Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Homer]

To provide another type of story to the one posted here about the incident in the restaurant....

I eat at this great little spicy pork soup place down the road from my home. I visit often with my wife and son. On this night I was alone with my son. I took him there because he had been stuck home sick and to give my wife a break for a few hours. My son is 2 and a half years old and mixed.

We got there at about 6pm and the place was packed. There were only a few seats open at busy tables and it loked like a long wait.

I was about to leave and go somewhere else when the ajuma that runs the place asked me to wait. She said there was room at a nearby table where a family was sitting (mother, father and 2 kids of elementary school age). She said the family would not mind sharing the table. As she insisted and the man at the table waved me over, I sat down with my son.

As they had not gotten their dishes yet, the man offered to eat together. I figured what the heck and anyway my son was aleady chattering on in Korean with his limited 2 year old lingo.

Well we ordered together and ate a great meal with these folks. there were friendly and we chatted mostly in Korean and sometimes in English as the father spoke it pretty well.

When it was over the man waved the ajuma over and paid for the meal. He refused my money of course.

Well we had exchanged business cards so I figured I would get them something later on.

It was raining when we got out and as I often do I had forgotten the umbrella at home (I hate those things) so he offered to drive me home.


This week, I called him up and we had lunch together with his family and my wife, my treat this time.

Now this happens sometimes in Korea. Much like it happens sometimes that people are jerks and bigots.

Do I think that all Koreans would have done what the man and his family did? No.

They were just kind people and I tend to take things one experience at a time....

[GoldMember]

Yea, I have to admit most of the time when Korean people are aquainted with you/know you, or you are introduced, they are not just nice but super nice. Not just in Korea but in many countries, hospitality is very important. In Eastern Europe for example, the prevailing attitude is that you should feed your guests better than you would feed yourself.
The problem however is when they are not familiar with you. Then you are just a piece of........
One extreme to another

[Ya-ta Boy]

(Am I the only one who can't make heads or tails out of GoldMember's post? It would appear he didn't read all of the OP.)

Glad to hear you had a nice time at the restaurant. I don't recall ever making a friend at a restaurant, I've had lots of pleasant conversations and been given a raft-load of free drinks.

[eamo]

Korean people can be ultra-friendly. They do indeed have big, warm hearts.

It's just that many of them simply can't interact with a foreigner in a natural way. Our foreign-ness always has to be the central factor. It seems that many Koreans think we are so different from them. Like a different species. When I meet a Korean and they ask me normal questions about my life and don't refer to my foreign-ness too much...........then I know I'm dealing with an intelligent person worth knowing.

[jaganath69]

Yeah, agreed. I generally find alcohol is involved in unpleasant incidents, that is when people are at their worst and most bellicose. Last time I had was involved in a dispute it panned out like that anyhow.

My wife went to a local siktang the other day with our baby who is teething right now and can be a handful. The adjumas took turns at nursing him and let her eat, very nice of them indeed. People here can be nice, so nice that it's often embarrassing. The unfortunate thing is that the bad incidents are more easily remembered, I guess.

[dogbert]

A lot depends on one's own attitude; not just the attitude of the locals.

Homer is likely a pleasant person and is treated pleasantly in kind.

[Juregen]

If i am eating in a restaurant and there is a parent or a students present in the restaurant, you can bet you underwear that i will be leaving the place without paying a cent.

[nateium]

Good experiences like the OP's seem much more common to me but they are much easier to forget, or be taken for granted, than the bad ones; which are burned forever into memory.

[skconqueror]

[uberscheisse]

the positive experiences like this with regular folk vastly outweigh the negative ones we have.

they're the kind of experiences we keep to ourselves, because they make us feel good.

if you get shippal'd on the street for being a dirty whitey, you're going to rant about it. where do you go to rant? your boss? your korean friends? no. you come here. which is why the statistics presented by folks on this site are generally skewed.

i hear stories like this one 10 to 1 compared to negative ones.

and of course there's the language barrier where people are talking smack and we don't even know it. but when would those people talking negatively ever act on their talk? rarely.

koreans, to me, seem to be brave when it comes to acts of kindness and downright cowardly when it comes to acts of malice.

[Homer]

[uberscheisse]

[Homer]

Indeed chris...you are right about introductions they do set up possibilities.

But I could have related other stories (and I am sure many others could as well) of perfect strangers helping out or being kind. I cannot count how many times I have been invited by Koreans to share their food when I go out hiking for example.....

[tzechuk]

Does your son eat spicy food at such a young age??

[yingwenlaoshi]

Big deal.