Korean Job Discussion Forums

mindmetoo · Joined: 02 Feb 2004

- Fan death
- Birds/pigeons
- The common cold
- Foreign everything
- Ghosts

Any others?

bixlerscott · Joined: 27 Sep 2006 Location: Near Wonju, South Korea

I too am afraid of the common cold as I've been getting it once every 3 weeks here in Korea for the past 3.5 months straight. I don't blame Koreans for being afraid of the common cold as it's so prevalent here.

As for fan death, that is weird and funny, but I do know that sleeping with a fan on you can give you symptoms of a common cold. I can bet the fan death myth comes from finding old people without air conditioners dead in bed with a fan on them. Often, when it gets hot in the summer, old people without an air conditioner will die of the heat. Still common in the US.

The magpie birds won't come up to you and claw your eyes out like seen in some video games. Often a magpie is an enemy in role playing games like Final Fantasy. Those black and white magpies always try to avoid humans in my observations.

newton kabiddles · Joined: 31 Mar 2007

Koreans do not allow an in-law to bow before a dead ancestor's tribute feast if someone in their immediate family has recently died. I think the rule is you have to sit the whole year out. You attend, but during the ceremony you are sent to a bedroom with all the "out-law" women.

newton kabiddles · Joined: 31 Mar 2007

endo · Joined: 14 Mar 2004 Location: Seoul...my home

Birds is definitely one that frightens most Korean girls I know.

Most recreational drugs also scare Koreans.

Ahhh, what else....

water
speaking English
a woman with a big ol' azz
foreign foods
fat people
China, Japan, America, North Korea
yellow dust (that stuff scares me too)

RACETRAITOR · Joined: 24 Oct 2005 Location: Seoul, South Korea

Let's give Koreans some credit. They're generally a lot less afraid of North Korea than pretty well every other country in the world.

Cats is a good one. Someone was telling a story on here recently about a Korean girl who threw a cat off her lap because it was making a strange sound like it was going to explode.

I do know a ton of Koreans who love cats though.

merkurix · Joined: 21 Dec 2006 Location: Not far from the deep end.

FistFace · Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2007 2:58 am Post subject:

BS.Dos. · Joined: 29 Mar 2007

Newbie · Joined: 07 Feb 2003

Newbie · Joined: 07 Feb 2003

I have found that Korean children (10-1 Cool

, when doing the typical "oooh, waygookin" thing, are scared senseless by foreigners who can say "what the frick you looking at?" "shut up. i'm not the first foreigner in Korea" in Korean.

Sometimes I have a bad day.

merkurix · Joined: 21 Dec 2006 Location: Not far from the deep end.

Natalia · Joined: 10 Mar 2006

captain kirk · Joined: 29 Jan 2003

Twice, years apart, I've listened to mid-twenties Korean women say that the sight of a turtle sticking its neck straight out of its shell is spooky/creepy/scary. Phallic looking, that, so they're being coy/demure pretending to be surprised, innocent, naive? Nice try, K gals, you probably stalk turtles waiting for them to extend their necks, ooooo, ahhhhh, 'so fortuitious an omen'.

Lots of tombs, those heaps of earth humped tombs, in the wild forests of the mountainsides, and a mid-twenties Korean woman told me Koreans avoid, at least while alone, the wilds like this for being tomb and thus ghost infested. I told her I'd seen a tomb so old, in untracked forest, that a huge old tree had been growing out of it for a couple hundred years and she exclaimed, 'oh, that's a very bad sign'. 'Of what?', I asked. 'That tree is the person's ghost', she said.

captain kirk · Joined: 29 Jan 2003