Brian at Cathartidae (which sports a spiffy new banner image) has a great post on the annoying people who find it amusing to mockingly discuss us barbarians in our presence. Writes Brian:
My girlfriend and I were in Hongdae today checking up on our cafe and the first day of interior work and ended up having lunch with our interior designer at a small punshik near the Hongik front gates. The ajjuma, somehow impressed with my adroit use of chopsticks, used my presence there to start talking with some other customers about how the foreigners that come into her place will speak Korean with a funny accent.
I fond this, well, pretty damn rude, but sat quietly until the meal was over and we said goodbye to our guest. Later, at McDonalds (which has become our de facto office in Hongdae it seems), I told my girlfriend about what happened and that I was a bit angry about it. My girlfriend was all set to give me the tired spiel about how she didn’t mean anything by it and that foreigners are still rare in Korea.
But I cut her off…
Yeah, that is a pretty annoying situation, although to tell you the truth, I usually feel a mixture of sympathy/shame when the same thing happens to me, mostly on account that, despite having spent seven years here, my spoken Korean is still pretty crappy (and has deteriorated since English became the official language of my yurt), and I probably deserve to be heckled. Still, I can only imagine what would transpire if English-speaking Koreans were to overhear barbarians making derogatory/racist comments aimed at either them personally or their fellow countrymen, so I’d have to say that Brian would be well within the boundaries of propriety if he were to politely (or not so politiely) tell the restaurateur in question that her remarks are not appreciated.
The comments on his post are pretty interesting, BTW - read them.
4 Comments
This pretty much reminds me of something Margaret Cho said at one show, about how even though she doesn’t want to be the only Asian among Caucasians (speaking with regards to her Irish boyfriend’s family), it’s far worst being the only Caucasian among a group of Asians because the Asians say shit about you and they don’t care. Things like “oh you so tall, you monkey, you drink so much milk…”… Something to that effect anyway.
bah. make that “far worse”, not “far worst”.
I’m still wondering whether the situation was as derogatory as it sounds. If the “funny accent” meant “ridiculous”, then surely. But as a speaker of a non-indoeuropean language in a country where especially the English-speakers are not among the exemplary language-learners, I can somewhat sympathize with the ajumma…
As I commented at Cathartidae, “us foreigners lose our appetite if you talk like that” kind of a comment might not be bad.
I was told that my funny accent while speaking Korean sounded like I was from Pusan. (which always brings a smile to ajumma’s face when I say “Chonun Pusan esowaseyo”)I was surprised to hear that there are many “accents” among Korean people. The way my chingu reacted to the accents was even more surprising…comments like “He’s only a country boy” or “I hate the way they speak in Chung gu or Masan” or, on the converse, “Her accent is so cute”… Still unrecognizable to my ears…I will always wonder..Do southern Koreans speak with a drawl?