Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Demophobe]

the anxiety people experience as they encounter and try to adapt to the customs and expectations of another culture.
campus.skillnet.ca/course_demos/con1/global/glossary.htm

The disorientation that people feel when they encounter cultures radically different from their own.
www.sociologyessentials-2nded.nelson.com/glossary.html

The feeling of surprise and disorientation that is experienced when people witness cultural practices different from their own. (See page(s) 73)
highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0072485078/student_view0/glossary.html

a sense of strangeness that occurs when visiting a place with a different culture than your own
www.sitesalive.com/acctg/glossary.htm

Feelings of disorientation often experienced in instances of contact with other cultures.
tsl4324-02.fa00.fsu.edu/glossary.htm

The feeling of surprise and disorientation that is experienced when people witness cultural practices different from their own. (p. 84)
www.mhhe.com/socscience/sociology/schaef/olc/65.htm

a condition of disorientation affecting someone who is suddenly exposed to an unfamiliar culture or way of life or set of attitudes
www.cogsci.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/webwn



Kerno...finding that a salad bar in an overseas Pizza Hut isn't the same as in your culture...well....forgive me. I guess there is a fine line between "culture shock" and ....ehh....nevermind. I just thought culture shock would come from eating boiled silkworm larvae from an old lady on the street, not Pizza hut. I guess I am a purist.

[kermo]

[schwa]

I can imagine a newcomer handling the 'exotica' okay because they'd primed themselves for that, then finding what they thought was a bit of familiar ground (Pizza Hut, supermarket, whatever) & relaxing, only to have the rug suddenly pulled out from under their feet. A shock to some, I'm sure, to discover the pervasiveness of difference.

Is culture shock necessarily negative? I'd been here about 6 weeks thinking 'This is cool, I'm handling this' & I walked out into the street one morning & it hit me like a thunderbolt: Holy *beep* I'm in Korea! I spoke it out loud. Made me grin.

[casey's moon]

Nicely put Schwa -- I think that's exactly it.

[lief]

For five weeks I couldn't figure out my Korean washing machine. If I could lift that thing, it would have flown out the window long ago. The damn thing would ever so gently and ever so slowly swish my clothes around for 15 minutes and then it would just stop. No rinse cycle, nothing. Just my clothes still drowning in scummy, soapy water. I'd turn the laundry beast off and try another combination of buttons but over and over again I got the same results. I'd usually give up after a couple hours and just squeeze the water out of the clothes as best I could before I hung/slapped them on my walls to dry over the next few days.
My school director came over one day and saw all the water damage I was doing to the wallpaper and he got me a laundry rack. But sometimes the clothes were so damp for such a long time that they started to smell... My Principal gave me a bag of laundry detergent without saying why. But I was using laundry detergent!
I showed my native speaking class a digital picture of my washing machine with some sort of Korean error symbol flashing on the hyroglyphic control screen. My students told me it was because I had to shut the lid. And then they said ��What��s wrong with you?��
Well I thought that I��d been doing that... most of the time... but I wasn��t sure. Anyway I got home and tadah it still didn��t work. So after five weeks of laundry hell I lost it and punched the machine as hard as I could. And I accidentally slammed the lid shut properly and everything worked fine from then on.

[matthewwoodford]

[endo]

[athenienne]

OK, this is not exactly a culture shock story but it's kind of funny, as in really stupid. I arrived in Korea with my boyfriend (for the first time ever) three weeks ago and I've gone out in Daejeon a couple of times but only drank beer. Last week, in 7-11, my bf picked up a bottle of Jinro soju, saying that he had seen people drinking it before. I was sort of distracted at the moment, so didn't realize that he meant that he had seen people drinking it in bars. Now, jinro comes in a really pretty green bottle that kind of looks like it would hold some kind of tea or soda-type drink. As I've gotten pretty used to buying/ordering food and drink without knowing what it is in the last few weeks, using my brilliant powers of deduction, I assumed that whatever was inside the bottle would be refreshing and thirst-quenching. Which explains why, just after my he paid for it, I grabbed it out of his hands and said, "oh, I'd like to try it." And opened it. And took a big swig. While we were still in the 7-11. I didn't get to see the look on the convenience-store guy's face as I started coughing and sputtering, but I did get to hear my bf laughing his **s off at me all the way home.....

As for culture shock, I think it's been too soon, but I've definately experienced it before, when I was an exchange student in Scotland my junior year of college. One particularly depressing day of bad food, rain, and flatmate problems, I arrived home to my room and burst into tears. The final straw, as far as I can remember, was that the light switches in the UK are reversed from lightswitches in America.

[OiGirl]

[jajdude]

The strongest and most memorable feelings of culture shock happened to me when I visited Canada --- twice in seven years. The open spaces and small numbers of people, the language, .... you get the idea.

[agraham]

[just because]

What culture shock????

I love it when there is new things that take me out of the comfort zone. makes life more fun.

Not saying the above stories aren't funny though

[mindmetoo]

I had come here a couple times as a tourist so I kind of had a great idea what to expect living here. However, the first time I was here as a tourist was a bit different. My Korean friend and her two girl friends picked me up at the airport, took me for dinner, took me to my hotel, etc. The next morning I was on my own until noon when one my friend's girlfriends was coming to give me a day time tour.

Anyway, I walked out of my hotel (Amiga hotel in Gangnam). I walked two blocks. Then it hit me.

JESUS H. EVERYONE ON THIS STREET IS KOREAN BUT ME!

You get so used to being the average white guy, figure-ground ambiguous, that your first time being different is dizzying.

I walked right back to my hotel and decompressed for a couple hours in my room.

[Barking Mad Lord Snapcase]

[peppermint]

My worst culture shock came early. . After around 25 hours on a plane followed by a three hour bus trip, I wanted two things, a bathroom and a bed- in that order. Instead of letting me get those things, the people that picked me up at the airport ( who spoke no English) brought me to my school to meet the head teacher. I sat there, in an utter haze for a couple of minutes, then asked about the washroom. When I found a stall with a squat toilet and a nasty bucket of used toilet paper, all I could think was "OH MY GOD! I'VE GOTTA DEAL WITH THIS FOR A YEAR??"