Korean Job Discussion Forums

[moosehead]

no prize for any of these answers -

it's the lousy toothpaste here - all the brands - and I mean ALL of them - suck big time - they are worthless tubes of crappy chalky substance.

Ks brush like mad all the time - so really - do you believe it's the food?

also they don't drink much water - which is so important for so many reasons - your mouth being one of them -

there was a good toothpaste Clarin that was sold for some time in specialty areas but I can't find it any more - don't know what happened to it

anyway, I'm using the arm and hammer brand now - not great but again, anything's better than the local K brands -

[nomad-ish]

i think it's the kimchi, pretty stinky stuff. i hate the smell of the subway cars on a friday/saturday night -- soju and kimchi, mixed together

as for koreans thinking we smell, yes they do. my co-teacher told me americans smell like butter because they eat it at every meal. i'm not american, but i have to admit i was pretty offended.

[Mix1]

[Papa Smurf]

can't say i've noticed. who are you hanging around with???

my coworkers brush obsessively. like 3 or 4 times during working hours.

[aerialsimulacrum]

Brushing and not flossing basically means you are swishing around nasty bacterial glop in your mouth, all while the brush opens up tons of little cuts in your (inflamed) gums.

It's also really disgusting to carry around one's toothbrush in those little cases right instead of disinfecting and drying them in the open air after every use.

http://checkered-vans.com/scenelulz/macros/gingivitis.jpg

[santafly]

Their stomachs are rotting - same reason stomach cancer is the most common cancer and the no.2 cause of death, what is the no.1 cause of death in Korea? Lung cancer.

I think the main reason that the guys stink is probably the drinking/work culture - I teach adults and I have to lean away a lot of the time - and I'm definitely not one to complain about people smelling after spending the past 7 years living/working in the outdoors.

Koreans say foreigners smell bad. I say Seoul smells like $hit! This is the worst smelling place I have ever been to - never encountered anything like it in many 3rd world countries - It smells worse here than parts of Kathmandu that have open sewers.

[itaewonguy]

[NoExplode]

Some wstrange statements in this thread...corrections:

-Koreans always brush all the time. Wackily so.

-Koreans are always flossing.

-Not eating doesn't give you bad breath.

[hari seldon]

[mogbert]

[offtheoche]

I was sitting on a bus a few days ago and the smell on the breath of the person sitting behind me was unbearable. I find a lot of Koreans to be generally quite smelly/dirty. Some of my students told me that they only shower once/twice a week.

[cj1976]

Some of the comments here are bordering on racist. Kind of reminds me of being in the UK during the 80's when Indians/Pakistanis were getting this kind of treatment.
To be fair, the food here is very pungent so it can make breath a bit smelly. When it comes to body odour, I rarely ever detect it on Koreans but I have noticed a few smelly foreigners here.
I've heard that BO can be correlated to dairy products, so that might be a factor.

[Bread]

Do they sell Crest Whitestrips in Korea?

[jajdude]

Not a bad idea is to carry around some gum or mints or halls and casually offer one to the next foul mouth you encounter.

[Underwaterbob]

From http://www.qualitydentistry.com/dental/halitosis/summary.html