Nearly 30% of the South Korean population has last name "Kim." However, this Kim (that's my first name) went there for the first time in 2001. Here are my travel notes about this intriguing adventure...
Looong flight. I thought 11.3 hours to Japan was a long flight, but it took about 12.5 hours to get to Seoul. I was sitting next to a Korean couple returning from a family gathering in Florida and a general tour of the US. The husband was very nice, and we chatted for quite a while during the flight about the Korean language and Korean culture. He was thrilled that I had a Korean guidebook that covered basic phrases and other things you'd need as a tourist. Not that I can speak a word of Korean, mind you! I was doing well to stagger through the romanized pronunciations in the book in such a way that they were comprehensible. Korean does not sound like Japanese, although the grammar is apparently similar.
The most interesting thing the Korean guy on the plane said was that he envied the US for all of its space. Korea is quite confined, of course (all the more so now that the north is inaccessible). He thought the openness of America would have a very positive psychological effect. Perhaps he's right.
The flight had a very interesting mix of people, by the way. It was going on to Tokyo after Seoul, so there were a few Japanese (why they didn't get a direct flight, I have no idea). Also, there was a woman who appeared to be a Buddhist disciple, with the shaved head and simple robes. Later, I noticed quite a few of these Buddhists in the airport and then in the streets of Seoul. Korea seems to be much more openly religious than Japan. You'll see both Buddhists and Christians there.
We arrived at Inchon Airport, which is the brand spanking-new airport outside of Seoul, much spiffier than the older Gimpo Airport. Everything went quite smoothly, and I got myself onto a bus going to my hotel, the Novotel Ambassador in Kangnam (a section of Seoul). Luckily, most everyone speaks perfect English in Korea, just like in Japan. I always feel uncomfortable when I don't know any of the language in a foreign country-- it seems so.... American, you know? But I had no choice. I think there were more Westerners at Inchon than I saw at Narita Airport in Tokyo.
Traffic. Holy smog, Batman, the traffic in Seoul is astounding. Every hour of every day, the streets are jam-packed with cars and motorcycles that obey the rules of the road only some fraction of the time. An acceptable distance between cars is about 8 inches, but you can squeeze closer during a merge or some tricky maneuver.
The motorcycles are used as the city's delivery vehicles, so many of them have elaborate racks built onto the back. They may be loaded with as much as 6 TV sets, or a huge stack of 50-kilo bags of rice. No room on the street? No problem-- the motorcycles drive up onto the sidewalk to save time. Don't space out walking down the street because you may get killed by a motorcycle. Oh yeah, and sidewalks are a good place to park cars, too.
By the way, it is nearly impossible to make a left or U-turn-- partly because there are almost no turn lanes, but also because the main roads are about 6 lines wide and there would never be a chance. The result is that you spend a lot of time driving around the block so you can approach your target from the correct direction. I'm really glad I didn't have to do any driving in Seoul!
It took 100 minutes to go about 20 miles. I finally checked into my room and headed out for something to eat. Lacking experience, I ordered something that looked like sushi to see what the Korean version of this dish would be. It was rice rolled up in seaweed like sushi, but the middle had an unusual combination of things-- egg, crab, cucumber, ham, mushroom, and other stuff. It didn't come with soy sauce, wasabi, or ginger, but rather with some curious white disks that were crunchy and a bit spicy. More on this later.
The whirlwind tour of Seoul. I had just one free day before I had to get to work in Seoul (oh yeah, I came to Seoul for business), so I wanted to see as much as I could. Luckily, I had guides! My dad knows a professor at Seoul National University, and two of his grad students agreed to spend the day with me. This made everything immensely easier, plus I had real, live Koreans to ask all sorts of questions to.
First we rode on the subway. It is efficient and convenient, but not quite as clean as Tokyo's. The cell phones ring constantly, whereas they are required to be turned off in Tokyo. The other thing I noticed right away is that Koreans have no problem pushing in crowds-- and some of the most aggressive pushers are older women! You will be jostled and nudged aside as the Koreans play a complicated game of positioning themselves optimally in a mob of travelers. This never happened in ultra-polite Japan.
We went to a palace called Changdoekkung (kung means palace), where the Korean royal family traditionally resided. To be accurate, we went to a rebuilt version of it, as the original was destroyed a couple hundred years ago in one of Japan's many invasions of Korea. No actual royalty has lived there for over 10 years since the latest Empress died.
We took the English tour, but I found the Korean woman's English to be nearly incomprehensible due to her thick accent. Oddly, my Korean companions said they thought it was fairly easy to understand! I guess it's the same way I can understand my classmates' broken Japanese better than my Japanese teacher can. Tours were offered only in English, Japanese, or Korean, so our tour actually consisted primarily of Europeans. I heard a lot of German, and was pleased to discover that I can still understand it. One curious habit of the guide was to write numbers in the air as she said them. Apparently this is common practice among Koreans because it is supposed to help them to remember the number. Once I was attuned to looking for this gesture, I saw a lot of people doing it!
The palace was very spacious, with wide hallways, large verandas, and broad courtyards. I was reminded of my Korean friend from the plane who admired America's space-- could the Korean royalty have been flaunting their priviledge by taking up a lot of space? The other thing I noticed was how colorful the decorations were. Bright paint, a rainbow of tiles and stonework, and many flowers and plants. By the way, Changdoekkung faces south because Korean myth says that power originates from this direction. (One of the other palaces faces east, another favored direction, but none faces north or west).
Behind the palace is the Secret Garden. It has a huge variety of plants from around the world as well as some very old trees-- one rumored to be over 500 years old. Nifty. One funny thing that happened there was that the Germans were drinking plum juice, and the Korean woman I was with asked what a "plum" is. I started to try explaining it, but then I remembered that she knows some Japanese, so I said simply, It is also called ume. She understood that! I knew I was learning Japanese for a reason. :-)
For lunch, we went to a fairly traditional Korean place, where we sat on cushions at a low table. We had a variety of Korean dishes, the first of which was immediately familiar. It was a big plate filled with sliced egg, crab, cucumber, ham, mushroom, and other things, and it came with big white disks-- what I had eaten for dinner was definitely a variation on this theme! I can't recall the name of the dish, but the idea is that you take a slice of daikon (the white disks, about 3 inches across in this case), roll up an assortment of things in it, and dip it in hot mustard sauce. It was great! We also had bul-go-gi, which is slices of beef cooked with onions. You eat it by putting some beef in a piece of lettuce (or a mint leaf) along with some slightly sweet red sauce. We also had a variety of side dishes, like the ubiquitous kimchee. This is usually cabbage preserved in a fiery hot pepper sauce, but it can also be "water kimchee," which is chunks of daikon in a flavored brine. (You actually eat the brine like soup rather than eating the daikon, although I liked to eat the daikon in this dish too, probably marking me as a clueless foreigner). We also had some interesting bamboo tea with pine nuts floating in it.
[Side note on Korean cuisine: The Koreans eat way too much beef for my taste. And most of it is of fairly questionable quality by American standards-- it tends to be very fatty and a little on the chewy side. Pork is also common, which is another meat I rarely eat. So overall, I found myself wishing for more chicken, fish, or vegetable dishes. Korean food is much heavier than Japanese food, although still lighter than typical American food. And Koreans eat more than Japanese; the restaurant portions are larger, and the people themselves are a noticeably larger. Interesting.]
Then we walked down a street famous for being an "artsy" district with a lot of galleries and small shops. I was hoping to find some really interesting and unique things to buy, but alas, this street is starting to get "touristy," and there were a lot of standard things. But I did find a few things to buy.
By the way, prices in Korea are way cheaper than in Japan. I was just as surprised at how reasonable most things were in Korea as I was surprised at how expensive they were in Japan. Some interesting economics going on there.
[Side note on Korean economics: I'm not an expert on national economies, but from my casual perspective, it seems that in some ways South Korea resembles Japan of the 80's. There is rapid expansion going on, often with little heed to profit or sound economic measures. The government often bails out flagging corporations. Will it all come crashing down as it has across the straight?]
Much more interesting, albeit in a different way, was Namdaemun market, or South Gate Market. This is an open-air market just like you've seen pictures of in magazines about Asia. (It's by the historic southern gate of the city, which is quite beautiful, by the way). There are all manner of street sellers, hawking their goods in crowded stalls along narrow alleys. You can get everything from cell phones to underwear to pig heads (I kid you not). I also saw some ginseng merchants who display bottles with a ginseng root floating in liquid-- for some reason, they reminded me of the floating heads and eyes in the jars of a mad scientist's lab.
For the Koreans, shopping is a sport, and the open air markets are for the professionals. Just like on the subway, there is competitive jostling to get position in front of a particularly juicy sale table, and once again, it is the older women who show the most bravado (to mix cultural metaphors). At South Gate Market, you can haggle for deals, too, so there is always a background din of shouted negotiations going on between buyers and sellers.
I was outclassed and didn't buy anything (lots of it was typical flea-market fare anyway), but we did try an interesting snack food that was basically fried dough in the shape of a fish. But inside was a surprise-- some sweet red beans.
In the late afternoon, we went on to another famous shopping area called I'taewon. This is like Namdaemun, but a little more conventional with actual stores in addition to tables on the street. Here you can get deals on higher-end goods, like Polo shirts, Rolex watches, and Gucci handbags. Be careful-- not all of it is genuine. But some is, and again, you can haggle for low, low prices. It's quite an experience.
On the subway back, we chatted about Korean culture and recent news events. I found out that the vote count in Florida for the US presidential election was hot news in Korea, and they were bitterly disappointed that Bush won because he is likely to slow the progress that they feel is being made with North Korea. Most South Koreans would really like to be reunited someday (even though they know the cost, having seen Germany reunite). [More comments on North Korea below]. Through all of this, we managed to miss the correct subway stop :-). But we got back to Kangnam eventually, then decided to stop at a video game parlor for one last fling. We played an amazing game where you stand on a panel with various colored squares to step on, then cue up a song to play. As it plays, a screen shows you which squares to step on at which time, so you are basically dancing to the beat, trying to follow the patterns and step on the right squares. This game is apparently all the rage among Korean teenagers right now. I was terrible at it, but it was fun.
[Side note on Korean video games: At US video parlors, most of the games are violent, featuring shooting or brutal fighting. The remainder are mostly about speed, such as driving or flying. There were very few such games at the Korean video parlor. They are more like the games in the US of 10-15 years ago, before the explosion of electronic video games. I did see one fighting game, but it featured babies fighting-- I'm not kidding.]
That day pretty much tired me out, and my guides, being grad students, had to head off to get some work done that evening. So I left them with a gift of some good-quality American chocolate I had brought, and checked out the hotel TV stations. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that they offered a wide variety of language channels, including NHK (Japanese), CNN, BBC, TV5 (French), DN (German), and something Chinese, as well as a few Korean stations. I had fun listening to the Japanese, but was disappointed that NHK mostly showed baseball-- bleah.
The health club. The next morning, I got up early to try out the hotel's health club. The first thing I saw when I walked in was a Korean guy hanging upside down by his ankles. He was on the most amazing health club equipment I have ever seen-- you lie on a bench and clamp your ankles into some holders that look like handcuffs, then activate a motor to roll the bench vertically up the wall so you are hanging. I guess this is supposed to be healthy.
The health club also had a curious massage machine that consisted of a giant rubber band that you loop around some part of your body, then turn on the motor. It vibrates like a jackhammer.
Anyway, there were about 15 Korean men-- all dressed identically-- and me in the weight room that morning. I think they had never seen a woman lift weights before.
After that, I was ready for breakfast. The hotel had the usual buffet with both Western and Asian dishes. One selection looked intriguing-- abalone soup. I would love to try abalone soup, but I couldn't quite face it at 7 am.
Conference. The reason I came to Korea was to speak at a conference, which I did in the morning. (My boss had come in the night before, and he attended also). It went quite well, although the session was moderated by a tough Korean professor (with the unsurprising name Dr. Kim) who must have been hell at thesis defenses.
The conference was mostly attended by Koreans, of course, but the speakers came from all over, so the conference was in English. There was one Japanese speaker whose English was quite poor, which ended up in a comical scene. During the Q&A session after his nearly incomprehensible talk, a Korean guy stood up to ask a question. For unknown reasons (but perhaps to take a swipe at the Japanese guy), he asked in Korean. Dr. Kim diplomatically translated to English for the benefit of the non-Koreans in the room. But the speaker couldn't understand the English, so he got one of his Japanese colleagues in the audience to translate the question to Japanese. Then this proceeded in reverse when he answered the question. I had the feeling that by the time the question got to him, it may not have resembled the original question anymore! To make matters worse, Dr. Kim proceeded to ask the guy about three more questions, which took a long time! At this point, I was certain that the Koreans were simply taking advantage of an opportunity to make a Japanese guy feel uncomfortable. [More on Korea and Japan below].
In another funny moment, a Korean guy was talking about his company's vision of product design, and he said, "We have heard of a very useful phrase. It is KISS-- 'Keep it simple and stupid.'" I love these cultural mistranslations. It reminded me of a Hungarian quantum mechanics professor I had in grad school, who once said, "I do not want to beat you with a dead horse."
Later, I was pulled aside by a reporter from a Korean technical newspaper. He snapped lots of pictures and asked to interview me about the market data I had mentioned in my talk. Then Dr. Kim mysteriously appeared, and sat next to me as I was interviewed. Afterward, he told me that I ought to present larger market figures because Korea needs to build this industry in order to beat out Japan, and larger market numbers will help generate more investment. This is typical Korean nationalism-- the attitude is simply, what do we need to do to be number one? We don't care what it is, we'll do it. Sleep in the factory? No problem. Meetings every day from 8-11 pm? We'll do it. It's like what people in Silicon Valley did while working for dot-coms during the Internet bubble, but without the high salaries, stock options, nerf footballs, and pizza parties. The Koreans are serious capitalists, at least in high tech. It was a little scary.
Dragon-Water-Mountain. For dinner that night, my company's Korean representative (who had arranged our meetings and was driving us around) took us to a traditional Korean restaurant called Yongsusan. This means dragon-water-mountain, and I was pleased to notice the resemblance to the Japanese sui (water) and san (mountain). The first syllable would have been ryuu in Japanese, however.
We ate a huge assortment of appetizer-like dishes (something like 15!), including jellyfish salad, pickled mung beans, rice porridge, kimchee, noodles in broth (a staple with every meal, it seems), and frozen maguro (I'm not kidding-- we had raw tuna with a sweet sauce and some sort of green sprouts, and the whole thing was crunchy because it was slightly frozen). Plenty of meat dishes, too, of course, like bul-go-gi, roasted pork, some sort of rolled sausage, and chicken cooked on a skewer. The whole thing was washed down with Hite beer, which is no better or worse than other kinds of Asian beer. For dessert, we had some interesting spiced plum juice and chewy Korean rice sweets, plus the usual slices of Asian pear. An awesome dinner, certainly the food highlight of the trip.
Business in Korea. The next day was spent visting clients, and we saw some very interesting things. In the downtown area, there is a fabulous building with amazing architecture. It's hard to describe, but it's got several towers connected only at the top by a gracefully curved section that appears to have a glass floor. It is called The Millennium Center, and we had to ask several people to find out what it is. It turns out to be the Tax Collection Office! My boss and I roared at that! Can you imagine a US government building with stunning architecture in the most expensive area of downtown? People would be outraged! I guess the Korean tax collectors are doing well.
At one client's office, we were served a curious bottle of juice that had bits of jelly floating in it. The bottle had a picture of an aloe plant on it, and sure enough, it tasted a bit like aloe, which I had only encountered in shampoo before. Interesting.
Also at this office, just as our meeting was ending at noon, we were interrupted by a woman who came in to take some red books and sheet music out of a drawer in the conference room. A few minutes later, a rousing song broke out from the hallway nearby, complete with multiple male and female voices. They sounded quite talented, actually. We asked what was happening, and it turns out that this was a company Christian group that regularly sings prayers during the day-- this was the lunchtime prayer. The company does not actively promote such groups, but employees are free to join if they want. Rather shockingly different from America, huh? :-) If a US company had Bibles in the conference room, the lawyers would be handing out their cards. As noted earlier, Korea is much more explicitly religious than Japan.
Outside, we heard more music, but this was accompanied by loads of police, some of them carrying shields or other riot gear. What's going on? It was a protest. There are many protests going on in Korea right now because of the poor economy. Companies are cutting jobs, and this does not go over well. Protestors set up outside the big corporate offices and play loud music or otherwise provide distraction. The police come to break them up, or sometimes just to stand around menacingly so the protestors can't even get started. We saw protests at city hall, as well as outside the offices of a couple prominent Korean companies that are having financial troubles right now.
In fact, we visited a smaller Korean company that is having a little difficulty right now, and it was a sight. The office was drab and much too stuffy. But what caught my eye was a motivational poster on the wall-- it featured a brigade of company employees, each one standing with his or her fist in the air, united behind a flag with the company logo. It seriously looked like some kind of Soviet poster.
The parking arrangements at these companies are very amusing, by the way. At one company, the lot was amazingly automated, with a computerized system to assign spaces efficiently. When we left, a special lighting system pointed the way toward to car, and there was a handy flashing bulb over our space so we could see it easily. At another company, the lot was outside and very crowded. We had to leave the keys in the car, and when we came back, it had been moved to make room for other cars! I have heard that in Taiwan the practice is not to leave the keys in the car, but to leave your cell phone number taped to the window.
We ended up having both lunch and dinner at Japanese restaurants that day, although the Japanese food in Korea is somewhat Korean in style. For instance, I got an assorted sushi plate at lunch, but there was no raw fish on it. It had the usual bowl of broth with noodles, a sort of scrambled egg dish (which was really good), a cooked fish with way too many bones, and a sushi roll that had... get this... beef in it! What else would you expect in Korea? :-) At dinner, I ordered sashimi, which did indeed have raw fish and rice, but the fish was drenched in sesame oil, which is far more Korean than Japanese. By the way, Korean food often comes with slices of raw garlic, which you just eat like a vegetable. Raw garlic is hot, it turns out, and of course, you taste it for hours thereafter. But I kind of like it.
Night life. That evening, I went for a stroll in the Kangnam area. It turns out that this is a major student hangout, and the place was hopping with teenagers and college kids. The stores open were of three types: beauty parlors, coffee shops/bars, and stores selling random junk that teenagers like (cheap earrings, comic books, cell phones, music). Korean young people are a lively bunch, and it was loud, even raucous. It is very common for women to link arms or hold hands-- almost all groups of two or more women are like a giant amoeba holding itself together. Male-female couples also walk arm-in-arm, but as usual, men aren't quite as touchy with each other. But once, I did see two businessmen holding hands as they had what appeared to be an important discussion while walking.
As I understand it, Koreans work late like Japanese, but it is less common to go drinking with your work friends, at least not every night like the Japanese do. Perhaps closer to once or twice a week. Every night at my hotel I heard the Japanese businessmen coming in drunk in the wee hours. Koreans may go out to party, but it's more for fun than for business.
Casual Saturday. My last day was a Saturday, but we still had one client meeting. It turns out that Koreans work at least a half-day on Saturday. The usual custom is that you can't leave until your boss does, so you might get stuck there all day. I have heard that there have been some protests recently where workers asked for a 5-day workweek. Management's response was to agree, but to cut salaries. Some factory workers work 7 days a week, especially in cases where Korea is trying to build the industry for nationalistic reasons.
However, in partial compensation, workers can have "casual Saturday," like some American companies do on Friday. You can leave your suit at home one day a week.
We had a nice lunch meeting at a Korean restaurant-- my last chance at kimchee and all the other common foods I had come to expect. This meal also included a risotto-like dish with gooey rice cooked up in a flavored sauce, as well as a side dish I hadn't had before of shredded daikon with a yummy sweet sauce. Overall, I can't say I would be able to eat Korean food long-term, but it was great for a few days.
Paying to get out. Back at Inchon airport, I had a final surprise in Korea. You have to buy a ticket to enter the security area of the airport! Yes, it's true. It costs $12 to leave this country. (I found out later that this is the fee to help pay for the airport's construction. We have it in the US too, but it gets buried in the price you pay for your ticket. It is charged to the airlines in the form of "landing fees" and other things, and these charges are passed on to the consumers).
The flight back was short as usual (you get great tailwinds going east across the Pacific), and I sat next to an American woman whose job is to inspect US government facilities for asbestos. Having come to Korea five times for several weeks each time, she is starting to pick up the language. I was lucky to learn to say yeoboseyo (hello, or just a general attention-getter; I think it literally means "look here") and kam-sa-ham-ni-da (thank you). :-)
Quite an adventure! But wait, there's more....
The Korean language. Korean, like Japanese, is a hybrid language-- it uses Chinese characters as the roots of words, then has a syllabary (like hiragana or katakana) for the endings, or for some whole words. The syllabary (called hangul) can in fact be used to write any word, since it is simply a representation of the sounds. I have heard that it was modeled after the way your mouth is shaped to say each sound, but it's a little hard to see that in the script. The invention of hangul was really important, by the way. It suddenly allowed a large fraction of the Korean population to become literate, and in recognition of that, there is a national holiday commemorating the introduction of hangul. It is one of the few languages that was consciously designed to be logical.
I think the Koreans are less tied to the Chinese characters than the Japanese are. I saw much more hangul than Chinese characters-- it seems that the characters are used more in formal writing, like newspapers, than on signs. In contrast, Japan has kanji everywhere.
What Ails You?. Seoul is the medical capital of Korea. Even though a third of the population already lives there, the other two-thirds are certain that they can get better medical care if they move into the city. This notion has not been lost on the entrepreneurial spirits in Korea. Everywhere you look in Seoul, there are "clinics" and "centers" devoted to every ailment you can imagine, and some you can't. In a short stroll around the neighborhood of my hotel, I saw places for pre-natal care, infertility, thyroid problems, lipo-suction, and plastic surgery. Driving around, I also saw chiropractors, opthamalogists, spiritual healers, and a dozen others. Hang onto your wallet.
The Barbers of Seoul. One of the first things I noticed in Seoul was the amazing number of barber poles. I swear every block has at least one place with a whirling red-white-and-blue pole, and most such places sport three of four poles placed strategically around the entrance and windows. What the heck is going on? Don't Koreans shave at home?
I had to ask a couple of people to get the whole story, but it seems that some "barber shops" in Seoul double as massage parlors, and some of these may have other services, too. Actually, I'm sure I still don't have the whole story, but there seems to be something intriguing there. Keep an eye out for striped poles-- you will be stunned at how many there are.
North Korea. I had not realized that Seoul is just 20 miles from the DMZ (demilitarized zone) between North and South Korea. 15 million free South Koreans live so close to the sequestered north. I asked a few people how they felt about North Korea, trying to broach the subject politely (although I don't know if I succeeded at that or not). This is clearly something a bit uncomfortable for them. Koreans are far less indirect than Japanese, but this subject borders on territory that makes them start becoming circumspect. They hem and haw about how they don't really think about it, or how they've just learned to accept it, but as I noted before, most South Koreans will also admit that they would like to see reunification someday. I suppose their emotional relationship to the proximity of North Korea is a bit like Californians' emotional relation to the Big One. It's a big threat, there every day, but we just can't think about it because we have no control anyway. Then these pesky foreigners come and ask incredulously, How can you live with the possibility of earthquakes all the time???
I noticed that my hotel offered bus tours of the DMZ. I had no time to take one, but it would certainly be interesting. I recall enjoying a bus tour of East Berlin that I took back before the wall fell.
On another note, I asked my Korean tour guides during our day exploring Seoul what they had learned about "the Korean War" in school (I'm not sure what they call that war in Korea). Once again, they hemmed and hawed and said that they weren't allowed to learn the whole story. I'm sure whatever they learned is far more (and far different) from what the North Koreans learn! This was a particularly interesting topic to discuss because Korea is currently embroiled in a dispute with Japan over some Japanese textbooks that the Koreans (and Chinese also) claim give a false impression of some events of WWII. Ah, the tricky task of writing history. (Lest we get too smug in America, we ought to read what the Vietnamese write about "the American War"-- you know, the war we lost. Remember, history is written by the victors).
Japan and Korea. Ooh, another troubled topic. Korea is full of psychological burdens. On multiple occasions, Japan has invaded Korea, most recently in the early part of this century, when they occupied it for 35 years (and forced the crown price, already betrothed to a Korean woman, to take a Japanese bride). Not surprisingly, Korea feels a deep antipathy toward Japan. And yet, as so often happens in these situations, Korea has largely imitated Japan during its industrialization, which only occurred in the last 40 years or so. More Koreans speak Japanese than vice versa, more Koreans study in Japan than vice versa, there are more Japanese restaurants in Korea than vice versa, and on and on.
But there is more to this story. Since I am more familiar with Japanese culture, I am aware that there is also deep antipathy in Japan toward Korea. It seems to go beyond the relation between, say, Britain and India or France and Algeria. So I asked some Koreans to speculate about why Japan would dislike Korea, besides having failed to conquer it.
I don't know how representative this answer is, but it's a data point. Apparently, the Japanese are culturally offended by the Koreans. As I've noted many times in this travelogue, Koreans are lively, expressive, and like to touch each other. Sure, compared to Westerners, they have the usual Asian politeness and deference to hierarchy, but compared to the Japanese, they are brash, loud, and awfully forward people. At some gut level, the Japanese just can't stand it! In fact, one Korean likened the relation between Japan and Korea to that between England and France -- sort of a cultural annoyance. I'm not sure how the Japanese would respond to that assessment, but I thought it was interesting.
By the way, I am slowly learning to distinguish different Asians. It's so embarrassing to have the stereotypical Western problem of not being sure where someone is from as long it's somewhere across the International Date Line. Now, I have always been able to distinguish Southeast Asians (Vietnamese, Philippinos, etc) from North Asians and Chinese, but within these groups, I am less sure. In particular, the difference between Japanese and Koreans was always unclear. I still can't be sure in all cases, but I can see differences between Japanese and Koreans now. Koreans seem to have rounder faces, fuller lips, and "softer" features compared to Japanese. (Please forgive this gaijin for her continued ignorance. But to be fair, I can distinguish Europeans from Americans, and also many different types of Europeans, which Asians can't do as readily. Also, I have some conflicting feelings about how useful it is to waste brain space on drawing fine distinctions between the way people from certain cultures look. Who cares? And yet, I know it's much too complicated to just say "who cares." Aigh).
Korea and the West. Although Korea has largely imitated Japan (although they might not admit it), there are elements of their culture that are more Western. Korea seems to stand between Japan and the West, actually, one foot in each part, as well as mixing in its own distinctive heritage. All of this combines to make Korea a fascinating place to visit. I found it to be generally more foreigner-friendly than Japan. More of the signs are in English, for instance, and the subway station announcements are in both English and Korean. (In Japan, this was true on the airport train, but on no other public transportation that I used).
Also, Koreans are thrilled when you use their language, encouraging you to stumble through sentences as best you can. (I was not at this point, but I saw some other Westerners trying it out). The Japanese seemed to frown at my attempts to speak their language, although they would never be so impolite as to show that. And I think I got more "looks" in Japan-- people whose eyes said gaijin! as they glanced at me. Koreans seem much more comfortable with foreigners of all types, Asian and Western.
Anyway, this is fascinating country. So colorful and energetic, so focused on the future. Korea is sure that it is going forward, even if it's a little unsure what that means or where it will end up. They just want to go. And they are!
Copyright © Kim Allen 2001
