Korean Adventure Part 1

I just got back two days ago from a grand adventure in the land of kimchi, cuteness, and computer games. Korea was ridiculously awesome. It wasn't my first time going, but I still learned a lot of new stuff about Seoul. I stayed in a really great little hostel called Kim's Guest House. Basically, for about $15 USD per night you get a nice, clean place to stay, a built in group of travellers to make friends with, and a source of advice for places to eat, visit, etc. And you can do laundry. I cannot stress enough how great of a choice this place turned out to be.

Anyway, in Korea I got to make a lot of observations. Seoul is similar to Tokyo in some ways. At least, they are both competely packed with people. However, where Tokyo is ridiculously clean and full of people mostly filling upper-level business roles (the subway is a sea of suits in the morning), Seoul is more littered and raw, and it has a wildness to it. Unfortunately, my Korean is horrible, although I can say the most basic things, but even when you speak to Koreans in english, they are much more direct. In Japan, you undergo a sort of dance of politeness, but in Korea it's straight out there.



Koreans in general seem to be a little more willing to confront one another, although also more willing to befriend you. Similar to Tokyo though, Seoul is very safe. The way shops are set up and people leave goods lieing around unattended (in one case I went to a shop with a sign detailing who to call if you wanted to make a purchase), it is clear that nobody fears theft much. When I say willing to confront, I don't mean that I've felt intimidated or unsafe at any time.

Korean daily life is pretty different from Japan. There are a lot of internet cafes in Tokyo, but not like Seoul. They're called PC Bangs there (bang meaning room), and they are everywhere. Most of them are roughly $1 USD per hour as well, so it's a pretty convenient stop. I kept seeing a weird game called Sudden Attack that was a Counterstrike clone with required registration to play, but other than that the game loadout was a mix of the regulars, such as all the flavors of Warcraft and Starcraft, and a ton of interesting Korean games such as Mabinogi.

The registration thing brings up a good point. From what I've read and found out from talking to others, it appears as if the Korean internet culture is really unique. If you don't know, Korea has the single highest rate of broadband connectivity in the world, with literally 25% of all Koreans with high-speed connections. Being a somewhat small nation, a huge number of Koreans are all on the Cyworld network, something like a 3rd or 4th generation social networking site, with tons of extras such as avatars, rooms, decorations, etc. Just to register, you have to either be a citizen or have an alien registration card. That is, in general, all members of the site will be real people with verified information. This, coupled with the near universal participation, results in a close-knit community where everybody knows everybody elses' business. My friend from Paris, whom I met during the trip, says that at one point a girl that he had been dating had gotten mad and posted something untruthful about him on her hompy (the Korean way to shorten the word homepage), and he ended up getting almost blackballed within his social network, with people he has never met before calling him up and harassing him even weeks later, after the girl he dated removed the information.

Clearly it is not without its problems, this kind of internet harassment is common in Korea, but I think the very close integration of social networking on the internet into Korean society provides a glimpse into the future. In Korea, internet savviness is common, and the utility and function of the internet as an organizer and facilitator of actual real life relationships is fully realized. In colleges in the United States, of course everybody facebooks one another, but this is like the next step. I've heard it said that a Korean person would rather go hungry than eat alone, and the internet has been fully integrated into the process of achieving this type of fundamental need for human connection.

In other aspects of Korean culture, there is a sort of fierce pride. Korea as a nation has worked to become a productive and powerful player in the international economy, and has succeeded thanks to its main corporations, Samsung and LG. As such, many Koreans are quick to talk about how great Samsung and LG are, and many drive Hyundais, a Korean car, rather than Japanese cars. Unfortunately, Korean pride often results in competition between whose company is better, Samsung versus Sony. This brings up another important point.

In Korea, anti-Japanese sentiment is fairly common. The result of both Japan's transgressions during World War II and horrible foreign policy decisions on the part of the Japanese government, namely having the Prime Minister visit the Yasukuni shrine each year, where war criminals are memorialized, there is lasting resentment on the part of the Korean people. Perhaps I will make a better update to my previous racism post in Japan to clarify the way it works, but in general, most of the Japanese I come into contact with, young people, students, and those looking to study foreign languages, harbor no resentment for Koreans. That being said, racism towards Koreans and Chinese in Japan DOES exist, in a somewhat hidden fashion. In Korea however, anger towards the Japanese is fairly common.

While out drinking, most of the Korean college students I've met have made their dislike of Japan fairly clear fairly quickly, upon hearing that I've just come from there. However, this is more of a sort of generalized dislike, and not openly acted upon in public, so I have heard from many Japanese tourists in Korea that have had perfectly good times. Despite personally getting kicked out of one club for attempting to communicate in Japanese, (something I've been assured is very rare) I've had a lot of good times out drinking in Korea as well.

Which brings me to yet another important point. The role of drinking in both Korea and Japan is something many foreigners may have trouble understanding. In Japan and Korea, people who say they don't drink do not exist. There are those who abstain of course, but there is no straight edge movement or anything like that, because drinking is a part of the social mechanism. I will go more in-depth into how it works in Japan later, but in Korea, alcohol greases the gears of the social process, and as such everybody participates. Drinking is even more vital than in Japan, and as a result many Koreans are STRONG drinkers. I consider myself a strong drinker, but in Korea its common to just sit around drinking from a glass of straight tequila. That's fierce.



One area where Korea's feeling of untamedness starts to come into play is when you go shopping. Absolutely everything MUST be bargained for. I couldn't even imagine bargaining in Japanese, but in Korea, even in the duty-free shops at the airport, I couldn't imagine not bargaining. Shopping in Korea is some of the greatest fun I've had there, and a really different experience from anything I've experienced in the US or in Japan. However, I will leave that discussion for my next blog post in the Korea series.