Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Died By Bear]

[Mix1]

[Gladiator]

I would add that in Korea, you are not considered a 'mature' adult until you are married. No matter how old you are, if you haven't tied the knot you are effectively a 'child' to the Hankooksaramdoorun. Also, the freaky Korean age factor enters the equation when a younger married person meets an unmarried 'senior' person-theoretically lower in status--and still has to address him/her in cheondaemal or whatever.

I think I also read somewhere in Paul Crane's superb (1978) book Korean Patterns that marriage is deeply entrenched in both Korea's agricultural and shamanistic heritage (procreation and production of first sons to look after family) and that the 'souls' of unmarried people--in Korean thinking--mystically and miserably lurk in a kind of quasi-religious 'limbo' when they die. Yikes!

I lived in Korea for seven years and alas Ms Right never showed up in my classes/Starbucks/Insadong/Itaewon on Saturdays to make my K experience that little bit more significant. It was my 'inyon' or fate I guess. In view of this, the 'kyolhon' question got extremely stale and irritating after the seventh year and the predictable, routine scripts of soju-breath Korean men with three hundred word English vocabularies demanding to know why I didn't have a Korean girlfriend started to sound like the townsfolk greeting Bill Murray day after day in Groundhog Day.

[Jongno2bucheon]

[joelove]

A stranger might ask you how much money you make. You could try saying, "You tell me how much money you make, then I'll tell you how much I make." Oddly enough the stranger might then consider you rude. Or if you answer the question honestly because you don't mind telling a stranger this, and supposing your income is not as high as the stranger believed, he might think you lied.

A stranger might be having some beer in a bar, and being friendly, is happy to drink with you. Things are going fine, there's joking and the beer is good as usual. He might ask you your age, and might even go right down to your date of birth. If it occurred before his, he might act a little differently towards you, a little deferential even, taking care to see your glass isn't empty for long, with a two-handed pour from the jug, or whatever, even if you come from a different land and don't look at all like a local.

A stranger could come along out of nowhere and say something like, "I think foreigners are selfish," or "I think foreigners are strange," and then carry on with his day. You carry on with yours too, perhaps wondering why the stranger felt a need to say that to you.

[joelove]

[TheUrbanMyth]

[DosEquisXX]

I never really took these comments as offensive. Granted, I was 24 when teaching there so some people didn't necessarily believe that I absolutely had to be married by then. A lot of it was just curiosity to me. After a while, I just started being honest.

Korean: Why aren't you married?
Me: Because I don't want to spend my life being a slave to my wife while supporting not only my family, but my parents and her parents by working 50 hours a week. I am able to do things that I couldn't do if I was married with a child. Like living overseas.
Korean: ...