Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Corporal]

Is there any historical significance in the fact that many inhabitants of this fine nation seem to believe all foreigners have big noses? Now, grant you, a lot of Westerners DO have big noses (present company excepted), but I have also seen my share of ajossis with considerable nasal capacity. So what gives? Perhaps I am being oversensitive, as the second most often commented upon feature of my daughter's is her nose (which, incidentally, is a very cute and highly normally-sized baby nose).

All I know is, I'm getting tired of it, and the next time I hear a nose mentioned in my presence, I shall be very strongly tempted to quote Cyrano: "My nose is Gargantuan! You little Pig-snout, you tiny Monkey-Nostrils, you virtually invisible Pekinese-Puss, don't you realize that a nose like mine is both sceptre and orb, a monument to my superiority? A great nose is the banner of a great man, a generous heart, a towering spirit, an expansive soul - such as I unmistakably am, and such as you dare not to dream of being, with your bilious weasel's eyes and no nose to keep them apart! With your face as lacking in all distinction - as lacking, I say, in interest, as lacking in pride, in imagination, in honesty, in lyricism - in a word, as lacking in nose as that other offensively bland expanse at the opposite end of your cringing spine - which I now remove from my sight by stringent application of my boot!"

[camel96]

Ha ha.
Sometimes when I have something like 5 minutes left in class at school I get the little darlings to draw a picture of me. It's pretty cool. I always end up looking like a giraffe.

[Dan]

I agree about koreans also having big noses. do you suppose its the prominent eyebrow, nose bridge area? cuz as you know, koreans have fairly flat faces

[weatherman]

You know, the only woman in Korea that I know for an honest fact, because she told me so, that had a nose job done, did it to reduce her nose size. And she truly looks a lot better now. That said, I see a good deal of prinesses and not so prinessie women who sure of have that look of having a nose job done, you know a little too big at the end, and a bit too flat between the eyes, or ridge of the nose. I still love them though....

[whatthefunk]

In men, the one part of the body that continues to grow after maturity is the.....

[sickboy]

When my students put on my sunglasses, they fall off their faces!

-sick

[BTM]

Just another media-fed prejudice and comedy racism option. Mostly borrowed from the Japanese (as so much is, in the last 100 years, as opposed to borrowed from the Chinese in the centuries before the last one).

See also : mayonnaise fetish, copious chest hair, AIDS spreading, hamburger, salt & butter loving, big p e n i s e d*, drug-addicted, disrespectful, incapable of learning Korean, etc etc etc stereotypage.

Next.



*well, that one's not such a bad prejudice, really.

[katydid]

BTM...Westerners have a mayonnaise fetish? Is that why I saw Kiwi Mayonnaise for the first time here in Korea?

Anyways...I have heard there may be some truth to the big nose/small nose thing. Apparently Westerners have a more pronounced bone between the eyes above the nose and Asians don't. So that gives the impression of a larger nose. So I heard. Maybe my friend is blowing smoke out of his...nose.

[duderdude]

The official derogatory term for us is "kojangee", which means 'big nosed one'. This is extremely bad so if you ever hear this, start swinging.

Other bad names include:

yang nom
yangkee


It helps to a have a Korean girl who can point out who is pointing you out....

[eamo]

As someone with a slightly pronounced nose I have to disagree with the OP.

I think Koreans tend to have little cute noses whereas many foreigners have biguns'.

[Wombat]

*ahem*

One Kashmiri morning in the early spring on 1935, my grandfather, Aadam Aziz hit his nose against the frost-hardened tussock of earth while attempting to pray. Three drops of blood popped out of his left nostril, hardened instantly in the brittle air and lay before his eyes on the prayer mat, transformed into rubies. Lurching back until he held his head once more upright, he found that the tears which had sprung to his eyes had solidified, too; and at that moment, as he brushed diamonds contemptuously from his lashes, he resolved never again to kiss the earth for any god or man.

Keeping out of my voice the natural envy of the ugly woman for the strikingly impressive, I record that Doctor Aziz was a tall man - just over six foot two. A strong man also. His beard was thick and red - and annoyed his mother who said that only Hajis, men who had made the pilgrimage to Mecca, should grow red beards. His hair, however, was rather darker. His eyes were pale blue - the Kashmiri sky has a tendency to drip into the eyes of its young men. "They went mad with the colours when they made your face," his friend had said, once.

But the central feature of my grandfather's anatomy was neither colour nor height, neither strength of arm nor straightness of back. There it was, reflected in the water, undulating like a mad plantain in the centre of his face...Aadam Aziz, waiting for the boatman to take him across the lake, was looking at his nose.

It would have dominated less dramatic faces than his, easily; even on him, it was what one saw first and remembered the longest. "A cyranose," his brother declared. Two other relatives added, "A proboscissmus." His sister announced, "You could cross a river on that nose." (Its bridge was wide.)

My grandfather's nose: nostrils flaring, curvaceous as dancers. Between them swelled the nose's triumphal arch, first up and out, then down and under, sweeping in to his upper lip with a superb flick. An easy nose to hit a tussock with.

Doctor Aziz's nose - comparable only to the trunk of the elephant-headed god Ganesh - esablished incontrovertibly his right to be a patriarch. When young Aadam was barely past puberty, his mother said, "That's a nose to start a family on, my princeling. There'd be no mistaking whose brood they were. Mughal emperors would've given their right hands for noses like that one. There are dynasties waiting inside it."

On Aadam Aziz, the nose assumed patriarchal respect. On my mother it looked noble and a little long-suffering; on my aunt, snobbish; on another aunt, intellectual.

I have escaped it completely.

A big nose is no bad thing, my dears.

[Moldy Rutabaga]

[Edit]

[Wombat]

I, myself, have a moderate nose. But as I said, a big nose is no bad thing, indeed.

GMW

[intergalactic]

A Korean friend of mine with quite a prominent nose went to my neighbourhood video store and borrowed a video under my name.
The next day the video store owner told me one of my friends had done this.
"Who?", I asked. "A Korean or a foreigner?"
"A foreigner", he replied. Who could it be? The video store guy told me that since I didn't know which friend it was, I should bring in photos of all my foreign friends so he could point out which one it was.
I went home and puzzled over who would have done this. I called a few foreign friends, none had travelled to my neighbourhood to rent a video. Curiouser and curiouser.

Then my Korean friend told me it was he who had borrowed the movie.
"Did you speak Korean to the guy or just grunt?" I asked him.
"I spoke to him, I said I was your friend, that I was staying at your place while you were gone and that it was OK. Yes, I had a conversation with him. In Korean."

I returned to the video store.

"This mystery friend", I asked the video guy, "Are you SURE he was a foreigner?"
"Yes, foreigner"
"Did he speak English or Korean?"
"English. Just little Korean. I'm sure foreigner. He had big nose. Tall, big nose, foreigner."
"I know who it was, it was a Korean friend of mine."
"Really? No!! He looks like foreigner, big nose!"

*sigh*

[The Marchioness]

I myself have what Koreans call a 'high nose.' That is, I have a slight but noticable curvature in the upper reaches, a testament to all of my illustrious ancestors of the Jewish, French, German, Swiss, Swedish, and Arabic persuasion. I like my nose - it has character - it has style.

Whenever a Korean feels the irresistible urge to comment on this fine and outstanding portion of my physiognomy, I agree with him or her wholeheartedly and with much sincerety. Yes, I say, I have a 'high' nose and isn't it my best feature? They are astonished at me (I like it like that; keep 'em off balance, I say) and there is much fodder for gossip. Oh, how they do love to gossip ... Provincials, Phillistines ...

Kudos to my nose and to all the 'high' noses of the waygook-in.