Anyone on here know much about Korea?

I find Korea quite perplexing, at least one reason for which is the fact that the only cultural measuring-stick against which I (and probably many people) have to understand its people and culture is that proffered by either of the much more prominent neighbours of China or Japan.

Because my interests are primarily religious, I have read some commentators who have stated that the situation in North Korea is at least partly an outcome of millenia-old cultural traditions that bestow an almost god-like status on ancestors, which is precisely the sentiment played on by the northern regime.

Likewise, in more specifically Christian terms, there seems to be a significant propensity for fundamentalism.

If you’ve been, how did/do you experience the culture? How would you describe its main features? On what points would you ‘sell’ it? What would you say are the more problematic features?

On the other hand, if you’ve got experience of living in places like China and Japan and can comment on how Korea might be perceived from those countries, what would say?

I find Korea quite perplexing

er, which one? North or South as there’s quite a lot of difference between them…

Based on the rest of your post I assumed you meant North, but then this bit:

If you’ve been

is unlikely to get many people responding!

<<end of thread>>

I guess that just illustrates my ignorance. I was referring to both, and probably should have said ‘the Koreas’. Having said that, I suppose I would have thought that saying so would be a bit like distinguishing between northern and southern England as if they represented radically different cultural traditions, as opposed to mere regional ones.

South Korea

North Korea

(I don’t know anything about Korea 😉 )

Work colleague and his wife are S Korean, though he went to a (posh) school here and his wife had a very good career here

hes quite westernised, but seems to be a very patriarchal society (that may have been the posh boarding school) he expects his wife to do a lot of things that Id (rightly) get a bollocking for off my missus!!

interesting stuff about the culture of gaming, drinking, schooling that is probably true of other east asian countries

Having said that, I suppose I would have thought that saying so would be a bit like distinguishing between northern and southern England as if they represented radically different cultural traditions, as opposed to mere regional ones

In their current state it’s best to think of them as two separate countries (who just happen to have a similar word in their names) with a shared border. And not in the Scotland/England/Wales sense, not even in the USA/Canada sense.

My brother-in-law has just spent 18 months in South Korea (teaching) and has a lot of interesting things to say about it, (if I have time later I’ll expand on that) though he didn’t travel much while he was there and I don’t think he discussed North Korea much with the locals either.

Despite the common heritage the culture and conditions are so very different as to be incomparable really, even on the border where there is some (little) ‘bleed’ from one to the other.

even on the border

That’s possibly because of the DMZ though?

Welcome to today’s STW unviersity seminar which is today on Korean social and religious issues and is led by SaxonRider. Coffee break at 4 with biscuits.

Can’t offer any insight on the topic except that I gather that Korea has been just as significant a culture as China or Japan at some points in the past and yet all we seem to know about it is that it’s split in half and the southern bit is addicted to online gaming and wacky youtube vids that break the internet.

I like them.

All I can add to this thread, having had a cousin who taught English in South Korea, is the odd practice of Ddong Chim:

http://iliveinkorea.blogspot.co.uk/2010/04/korean-kids-really-like-to.html

Food is good at least it was in the Korean Restaurant in SoHo. (In the south rather than the north I imagine)This is the limit of my knowledge. They have very healthy diet.

All me mates from South Korean, Japan, China and those from S.E. Asia with Confucius heritage have same values, except they would emphasize them slightly differently.

They all have good rice wine and good food … 😆

torsoinalake – Member
All I can add to this thread, having had a cousin who taught English in South Korea, is the odd practice of Ddong Chim:

I absolutely get that joke Ddong Chim. At school we used to play “flick the ball” i.e. when mate is not noticing you walk up pretending to have a conversation and then with a lighting fast quick “flick to his balls” run off laughing when he is in pain … 😆

Like John Snow, I know nothing, but i have an interesting annecdote to share.

As teenager the husband of a family friend, who designed fire safety systems for large fibre optic plants, used to have to travel regularly to ‘Korea’.

I always thought it very cool and was surprised when he said he would dread the prospect of having to travel there again. He had a young family at the time but I still figured that international travel would be seen as something fun and cool.

It was only when I reconnected with the family as an adult did I find out he’d been travelling to North Korea and that whenever he’d been there, apart from the general swfulness of the place, he’d never been left alone for one moment, he’d always had ‘minders’ shadowing and wathcing him. He descriubed the experience as being exactly like ‘1984’.

I’ve got a couple of mates who were born in Sth Korea, came over here to work for a few years and have now gone back.
Bloody lovely peaceful and polite people.

I’m going to visit in September, I may be sometime ..

I know this is nice

Only spent a short time there with work but would love to go back and see more of the country.

Went to Seoul a few weeks ago with work. As you leave the airport you are greeting with this splendid erection (literally!):-

Can’t say much about Korea but Seoul was OK. People are very nice and formal, as people tend to be in that region. The food is very good, as it tends to be in that region. They don’t eat dogs much – its a rare delicacy special dogs are specially bred and most of the locals I spoke to found it just as repulsive a concept as most westerners (though i’d have no problem trying it – i’d eat anything). They have a pretty healthy attitude to the rhetoric that constantly comes from North Korea – they ignore it. Seoul itself is not a particularly attractive city – it’s improving but there are alot of cheap looking buildings put up after the civil war. There is an old part of town but I didn’t get much of a chance to explore.

A work colleague based out there who is a brit and married to a Korean wife likes it. He’s travelled to the North a couple of times – he’s a bit of a plane buff so has gone on a couple of plane spotting trips including last years airshow which was the first they’ve ever held. All the ‘propaganda’ we hear in the west about the North is true and if anything worse. Maps in North Korea don’t even show the South of the country.

Quite an interesting place really, i’d like the opportunity to go back again but this time spend an additional couple of days to have a look around, visit the DMZ, explore the tunnels.

Any excuse for some Korean Kittens

It’s rubbery.

I could tell you about my time in the north korean army….

It was Seoul destroying.

😆

Actually thinking about it I cannot believe that no one has declared NKPR to be a very ronrey place.

*sigh* the good old days:

South Korea …

Dunno if it’s to with Christianity much or not, but their attitude to female children, and children born out of wedlock leaves much to be desired. After the war there were many babies as a result of liaisons with American servicemen and many kids were abandoned. America decided to take many of these orphans, Korea realised it could make money and basically provided children to well meaning westerners.

There is now a huge community of adoptee Koreans all around the world. They don’t get any support from Korea, and if the adoption goes awry, places like America don’t seem keen on keeping them.

Suicide rates and mental health issues are common.

Some adoptees return to Korea but don’t really feel Korean, and tracing parents is difficult because of stigma and corruption.

It’s still going on and churches still operate baby drop boxes so a mother can leave a newborn.

There is a law that in theory enforces parental registration but it’s had the consequence that abandonments are more risky for the baby.

I’m heading there in October with my adoptee girlfriend to help trace her roots. I think we will try and make a wee film.

cbike – Member
Dunno if it’s to with Christianity much or not, but their attitude to female children, and children born out of wedlock leaves much to be desired.

Nothing to do with religion or culture coz it’s the same all over the world.

It is the shame.

Dunno, Filipinos seem to give less of a **** if you’re born out of wedlock to a foreigner. Actually – that country has a reverse problem with it – it’s cool because a lot of the model agencies and tv shows there go for half white/half asian models. It can get a little nauseating when you’re trying not to be viewed as a stereotype by people – “ahhh cool, you’re babies will be tall and less brown” is a response that I feel was/is uncomfortably common.

But the Philippines isn’t really a homogeneous society like Korea is, lots of waves of immigration from various ethnic groups even before the Spanish rocked up and **** the countries national psyche up with 500 years of colonial rule.

I lived in South Korea for one year (2010) teaching English. One of the best years of my life, even though there was certainly some cultural readjusting to do.

The whole North / South divide is a tragic example of how political ideology can destroy a people / race. You can see traits of the North Korean regime in everyday South Korean behaviour which is alien to us in the west, but which I found fascinating.

On the religious / philosophical aspect, they are deeply Confucian, which as you noted is manifest in their ancestor-worship practices. There was one national holiday (Chuseok) where the whole country shuts down and everyone visits their ancestral hometown to pay homage to the dead. The country is mainly agnostic or shamanistic (superstitious beliefs) with some Buddhist and Evangelical Christian missionary sects, but this was the “real” Korean festival which I remember. Another amazing experience I had was visiting a shaman shrine in the mountains in the middle of Seoul.

Korea was intentionally cut off from the rest of the world for many hundreds of years, yet their technology was vastly superior to many Asian countries at many times in their history. They had quite a close relationship to China (sharing many religious, philosophical and linguistic traits) but had quite an antagonistic relationship with the Japanese over their history. Thus, their national character is one of hardiness and wariness to strangers, and a deep insecurity about themselves and their strength, yet once they begin to trust you they are some of the warmest people you will ever come across.

Back to the North Korea situation, this isolationism feeds into the regime’s psyche. Their missile launches, military drills etc, are a bluff designed to project strength. I don’t believe for a second that the North would attack the South, they aren’t that stupid.

Oh yeah, and soju is the product of the devil.

^^^^^
That’s actually a real dish you can order in some seafood restaurants. The “penis worms” are the real delicacy…. 8)

devash – Member
Oh yeah, and soju is the product of the devil.

I like it very much … 😆

I used to sometimes work in New Malden, London / Surrey. Of the 30,000 people that live there, 10,000 are Korean. Fascinating to see

” New Malden is popular because here, new arrivals can speak Korean, eat Korean food, frequent Korean businesses, and spend time with fellow Koreans – almost, really, as if they were in some free, democratic, parallel-world North Korea. Neither Choi nor Kim – nor any North Koreans I spoke to in New Malden – speaks a word of English, sometimes after two decades of living in the UK.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/the-korean-republic-of-new-malden-how-surrey-became-home-to-the-70-year-old-conflict-10063055.html

That’s really helpful. Thanks, devash.

They’re two completely different country that happen to share the same landmass

No desire to go to N Korea

I’ve been to S Korea for work a couple of times, flying visits though.
Didn’t really rate the food
Instant noodles very popular
Can get surprisingly cold
Lots of smokers and drinkers
Unsurprisingly, incredible pride in brands like Samsung
Strangely, very old fashioned (value age and experience over competence, progression is business is often time served. Old men vs women values. Slightly racist? Values koreans over all other nationalities/races/denominations, I bit like business in Japan)

I might have generalised a touch

he expects his wife to do a lot of things that Id (rightly) get a bollocking for off my missus!!

Yeah a good friend spends lots of his time in South Korea and now has a Korean girlfriend. She is quite happy in accepting (culturally) that her place is to undress him and wash him in the shower (+ extras) after a day at work and have food on the table promptly at every mealtime (amongst a great many other things).

But in return, when she visits the UK she expects to get *very* expensive handbags, underwear, clothes etc….

Strangely, very old fashioned (value age and experience over competence, progression is business is often time served. Old men vs women values. Slightly racist? Values koreans over all other nationalities/races/denominations, I bit like business in Japan)

All true, although the racism seemed to be directed at other south east asians with darker skin rather than westerners. There was always stuff on the TV thought about western men trying to steal Korean women which made me laugh.

I thought the food was incredible though. It all comes down to whether you can stomach the kimchi though. I liked sauerkraut so managed to get on with it, although the first time I tried it it was a bit “meh”.

Kimbap (Koerean style Californian rolls), Kimchi Ggigae (spicy cabbage and pork soup), nnengmyon (ice noodles), bibimbap (veg, rice and spicy sauce) and Korean sashimi were all delightful. Ssam gye tang (whole chicken and ginseng soup) was also memorable. I kept away from the dog though.

I flew business class over there, with Korean airways. I thought I’d go native so I had the local food option (to the extent that you can on a plane, but often business class food is good)

I got a bowl of noodles in ice, and some other bowls of stuff. Like an uncooked deconstructed dinner. I was completely lost. I politely waited for others around me to start first, but most had opted for the western options. The 2 Korean ladies next to me had opted for the same thing, but were so busy chatting that they weren’t started

I sat looking like a lost puppy

The air stewardess came up to me and delicately asked if I wanted some help!

I was left very underwhelmed

I didn’t care for the Kimchee. I like spicy food but that just didn’t do it for me

It used to be part of China – according to Trump.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/04/19/trumps-claim-that-korea-actually-used-to-be-a-part-of-china/?utm_term=.01f075f0d40e

Actually I know a lot about Korea, having just been to see The Handmaiden, which is a highly recommended film!

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/may/14/the-handmaiden-review-park-chan-wooks-lurid-lesbian-potboiler-simmers-with-sexual-tension

Korean BBQ. You can eat this every night even in Seoul for around a fiver.