Sweet and Sour Emotions

Dear Korean,

please explain the reason why Koreans don't smile as much as those of us born in the ole U.S.?

Jim B.


Hi, dong-seng!

I myself am Korean-American but still can't figure out this cultural phenomena. What's up with all the yelling with Korean people when they converse casually? I see it on Korean TV drama and in real life. I once heard 2 ah-juh-shee shouting really loud outside my window. I thought they were fighting but it turned out they were just talking...."I CAN'T GO GOLFING WITH YOU THIS WEEKEND!" I'M GOING TO ARIZONA!" And as much I love my family, it is rather embarrassing to hear my dad and his friends' raised drunk voices reverbrating throughout the whole restaurant. Is there a particular reason why Korean people tend to YELL when they're merely carrying on a normal conversation? ghoom-ghoom hah-da. mi-gook sah-rham han-tae yi-sang-ha-da.

Diana P.



Dear Mi-gook Sa-rahm-deul ("Americans"),

First, about the picture. The Korean searched Google Image for "yelling Korean" and four pictures of this girl showed up first. Having never cared for Korean pop culture even when he lived in Korea (except in certain contexts), the Korean has no idea who that is. But she's pretty hot, so why not? This blog could use some sprucing up anyway.

The last sentence by Diana P. was meant to say "I'm curious. It's strange to an American," but she mangled it. It should have said goong-geum hae-yo, mi-gook sah-rahm eh geh yi-sahng-hae-yo. (Or drop the two yo's since she called the Korean dong-saeng, "little brother". But she misspelled the romanization of that too.)

Alright, enough extra stuff. What's with Koreans facial expression and voice?

Couple of things out of the way first. In Korea, smiling is not the best thing a Korean can do for her reputation. People who smile a lot are traditionally considered too "light". A grave countenance is to be maintained at all time, in order to show that you are a serious person to be taken seriously. But this cultural factor is fading away as Korea has become more westernized, and only old school Koreans in their 50s and up truly follow it. (What is interesting, however, is that Korean Americans often retain old Korean habits that went out of fashion in their homeland. On the whole, Korean Americans are a heck of lot more conservative than Koreans in Korea because of this. More on this topic later.)

Another thing is that yelling in Korean dramas fall into a different theory than what the Korean is about to suggest. Characters in Korean dramas yell for the same reason characters in Bollywood movies sing - it's a cheap way to convey emotional content without relying on sophisticated dialogues or acting. Not that all Korean producers and actors are incapable of using such things: many Korean movies excel in conveying emotion through the subtlest subtleties. (One of the Korean's favorites is Waikiki Brothers.) But Korean dramas appeal to, shall we say, a less sophisticated audience. The Korean has a feeling that this may change at some point: there has got to be a market in Korea for artfully made television series, like Six Feet Under or Friday Night Lights in the U.S. But as long as there will be ajummas who sit on their asses doing nothing but watching dramas in Korea, there will be yelling in Korean dramas.

So, what about Korean people not smiling or yelling? They may seem like two different things, but they both have the same answer: Koreans are straightforward folks, and they feel absolutely no compunction to engage in social phoniness.

Like the Korean said before, Koreans are efficient folks and they do not like to waste time and energy. All the frills must go, and included in the frills is the need to hide emotions and engage in pleasantries. Life alone takes enough effort already anyway; why waste energy making shit up, and then waste time trying to figure out how people are really feeling? So Koreans smile only when they are truly happy, and Koreans talk up a storm when they are in a good mood. (It's not surprising, therefore, that the nicest Korean restaurants in Korea always have private rooms and very little public space.)

Immigrant life is full of drudgery already; would that load of dry-cleaned clothes be any lighter if you smiled at it? Save them smiles, dispense them when they count, and you don't cheapen them like those of a car salesman's. And if you're having a good time, why kill it by trying to be hush-hush about it? Surely a loud party is a happening party; the opposite cannot be true. We know all this in America already, but somehow we made up this phony rule of appearing to be happy and appearing to be having a bad time. What's the point?

There is no reason to be embarrassed, Diana noo-na ("older sister", for calling the Korean "dong saeng"). Your father is just having a good time, and there is no reason to hide it. If anyone complains, tell him to remove the stick up his ass and yell his conversations too. As anyone who's familiar with no-rae-bang ("karaoke") knows, yelling one's head off is pretty fun.

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@hotmail.com.

Who Knew Restauranteurs and Customers were Mortal Enemies?

Dear Korean,

Why so many Koreans so hot-tempered? I work as a waiter at a Korean restaurant. Even though I am obedient, non-complaining, and always smiling, (my grandparents were REALLY Japanese and instilled similar values in me) the customers (ajummas in particular) do not seem to care, and only demand more water, more pori-cha, and lose their heads when an empty panchan plate is not removed from their tables. I have seen Korean waitresses at other restaurants and their rude behavior toward the customers (and me), and would think that my generosity would have them turning a new leaf, but it does not. I just want to know why there are so many that have such abbrasive personalities that do not respond well to a pittling little college student trying to make next semester's tuition payment and his tendency to treat everybody with respect.

Tofu Master Extraordinaire

Dear Tofu Master,

It’s the Japanese blood in you. Koreans can smell it. Koreans cannot wait for the giant earthquake to come and sink all those islands into the depths of hell. (I’m not making this up. There is a Japan-made movie that describes this scenario exactly, and it did pretty well in Korea by all accounts, although everyone who has seen it agrees that it was a shitty movie. ) The Korean will soon do a series on Koreans’ well-documented hatred for Japanese, so this discussion will be saved for later. Or maybe they are mad because you keep on misspelling things. It’s bori-cha (“barley tea,” delicious) and banchan (“side dishes,” an essential part of any Korean meal). Those two are understandable, but misspelling “abrasive”? Come on.

Just kidding Tofu Master, the Korean should be the last person to tease anyone for their nationality or their spelling skills. You got the correct impression of a very interesting phenomenon that occurs in any service industry run by/patronized by Korean people. Why does this happen?

On a fundamental level, Korea is a country that transitioned from being an agricultural society to being a post-industrial society waaaaaaay too fast. (In fact, entire East Asia is like this.) So the mismatch between how people behave and where the society actually is begets many hilarious consequences, including this one.

It happens in any service industry, but take restaurants for example. In the good old days when Korea was poor and everyone was hungry, restaurant owners was doing a huge favor for their customers. Ever driven through some parts of the country where you don’t see a gas station for hundreds of miles, then found a place that sold gas for four dollars per gallon? Do you care if the place is shady or the owner gives you an attitude? That’s exactly the restaurant situation in Korea in the old days. In an agricultural society, who the hell would eat out when it’s a huge challenge already to get some eating out of the ground? Only those who were traveling (and can afford things) would purchase food, and they absolutely would not care how shitty the food or the service was. Without that restaurant at that place, the travelers would have starved anyway. So service providers in Korea traditionally assumed this attitude of “Be grateful that I’m doing business here,” and did away with all the frills like smiling or not throwing food on the table. Cooking and serving food are hard work already; people expect the server to smile as well? Jokka. (“Go fuck yourself.” Literally, it translates to "peel a dick.")

Later (in fact, much later), Korea got richer and competition among restaurants finally emerged. But the attitude survived, since Koreans know that (being practical as they are,) they eat the food, not the service. But action calls for an equal and opposite reaction, so react Korean consumers did. Sensing that now the customers were the king of the market economy, Korean customers decided to toss out all the pleasantries against service providers as well. After all, being polite to everyone is tiring. (The Korean thinks that it’s the stress from being polite all the time that drives some Japanese people to go on mass-murdering rampage a few times each year. But that’s another story.) The singular force in this movement, of course, is the ajummas, whose irrepressible energy constantly seeks out for new advantages they can exploit.

So, Tofu Master, you are caught in a race toward the bottom. Customers don’t care about shitty service because they expect them. And customers are shitty toward you because they expect shitty service anyway. The Korean advises you to join the race, since you will find that the bottom will be quite lively and fun. Who doesn’t enjoy a good shit-flinging fight? Except for the Japanese I guess.

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@hotmail.com.

Ask A Korean! News: Met Opera Attendees to be Suffocated by a Pair of Garlic Breaths

To the delight of classical music-loving Koreans everywhere, (the Korean included, having no choice as the Korean Girlfriend is a classical musician,) the Metropolitan Opera in New York will feature two Korean headliners in this year's production of La Traviata. Hei-Kyung Hong will play Violetta, the main heroine, while Wookyung Kim will play Alfredo, her suiter. (Photo picked up from Dong-A Ilbo.) The Korean finds it hilarious that Hong and Kim, playing lovers, are 47 and 29 years old, respectively. Not since Anna Nicole Smith and her late oil tycoon husband did a relationship so twisted and gross exist. This will be Met Opera debut for Kim. According to Dong-A Ilbo article, this will be the first time Asians take both male and female leading roles on the same stage in the Met's 127 year history.

As the Korean sees it, this is one of the examples of Koreans out-white-ing white people in an effort to emulate them. (Here is an earlier post about this topic.) At any venerable conservatory in the U.S., (and perhaps in the world,) Koreans are bursting out of seams singing, dancing, or playing some sort of instrument. As Margaret Cho remarked, she was the first Korean who stood on the stage of Carnegie Hall without a violin. But that by no means takes anything away from Hong and Kim's accomplishments as artists, and kudos from the Korean goes to them. If you are in New York and interested in opera sort of thing, please go watch since La Traviata is a classic. Since the Korean already saw La Traviata, he is more excited about the First Emperor, with Placido Domingo as Emperor Qin.

Rapid Fire of Bad Manners

Hey Korean,

4. Is it true that a Korean man's ga gee is smaller than other races?

6. How come Koreans have table manners of a rabid badger? i.e. my uncle lifted a butt cheek and let one rip at the dinner table and everyone continued to slurp away (in Korea not US).

8. What can a Korean man do to prevent the loss of life burping after a good Korean meal? Mints don't help.

R

Dear R,

4. "ga gee" means an eggplant. It is true that eggplants grown in Korea are smaller than American ones. As to what you were trying to say --ja ji ("penis")--speak for your ssibal self. The Korean would show his to prove otherwise, but there is a court order against such an act.

6. First, the meal was within a family, and there is a certain leeway. Nonetheless, that might have been just your family....

8. .....and you just proved the Korean's theory. Why the hell would you burp? Gargling with [INSERT PRODUCT NAME HERE] tends to help.

The Korean really needs some product placement credit - that could have been a free bottle of Listerine or something. Oh, and sending in 12 questions does NOT help. The Korean appreciates it, but one at a time people.

Off the Boat, but not Landed

Dear Korean,

I went to college in New York and had hung out with 1 1/2 generation immigrants from all over Asia. In my experience Koreans tend to be the slowest to assimilate and to learn English, compared to other East Asians. I'm talking about people who came when they're less than 10 years old who still spoke English in incomplete sentences with a heavy accent. Is that something you have noticed too? If so, what do you think is the reason for that?

Fellow AA

Dear Fellow AA,

“Compared to other East Asians”? That’s a bit misleading, isn’t it? There are only three East Asians – Koreans, Japanese, and Chinese. Japanese people stopped immigrating en masse long time ago, so there are no Japanese FOBs. (“Fresh off the boat,” Asian equivalent to “wab”) So you’re basically comparing Koreans and Chinese. And the Korean did not really notice the difference between those two. (or three, if you want to get technical and separate Mainlanders and Taiwanese.) There are always some group of FOBs among Koreans or Chinese that are always slow to assimilate, no matter how early in their lives they move to the U.S.

The Korean cannot speak for the Chinese folks with any sort of authority, but as far as Koreans go, there are several reasons why this happens. First, these are usually the people who immigrate later than age 8, when the “language instinct window” closes and language learning has to be forced, not automatic. And there are enough Koreans in the U.S. (particularly in big cities) to live a life pretty comfortably without speaking any English, provided that the person has no ambition to make anything out of himself in the American society.

Second, a significant number of Koreans who move to U.S. are precisely of that sort. Many, many Korean students (as young as second graders) come to U.S. because their parents fear that they won’t make it in the brutal educational system in Korea. (And it is brutal indeed, but that’s another story.) But the inevitable truth is that some of those Koreans are too dumb to make it in any educational system, especially the system that runs in a different language. If these kids stayed in Korea, they would be the types who huddle in the back of the class, doing just enough to get by in school, and smoking, drinking, and partying out of school. It’s not all that different from American kids who do the same, because dumbness is evenly distributed across countries, cultures, and languages. It’s just that dumbness manifests itself in a different form—not learning English—for those dumb kids who are stuck in a different culture and language, since, as the Korean said previously about learning language, assimilation is not a walk in the park.

-CORRECTION- The Korean is currently reading The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker, which is a fascinating book. According to the Language Instinct, an average American six-year-old commands 13,000 words (or to be precise, listemes, the term include idioms like “cutting the cheese” whose meaning has nothing to do with “cut” or “cheese”,), and an average American high school graduate knows roughly 45,000 words. My previous entry said 6,000 words to carry a conversation, and 10,000 words to read newspapers. The Korean got the numbers out of memory, which was wrong. The Korean stands corrected.

The Korean's Holiday Season

A quick recap of how the Korean has been doing:

1. Had a grand ol' time with a couple of the Korean's junior high school friends visiting from Korea.

2. Attended Holiday Bowl at San Diego, CA to watch the Korean's alma mater destroy Texas A&M by the score of 45-10.

3. Visited the Korean Cousin - Colorado at Colorado Springs, then traveled around Colorado, skied, checked out sulphur baths, and got snowed in and barely made it back to Los Angeles 16 hours after the Korean Family was supposed to be back.

And the Korean is finally back in New York, sitting through the first day of his last semester at the graduate school. Since the Korean Email Account has a lot of emails stashed away, the blog will be updated vigorously until they are all gone.

Okay, so...

the Korean won't be back just yet. Right now the Korean Family is stuck in Denver, covered in snow. The update will come whenever the Korean can get back to his computer.