Korean Job Discussion Forums

[okokok]

I was leaving my apartment this afternoon, so I got on the elevator on the 13th floor, and a Korean woman (35-40) gets on at the same time. As always, the Korean makes a bee-line for the mirror at the back of the elevator and with her nose only an inch from it, fixes her hair, ballcap, picks her nose, whatever. She also eyes me up and stares at me through the mirror.
When the elevator gets to the third floor, it stops and the doors open since somebody must have pushed the down button, but taken a different elevator since no one is there.
The ajumma bursts out of the door thinking that it is the first floor. The first floor and every other floor do not look the same in any way. Fine, simple mistake. However the woman continues to round the corner to where the exit would be on the first floor, and actually runs into the wall!!! Finally realizing her mistake, she turns around but it was too late as the elevator door had closed .
Now, I'm not trying to pick on anybody, but quite honestly I see things like this everyday. This is but one example. I'm sure anybody that has been here for any length of time could recount a number of similar stories.

Now, I believe my days are numbered in Korea, but I really would like to somehow understand what goes on in Korean's brains before I leave. Why do so many seem to be so confused all the time. Whether it's when they approach a subway ticket machine, or when they get off a subway and don't know which way to go, or when they run right smack into you even though it's only you and them on a 3 meter wide sidewalk and they've been staring at you for the last 30 seconds as they approach you.

In so many situations, their brain seems to short circuit. So I'd just like to know why do you think that is.... that is all.

Don't hate me........ you know I speak the truth.

[Yu_Bum_suk]

I think what happens is that the mind is oscillating (sp?) so quickly between the huge picture and (as an escape continually redirecting the mind to) the tiny picture that everything in the middle gets missed. Oh my boss is upset with the report ... oh how do my nose pores look ... oh my boss is so upset with the report; I just have to get to work and do something ... oh I don't know if I like my bangs ... oh I hope I don't piss off the boss again today ... I really don't know about this shade of lipstick ... OH SHIT!!! A WALL!!!

[okokok]

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

[pkang0202]

A lot of Koreans have anxiety around foreigners. Most of it stems from a lack of direct contact. That ajumma probably was so nervous about being in the same elevator as you that she wanted to get out of there ASAP. Kinda like someone who is claustrophobic.

I think this is a issue to do with Koreans aged 35+.

[PBRstreetgang21]

I think it has more to do with the fact that these people have been told how to do everything their whole lives that by the time they get older and no one is telling them what to do they dont know how to function unless every detail is explained to them by someone else.

Creativity, Free thought, and rationality arent exactly nourished here compared with obedience and the memorization they refer to as "education".

[vox]

When young brains are trained not to do young peoples' things but rather to conform to adult matters for so long, the mind's ability to wander (into things that would catch a normal person's eye) must be compromised.

Oh my God, I think I just explained Noraebangs to myself! They seem downright evil. Shoving peoples' desires into the bottom corners of buildings, instead of into community choirs where they could actually meet people.

Oh well, I wasn't promised England.

[Captain Corea]

[captain kirk]

You (OP) remind me of a friend of mine's son. My friend was 50, teaching in a hagwon, and his son was over, teaching in a different hagwon. I'd meet them for lunch and the young son said the jist of your post, that Koreans are addled and he has to leave because they're driving him mad. They often talked about how 'Koreans can't walk in a straight line'. And how they will walk into you when no-one else is on the sidewalk, gravitating toward another body, and for what reason? I got tired of listening to them go on about this, except when the young one talked about body checking 'sidewalk space invaders', since he was a hockey player, once sending a guy on a scooter teetering and over like a tipped cow.

About Koreans and mirrors, my co-teacher is a batty Auntie, when I'm not hating her to death I like her alot, because she's a character, so zany it's unbelievable. And she has all the usual Korean addle-witted characteristics we foreigners tend to pick on, including being glued to/transfixed by the mirror. She'll, as you say, be an inch from the mirror, during class, checking herself out like she's sharpening a knife. Primping, winking, loving herself up as if she's alone, perceiving, by chance, some mysterious, beautiful stranger in the mirror. I feel like saying, 'it's you, you old hag'.

Chiming on part of your post where the woman rounds the corner and whams into a wall, I saw the same sort of thing today. It's a highway, and there's a light at a crossroads for the town. A man in a white car does a u-turn in the middle of the highway and then just stops, leaning forward, and peering through the windshield. I looked where he was looking and it was a view down the highway, no signs to see, just a straightaway into mountains in the distance, and over them. Meanwhile, and he HAD to have seen this before he did his middle of the highway u-turn at a snail's pace, a cement truck and other cars are bearing down approaching his location, but this doesn't inspire him to be quick, get out of the way, ensure he isn't impacted. No clue at all, but driving, or trying to. I almost ran into the rear end of a car suddenly halting in the middle of the highway like this, once, which taught me to expect this sort of thing, or die.

[ipsofacto]

[Adventurer]

OP people can get on the wrong floor. It happens all the time. I don't think it is strange. It happens all over the world. However, I do believe too many Koreans don't seem to be conscious of where they are running, walking, or going and keep bumping into people as if the whole world should move for them or something. It doesn't make sense. People need to be conscious of where they are going. If they did this in New York, they would get screamed at just as one my co-workers does when they do that to him like the girl who ran into him with his bike, the motorcycle guy who hit me on the side walk...

I think the title of the post is kind of racist against Koreans. Believe me, I have some problems with some Korean views and attitudes, but the title is racist. I am not Korean, evidemment, but if I were Korean, I would be offended. Imagine if the post read "The African American brain". There would be a massive flame war.