can you not look the elderly in the eyes, even
if they are your family?
Confused, but willing to learn
Dear Confused,
Never, never, NEVER look into the eyes of someone who is in a superior
position than you are. This includes everyone who is older than you, even by one year,
family or not. This also includes people who are higher than you in a
workplace or social hierarchy, regardless of age. (For example, your
boss, a judge, etc.) In practical terms, this means that you are pretty
safe with not looking into anyone's eyes when you are in Korea.
It is ok to look into the eyes of someone who is your peer (and feel
close enough,) or someone who is younger or in an inferior position than
you are. But be mindful of how "peer" or "inferior position" are
defined. For example, a person who is younger than you but in a higher
grade in your school is not your peer -- she is your superior. A person
who is older than you but began working for your company in the same
year can be your peer.
Be also mindful about the message that you are sending when you do look
into people's eyes. For Americans in Korea, it is very easy to cross the
line between seeing and glaring when you look into someone's eyes. And
glaring in Korea means about the same thing as glaring in America --
anger, disappointment, rude curiosity, intense romantic interest, etc.,
depending on the situation. If you are unsure where the line is, just
don't look into anyone's eyes.
The Chinese guy said... Interesting, no wonder everybody thought I was a psycho in Seoul.As I adjusted to this new social norm, I still felt that Koreans were a tough crowd. It wasn't my imagination. Socially, it's considered a little strange to strike up a conversation with a person you don't know. This makes things a little difficult for someone like me, who is traveling alone and trying to make friends. Even the bars in Korea are not really conducive for meeting people. It's rare to find a bar that actually has bar stools, where you can sit next to, and maybe talk to strangers. The most popular places are table service only, which means if you show up by yourself, you get seated in the corner with no chance to talk to anyone. The usual advantage of a crowded bar is that there are people standing around, making it easy to talk to whoever you end up standing next to. These situations are virtually non-existent in Korea.
I had a handful of successful attempts at chatting up people which resulted in a nice conversation or dinner companion, but I also experienced far too many failed and awkward attempts to even mention. When I say Koreans are a tough crowd, I think it is best illustrated by this particular situation I encountered one weekday evening. I walked into a bar around 6:30pm, hoping there might be an after-work crowd. Despite being in a busy downtown district, the place was empty except for a single girl sitting at the bar. I took a seat a few stools down from her and ordered a beer. I glanced over and her body language was indifferent to my presence, but it was just the two of us so I figured I should try to make friends. She was finishing up a Scotch on the rocks and ordering another. Wondering if maybe she was drowning her sorrows, I asked her if she was having a bad day. She quickly replied that she was actually having a really good day. Then she turned her back to me. A little discouraged, but not defeated, I let ten more minutes go by and tried another conversation starter, but got the same indifferent response followed by more "leave me alone" body language. Ten more minutes passed and we were still the only people in the place. It still seemed silly to me that we should be sitting in silence, so I made one more effort and asked her about the Scotch she was drinking, and suggested that we share one together. All of sudden it was like we were old friends. She was giving me all kinds of advice on where to go and what to do during my stay in Seoul. We ended up talking for an hour.
So what did I learn? It turned out that she was friends with the bartender, hence drinking for free and killing time before meeting up with some friends later in the night. She made reference to the fact that she is a really friendly, outgoing person, interested in other cultures and wishing to go to Germany for grad school. What kills me about this experience is that I agree with her, she was a friendly person, but getting the conversation started felt like pulling teeth.
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| From Korea |
Needing some insight, I turned to GaYoung, Sun and Garam for insight. GaYoung had just finished traveling South America by herself, Sun has lived in Canada and Denmark, and Garam, whom I met through couchsurfing has lived in Canada and traveled in the U.S. and U.K. This meant that I didn't have to spend too much time explaining my western mindset. I ran the story of the single-scotch-drinking-girl by each of them and they all had the same reaction: "Yep, that seems about right. It's kind of weird to just start talking to someone you don't know."
So I asked them all a follow up question, "Let's say you're out and about and you see a cute guy. How do you let him know that you want him to talk to you?"
Eye contact and a smile, surefire western cues, are pretty much out of the question. Sun actually said that if she looked at a guy and smiled, he would probably think that he had something on his face.
"Ok.....so, what do you do?" I asked. Again, I got the same answer across the board: Nothing. You do nothing.
At this point I'm not surprised, but there must be something I'm missing. I'm convinced that there is a secret signal, the way a baseball coach lets a runner know he should steal second base.
"Ok, let's say that you do nothing and that actually works. You've done nothing and for some reason the cute guy feels compelled to talk to you anyway. Do you act really interested, or do you play a little hard to get?"
"Play hard to get."
"How does anyone meet anyone???" I asked incredulously.
"Blind dates."
"Blind dates?" I guess most people just wait for a friend, co-worker, or family member to set you up with someone. I asked if they like this system.
"Not really."
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| From Korea |
I was out one night with GaYoung and Stephane, a French guy, whom I met at a guesthouse. We stopped at a late-night food stand popular with the after-bar crowd so Stephane could get something to eat. I wasn't hungry and so sat down, occupying two small tables while they ordered food at the counter. At this point, two other girls were about to sit down at one of tables I was holding when they realized I had two friends coming back with food. As they excused themselves, I asked them to please join us. They said no, they could find another table. I had learned that an opportunity to make a new acquaintance was not to be squandered, so I begged them to please sit, and then eventually did. When GaYoung came back and saw our table taken over, she frantically said, "What's going on???" It was not the welcome I wanted our new friends to have. Having insisted that they eat with us, I tried to make some conversation about where they had been for night and what their plans were. GaYoung, still uncomfortable with the situation, scolded me for being rude. Afterwards GaYoung apologized to me but said that it just wasn't normal to invite people to your table and insist on talking to them. Tough crowd.
Garam, who studied in Canada and spent a month hanging out by herself in NYC was telling me about making friends while waiting in line in a NYC bagel shop. I asked for some advice on chatting up Koreans. She more or less told me I was out of luck. Then she said something which seems perfectly phrased: Koreans are very kind people, but not necessarily very friendly people.
Korean guys seemed less interested in talking to me than Korean girls and I was put off early into my visit when two guys, both older than me, had just come from the office, saw me sitting by myself, and offered me a shot of tequila. We talked a while and they ordered more tequila and then more tequila. Then they excused themselves, said something about Korean tradition and whether I would mind getting the bill, and then they were both gone. I couldn't believe they were trying to stick me with their tab. There was no chance I was going to pay their outrageous bar bill and the last thing I wanted to do was get into an argument with the bartender over who was responsible for this. I had no choice but to settle up my own tab and then leave immediately. I wandered down the street into an unremarkable basement bar where I was immediately pestered to order a drink. I was still letting the tequila settle, so I asked for a few minutes. The waiter was being really pushy with me, so I told him was just going to leave, at which point he grabbed my arm and gave me a bill for a beer that I didn't have. The night got worse after that. There were a few upscale nightclubs in the area with recruiters working the streets. I followed a few of them and then got into arguments when I wasn't willing to plop down a pile of money for the privilege of walking in.
The next day I was feeling a little bitter over the previous night. I found a park bench and was reading the latest news on my laptop. It started raining and the old man next to me shared his umbrella, gave me a tissue to wipe off my screen, and restored my faith in humanity.
I found that making plans with people was difficult because of their work schedule. Su Wol, the girl I met in Chile, was working 10 - 12 hours/day, 6 days a week. The more people I met and the more questions I asked revealed that long working hours, 10 - 14 hrs/day, was the norm. Out of curiousity, I checked Wikipedia to see if my observation could be backed up by some statistics. This is what I found:
By far, workers in South Korea have the longest work hours among OECD countries. The average South Korean works 2,390 hours each year, according to the OECD. This is over 400 hours longer than the next longest-working country and 34% more hours than the average in the United States. A typical workweek in South Korea is 44 hours or longer. Most people start their day at 8am and end at around 10pm or later, often having dinner before returning from work. Until legislation in 2004 virtually abolished the six-day workweek in large corporations known as chaebol, South Korea was the only country in the OECD that worked Saturdays. Despite the legal framework many office staff are regularly required to work on weekends or stay at their desks idle, waiting for their superiors to leave.That last sentence eludes to the strict adherence to hierarchy in Korean culture. Sun gave me a few unexpected examples of how hierarchy plays itself out. She had to train herself to eat lunch very quickly because her boss was also a fast eater. His hectic schedule had him rushing off to meetings, allowing very little time for lunch. Whether Sun also had a hectic schedule was irrelevant; Eating with her boss meant starting and finishing with him, even if it was cut short. She also said that Korean students never ask questions in class, because it is considered rude to be interrupting (or contradicting) the teacher. She was always a little amazed with the ease that foreign exchange students asked questions and spoke their mind.
GaYoung, Stephan and I were having a little cultural exchange, asking what we liked and disliked about our own cultures. GaYoung was proud of the fact that Koreans are such hard workers. When asked what she disliked about Korean culture, she said that she wished Koreans had more fun. After spending the summer in South America and staying with friends in Brazil, it was easy for her to contrast the two cultures. To me, her statements were a little ironic. The hard work which she is most proud of, in my mind, is to blame for the cultural aspect she dislikes the most, not having much fun. But to keep things in perspective it's important to understand that for the first half of the 20th century, Korea was dominated by the Japanese and then suffered division after World War II, leaving most of the country starving. Now one of the most modern countries in the world, they have an economy to be proud of.
Another sentiment that I heard from Sun, GaYoung and Garam, who, unsurprisingly, are all couchsurfers, was that they wished Koreans were more keen on inviting people into their home. GaYoung loved how Brazilians would invite her to their home within hours of meeting. Sun wants to find a boyfriend who will let her have an additional room to host all of her international friends. Her friends tell her that no Korean guy will put up with that.
I feel like I spent all my time in Korea with a puzzled look on my face. For being such a huge city, everyone looks like they shop at The Gap and has the same quiet look of content on their face. Or maybe it's discontent, I can't say for sure. When I go to place like Mongolia,where people are living in tents and eating a steady diet of yak cheese, I'm looking in from the outside without the pretense of being able to understand their life. Life in Seoul however felt like it should be much more accessible, but it wasn't.
Now I feel like I've painted too gloomy of a picture, because there are many things I really enjoyed and admired. I don't feel qualified to talk about the Korean sense of aesthetic, but there are so many beautiful things in Korea. Beautiful buildings, art, decorations, restaurants, handicrafts, all wonderful marriages of form and function. Korean food is also completely unique and so delicious. And of course I think grilling your food at your dinner table is such a perfect idea. Petty theft, vandalism, and random street crimes are basically non-existent. It's a wonderful feeling to not have to clutch your belongings everywhere you go. The public can be trusted with nice things, like interactive touch-screen maps at the subway stations, those wouldn't last one day in New York City.
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| From Korea |
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| From Korea |
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| From Korea |
I feel good about my time in Korea, and the friends I made are very special people. But I find myself wishing my western values on their culture. I wish Koreans didn't work as much, had more fun, and were more outgoing with each other. For a country that seems to have everything under control, they have the second highest suicide rate in the world (according to Wikipedia, just trailing alcoholic Belarus), which is nearly three times the U.S. rate. I keep thinking about something that Garam told me while explaining her struggle to balance work and her desire to travel. Being called "unique" in Korea is not considered a compliment, but that's what I liked about her, she was unique.
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