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Funny Little CountryMay 04 '06 Write an essay on this topic.The Bottom Line South Korea is going to be very different from what you expect, no matter what you expect. There are a number of things about Korea that are going to be surprising, distressing, or possibly alarming to Americans (and potentially other visitors, but I’m an American and I can only speak from my own perspective.) What I have listed here is everything that I could think of that I either knew before I got here or was shocked by after I got here. It is in the order that I thought of it, so don’t start think I was making any kind of top ten list. Spitting Koreans spit in the street. They don’t blow their noses and think it’s gross, but it’s perfectly ok to spit in the street. One man’s copasetic is another man’s disgusting. So far I haven’t managed to get used to the sound. Urinating I can’t imagine a society where this isn’t nasty, but for some reason it’s accepted here. It’s not uncommon to see a man standing in an alley facing a wall. Doesn’t happen every day or anything, but it happens too often for me. So maybe ever is too often for me, but I don’t think I’m alone in this. Personally, I think it has a lot to do with the alcohol culture. You get really drunk, you gotta go, so you go. Toilets While I’m on the subject, pubic toilets are plentiful and clean in Korea. Many of them actually have a little office in them for the person who cleans it. This is not a glorified storage closet. I’ve peeked. Sometimes there’s a desk and a telephone! However, as clean and available as the toilets are, not all of them have toilet paper. When I say they have no toilet paper, I mean there’s no dispenser. Just to be on the safe side, make sure you have at least a napkin in your pocket at all times. Korea also boasts an unusual style of toilet fondly referred to as "the squatter." It looks like a skinny urinal set into the floor. I have never encountered a bathroom where I had no choice but to use the squatter, so I never have, but I figure knowledge is power. (This brings up the obvious question, if the toilets are so plentiful, why don’t Korean men use them instead of the alley walls? That is a question for the ages.) Showers Honestly, I didn’t mean to get stuck on bathrooms, but now that I’m here… Showers in Korea don’t have their own drains. The drain in my bathroom is on the opposite side of the toilet from the shower. This means that every time I take a shower, I get water every where. The shower at my homestay when I first got here was the same way. Sort of annoying when you get your socks all wet when you walk into the bathroom after someone has showered, but the floor is always clean. There is usually a pair of ill fitting shower shoes near the door. Homestay What’s a homestay, you ask. It’s the Korean version of a B&B. I don’t know why they don’t just call it a B&B, but they don’t. Maybe because the breakfast portion isn’t especially fancy. We were given free run of the toaster and the teakettle. Koreans don’t understand the concept of breakfast, so we were probably lucky they had bread on hand instead of kimche and rice. Kimche It’s not just a food, it’s a national obsession. The first question you will be asked is: where are you from? The second will be: do you like kimche? Kimche is cabbage fermented in vinegar and hot pepper. It ranges (for me) from inedible to delicious with most of it being inedible. Every time you eat in a Korean restaurant you will be given kimche. Just to be on the safe side, tell anyone who asks that you like it. We suspect that you might be deported if you say you don’t. Slip On Shoes It is of vital importance when traveling in Korea (and probably anywhere in Asia, I’ll let you know when I find out) that you wear comfortable shoes that can be slipped on and off with ease. Lace up tennis shoes, the staple of North American casual wear are the worst thing you can wear here. When going into private homes, some restaurants and temples you will have to remove your shoes and if you are wearing laced sneakers you’ll have to sit down and unlace your shoes before going inside and then you’ll have to reverse the steps upon leaving. It’s sort of a pain. So either fix your laced shoes so you can slip them on and off easily or get different shoes. Also make sure you are wearing decent socks. Walking through a temple with your big toe sticking out just isn’t cool in any country. And do make sure you remember where you put your shoes when you take them off. At some of the more popular sites you will be faced with a sea of shoes and it’s easy to lose track of yours. Much easier than losing your car in the Disney World Parking lot. (In fact, I have a funny story about that.) Food Obsession Koreans are obsessed with their food. They think it’s the greatest stuff in the world and they also think that the rice on this side of town tastes different from rice on that side of town. The pork in Mok’po is different tasting than the pork in Pusan. And Deagu has really good kimchi. Korea is about the size of my home state, Ohio. A lot of corn is grown in Ohio, but one ear of butter and sugar corn tastes the same as the other even if on was grown just south of Cleveland and the other just north of Cincinnati. Sometimes this national delusion about the food strikes me as funny, other times I want to strangle someone because in my opinion, Korean food is the worst in the world. My husband and I have a theory that attachment to their food was the only way of keeping their national identity through centuries of invasion. The Japanese, the Chinese and the Russians have been fighting over this patch of land for a thousand years and that only ended 60 years ago. Korea is an odd little country shaped by a history of violence. There are lots of traces of that embedded in the culture. There are also some just flat out weird things that I thought you should know before you got here and did something inexcusable like announced that you hated kimchi.  |
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