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Koreans are fighters, certainly, but no more than anyone else, I don’t think, and it’s not like it’s a cherished part of Korean culture or anything. What is a part of Korean culture is to ignore people who are outside your circle of personal friends/acquaintances/family. If someone’s not in your circle, they are an unperson, so a) their feelings are not considered b) you can be unembarrassed about airing your dirty laundry, in whatever form.

So if these folks are indeed Korean, making friendly overtures so that you impinge on their humanradar (depending on how old-skool Korean they are (ie if they hew fairly closely to the usual Korea-Korean norms, it’ll work)) might just make you a person to them, in which case they’ll be too ashamed to make all that noise.

Someone else suggested in no uncertain terms that they thought my suggestions were bigoted, which completely shocked me (and pretty much everyone else). After one of those interminable long arguments about what constitutes racism and what doesn’t, it seemed like my use of the word ‘unperson’ had triggered a strong response, which wasn’t intended. I should probably have used a word a little less emotive. Live and learn. In the course of that argument, which ended up involving a good hundred people, I offered the following mini-essay about some Korean Kultural Konstructs, and I thought I’d share it here.

So this is what I said. It was off the cuff, and I was angry, so I’ll apologize upfront for inaccuracies.

Go:

[Have a look at some background material], and then I’ll try to pull some threads together into a nice package:

Some of the forces at play in molding some of the ways in which some Koreans tend to perceive both themselves (that is, their own identities) and others with whom they interact (as well as Korean Identity as a whole) are the concepts of chemyeon (face, sort of), neunchi (sensitivity to social subtext), kibun (personal mood+life force), bunuiki (group mood), cheong (loving attachment to one’s immediate circle), and han (sorrow and rage angainst injustice). All of the translations I’ve offered are weak and inaccurate. For the most part, none of these words translate well (or at least pithily) into English: we know the feelings, perhaps, but they are very difficult indeed to discuss. I believe one of the strengths of Korean, and one of the reasons Korean folks can speak of cultural norms so easily, is that they have single words to describe them.

Each of these deals with the way one interacts with the group, or the way the group impinges on one’s identity and emotions. This is no accident. Koreans are brought up (this is changing, as all things are, but not as much as much else in the country) to understand their indentity within various overlapping circles, the first, of course, being strongly-connected family. Marriages are the binding of families, not individuals (many marriages in the past were arranged: some still are), for example. Extended families are still the norm. The elderly (less so, again, than in the past) are almost never put in retirement homes or the like. Brothers and sisters share a generational name (one syllable amongst the three syllables that constitute 95% of all Korean names). The list goes on. As I said here:

Relationship words are blanket nouns denoting relationships between people that are commonly used in informal conversation between people, rather than given names – older brother, younger sister, uncle, auntie, grandmother and so on. (In the slummy, thin-walled building I used to live in in Busan, it was de rigeur on Saturday nights to hear sounds of passion and female cries of ‘Opa! Oh, opa! (older brother)’ from the playboy-next-door’s apartment.) These extend to the common practice of referring to a woman as ’so-and-so’s mother,’ rather than using her given name.

In a restaurant, on the street, wherever: one calls people (in Korean) ‘uncle’, or ‘auntie’ if they’re older, or ‘grandfather’ or ‘grandmother’, regardless of their relationship. There are a thousand variations.

This and more stands in contrast to the western tradition of identity being predicated on the individual, on him or her first, followed by context. In Korea, it’s context first. (It is amusing to me at least to note that when we say something like ‘hey buddy’ to someone we don’t know in English, it’s usually in an aggressive tone or situation.)

Another thread to this, and part of the reason this is so, is that Korea is the most Confucian country in the world. Confucian ideas are relevant here because (as I also wrote earlier)

Confucius focused on the need to maintain social order though willing or unwilling submission to the five primary relationships :

1. Ruler and subject
2. Parent and child (teacher and student)
3. Husband and wife
4. Older and younger person
5. Friend and friend

All of these relationships are explicity hierarchical, excepting, significantly perhaps, the last, although friendship of a Confucian bent is a considerably more meaningful proposition, it may be argued, than ‘buddies’ in North America might be.

Confucian beliefs permeate Korean society, for better and for worse (egregious sexism is a downside, for example). Regardless, here it is again one’s relationships that define who you are, and what you can and cannot do. Note (because it’s unfortunately necessary, it seems to say so) that these are generalizations about an entire nation, not a taxonomy of the beliefs of any given individual.

It might be said that Buddhist beliefs have some influence (honoring the god inside the other) here, and that may be the case, but Korea is about 45% Christian, and both Buddhism and Christianity are just veneers on the old animist beliefs, to an extent, anyway, so I won’t go there.

But when you put together the confucian primary relationships together with ideas like ‘cheong’ and ‘bunuiki’, and believe deep in your bones that proper, civilized behaviour means acting in accordance with these baked-in ideas, Korean people are left in a deep and difficult-to-resolve quandary: you can’t behave in accordance with these principles with everyone. It’s just not possible to treat the taxi driver and the garbageman, the kid behind the counter at the 7-11 or the guy in the next car at the stoplight as part of your primary relationship group (family, friends, coworkers, bosses, alumni).

So what happens? Well, if you’re not part of one of the groups that count, then you are more or less in my way. I’ll call you ‘uncle’ or ‘auntie’, but that’s as far as it goes. Not all Koreans are rude or unpleasant to everyone not in their circles, of course. This is not what I am saying.

But manifestations of this are everywhere, and it’s only in part hierarchy. People are (to a western eye) shockingly rude to waitresses (there are no male servers, for the most part), to clerks at shops. In their cars, they seem to ignore other drivers, and pedestrians. Neighbours, especially if you haven’t met them, effectively don’t exist. Regionalism has made an internecine battlefield of Korean politics. Park Chung Hee’s graduating class made up most of the government during his military rule, and the same thing happened when Chun Du Hwan took power, with his class, in 1979. Examples of both inside-group and outside-group thinking are everywhere.

That said, Koreans can be amongst the kindest and most welcoming of people, particularly to foreigners who are so far outside the inside-group that they need to be thought in entirely new ways — in other words, as individuals. And once a foreign person becomes part of a cheong relationship — with family, friends, coworkers, whatever — you’ll find it hard to find people as loyal.

Are people outside the circle ‘unpersons’, as I suggested? Well, I think so, even if [my accuser] understood the word to mean ’sub-human’ (I did not). But it’s not a value judgement, it’s a coping mechanism. [My accuser] was overlaying his (reasonable) beliefs, based on his culture (I assume he’s not Korean), about ‘all men being equal’ to the situation, and gleaning a mistaken understanding that there was a boot on someone’s forehead if I was correct, or that I was racist for saying what I did, even though I did not intend my comment to be disapproving, merely explanatory.

So: in general (again, weasel words that are made necessary by the pointing finger of disapprobation) Koreans tend to immediately slot other Koreans into one of two buckets, and the second bucket is the large one. In that bucket is everybody who just doesn’t matter as much, and is treated in that way, because otherwise daily interactions would be untenably complicated, people whose identity, affiliations, family, status, educations and age are unknown, and who therefore can’t jump into the first bucket until some relationship is established. (This is, for example, why every book you read that talks about doing business with Koreans seems confused about why Korean businessmen insist on trying to establish some personal link, and may ask what seem like overly-personal questions. It’s not irrational or sentimental, it’s baked-in to the culture.)

I haven’t made a complete tour here (by any means), and it would take a full book to do justice to the topic, anyway, I think (one which I’ve often thought of writing), but hopefully someone found this useful or interesting.

Note that although most of what I say here is something you could read in any textbook, some of my conclusions and dotted-line drawings are my own.

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Well, despair no more, friends, because I’m going to give you the beginnings of a Rosetta Stone for ordering Korean food with style and aplomb and hopefully not too much embarrassed-for-you giggling.

It might help a little to peruse Learning to Read Korean Part 1 and Part 2 (Parts 3 and 4 are upcoming) before you jump in, but I’ll try and provide some phonetic cues in this article which will make it unnecessary to actually be able read Korean (that said, it’s really easy, so I encourage you to give it a go!)

Throughout this article, I’ll use the Korean, then the revised romanization, then a phonetic approximation for those who are not familiar with the sounds of Korean (regrettably, a prerequisite for proper pronunciation of the revised romanization scheme), then the translation.

An example: 밥 – bap, ‘bahp’, rice (cooked)

Dining Customs

In Korea, you order your main dish, which is frequently some kind of soup or stew, often served individually in a heated stone or clay bowl to each diner, or in a larger pot or pan in the center of the table over a gas fire, which is shared amongst everyone at the table. Also shared are the constellation of 반찬 (banchan, ‘bahnchahn’, side dishes) — the more there are, the more sumptous the meal is perceived to be. It is perfectly fine to ask for more of a given side-dish if it’s all eaten (and is provided without charge), and it is unnecessary to eat all of the each of the side dishes (and in fact might give a bit of an impression of gluttony).

Everyone also gets a small individual lidded stainless (or sometimes ceramic) bowl of short-grain, glutinous rice, which you are generally expected to finish. Long-grain, ‘fluffy’ rice is almost unheard of — if that’s what you get in an overseas Korean restaurant, it’s just not the Real Thing. The rice bowl is customary kept to the diner’s left, and the soup or stew to the right. Stainless steel chopsticks and long-handled shallow steel spoons are customary, although Korean folks (overseas or in touristed areas of Korea) may try and be ‘helpful’ and give you a fork. Be gracious, thank them, and put it aside in favour of the chopsticks. Many restaurants (but by no means all) have areas with floor seating and table-and-chair seating; the former is, of course, the traditional style.

Food is very regional, and every little village and town has its own specialties, for which, according to the locals of that hamlet, it is justifiably famous. Regions also tend to have their own takes on standard dishes like 김치 (kimchi) or 김밥 (kimbap) or 비빔밥 (bibimbap).

Some etiquette no-nos if eating with Koreans (or just trying to be polite a la mode Koreane): don’t

• blow your nose at the table
• pick up your utensils and start eating before the eldest person at the table does so
• stick your chopsticks upright in your rice and leave them (edit: this is done with the rice offering during annual graveside ceremonies to honour ancestors, and so is inappropriate to do at a convivial dinner)
• pour your own liquor — watch what others are doing (the matter of drinking etiquette deserves its own essay, which I’ll tackle sometime later

Answers.com mentions a few other things as constituting bad table manners

Bad manners include [...] chewing with an open mouth, talking with food in one’s mouth, [...] stabbing foods with chopsticks, mixing rice and soup, and picking up food with one’s hands…

As far as I’ve seen in 10 years here, those are pretty much nonsense, at least in any but the most absolutely formal of situations.

The Language Of Food

Here are some vocabulary elements that show up in the names of various foods, and will help you to guess what category, at least, the dish might fit into.

밥 – bap, ‘bahp’, rice (cooked)
장 – jang, ‘jahng’, paste
자장 – jajang, ‘jahjang’, black bean paste
된 – doen, ‘dwehn’, fermented soy beans
고추 – gochu, ‘gohchoo’, hot pepper
김 – gim, ‘k/gim’, dried laver seaweed (the initial sound is partway between ‘k’ and ‘g’, usually romanized in the past as ‘k’) (note also, that it’s not the same 김 and the one in 김치 (kimchi).
떡 – deok, ‘dduhk’, chewy rice cake (the inital ‘d’ is highly aspirated)
두부 = dubu, ‘dooboo’, tofu
고기 – gogi, ‘gogee’, meat
닭 – ‘dak’, ‘dahk’, chicken
돼지 – ‘doeji’, ‘dwehjee’, pork
감자 – ‘kamcha’, ‘kahmcha’, potato
회 – hoe, ‘hweh’, raw fish or other raw seafood
찌개 – jjigae, ‘jeegay’, soup or stew
탕 – tang, ‘tahng’, soup or stew
국 – guk, ‘gook’, soup or stew
면 – myeon, ‘myuhn’, noodles
주 – ju, ‘joo’, alcoholic beverage (소주, 맥주, 동동주, etc)
차 – cha, ‘chah’, tea
물 – mul, ‘mool’, water
불 – bul, ‘bool’, fire

비빔 – bibim, ‘beebeem’, mixed
냉 – neng, ‘nehng’, cool or cold

Those syllables (there are many many more, of course) are enough to get you well down the path of figuring out the most common Korean menu items! Let’s start putting them together and see what we get. (

된+장 = fermented soy bean + paste: one of the most common bases for soups and stews.
고추+장 = hot pepper + paste: the other most common flavouring, after 마늘 maneul, ‘mahneuhl’, garlic)

See how easy it is?

How about the everyday light meal or snack, 김밥?

Well, 김+밥 = seaweed rice, which is what it is. Rice with goodies, wrapped in a seaweed roll. Sushi roll ahoy!

How about that old dinner standby, 불고기?

불 + 고기 = fire meat. Sounds painful, but it’s the grilled marinated beef that is iconic of Korean BBQ. Variations are 닭 불고기 (chicken + fire + meat) and 돼지 불고기 (pork + fire + meat).

Now, let’s put together some even longer dish names, why don’t we?

된장찌개 = 된+장+찌개 = soybean + paste + stew.
김치찌개 = 김치+찌개 = kimchi + stew.
두부 찌개 = 두부+ 찌개 = tofu stew. Woohoo!

What about that other everyday Korean food that everybody knows and loves, 비빔밥?

비빔+밥= mixed + rice, which is exactly what it is (except you do the mixing, which adds to the Power of the Delicious, if you do it right). And, of course, it’s what you mix in with the rice and the 고추장 that makes it sing. A sunnyside-up fried egg on top is mandatory, in my humble.

Let’s try that again with another noun. How about

비빔면 = 비빔+면 = mixed noodles, the noodle equivalent of 비빔밥.

A standard Koreanized Chinese food is 자장면. What’s that?

자장 + 면 = black bean paste + noodles.

One of my all-time favorite Korean foods is 냉면. What does that mean?

It’s easy: 냉+면 = cold + noodles.

We can get even fancier, because there are two kinds of 냉면.

물 냉면 = water + cold + noodles (cold buckwheat noodles in a cool broth)
비빔 냉면 = mixed + cold + noodles (cold buckwheat noodles with veggies and seasoned pepper sauce, that you mix in the bowl in much the same way you mix 비빔밥, of course!)

Fantastic stuff in the summer time.

And, last but not least, we can now read the label on that old favorite from university days, ramyeon (ramen in Anglified Japanese).

ramyeon = 라면 = 라 + 면 = ra + noodles. I dunno what ‘ra’ means, but it’s darn tasty.

Cool, huh?

Now, I won’t pretend that this list is exhaustive, and there are synonyms and other words for some of these things, as well as many, many more ingredients and combinations Just a few tastes from the groaning buffet table. But after studying these building blocks, you should be able to navigate your way through that Korean-language menu on the wall with a little bit more authority.

Good luck!

(If you have any additions or corrections, feel free to leave a comment, below.)

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Here, you watch it, and decide what you think.

See, here’s the thing. Or the things. I’ve mostly gotten over the kind of pop-eyed apoplectic rage I used to feel when advertisers used rocknroll songs I loved as the soundtracks for their shills. It doesn’t bother me any more — I’ve made great strides in anger management over the years. So if LG wants to use The Clash’s Revolution Rock to sell mobile telephone services, well, I can live with that, even if I don’t like it much.

But I’m wondering if they had anyone who could speak English vet these lyrics:

Revolution rock, it is a brand new rock
A bad, bad rock, this here revolution rock
Careful how you move, Mac
you dig me in me back
And I’m so pilled up that I rattle
I have got the sharpest knife
so I get the biggest slice
I got no time to do battle

It seems a bit rogueish for an arm of one of the biggest chaebol in the country, one that owns so much of it, to be admitting “I have got the sharpest knife, so I get the biggest slice”. And being “so pilled up that I rattle” might be one heck of a fun way to spend a lost weekend, but it’s a bit much in Korea, where the last I heard one could still get the death penalty for it. But the imagery and lyrics, coupled with the tagline, are the bits that have me trying to figure out if this is clever or clueless.

Everybody knows about the Korean predilection for public demonstrations. Often violent ones. It’s probably one of the enduring images that the outside world has of Korea, much as the government would like for it to fade away — headbands, fists in the air, chanting hordes, riot cops younger than the demonstrators cowering behind plexiglass shields, blood, fire. So an ad showing people spontaneously joining some kind of mob, admittedly happy and brandishing cell phones rather than molotov cocktails, well, that’s just cheeky. And flashing the tagline “Join the Movement” at the end? Is it a clever reference to and inversion of that enduring image in the minds of foreigners?

I don’t know. I just don’t know. Crass, sure. But being semi-convinced that the Makers of Marketing Decisions at LG didn’t understand much of the lyrics of that song other than the word ‘revolution’ just doesn’t jibe with the bit that impressed me the most — the tagline “Join the Movement” pops up right after Joe Strummer sings “I got no time to do battle”.

It’s either brilliant or just plain lucky. I have no idea which.

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The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, which is variously referred to as the ‘Whorfian Hypothesis,’ ‘linguistic relativism,’ and ‘linguistic determinism’ (a description of the strong formulation meant by implication to be a bad thing, I think) concerns the relationship between language and thought, and suggests in its strongest form that the structure of a language determines the way in which speakers of that language perceive and understand the external world. This formulation is generally understood by many to be untenable, but the hypothesis also exists in a weaker form : that language structure and content does not determine a view of the world, but that it shapes thought to some degree, and is therefore a powerful impetus in influencing speakers of a given language to adopt a certain world-view.

A possible opposite claim, from a sociolinguistic viewpoint, is that the thought (and thus culture) of a linguistic group is mirrored in the structure and content of their language, that because they behave and understand things in a certain way, their language reflects those behaviours and understandings — the idea that language is molded, if not determined, by culture.

Two quotes from the linguists whose names are most closely associated with this idea, the first from Edward Sapir (Language, 1929b, p. 207) :

Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language that has become the medium of excpression for their society. It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection. The fact of the matter is that the ‘real world’ is to a large extent unconsiously built up on the language habits of the group…We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation.(Sapir, E. Language, 1929b, p. 207)

Benjamin Lee Whorf, who was a student of Sapir, went further than the ‘predisposition’ suggested by his teacher, and proposed that the relationship was a more deterministic one :

the background linguistic system (in other words, the grammar) of each language is not merely a reproducing instrument for voicing ideas but rather is itself the shaper of ideas, the program and guide for the individual’s mental stock in trade. Formulation of ideas is not an independent process, strictly rational in the old sense, but is part of a particular grammar, and differs, from slightly to greatly, between different grammars. We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages. The categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a kaleidoscope flux of impressions that has to be organized by our minds — and this means largely by the linguistic system in our minds. We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way, an agreement that holds throughout our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language. The agreement is, of course, an implicit and unstated one, but its terms are absolutely obligatory; we cannot talk at all except by subscribing to the organization and classification of data which the agreement decrees.
(Whorf, Benjamin, (1956). In J, Carroll (Ed.), Language, Thought and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf.

Whorf does not go so far as to say that language structure totally determines the world-view of a speaker here. He does add, though :

This fact is very significant for modern science, for it means that no individual is free to describe nature with absolute impartiality but is constrained to certain modes of interpretation even while he thinks himself most free. The person most nearly free in such respects would be a lingusit familiar with very many widely different linguistic systems. As yet no linguist is any such position. We are thus introduced to a new principle of relativity, which holds that all obcervers are not led by the same physical evidence to the same picture of the universe, unless their linguistic backgrounds are simialr, or can in some way be calibrated.

This last is where the argument runs off the rails for me, at least the argument in which I have any interest. It is also the portion of the idea upon which most critics focus, and which was fueled by the Great Eskimo Snow Silliness set off in great part by this :

We have the same word for falling snow, snow on the ground, snow packed hard like ice, slushy snow, wind-driven flying snow – whatever the situation may be. To an Eskimo, this all-inclusive word would be almost unthinkable; he would say that falling snow, slushy snow, and so on, are sensuously and operationally different, different things to contend with; he uses different words for them and for other kinds of snow.
(Whorf, Benjamin Lee. 1940. Science and linguistics, Technology Review (MIT) 42, 6 (April))

and which has been discussed at length in many places, including, cogently here, for example.

To most people, particularly those with little knowledge of Hardcore Linguistics, including myself, the weaker form of Sapir-Whorf seems self-evident. Of course the words we use, the words we know, have some influence on the way we think! The very fabric of our cognition is language, it might well be claimed (but of course that would be a claim that would meet great opposition as well). There is, predictably, great argument about what constitutes ‘mentalese,’ the native language of our minds, as it were). Do words determine the shape of our thoughts? Well, it seems equally clear that that’s nonsense, and though it may and can be argued, it must be said most people don’t bother to try.

Steven Pinker, who was the entry point to the brief exchange between Kevin and I a few weeks ago, calls the idea ‘linguistic determinism,’ and argues as most do that the strong version is nonsense. A student of Noam Chomsky, he works from Chomsky’s idea of ‘Cartesian linguistics,’ that the brain has a ‘hard-wired’ built-in language acquisition device with an understanding of ‘universal grammar’, and suggests that language acquisition is an instinct. If we accept that language is an instinct, as Pinker and his mentor Unca Noam argue, it seems as if we must reject the proposition that language shapes thought. Some consequences of this :

Thinking of language as an instinct inverts the popular wisdom, especially as it has been passed down in the canon of the humanities and social sciences. Language is no more a cultural invention than is upright posture. It is not a manifestation of a general capacity to use symbols: a three-year-old … is a grammatical genius, but is quite incompetent at the visual arts, religious iconography, traffic signs and the other staples of the semiotics curriculum[...]

[...] Once you begin to look at language not as the ineffable essence of human uniqueness but as a biological adaptation to communicate information, it is no longer tempting to see language as an insidious shaper of thought, and, we shall see, it is not.
(Pinker, S (1994). The Language Instinct New York: William Morrow and Company Inc.)

In this, Pinker seems to be arguing not only against the idea that culture shapes language, but also the against idea that language shapes culture (by shaping thought). The use of the pejorative ‘insidious’ is a little unnecessary, but I’m not one who should poke people with sticks for using flowery language.

In his discussion of the idea, Pinker suggests three possibilities for interpretation:

(a) identicality: that language determines thought precisely, word-for-word;
(b) concept determinism: language determines (to an unspecified degree) what we
can think (doubleplus ungood!);
(c) linguistic relativity: that the form of our language (merely) influences what we tend to believe.

In Chapter 12 of The Language Instinct (quoted to me by Kevin), it seems that Pinker does concede the weak form :

Language surely does affect our thoughts, rather than just labelling them for the sake of labelling them. Most obviously, language is the conduit through which people share their thoughts and intentions and thereby acquire the knowledge customs and values of those around them.

Some commentators apparently do not take this as evidence that Pinker is admitting the weak formulation (c, above) of Sapir-Whorf. As I do not have access to a copy of The Language Instinct (no English language libraries and no damn money!), I’ll have to take their word for it.

The amount of time and energy that’s been expended on arguing about how vocabulary effects cognition surprises me, frankly. I think there’s a much more interesting discussion about grammar and deeper structures here that often seems ignored, at least in what reading I’ve managed to do.

The effect of such things on language users seems to me to be more pervasive and more subtle than simple differences in richness or breadth of vocabulary, on which most work and thought has seemed to focus.

One reason I believe this to be so is as a result of some of the fundamental differences in language structure between Korean and English (and to a great extent, the other European languages with which I have some familiarity). Please note that I neither claim to be a expert in Korean language (more of a lazy amateur), nor have I conducted any experiments or formal observations. First, some background. There are three ideas with some circulation about the earliest genetic relationship of Korean with other language families : 1) the traditional view that Korean is an Altaic language, sharing its origins with Manchu, Mongolian, and Turkish, amongst others; 2) the proposition that Korean has its origin in two language families, Altaic and Polynesian; and 3) the view that because of insufficient evidence to support a definitive relationship with other languages, Korean is a language isolate.

Regardless of its origins, Korean does share a number of features common to Altaic languages : words are built by agglutinating affixes, vowels within words follow certain rules of harmony, and articles, relative pronouns, explicit gender markers, and auxiliaries are not found.

Although Korean is not related to Chinese, as a result of history and geography more than 50 percent of the words in the Korean dictionary are of Chinese origin. Most legal, political, scientific, religious and academic vocabularies, as well as Korean surnames, and increasingly at present given names, are based on Chinese borrowings and can be written with Chinese characters, although meanings and pronunciations have often shifted as they have been adopted.
Although some basic words for body parts, clothing and agriculture are shared between Korean and Japanese, and other similarities exist, including grammatical structures similar enough that word-for-word translations between the languages is relatively easy, it is still uncertain whether the similarities are genetic or come as a result of historical borrowing between the two. Many features of Korean separate it from English and other Indo-European languages. Some of the most important of these (for my discussion here, at least) are the use of honorifics, relationship words, and different levels of speech (others include articles, plural markers, pronouns, adjectives, verb forms, demonstratives and so on).

Honorifics are markings for nouns and verbs that express the speaker’s attitude toward the addressee and the person who is being spoken of. Relationship words are blanket nouns denoting relationships between people that are commonly used in informal conversation between people, rather than given names – older brother, younger sister, uncle, auntie, grandmother and so on. (In the slummy, thin-walled building I used to live in in Busan, it was de rigeur on Saturday nights to hear sounds of passion and female cries of ‘Opa! Oh, opa! (older brother)’ from the playboy-next-door’s apartment.) These extend to the common practice of referring to a woman as ’so-and-so’s mother,’ rather than using her given name.

There are four main levels of speech – polite-formal, polite-informal, plain, and intimate style – from which a speaker chooses, generally unconsciously, in everyday speech. The rules which determine the appropriate choice in conversation derive from the arcane art of knowing the ins and outs of the complex sociocultural fabric of Korean. It is equally inappropriate (in general) to address an older non-relative informally as it is to address a child with the polite-formal style, and mistakes like this may constitute a social breach (although it is generally understood that non-native speakers might make such mistakes). Depending on the relative status of the speaker, the person spoken to, and the person or thing that may be spoken about, the speaker can choose different words and forms to express intended meaning. For many basic verbs like eat, sleep, or give, at least two Korean words are available, each reflecting a different status of the subject or object of the verb. Each verb in Korean is further altered by a choice of grammatical affixes, adding not only grammatical information (such as tense), but carrying different levels of respect, deference, or politeness. Many nouns that refer to kinship or the household alsohave plain and honorific versions, the latter of which are used speak of another’s house or relatives, and the former of one’s own.

How does all of this relate to my earlier discussion of Sapir-Whorf, and considerations of how much and in what manner language may shape thought, and whether culture (loosely) determines language stucture, or vice versa? Don’t worry, I’m getting to that.

Korea is widely acknowledged to be the most Confucian nation in the world technically neo-Confucian, but there’s no need to split that particular hair here). Confucius focused on the need to maintain social order though willing or unwilling submission to the five primary relationships :

1. Ruler and subject
2. Parent and child (teacher and student)
3. Husband and wife
4. Older and younger person
5. Friend and friend

All of these relationships are explicity hierarchical, excepting, significantly perhaps, the last, although friendship of a Confucian bent is a considerably more meaningful proposition, it may be argued, than ‘buddies’ in North America might be.

Appropriate behaviour is expected for participants in each of these relationships, and the language used must be similarly hierarchical :

…a son should be reverential; a younger person respectful; a wife submissive;a subject loyal. And reciprocally, a father should be strict and loving; an older person wise and gentle; a husband good and understanding; a ruler righteous and benevolent; and friends trusting and trustworthy. In other words, one is never alone when one acts, since every action affects someone else.

Although as in many nations, the strength of these traditional beliefs is fading, Confucian tenets still underly a great deal of the conscious and unconscious expectations of social behaviour, and deeply influence the relationships Is it possible that Koreans really do think differently about these things, and that this difference may spring (entirely, partially, as much or less so?) from their language? between the sexes and the generations.

The question that interests me, then, is this : do structures and forms like these in the Korea language shape the way in which Koreans think, particularly in terms of their relationships not so much to the world but to the people in it, to such a degree that we can say that language has given them a world-view substantially different than, for example, my own, as an English native speaker? It certainly seems so, to me.

Language is a tool for communication, a social construct, and it seems somewhat pointless to argue about what nouns one uses, and whether the presence or absence of a given bit of vocabulary in one language or another either permits and limits one’s ability to think about it. This may be so, but I don’t think it’s very interesting, except in the abstract.

More interesting to me is the idea that the structures of a language – in this case Korean – may expand or limit the way in which one thinks about something much more important than snow (for example) : how one fits into society, and how one interacts with other humans. Is it possible that Koreans really do think differently about these things, and that this difference may spring (entirely, partially, as much or less so?) from their language?

Is this a valid argument for a weak form of lingustic relativism? Is it even something that comes under the Sapir-Whorf rubric? I’m not sure. An opposite, equally important question is this : is it the case that the language has come to have the form it does as result of culture and belief, rather than the opposite? Confucius was Chinese, after all, and from an entirely different language group!

Again, I’m not sure. The correct answer is usually ‘a little from column A, a little from column B’, no doubt.

[originally published April 2003, revised June 2006]

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It might be described as the part of you that goes beyond your physical presence, that not only permeates your being but surrounds you, invisibly, like a cloud. But it can be damaged, by unhappiness or disrespect, by losing face, by thoughtlessness or humiliation, by anything that’s disruptive to the harmony you feel with other people. Damage to your kibun is damage to your essence, and can have negative effects both mentally and physically.

It is this consciousness of an inner life, one that is molded by the degree of harmony one achieves in one’s relationships with other people to whom one feels any degree of responsibility, that gives Koreans their almost preternatural ability to sense peoples’ mood, and their character, and modify their own behaviour to lubricate the social gears. That’s the nice part. The infuriating flip side of that, though, for many foreigners, is the tendency to dance elegantly away from any potential confrontation. An angry waeguk-in, until they understand what’s happening, is likely to become angrier when the Korean with whom they have a bone to pick says ‘Maybe’ when they mean ‘No’, or ‘tomorrow’ when they mean ‘never’, in order to try and re-establish harmonious dealings. The accompanying, ever-present potential too, is that when someone is pushed too far, and they lose face, in which case ’social harmony’ can take a flying leap, and the only way to regain face and salvage personal kibun is to blow up and stomp and yell. This happens a lot, too.

In this consciousness of the relationships between people and its effect on your own wellbeing, rather than the ‘correctness’, ‘objective truth’, or self-interest of an individual or his arguments, there is a minefield of potential misunderstanding. Most foreigners to Korea trip through it over and over again, myself included, before they realize that putting the kibun of the people around you first, even in a situation of confrontation, will bring results.

(As an aside, this is what the Americans do not seem to understand, or care to, when they deal with North Korea. The patterns of seemingly-irrational behaviour on the part of the DPRK negotiators isn’t (always) irrational at all, from their own perspective.)

The importance of kibun for Korean people should never be underestimated. It’s not merely convention, it’s baked-in. Koreans can make crucial, important decisions based on kibun. Business decisions, choice of a mate, career and employment choices, all may be taken on the basis of what feels right, or what will result in the most socially harmonious outcome for all concerned. Koreans will discuss kibun, but rarely attempt to analyze it in this way. To do so would perhaps damage their kibun.

This is not to say that decisions, important or otherwise, are made strictly on a non-rational, intuitive basis. Things like love and marriage, about which westerners can be decidedly irrational, are approached with a combination of cold, rational analysis and intuitive leaps here, for example. It is another of the contradictions that make up so much of what it means to be Korean.

In future, look for more on this from me. Kibun is only one of the six controlling concepts of the Korean psyche : chemyeon, neunchi, kibun, bunuiki, jeong and han, and the interplay between these guiding forces is what makes Koreans so unique, and, at times, so difficult for the non-Korean to understand.

[originally published January 2002, revised and updated 2006]

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One of these, one you’ll notice immediately if you spend any time watching one of the many evening variety shows on Korean TV (all of the major networks stream on the net live or on demand, by the way, if you’re curious and have the bandwidth : the big three : MBC, KBS, SBS. Even without being able to read Korean, you should be able to find the streams pretty easily…) is what I’ve called the ‘schoolgirl howl’.

This is a sound I cannot for the life of me reproduce. I’ve tried. It is reminiscent of the kind of pre-orgasmic squeals that teenyboppers on those black-and-white newsreels in the early 60’s would emit when faced with the Beatles, or Elvis, and I suppose, in a deliberately more chaste fashion, that’s what it’s modelled on. It sounds a bit like a very high-pitched ‘ooo-WOOOO-OOoo!’, done chorally. The thing is, though, that it’s delivered with clockwork regularity every 10 or 15 seconds, when anyone does or says anything even remotely interesting. And even when they don’t — a chef is brought into the studio to prepare some normal, everyday food, and the guests on stage crowd around the table to sample his creation. One of them dips his spoon, tastes: the schoolgirl howl.

“Oh my goodness I am uncontrollably excited in a non-sexual fashion by the fact that that dog just jumped through a hoop!” is the message. It’s ritualistic, of course. It’s contrived in the same way that the applause light and audience wranglers elicit carefully-timed reactions from the bleachers on David Letterman. But the artificiality of controlled, note-perfect choral ululation, a simulation of wild abandon, raised at the most banal of actions in the studio, is enough to raise hackles if you pay attention to it, perhaps because it’s so unfamiliar to the western viewer.

To add an extra layer of weirdness, theschoolgirl howl is also omnipresent on prerecorded segments. It would seem that Korea has invented, parallel to the sitcom laughtrack machines in the West, a Schoolgirl Howl Machine. I imagine the engineer in the booth, bored look on his face, cigarette dangling from his lip, pushing the lever for another howl, and twiddling a knob for that extra bit of oomph because the current howl-ee is a member of the latest boy-band, wondering how he got there.

I rarely even notice it these days.

[originally published January 2002]

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Korea was, until recent decades, a mostly agrarian society. The poorer segments of society scratched out a living by farming, and of course, this is still the case, although the farms and farmers are almost without exception aging and marginalized, because all the young folk have moved to the cities to seek their fortunes and educate their own children. What happens to your skin when you’re out in the sun every day, working in the rice paddy or the vegetable beds? It burns, it tans, it gets leathery and brown. If you’re rich — more importantly, if you want people to think you are affluent — you cannot have tanned skin. That’s the mark of the poor farmer, not the badge, as it is in the west, of ample free time with which to loll about in the sun.

Sunscreen makers have excellent opportunities to succeed in the Korean market. Beach towel manufacturers, not so much, although young people, as with so many things, are beginning to pick up the sunbathing habits of their western friends.

The surface appearances of appropriated western or Japanese cultural items are mimicked rigorously, but the meaning behind it is almost entirely lost, or deliberately subverted, or, as in the example of tanning, neatly inverted. A stage performance of heavy, industrial Nine-Inch-Nails-like industrial metal by a growling, pvc-clad singer is backed up by a troupe of balletic dancers. Education is all-important, but the ultimate goal is to pass tests, meet the correct people, and join a good company. Health potions and folk remedies are a daily concern, but the fattiest beef and pork is the conspicuous-consumption dish of the day.

Lapdogs are favored pets, cozened and dressed up and fetishized, but the flatbed truck stacked with wire cages crammed overfull of meat-dogs on their way to restaurants is studiously ignored, as is the evening TV magazine program piece featuring restaurants famous for their inovative dogmeat cuisine.

The careful attention paid to surface appearances diverges radically into schizophrenia when it comes to one’s surroundings here, too. Piles of garbage are everywhere, as are morning puddles of vomit, even in residential areas, that attest to the excesses of the night before. Construction is slipshod, somehow temporary in appearance. Windows, even on shops that have opened that very day are often streaked and dirty, and left that way. Litter abounds, and people casually throw more atop it. Men hork and spit great nasty oysters of mucous on the sidewalks, everywhere, which makes it not only traditional, but downright mandatory to take your shoes off when entering someone’s house. Industrial filth and noise back onto residential beehive towers at random. Streets are unnamed, and addresses as we are accustomed to in the west simply do not exist. Traffic rules tend to be a matter of ‘whatever feels right’ rather than any enforceable set of regulations.

So why is this? Why is there this enormous gap between the attention paid to detail and appearance at one end of the spectrum — one’s personal appearance — and what would seem to be a complete lack of it at the other? And why is it so obviously different than the (cliched, certainly, apocryphal somewhat, but not entirely illusory) approach of the Japanese, who seem to have a greater focus on harmony and order in their surroundings?

Although the cultural influence of the Chinese, cannot be underestimated, I think it’s the legacy of the recent climb out poverty for many, and rapid, pell-mell industrialization, in great part. More affluent, modern areas are much less littered and polluted, as are more stolidly traditional ones, of which there are not many left. The modernization-at-all costs drive of the Park Jung Hee era in the 1970’s paid scant attention to consideration of the environment, or creature comforts, or quality of life — industrialization, urbanization, and wider affluence were the goals, and they were achieved, at no small cost.

I wonder too if there is something historical, a legacy of the invasions and wars and widespread destruction that happened over and over again throughout the history of the peninsula, that left the culture with a feeling of impermanence, a sense that building for the ages, or even for the medium-term, was a fool’s game. All will be destroyed, probably, in short order, so why try?

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