Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Jacobbm]

I'm currently reading this book: The Geography of Thought.

It details the differences in thinking between those from Western countries and those from East Asian nations. It has always seemed to me that most foreigners living in Korea have a had time understanding Koreans (myself included) and this book provides some interesting insight into the East Asian ways of thinking.

It seems to me to be good reading for anyone living in Korea. [/url]

[caro]

That book looks really interesting. I just ordered it off of Amazon. I'll let you know what I think. Thanks!

[SqueakyBuddha]

Great book. I loved it.

[Ya-ta Boy]

I read it last year. I recommend it highly to anyone coming to Asia. For fear of stirring up a storm, I won't say that I think it should be required reading for posters here at Dave's. The self-appointed experts wouldn't like it if I said that.

[bassexpander]

Who wouldn't like it if you said that?

[ChopChaeJoe]

Any ideas from the book you could share?

[Atavistic]

I read this book shortly after I got here and wasn't impressed. I read it six months later and wow, it made sense.

ChopChaeJoe, I read this book a while ago, but I remember a few things.

One was having college students look at pictures of fish in a pond with seaweed, etc. The Caucasian students tended to start with "there is a big fish. There is seaweed...." and end with "it seems to be a pond or lake."

However the Asian students (Japanese, I think?) usually started with "it seems to be a pond or lake" and ended with the details.

I recall that the other FT at my first hogwon bitched that Korean sales signs were "backwards." In the West we tend to write 10-50% off! But here in Korea it's 50-10% off! To me, there were a lot of little examples in the book that pointed to small-to-big vs big-to-small.

(The Korean language is like that, too. In English, we say city, state/province, country. In Korean, it's the reverse.)

Another was how Asians view themselves in terms of a group. They had two circles. One circle was a group that the person was a part of. For the Caucasian, their individual circle was half in and half out of their group. And the "my group" and "other group" circles were fairly close together. For the Asians (I think Koreans, specifically), "my group" and "other group" were father apart. Also, the individual circle was entirely within "my group" circle.

After I'd been practicing taekwondo for several months and had finally started to break into the group, I REALLY understood that diagram.

Um, another point was how white parents talk to their children compared to Asian parents. White parents tended to ask a lot of "what is this, who is that, where is this?" questions whereas Asian parents tended to emphasis toys working together and their relationship with each other. Something like that. I think one of the major points was that Asian children acquired verbs earlier than white children.

Another point was that as people from one group live in another group for a while, their thinking can and does start to change.

I'm using "Asian," "Western," "White" rather loosely here because I don't recall all the details. I do remember that the studies were explained fairly well. Where were they conducted, had the population been exposed to the other culture much, etc. The Asians they focused on were Chinese, Korean, Japanese.

It was an interesting read, and it did help make some sense of Korea.