2S2 Saturday: Here's the Plan; Come Hungry; Here's what I Need

OK, readers...

Here's the problem.

I have a great idea for this Saturday's 2S2... except one thing.  I'm double-booked.

See, I'm getting married in July ... you might have heard about this ... and Fiancoseyo (no. That's not working) Girlfriendoseyo set the tuxedo shopping appointment for this Saturday, at 3pm.  Given that 2S2 meets at 2pm, it pretty much means that I could be there for about ten minutes before I had to split.

I love you all, my readers, and I care a lot that people get the connections they need... but I'm completely unavailable this Saturday.

So here's what I need: a friend who can fill in, and lead people around.  I'll even plan out the thing, as long as I have someone who can hold a map and keep a group together.

You can read about 2S2 Suwon here, or at the 2S2 blog, once it's posted there; I hope 2S2 Wonju will be putting something up soon, and 2S2 Yongin/Suji also has a facebook page.

Here's my idea: about a 20 minute walk from 2S2's Anguk Station meetup, there's a fantastic market called "Gwangjang Market" where you can get some of the best jeon (seafood pancake), bindaeddeok, kalguksu (Korean cut noodle soup), and a whole swack of other old-style Korean foods - the kind of stuff that reminds Koreans of their childhood, all served up in little food-stalls.  The prices are ridiculously low, the food's awesome soul-food - there's pig's feet, but there's also some awesome not-gross, cheap food like kimbap, chapchae, noodles, egg and fish-cakes -- all the best Korean cheap-foods you can think of.  And the market experience is as authentically "Korea" as you can get.  Read more here.

Here's Dan Gray, from Seoul Eats, my nemesis, describing some of the foods:


From there, right next to Kwangjang market is the Chunggyecheon stream, which is a nice stroll to work off all the food you ate, and if you're really ambitious, Kwangjang Market is not far from Jongno 3-ga station, where line 3 takes you to line 6, from which you can head down to the Seoul DJ Festival - I've gone before, and it was awesome.  (learn more here, or here, or here)

So... any takers?  Help a fella out!

Inwang Mountain and JjimDalk: Awesome Day

Given such fantastic weather, Girlfriendoseyo, Mom-in-law-oseyo, and I climbed Inwang-san, or Inwang Mountain, this Saturday.

The mountain was in fine form, with cherry blossoms and magnolias still in bloom.

The tree cover had pink peeking through.

The air was clear enough to see from Inwang Mountain, all the way to the 63 Building on Yeouido.

Girlfriendoseyo playing with her dog.  Cherry blossoms through the opening in the wood grove.

Mother-in-law-oseyo loves the mountain.

After a good climb on the mountain, we had a special treat in store: Andong JjimDalk.  Andong JjimDalk is so good, that it's just not worth eating it anywhere except in Andong... but Girlfriendoseyo heard that some of the JjimDalk restaurants in Andong will actually deliver their recipes to you in Seoul, if you order them a few days ahead of time.  Girlfriendoseyo did exactly that.  We'd been planning a jjimdalk party sometime, but before we ordered it to eat with a bunch of friends, we wanted to try it, and make sure it was the same stuff on deliveray, as it was in Andong.  After climbing the mountain, Mother-In-Law-oseyo warmed up the recipe that had been delivered, and readers... it was almost as good as making the trip to Andong.


A bit closer:

And this, readers, is a picture of a full, and happy Roboseyo.

Bravo my life!

And then, on the way home, I saw something amazing: on the subway, this old lady got on the subway, and fell into the most amazing kimchi squat I've ever seen. She curled into a tiny ball on her heels, fell just about asleep, and no matter which way the train pitched, rolled, accelerated, and decelerated, she stayed put. I've never seen a kimchi squat so stable. People were getting on and off near her, and bumping her, and she was unperturbed. Impressive.

ATEK Communications Officer, and no, ATEK will not be taking over Roboseyo

On Monday I sent out a press release, and posted on ATEK's website, that I've applied for, and been appointed, ATEK's National Communications Officer.  (link to press release).  This is an interesting opportunity for me, and I'm pretty excited about the possibilities right now.  Last time I wrote about ATEK, I wrote that

The area where Atek is failing so far is in communication, in my opinion. There isn't enough knowledge in the general population about what they're on about, about the kinds of connections that are being formed, and the reasons why things seem to be going slowly. Meeting notes ought to be published somewhere on their websites, and regular national council meetings should be announced, with their agenda and notes published, at least in some form that doesn't impinge on the privacy or trust of the people involved in certain ATEK actions.

I still think that.  From the conversations I've had (and I'm still learning the ropes right now: patience, please!) Atek has a lot of good people, and they're doing a lot of good things, and I'm looking forward to being a part of letting the world, or at least those who care, know what Atek's about, what they're doing, what they want to do, and how people can get involved.  Hopefully soon, people will no longer be able to say that ATEK's main failing is a failure to communicate... if I do my job well enough, people will know enough about ATEK that they'll be able to criticize finer points of its organization or bylaws or goals, and we'll be able to learn a lot from those public discussions, if they're productive.

So stay tuned: I'm getting my feet under me right now, but I've been sharing a lot of interesting ideas with a bunch of people (you can read some of them here, from Jason, who wrote a nice post about my appointment.)

But I'd like to be clear to my readers that I do not intend to use Roboseyo as ATEK's mouthpiece blog, nor any of the other blogs I'm involved with.  That would be unfair to my readers at Roboseyo, who come here for Roboseyo, not for ATEK, it would be unfair to other bloggers and news sources who write about ATEK, to be scooping them any time with inside information, and it would also be unfair to whoever comes after me as National Communications Officer, if I use the Roboseyo media empire (tee hee) for ATEK publicity, rather than trying to set up ATEK-specific communication mechanisms that are separate from Roboseyo, so that I can cleanly pass them on for the next person to use effectively, when my term expires (the bylaws give a maximum term).  Now, if I go to an ATEK event that rocks, I might post photos and talk about it, because that's something that happened in my life, and it rocked.  If ATEK is doing an event that I think is cool, you might hear about it at the 2S2 Blog or here, but I'll continue posting non-ATEK events that I like, and photos of non-ATEK stuff as well, so long as it's awesome (because that's the only real standard here at Roboseyo: awesomiousity).  This will be very remain my personal blog, with my personal opinions.  Because of my new official position, I'll actually be talking about ATEK less here (for example, in posts like this), because now that I'm in an official capacity, I should be writing about it along official channels.

So why, Roboseyo, are you taking on such a big task?  (and dear readers, it IS a big task... with a sharp learning curve.  I'd never written a press release before until Monday, and I made some mistakes that will be corrected in the next one.)  Well, here's why: I'm getting married, readers.  You know that.  To a wonderful Korean lady, no less, whose job prospects are mostly limited to Korea because of the kinds of re-training she'd have to undergo to do her job in other countries (she's pretty specialized).  I'm probably going to be living in Korea for most of my adult life, if things go the way they have been.  The wind blows, and the wheel turns, but for the foreseeable future, Korea's it.  For a lot of that future, I may well be involved in education, and if that's the case, then helping out an organization whose goal is to improve the lives of English teachers seems kind of logical.  At this point, I think ATEK is the organization I can get involved with, that has the best chance of affecting tangible improvements in the quality of life of English teachers in Korea.  I have a big stake in Korea, so I'm doing a favor for my future self, folks.  Also, when I have a bad Korea day (and everybody has them), thinking that I'm doing something meaningful with my free time makes me feel better about the prospect of living in Korea for a long long time.  It won't always be easy: the time management challenge alone will be a biggie, and I have a wedding coming up, but I think I can do a good job of it, and I'm excited to be part of an organization with a lot of cool people who are passionate about making life better for English teachers.  Plus, I get business cards!

If you want to talk to me about personal or blog stuff, write me at the address on the right: roboseyo at gmail.  If you want to write me about ATEK stuff, I'm going to try to keep them separate, so please send it to media[@]atek[.]or[.]kr   If you have some advice, some suggestions, or if you want to help me out as a volunteer, because you like me so much, or just because you're awesome, some of the ideas I've been tossing around for improving communications will take some help, so drop me a line.

Have a great day, readers.

Roboseyo

Circus Acrobats...

I love Circus shows.  I love what humans have trained themselves to do.  The first live circus I saw that I can remember well (I think I went to a few when I was a kid, but didn't grasp at the time how friggin' hard it is, what they do,) was in North Korea, at the Geumgang Resort.  The stuff they could do was mind-blowing, and I felt like I was seven years old again... I'm still sad that I wasn't allowed to bring recording devices into the country, or buy a DVD.  Not that circuses EVER look good on DVD.

Saw this on Collegehumor, which usually does comedy, but every once in a wile puts some "wow" on their video feed, and it reminded my.

My favorite circus story was when I went to Beijing in December '08/ January '09 with my best friend and his wife; she speaks Chinese extremely well, so she did a lot of bargaining for us to get awesome prices and deals on a lot of stuff.  When she got on the phone with the circus people, to reserve tickets for the Beijing Circus, she tried to argue for a discount, and the phone operator just answered, "What they do is hard." and she had nothing to say.  Check it out.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

The circuses I've been to since then, starting with the most "wow":

1. Geumgang Mountain Tour, North Korea

2. Alegria, by Cirque du Soleil (wrote about it here and here - some of the video clips have been taken down; others are good)

3. Quidam, by Cirque du Soleil

4. Chinese Circus in Shanghai

5. Chinese Circus in Beijing (China takes so many Olympic medals in gymnastics, and supplies performers to every circus in the world, and it shows in their domestic circus shows.)

And being #5 on that list is no shame, buddy.  That's all for now.

Blood Connections, Group to Address Blood-Donation Issues, to Meet on Sunday

Blood Connections is a group conceived by some of the people who were working to collect blood for YooWoon, the 19-year-old boy who had a facebook page and a blood drive done in his name, but who passed away last week.

Some people, myself included, discovered that there are a number of issues making it harder for non-Korean speakers to give blood in Korea.  On Sunday, in Kangnam, a group of these people are meeting to start a group meant to address these issues, and make it easier for foreigners to give blood in Korea.  The facebook page is here, and it's a good cause that can mean life or death.

Praise is Meaningless if Not Allowed To Criticize

This article was published in the Korea Herald, but the link is a bit glitchy, so I'm storing a copy here in case it disappears next time The Korea Herald updates its website.

It is further discussed in this blog post, "Death Threads, K-Bloggers, Lousy Korea"

This January, an English teacher in Korea had a conversation with a few other expats. All the complaining she heard made her decide to vent her negativity on a blog, so that she didn’t have to be negative around her friends.

Also a regular blog reader, she took the repeated and repetitive theme of complaining about Korea, and exaggerated it to ridiculous degrees, partly to vent, and partly in hopes that the exaggeration would prompt some of the whiners to shake their heads and say, “Wait a minute ... Korea’s not as bad as all that.” She named the blog Lousy Korea, and while she expected some defensiveness from people who missed her point, she did not expect what happened.

image from original Korea Herald online article (see link above)

The teacher, whom we’ll call L.K. to protect her privacy, last week took her blog down completely. Threats were being made not only to L.K., but to other bloggers who were linked on her blog, and even the families of those bloggers. Lousy Korea is not the only blog that has been targeted by death threats, nor the only expat: Korean Rum Diary is another blogger who received a death threat with detailed descriptions of how he would be murdered, and included his real name and address.

Popular blogger Brian in Jeollanam-do was recently reported to immigration, most likely because of his critical opinions, and the president of the Association for Teachers of English in Korea also had his life threatened. Some of these people were attempting to discuss Korean social issues honestly. Others took negative approaches. However, it is shocking that there are people who believe that when somebody writes something they dislike, an appropriate response is to threaten that person’s job, life, friends or family.

So what’s with these negative blogs, anyway? They’re misunderstood: A lot of the people who complain online save all their negativity for the Internet, so that they can be pleasant and polite during the day to their friends and coworkers. These people are not publishing their articles in famous magazines or newspapers -- they often aren’t writing for an audience at all: They’re participating in a group therapy session, dealing with culture shock by talking to others who also feel culture shock. Posting their thoughts where anybody can find them might not be the wisest choice, but such people deserve pity more than hostility.

Meanwhile, in the same way that hyper-negative bloggers leave a bad impression of expats in Korea, the extreme reactions from netizens, who really believe they are protecting Korea with their hateful behavior, creates the impression that Korean society can’t stand criticism. This tiny, angry minority of hostile people can be very noisy, and they’ve chosen different targets at different times: ask Park Jae-beom, Vera Hohleiter (the “Loser” girl from Misuda), Dog Poop Girl or Jim Hewish. These people do not realize that rather than protect Korea’s reputation, their behavior actually damages it by creating a false image of a country full of thin-skinned, reactionary and hostile netizens.

During Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan’s dictatorships, people were afraid to say anything different, difficult, or provocative, because people were regularly jailed for criticizing the regime. Even today, the situation is similar in North Korea. It is really sad that a few angry and aggressive commenters can create a culture of fear online, so that, once again, people are afraid to express their opinions. It is shameful that even though many Koreans alive today can still remember those dictatorships, some people are celebrating Korea’s new democratic freedoms by using the same fear and intimidation tactics Korea’s old dictators did, to stifle opinions they dislike.

Free speech is the lifeblood of a truly free society, and while free speech does not mean speech without consequences, there are acceptable responses to speech, like written responses, angry comments, criticisms and negative feedback, and there are unacceptable responses, like threats to someone’s privacy, job, safety, friends or even family. It doesn’t matter if someone’s opinion or method of expression is unpopular or even offensive: If their free speech is not also protected, nobody is really free to express themselves.

These days, Korea seems to be especially concerned with how it is perceived by countries around the world. Branding is the buzzword in food, business and tourism promotion. Positive mentions of Korea are repeated, but criticisms are met with outcry.

On the blogs, it’s the same: Everybody congratulates the happy bloggers for truly understanding Korea; however, if bloggers do not feel free to say what they really think, if they are writing positive things because they fear violence when they criticize, then their positive comments are as empty as the songs of North Korean school children praising their leader, for fear of the prison camp.

To comment, e-mail [redacted]; Rob Ouwehand’s other writings can be found at the blog Roboseyo.blogspot.com; the opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent those of The Korea Herald – Ed.

By Rob Ouwehand

Death Threats, K-Bloggers, Lousy Korea

I wrote an article for The Korea Herald about the Lousy Korea incident, which you can also read about at I'm No Picasso here; the best commentary on the issue so far is coming from Korean Rum Diary, who's made some interesting and thoughtful posts on the topic.  His first discusses critics of negative blogs; his second is actually a long comment from the blogger Lousy Korea, and his third responds to the article I wrote today in the Korea Herald.  In the comments to the first of KRD's posts, The Korean leaves a response that's worth reading.

You can read my article in the Korea Herald here. Duplicate link here in case the first goes dead.

I'd written a big, really long post about this issue that I was going to run this week, but while writing the Herald article, I asked LK to contact me, and during that correspondence, she said that she doesn't wish this thing to be made too much more of a big deal, for the sake of some of the people whose lives have been threatened.

So I'm going to summarize my long post, instead of publishing the whole thing.  Interestingly, it referenced the same news story KRD mentioned: Muslims threatening South Park for their Muhammed portrayal.

Here's the bullet point version of the original post:

1. Yeah, Lousy Korea had a harsh tone that was quite provocative.
2. I'm No Picasso notes here that "hater K-bloggers" and "psycho nutizens" are both extreme fringes who do not represent their groups, but who sometimes makes their entire group look bad.
3. Yep, Korean Sentry can be hateful... but no worse than some of Dave's ESL's Hate Korea comment threads.
4. A lot of this stuff relates to my old "Why Do Expats Complain"/"Why Do Koreans Get So Defensive" teamup.

Longer points:

5. (똥)개 눈에는 똥만 보인다 - a Korean saying literally translated, according to Girlfriendoseyo, "The dog that eats shit, only looks for shit."  I think "The dog with shit in his eye sees only shit" is snappier, but basically, some kinds of writing reveal more about the writer than the subject.  Such extreme writing speaks for itself, and undermines itself with its vitriol; if somebody's having SUCH a bad time in Korea, they ought to be pitied, and then ignored.

6. Most of the "Hate Korea" blogs out there have fewer than 50 followers: they're not reaching a large audience, nor are they really trying to.  It's mostly a few buddies passing notes to each other in class.

(with apologies to Jason Ryan)
Q: If a tree shouts, "Korea sucks" in the forest, ten other trees shout, "Hear, hear!" and nobody else is there to hear it, does it make a sound?
A: Who cares?  I have more important things to worry about.

7.  "Hate Korea" blogs and the extreme reactions they engender lead to a perception that expats and Korean society are incompatible - in the same way that South Park's Mohammed jokes and militant groups' overreactions create the perception that Muslims will NEVER integrate into Western society.  Is the laugh that South Park got for taking cracks at Mohammed worth the mutual alienation that develops between Muslim and Western society?  I don't know.

8. While there are enough Koreans who can read English and access OUR complaining blogs, there are way too few expats who can read enough Korean to answer the K-defenders with "But a Korean blogger said the same thing yesterday!" and provide a link.  That's too bad.

9. Free speech doesn't mean Speech without consequences.  Free speech, even on the internet, has consequences, be that hundreds of commenters flaming me for saying "Wondergirls suck" or Birthers shrieking because I wrote in support of Obamacare, expressing yourself on the internet has consequences. The Marmot, Garry Bevers, Kushibo, and Brian in Jeollanam-do have all been personally attacked or threatened for their online actions.  You own everything you say on the internet, forever.  No, people shouldn't be allowed to publish my address and phone my employer: there are appropriate and inappropriate responses to free speech, but speech DOES have consequences.  Even anonymous speech can be traced by smart, persistent people, and a dedicated sleuth might expose even the thing you thought was completely anonymous!

10. The cycle of Misunderstanding: I really think there's a big misunderstanding leading to the negative cycle of Haters and K-defenders.  Here's how it works:

1. Expats vent online, kind of like a group therapy session (the internet's good for getting together group therapy and support communities)
2. K-defenders read the venting and miss the group-therapy context, and react.  Maybe they start out rationally (which would be fine if the point of the forum really were intellectual exchange, but it isn't: it's catharsis), maybe they don't start out rationally.  But they react.
3. Expats mistake the K-defender's defensiveness for either an invalidation of their right to free speech, or a denial of the realities they face every day.  Instead of explaining, "Kindly leave us to our group therapy," they double-down, and re-assert their right to free speech, usually by saying even nastier things about Korea.
4. Repeat steps 2-4 until everyone hates everyone.

11. You're not the first one to notice this blog is one-sided.  K-defenders forget that the other people who read the "Hate Korea" blogs have brains, probably don't believe everything they read on the internet, and most likely suspect any blog that is one-sided, either positive (suspected to be propaganda) or negative (suspected to be vendetta).  Readers will seek out other sources, if they care enough to get the full story. If readers are so disengaged and incurious they don't check their facts and read other sources, who cares what they think?

12. When people are putting stuff on the internet, I don't know if "You're not my intended audience" can/should be a "get out of jail free" card; regardless, if it's something easily misunderstood, it's the barest of prudence to put a disclaimer on the front page: something like "This blog is a satire;" or "this blog is just my own opinion;" or "I usually write when I'm feeling a lot of feelings, so the things you read here might not reflect how I feel 80-95% of the time;" or "These are jokes. Lighten up or move on."

13. In my own experience of K-defensiveness, I don't think it's as bad as it used to be, but I don't know if that's because there are more Koreans able to talk openly to foreigners about negative topics, because I'm getting better at presenting my thoughts tactfully, or because I'm getting better at spotting who is and who isn't up to those kinds of discussions, and I naturally avoid those who can't.

who knows.

Wanna Chat with Foreign Beauties? How to Make Friends with a Foreigner Part 6

This post is part of a series providing tips for expats in Korea who are interested in becoming friends with Koreans, and tips for Koreans who are interested in becoming friends with Westerners. Read. Yes, I know these are sweeping generalizations. Deal with it.

The table of contents for the entire series is here.

Tip 15 Be calm: if you find yourself wanting to "correct" my opinion, or if you find yourself wanting to say something like "You should learn more about Korea before you criticize," it's time to do one of two things: 1. do a quick emotion-check - breathe deeply, count to ten, and continue as coolly and rationally as possible, with delicate, tactful language, in a calm voice, or 2. if you don't feel like doing that, or if you're afraid your emotions will make it hard to do that, just change the subject.

Honestly, this is a bad habit many foreigners have: it's natural to have complaints about life -- nobody's ever 100% happy -- but sometimes we choose the wrong time or place to say them, or we take our normal, natural complaints about life, and make them sound like we're complaining generally about Korea, not specifically about a situation. If it seems like the conversation is about to turn into a bunch of complaining, it might be time to change the subject.

If you don't want to have conversations like this, see also tip 11: don't ask questions that could be taken as an invitation to complain.

Tip 15.1 Please allow me to have bad days. Some days, my boss was a jerk, or the crowded subway was annoying, or some of my students' mothers complained about my teaching. If I complain about those things, please listen to me, and don't think that my complaining is a final judgement on your country, or your culture. I need friends to help me deal with my bad days, not Korea defenders to tell me I shouldn't feel that way!

Complaints are emotional, especially if I just had a bad day, and when I'm emotional, I don't always choose my words carefully. That's normal human behavior; please remember that before getting defensive.

Tip 16 Be ready for a different kind of friendship than you have with your Korean friends. I don't feel comfortable explaining in detail exactly how, because "foreigners" is a pretty diverse group, as are Koreans, and the specifics vary for every two different people... but the ways and reasons Koreans form and maintain friendships are sometimes different than the ways and reasons foreigners form and maintain friendships, so there will be times when things are different, strange, maybe even uncomfortable for both of us. In those cases, if you really want to have a good foreign friend, it'll be important for you to talk with me about what's happening, and how or why things are different than you'd each expect from your friends of the same culture. If you can both keep open minds and negotiate those challenges, then you'll be on the way to having a truly rewarding friendship. But especially if you haven't lived outside of Korea, and your friend hasn't spent time in other cultures growing up, both sides will need to work on being flexible. If we can both be flexible, it's totally worth it.

And remember: "It's a cultural difference" is NOT the end of a conversation.  It's the BEGINNING of a conversation.  After saying "It's a cultural difference," it's important to articulate that difference, and how my expectations are different than your expectations, so that we can be understanding and flexible towards each other in the future.

Now, following these tips won’t automatically guarantee that you’ll become great friends with every foreigner you meet: friendship depends on more than avoiding faux-pas - but by avoiding these turn-off behaviors, you’ll hopefully have the tools to make the kind of good impression that leads to good friendships. Have fun!

Back to the Table of Contents for the series.

I'm in the Canadian Embassy's April Newsletter!

The Canadian Embassy wrote a feature about me in their monthly newsletter.  :)

You can read it here.

You can go to this page, and in the top right corner there's a spot where you can subscribe to the newsletter.

Also, on the right side of this blog, under the "helpful sites worth checking out" category, you can find a link to the Embassy's page of information about coming to Korea to teach English.  It's a pretty good primer that touches on the most important points without getting over-long.

Wanna Chat with Korean Buddies? How not to make an Ass of Yourself: Part 4

This post is part of a series providing tips for expats in Korea who are interested in becoming friends with Koreans, and tips for Koreans who are interested in becoming friends with Westerners. Read. Yes, I know these are sweeping generalizations. Deal with it.

Here's the table of contents to the series.

On to the tips:

Learn as much as you can about Korean manners. Gord Sellar just wrote a great piece about what is called "Gaijin Smash" in Japan - where foreigners get away with stuff, or dodge the usual expectations or obligations by feigning ignorance of Japanese norms, or demanding special treatment. Don't over-play the foreigner card, and learn how we Koreans deal with conflict resoluation. Open confrontation often isn't the way it's done here; if you have an awkward situation, ask a Korean friend for advice rather than starting off with your battering ram impersonation. As a general rule, Koreans usually prefer back-channels and indirect methods of conflict resolution, rather than direct confrontation; we even have a word for it: 눈치, or nunchi, which might be defined as a cross between social awareness and tact on steroids. Learning a bit of how to comport yourself with nunchi will go a long way. Give a person a small gift and invite them to go drinking to work things out privately, instead of hauling off with a confrontation in front of colleagues, where I lose face, and you lose even MORE face, for making me lose face.

Don't ask how to get a Korean girl. What would you say if a Korean exchange student in your home country asked you the same question? Probably, "Every girl is different; I don't know what to tell you," right? Why would you think it's different here?

So here's Roboseyo's authoritative guide to meeting Korean girls: step one: Come to Korea. Step two: Approach a girl. Step three: Put your best foot forward, and hope she likes you. The Korean from Ask A Korean! wisely notes that "If there is only one thing to remember about Korean men, it’s this: they are men before they are Korean." Ditto for women: it's pretty universal that women want to be treated with respect and kindness. It's universal that there are some awesome women and some crazy psychos in every country. While variations in culture might lead to differences in how people express certain things, or how an an individual's awesomeness/psychoness manifents, those differences won't be that much more confusing than the usual variations between individuals, if you keep an open mind. One friend advises watching a few Korean dramas and romantic comedies to see what women expect from a suitor. From there, figure it out.

Earn your right to be opinionated. When giving opinions on Korea, acknowledge what you don't know. Even Roboseyo remembers having conversations with Koreans in his first year, telling them everything that was wrong with Korea, and exactly how it could be fixed. Coincidentally, the best way to fix things, most of the time, was to do them more the way they were done in Canada. Old Roboseyo was operating under the false assumption that Koreans don't already know what's broke in their system, and got caught up in the heady notion that he would be the visionary - that vaunted outside voice - who could break people's thinking out of the box of Neo-Confucianism (whatever that means) or hyper-competition, or whatever.

Problem is, the more Roboseyo learned about Korea, the more complex all those problems seemed. It's no surprise that a lot of us Koreans rankle when somebody acts as if they have it all figured out, three months into their Korea experience. During all those conversations on his high horse, Roboseyo didn't actually say anything his Korean friends hadn't heard before, and been said better, by a social critic, a commentator, or a thinker in Korea. Don't fall into the trap of thinking we will never have heard your "western perspective" before. Approach discussions of Korean issues with a level of humility appropriate to your level of knowledge about the country.  

Pick Your Spots, Too. Make sure our friendship can bear the frequency and type of complaints, criticisms, and commentaries you make on Korea. It IS my country, after all, so I probably won't want to talk about social issues all the time, nor will I want to hear complaints and criticisms every time we talk.   Spend some time talking about travel, or food, or video games, so that it doesn't seem like the only thing we ever talk about is all the ways you'd change Korea, if you could.

Meanwhile, if you don't know me well enough to read when I'm starting to feel uncomfortable with the direction of the conversation, you shouldn't be getting overly critical to begin with, and if you do know me well enough to read my comfort level, be sure to do so during the discussion.  It's generally a good idea to save the "Korea bashing" theme for other expats, who understand the difference between the "group therapy" context and the "representations of Korean culture" context.

Finally: Don't talk about sex all the time.  Some of us don't mind that - some of us even hang out with non-Koreans so that we can speak a little more freely about topics that are taboo to most Koreans, but not all of us.  It's quite unusual, and often embarrassing to have a lot of really open conversations about sex, even if it's in English, because these days, a lot of people can understand English, and can follow every word you're saying if you talk about it in public.  Even if the other people in the coffee shop don't understand every English word, they'll still recognize words like "sex" and "fuck" - we all watch Hollywood movies.  Once again, pick your spots, and don't go into it unless you already have a pretty good read on a person's sensibilities and comfort zones.

Well, that's what I've got for now. If you can think of other things I've missed, let me know. I hope this series turns out useful for both sides.

And even though I've just spent a few thousand words dredging up stereotypes and awkward aspects of either side of the expat/Korean friendship, here's my bit:

Basically, if you boil down both lists, they sum up the same way: be considerate and respectful, and consider the person you're meeting as a complete human, and not just an example of their group. Really, that's all anyone wants, because, to modify The Korean's quote: "We're humans before we're Koreans, or Westerners."

I've grown uncomfortable with the casual tendency to say "I talked to a Korean nurse at the clinic" instead of saying "I talked to a nurse..." because often adding the "Korean" (or "foreign") label means lumping a whole bunch of baggage over top of the initial situation. "A Korean lady pushed me on the subway." No. "A rude lady pushed me on the subway." Using the word "Korean" there instead of the word "rude" seems to saddle the category of "Korean" with rudeness, and fails to acknowledge the diversity of Koreans, and that's unfair. On both sides, we need to be more careful about avoiding such casual categorizations.

One of my correspondents concurs:

Even though I said these things, this is the small part of my friends/foreigners aspects. Mostly, the foreigners I know are really nice but I sent this list because I had to think about what could be annoying for me.

and I'd say the same thing about the Koreans I know.

Hope you've enjoyed the read.

Back to the table of contents.