Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Rock]

Lost it, this battle. The" internal inferno," I call it. It's the great dilemma, the feeling of not bridging the gulf between East and West and greeting the country I'm from with feelings of ignorance on my country's behalf. Never wanted to return home.

Now that I've experience another country and Asia. There's no acceptance back home, no idea what it took to bridge this gulf between East and West, to act open-minded, to condescend and humble oneself. Not so the brave Americans back home who sit on their couches all day, watch tv and believe we're better.

But I feel the call again like a squall to my senses, something stirring up the depths of my soul to return back to Asia. The "internal inferno" is hating yourself for giving in to the prejudices that exist in us all and not perservering. It's trying to re-identify after having been in Asia for 10 years and believing in a real purpose for living. This purpose was to learn about a whole different country and world and that for as long as I could.

Not that I want to live in Asia forever. It's just that there's no understanding back home, just a sort of ignorance that I can never accept, that things are inferior elsewhere and that we in America have superior living standards. Some may be true. But in reality, I've lived a better life abroad than back home. The details I can't convey.

Neither can I convey the experiences of living in another culture. I can only say that I've had a better existence than I'd ever lived back home, ie., having steady work, a place to live, low cost of living and good food. I"ve also felt a sense of real identity, believe it or not, since in the U.S., the roots of one's race are really non-existent.

So the moral is, go native and marry those lonely adjumma and ajoshiis. That way you can find ignorance is bliss.

[Zackback]

Get a job lined up, pack up and fly out here. Marry a real cool Korean woman and enjoy life.

[travel zen]

Ignorance is everywhere.

I've seen a lot of it when i did a tour of Asia. Returning home to Canada, I saw it again in the immigrants from those same countries. Worse, I saw it in the Canadian 'brothers and sisters' whom I grew up with. If you stay in USa long enough, Korea will come to you ...

[Underwaterbob]

The whole world over (minus bits of Europe and Asia maybe) has been on some kind of anti-intellectual kick for some time now.

[madtownhustl]

No acceptance back home? I think it's worse here! Unless your a korean, you'll never be fully accepted...Fact.

[Globutron]

Surely it's only a better life here *because* you're a foreigner. You get all this easy teaching giggery with extreme amounts of money (compared to those say, working on a korean market) in the middle of Seoul.

[Draz]

I think I see what you're saying. I also don't know how I'll deal with people who ignorantly think Western culture is better just because, unlike myself who learned Western culture is definitely superior by having to submit to Asian foolishness for a large chunk of my own life.

[comm]

[PCRamplified]

Sounds like reverse culture shock...

[UknowsI]

My biggest annoyance when I go back home is the complaining about completely trivial topics. For example I read in the news papers that 25% of all adults in my home country had gone to work at least once with a hangover, and it was shocking news. Other people are outraged that they have to work for 6 minutes to be able to afford a bottle of beer or that they sometimes have to stand on the subway because all the seats are occupied. These kind of complains seems so trivial after experiencing different cultures.

Most of my friends have stayed or even worked abroad, so I don't have any problems relating my experiences to theirs.

[Cerulean]

Rock, how long have you been home?

[redaxe]

The biggest reverse culture shock for me upon my return to the USA has been the extreme aversion that Americans have to paying for anything for another person.

Going to a restaurant with my American friends and listening to them haggle over the bill is so freaking embarrassing that I want to (and sometimes do) just slap my credit card on the table and say I'm paying for the whole thing just so they'll shut up.

And hearing my younger brother's girlfriend talk about how she has to pay her own way through college working minimum-wage jobs and cannot get student loans because her parents make too much money.

If you make enough money that your kid doesn't qualify for subsidized loans, that means you're supposed to be paying for your kid's tuition! Not buying yourself a new Lexus!

This is one area where I feel East Asian culture is superior. In Asia it's prestigious to pay for things. You consider it an honor to treat your friends to dinner, and you don't just kick your children out on the street to fend for themselves economically as soon as they turn 18.

[Rock]

[Died By Bear]

I think that Koreans get the idea of 'unconditional love' when it come to parenting and all that, redaxe.

[redaxe]