Oh, Those Mysterious Koreans

In the KT, University of Maryland University College, Asia sociologist Jon Huer makes those of us without PhD’s feel a whole lot better about ourselves.

Many foreigners who enter Korea try to understand “Korean thinking” but end up finding the enterprise quite baffling and frustrating.

To put it simply, most American businessmen, diplomats, military personnel, tourists, teachers and any number of those who have had a brush with Korea find its thought pattern among the strangest, and its behavioral rationale among the most difficult to comprehend.

Many conclude that Koreans are too impenetrable and weird to understand. They cite the mad-cow protests, the National Assembly brawls, the Internet madness, and now the “Minerva” phenomenon, among others, as examples to demonstrate this sense of incomprehensible strangeness about Korea. If these examples are not good enough to indicate Koreans’ “strange” thinking, another more recent example might suffice.

Yes, I guess this all does look pretty “impenetrable” and “weird”… if you’re completely unfamiliar with the history, culture, society and politics of the country you’re trying to comprehend. But that doesn’t mean their thought pattern is strange. It just means you’re ignorant.

On Jan. 14, a teenager called Gimpo Airport and told them that there was a bomb on board a plane bound for Jeju Island. While suspecting it to be a prank call, the authorities still halted the 18 flights scheduled for the island and took precautionary measures. No evidence of a bomb was found and the flights resumed, but with a terrific bill of extra expenses and inconvenience in the aftermath.

Why aren’t the authorities pushing to enforce the law against the prank calls, which are punishable by up to three-years’ imprisonment? “Because we’re afraid of the reactions [from the public] that the punishment is too harsh.” (Chosun, Jan. 16) Enough said.

No, not enough said. Immediately following that quote (and I’m translating here), “Jeong Bo-hwa of the Civil Aviation Safety Authority said, ‘The police’s light punishment [of prank crimes] as a minor crime has led to copy-cat crimes… I think only if we strengthen punishment by tracking down perpetrators and punishing them harshly will prank calls diminish.” Most of the comments that followed the piece call for the authorities to throw the book at the kid… who was 13. Following more prank call incidents, media — the Seoul Sinmun and MBC, for starters — also called on the authorities to severely punish prank callers.

But you’re right, though. Koreans think strange. Because authorities in other countries never behave in mystifyingly incompetent ways.

This sense of incomprehensibility is surprising to most casual observers because Korea “seems” to be so modern and westernized. Its highways are first rate, its technology some of the most advanced, its cultural consumption among the most affluent. It has one of the best-educated populations in the world.

Amazing! An advanced nation with people who don’t act like Westerners! I mean, shit, next thing, you’ll be telling me Japan is the world’s second largest economy.

Why is Korea so strange and weird, contrary to what’s on the surface? As a sociologist who has lived and taught in Korea for over a decade and as one who believes in rational explanations for all social phenomena, I am going to offer two explanations: geography and language.

This, children, is where it goes from bad to abortion.

As for geography, if you take Europe as the starting point and expand your horizon in both directions, east and west, the Korean Peninsula is seen at the very edge of the world.

Yeah, so?

If Alexander the Great had pushed on toward the “farthest point of the world,” as he had originally wished, he would have stopped in Korea. Of all the nations he encountered on his eastward progress, the cluster of the tiny kingdoms now called Korea would have been at the very edge of the known world.

And if Alexander the Great had gone west rather than east and ended up in the British Isles, he would have encountered some pretty bizarre folk. So?

Indeed, Korea is virtually the remotest tip of the known world to Americans and Europeans. Korea’s social structure, food, clothing, manners of living, language and other aspects of life are some of the “strangest” the Western world has known about. Even Nepal, as remote as it seems from the Western sphere of things, is more familiar than Korea to the rest of the world. No wonder Korea’s internationally-recognized moniker is the “Hermit Kingdom.”

OK, so Korea is far from Europe, and they dress, eat and talk funny. Oh, and it used to be called the Hermit Kingdom… before the 20th century, Japanese colonialism, the Korean War, the Miracle on the Han, the 88 Olympics, 2002 World Cup and StarCraft.

Western civilization never reached Korea, even remotely, until, very oddly, Japan opened it by force in the early part of the 20th century. The strange and alien feelings that the American GI’s had upon coming to Korea during the Korean War (1950-53) are somewhat shared by today’s visitors to Korea if they stay long enough to go deeper than the tourist’s cursory attention.

Going deeper than the tourist’s cursory attention. Hmm, maybe you should try it some time.

As for language, linguists and anthropologists the world over routinely list the Korean Language as one of the most difficult languages, if not the most difficult, to learn. What makes it so is its uniqueness.

The expressiveness of the Korean language and the variations and shades of meaning it is capable of producing is mind-boggling to most Westerners. Even the commonest verb, like “to eat” or “to live,” when combined as a compound verb “to eat and live,” is so loaded with emotions and feelings that only native Koreans can comprehend and communicate them among themselves.

Where did you read that? The Lonely Planet?

Then you add all the combinations and permutations of socio-economic ranks, regional differences, educational levels, familial and gender statuses, and other such assumed situational variations, and it’s no wonder that even the most astute linguist can merely scratch the surface in his effort to penetrate the Korean mind.

Especially if your primary text is the Berlitz phrasebook.

Shrouded in this mind-fog and stranded in this cultural orbit, few Koreans are strong enough or fortuitous enough to escape the Korean uniqueness/strangeness that is ordained in their language. The power of language on the Korean mind is so absolute that even their extensive foreign travels or English learning seem to have failed to produce any influence on their ability to escape into a semblance of global objectivity or modern rationality.

How positively inscrutable!

As a blessing, the language has protected Korea’s identity like a secret code. As a curse, it keeps Korea forever in the black hole of impenetrable oddness.

Funny, I feel the same about Portuguese. I mean, any time I hear Brazilians talk, I can’t understand a word they’re saying. It’s like a secret code that keeps them forever in a black hole of impenetrable oddness.

Brazil is pretty far away, too — it’s like a nine hour flight to Rio from JFK.

Trapped by such immutable aspects of history and culture, Korea will remain strange and incomprehensible to the rest of the world for a long time to come.

Christ, what do they teach at UCLA? I mean, this is two in a row.