Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Newbie]

[PatrickGHBusan]

[laynamarya]

True, I suspect it's much better than it used to be, though somebody always admonishes me when I bring our two-month old outside. And many of the young Korean moms I meet wistfully comment on how much they wanted to go outside when their baby was less than three months old.

But anyway, twenty or thirty years ago, I believe the rule WAS much stricter, and the folks complaining about the cold now are the ones born back then.

[PatrickGHBusan]

[quote="laynamarya"]True, I suspect it's much better than it used to be, though somebody always admonishes me when I bring our two-month old outside. And many of the young Korean moms I meet wistfully comment on how much they wanted to go outside when their baby was less than three months old.

But anyway, twenty or thirty years ago, I believe the rule WAS much stricter, and the folks complaining about the cold now are the ones born back then.[/quote]

I agree.

We got those comments with our babies when we took them out for a stroll in Korea. Mostly it is the general well-meaning, well being comment that Koreans make when they see babies.

[sublunari]

It began yesterday. Chuckling, an old ajoshi came out of nowhere and told me, in Korean, that my toddler was cold---and the very instant he did, I replied in polite but firm Korean that he was not.

The boy won't wear hats, but he was in a stroller under a goddamn blanket with wool socks. I suspect that if I went inside an active volcano with my son and met an old Korean there, we would be informed, immediately, of the boy's intense coldness---even if he were dripping with sweat or actually on fire with flames leaping out of his eyeballs.

It's a knee-jerk reaction for me, now. If a Korean tells me my son is cold, I don't just take it and grumble about it for the rest of the day: I fight back! I had wanted to reply by saying "Your heart is cold", but my Korean wife advised against it as we live in a relatively small city and could run into the same people again.

My wife also spends a lot of time reading Korean forums for moms and international couples and says that other young Koreans are complaining about the same or similar issues. It's always the older generations who feel pressed to inform complete strangers that they are bad parents.

[Gorf]

No, you see, it's only because Koreans care more about children in their community than your country, it is Korean culture, please understand.

Also my apartment is tiny and old, and the entire floor's ondol is controlled by one button out in the hallway. Some jerk keeps cranking up the heat every night to 90 degrees F. My place is sweltering and I have to use the aircon in the winter. I wish I could curbstomp whoever thought it would be a good idea to make the entire floor controlled by one machine.

[PatrickGHBusan]

[Mr. BlackCat]

[rchristo10]