Tired of being called “ajoshi” or “ajuma,” USFK base workers are getting their own name tags:
The name tags would help avoid the common practice of soldiers addressing South Korean base workers as ???ajoshi?? (uncle) or ??ajuma?? (aunt). Several South Korean employees had come forward with badge designs since the proposal was made, Newton said.
Kang Hyung-do, the USFK Korean Employee Union??s Uijeongbu chapter president, said he understands U.S. soldier??s use the words to be friendly with base employees, but that long-term workers ?? and younger employees ?? find the terms offensive.
???We think Col. Newton??s proposal is really great, affirmative and encouraging for us,?? Kang said. ??We hope this ?? can help to improve the human rights of our Korean employees.???
Of course, when I read this, all I could think of was Kim Sun-ah’s Collagen 5000 commercial.
29 Comments
I thought it was customary in the language to call people aunt, uncle, grandmother, grandfather, older brother, older sister?
The note about it being connected with the “human rights” of base workers boggles my mind…..
In my time teaching adults, the base workers were just behind the people over 65 in having a net positive view of the US-SK relationship.
I think a lot of it depends on the tone. You overhear people calling “Ajoshi” or “Ajumma” (even “Agashi”), and most of the time it’s polite or innocuous, but it’s also easy to hear the same thing shouted or called out with derision, condescension, or even animosity (much like “Agashi”). That does tend to ruin it. I can see why a lot of people would think this is a step in the right direction.
B. Carr pretty much summed up the problem.
I’ve seen the inappropriate approach and tone many times on Yongsan base and in Itaewon. Personally when I’m in a store on the base I use Sir/Madam/Miss when addressing Koreans. I don’t see the point (in a base store) of addressing a Korean person in their language unless I can continue to speak in their language.
“Adashee! How much is this, man?!” is rude in many ways, and unfortunately a very typical question on the base.
However, I don’t think name tags will make a difference. I think the US military should make a basic Korean language course mandatory for people who are going to be stationed in Korea beyond one year, civilians as well military pesonnel.
it’s kind insulting to be addressed by those titles if you’re a relatively young person. especially for women.
i was in a bar a few months ago and a 23 year old boy called a 25 year old bartender “ajuma” and i cringed waiting for the bitchslap. fortunately for him, she was stunned speechless and just kept repeating, “did you hear what he called me?”
I am surprised that base workers want name tags .. now you’ll know who to complain about .. some of them tend to be, shall we say, a little bit lazy …. I know, it’s real hard to believe !
Among non-Korean speaking GIs the word “ajoshi” is most often pronounced “adashee” (sometimes shortened just to ’shee) and spoken most often in a disrespectful, contemptuous tone (as if it were “Look here, boy”), and “ajumma” as “ajeema”. The base union leader is pretty generous when he claims the Gis are trying to be friendly. It’s especially insulting when the words are so horribly mispronounced that they can’t be recognized as the originals.
Brandon’s comments can be attested to by anyone who has heard the AFKN ads that talk about calling a taxi-the guy is clearly called adishee. I can see what the base workers are getting at, much like people reffer to people of Hispanic origins in the US as ‘amigo’. The meaning of the word is good but it is the tone that is offensive. I think that trying to connect that to human rights is an abuse of the concept of human rights. By this line of thinking, my personal human rights are violated every time I get into a taxi or walk down the street in Korea.
It’s a reasonable and diplomatic solution… but just imagine how badly some of the names will get mangled! “Damn it, my name is Jeon, not Gee-on!!!”
Also, what if one of the ajoshis is named Park In-bum?
BTW, that commercial was hella funny!
The next step will be for the garrison itself to wear a giant nametage stating, “My name is YOHngsan, not YAHngsan.”
I still think we’re being kind of picky here, no?
I admit I don’t have much experience on base or around GIs a whole lot in Korea. If Brendon and others do, then they can speak better than me on the issue, I concede that point readily, ….but I can easily imagine some ESL teacher I worked with saying the same thing — that “Among non-Korean speaking” teachers, they “always” mispronounce it in a contemptuous manner that Koreans should get pissed off at.
I’m sure I could get this same conversation going at Dave’s ESL Cafe.
We in the expat community are an interesting bunch…
Like with the string of GI crimes last month and the not too uncommon thoughts about how ashamed a person is with GI behavior and seeing them talking loudly in the street or bump and grind on a nightclub dance floor.
I have no problem with finding personal disgust with that by itself….
but is usually quickly followed with “They’d never act like that back home! And it is certainly a disgrace in Korean society among Koreans.”
Well, we haven’t been around the college bar scene (and other bar scenes) in American society if we think it doesn’t go on there.
And then we have that news item from a Korean club where regular people are stipping in a sexy dance contest………suprised the heck out of me, but I went around enough to see some odd things in Korean-only night spots. And you’d have to have your head buried in concrete (not sand) to miss the prostitution industry in Korea………so after my first year in Korea, I always got a little itchy when this conversation would come up as I just decribed it…
Sometimes it seems like the expat community is pretty self-loathing. It isn’t just an anti-soldier thing. Like I said, you get reams of it on the ESL boards too talking about the loser expat instructors who only came to Korea because they couldn’t get a date backhome and were too stupid to find a job yada yada yada….
I guess what I’m saying is I’ll need more information or experience before I can picture this article making sense.
Spanish isn’t Korean. In Korean, you hear people say uncle, aunt, older brother, older sister, grandmother, grandfather all the time. It is a custom in the language. Korean, Japanese, and Chinese are honoric type languages….I forget the term for them…..they have such things built into the grammar.
So it is hard for me to quickly jump to a negative interpretation when I hear about GIs (or any expats) trying to use those terms when speaking to Koreans.
It is somewhat like when one of the USFK accidents happen where someone is killed or severly injured, and the US officer goes to the hospital and gives the small amount of bereavment money, and the Korean press (and my students) express anger at the audacity of USFK to think the life or limb was only worth that little sum of money….
Maybe if this article were some story about how the GIs go around using the lowest level sentence enders, or the term for younger brother/sister, as if they were speaking to someone below them in age or station, instead of (yo) or (sumnida) I could picture it better and understand the indignation.
But, it isn’t easy for me to picture the reason for the angst being the soldiers using what is standard in Korean grammar.
(Maybe, and I’m guessing based on students I’ve taught over the years who worked on base, part of it is that the Koreans feel that since they are in a non-Korean environment, and they have worked hard for years to gain English language skills, they’d prefer being spoken to as if they could speak English????)
Next, how much are we to dock them for mispronunciation?
I worked with a 50 year old Canadian who mangled “kamsahamni-da”. I tried to tell him the more correct pronouncition, but he just didn’t get it. And the way he worked at trying to say it, he looked a little odd and always drew a smile from the people.
He was making the effort.
Again, I haven’t been around base PXs much or with GIs out and about in the town. Others who really have been know better than me. Maybe I am giving them too much credit. Maybe some other people have spent a lot of time out with soldiers and have seen them using aunt and uncle as insults to Korean shop workers and such.
But, I’ve been in this same type conversation so many times….and with coworkers I know had spent hardly any time out and about in Korea with anybody but coworkers from the school……….
It still sounds like an odd thing to me. Especially the length it was taken to in the article — that it was a human rights issue.
And as I said, another reason it struck me as odd is the fact that the group of Korean adults I taught that were fairly pro-GI and pro-US alliance were base workers. The few adults over 50 I taught back then were probably the most often pro-US, but base workers were 2nd, and for some reason it doctors and nurses were 3rd.
(After those three, it fell off a cliff……)
On the name thing……
Thanks to the Korean government changing the spelling, we are going to have to have my wife’s name officially changed in the US, because nobody has a clue how to pronounce “Seon Hee”.
She can be just Sunny.
I worked for a publisher that included light Korean-teaching materials and they chose in one book to introduce basic grammar and a lot of getting-around vocabulary in the new Romanization system. Their feedback, from people entirely unaware of the controversy surrounding the Romanization problems, was nearly universal in saying something along the lines that the Romanization was “utterly useless.”
usinkorea (#9), I see your point about trying, and that is important, but the way some people use the word, the tone and circumstances they use it, I mean, it really does come out as derisive or condescending. And I emphasize here some. Anyway, I do spend a considerable amount of time on the local military base, so this story didn’t surprise me.
Like “Boy” or something like that. (I once heard an old guy on base, probably in his sixties or seventies, call a thirty-something female worker over by yelling, “Mama-san” to her, but that’s not completely related to this.)
There have been stories coming out of Iraq about troops referring to Iraqi men as “hajj” or “hajji” in a derogatory manner, notwithstanding the fact that the term is an honorific applied to one who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca.
I don’t have trouble imagining it happening like that.
But since I don’t have enough experience of my own, I have to imagine it as a trend or a limited event based on other people’s recollection.
And as I said, I grew wary of these conversations after listening to ESL teachers making strong claims when I knew for a fact they had even less experience than I did in that setting.
There is something about being a foreigner in another country that leads people to jump at conclusions more readily than they might snuggled in their own culture.
And this happens jumping toward the positive as well as the negative….
Kind of like how with Koreans, if you try to use some Korean, or say something about Korean history that really only shows you might have flipped through a travel book, they will shower you with praise for being almost a Korean. How showing a little interest easily translate to them that you are investing a great amount of time and attention and heart into learning about their culture.
on note #11.
If I remember correctly, the government sponsored group Korea had study the romanization system came back with an original recommendation to keep the old system. They said it was about the best you could do even with the little funny marks above some of the vowels.
And I heard one of the primary reasons for throwing that recommendation out and telling them to devise another was was the fact that the old system was created by non-Koreans.
My wife wants Sunny - but my father had two male cousins we call that - and my wife said she likes the way I put a pause in the name for the “H” and she likes that better than the “sunny” pronounciation.
So, I’m trying to talk her into Sun-Hee.
But she doesn’t like the -.
But I told her if she doesn’t put it in, everyone is going to call her “Sun.”
And I heard one of the primary reasons for throwing that recommendation out and telling them to devise another was was the fact that the old system was created by non-Koreans.I have heard that, too, but I don’t recall seeing any substantiation. Every time I’ve dug deeper, it has always turned out to be conjecture or repeated rumor.
I think the reasons for changing are because of two factors: the ones stated in the NAKL’s introduction (which I don’t agree warrant scrapping the older, better system) and also, according to one source close to it, because the NAKL people at that time wanted to leave their mark on something.
Just a thought: Is it possible, the condescending tone could have been picked up from the locals themselves? Maybe the military guys think that is the “proper” way to say it?
I have noticed that “tone” among Koreans here in my area, specifically among the males.
As far as pronunciation, I think Americans should be given the benefit of the doubt. To foreign ears, it can be very difficult to tell the difference.
I like the idea of Korean language classes, especially if taught by someone who can pronounce the words correctly (like a Korean, perhaps). Even if it is just easy things like how to address a Korean person properly, or how to say thank you.
mrstkdsd (#18), I doubt that is the case. What words local Koreans would be addressing them with (e.g., sonnim off base or an English “Sir” on base) would be different from those in question. The words and tone are not being mimicked.
Again, I want to point out that this is only some of the USFK personnel and DoD employees (and their guests), not all.
I was speaking of agashi and ajoshi, not sonnim.
I realize I made a generalization, and I didn’ mean to.
More often than not, its the males, and it could be more of a sexist thing (at least in the case of agashi).
I can also understand the younger people not wanting to be addressed as an older person.
It just seems like the people that are offended are being a little too sensitive. The Koreans I come in contact with appreciate my attempts to use their language, even if I mispronounce words.
“Personally when I??m in a store on the base I use Sir/Madam/Miss when addressing Koreans. I don??t see the point (in a base store) of addressing a Korean person in their language unless I can continue to speak in their language.”
See….it is lines like that that muddy the waters of comprehension for me.
I can picture a GI or ESL guy saying in a rude voice, “Hey boy! How much for this?”
But, when an example or statement saying that is how it is fairly often done comes in the same comment as the above sentence, I start to have doubts.
What I mean is, if you (the generic you) already have the idea that you shouldn’t try to mix in some Korean with your English on a basic level because it is wrong or awkward or a minefield for potential misunderstanding or something like that
“It just seems like the people that are offended are being a little too sensitive.”
That is a doubt I have too.
And if the GIs want to be somewhat insulting with their use of Korean, I would think they would do a better job of it if they were to learn to use the lowest form verb/sentence ender and toss out any Yo-s or sumnida-s…..
“And I can??t see anything wrong with an expat throwing in a Korean word or two without having to first learn the language enough to be conversational.”
Certainly, but that’s not what the Koreans on base are complaining about. There are many people who use ajoshi and ajumma incorrectly because they have never learned, (and in most cases have no intention to ever learn) the basics of Korean language. It’s something like the equivalent of “Yo!” in English.
Aside from the name tag business and allegedly rude soldiers, I think it’s rich that any Korean people complain of rudeness–in stores people routinely bark out demands for something and in restaurants yell “Here!” at the top of their lungs. This is never prefaced by “excuse me,” “please,” or “thank you,” except from me, Mr. Foreigner, because I like to see the looks of surprise and big smiles from people who are being treated like a human being for a change.
Well, part of politeness comes out in linguistic differences. So, even when Koreans don’t use a word like ‘please’, language structure can imply it, and verb conjugation can show it. It’s not always necessary to use ‘????’ or ‘??’, because it’s being said in other ways.
But how about the folks who violate that norm? For example, how about Koreans who use ????? with non-Koreans, when the social norm doesn’t support it? I don’t mean the folks working in the local ???????????? - you expect to find that kind of language on the street, so it’s no big deal. But that can also happen in stores (heck, it’s even happened to me in a bank), and it’s infuriating when Korean customers are spoken to in Korean much more politely than am I - a well-dressed middle-aged non-Korean, who is also using Korean (politely, too, ’cause that’s the way we’re taught in school). Once you study a language, you learn what people say and how they say it, and you’ll also discover that it’s not all that difficult to find Koreans who violate their own culture norms when they speak with non-Koreans.
I hear you gbnhj, and I suppose that yelling “Yogi-o!” at the waitress is marginally polite because of the ending, but come on. People mainly speak formal Korean with me, which is kind of a waste because I only understand a fraction of it
Anyway, I don’t give a damn about the conjugations, I just want people here to stop walking into me and cutting in front of me in lines….
People mainly speak politely to me, but not usually formally - that’s where I’d say ‘come on’
The situation that I mentioned in #25 is not the norm, but it happens. BTW, the next time someone cuts in front of you, try saying ‘Cheogi - jaega moonja wussuyo’ (’Excuse me - I was here first.’) with a kind of dour look, and they should stop quickly enough.
Agree with gbnhj on #25. It’s always a double-standard. Lotsa people are very unpolite with foreigners, because mainly we don’t belong into their social scheme. A good remedy ?? but you need a good command of Korean ?? is to give them a taste of their own medicine.
Another thing that irritates me is the unwillingness of Koreans to use [at least to Korean-speaking fuhreenas] ????? [ranks, titles] as they would with Koreans. I had to give a lot of crap to a cop [don't ask] to call me ????????? when I was a prof @ HUFS, and ????????? + ?????? is apparently very difficult to conjugate. But here again, call them ????*??* and they stop pretty fast…
In talking about prejudice and whatnot in Korea with new teachers, I always told them if they made the effort to go out and about in Korea, they (the non-black ones) might have 1 or possibly 2 negative run ins with a Korean a year at most, but…….they would frequently get better treatment in restaurants and shops and such, especially outside of Seoul, than Korean customers just because they are foreign and exotic.
I don’t call Koreans terribly rude, but there is a big difference between the concept of customer service in Korea than, well, at least what I’m used to in the southern states in the US (and in a couple of other states I’ve lived in). (I threw in the “well” because I suddenly had flashbacks to living in Miami……..)