Korean Job Discussion Forums

[jaj]

Recently, a few of my students have gone on research missions to the US in behalf of their companies to analyze weird stuff like how we run supermarkets, design colleges and houses. The trips didn't seem consistent with their actual job descriptions as I understood them. On returning, one of them made a comment about our 'unlimited space." It sounded ominous.

Another student remarked the other day that she thinks that Koreans are going to move over to learning British style English because it's a "higher quality." (She sounded like she was buying gloves). When I told her that countries in Asia where the people speak with Britishy accents like India, have historical ties to the UK that Korea doesn't, she changed the subject to computer chips that are being developed to insert into people's brains so the language acquisition process is simplified.

Am I the only one creeped out by how Koreans cherry pick American ideas and culture -- Jim Crow hiring practices, a faux Central Park, and round eye surgery etc. and where this is leading?

[kenglish]

gasp! another country idolizing western culture and adapting to themselves every aspect of it that they can embody?this is shocking indeed!

p.s. have you been to japan lately?

[jaj]

No, haven't been to Japan, but hear that it's not as ambitiously "Western". Are you there?

[1927]

[jaj]

My students tell me that all Western food looks the same to them, use the terms Eastern and Western all the time as there are actually common histories and linguistic similarities as well as contemporary culture shared between East Asian countries, lots more than you're most likely aware of. Sounds like you're the one in the small pond, but if you lent a single interesting insight, I'd be more motivated to chat further with you...btw, clearly the Central Park reference is over your head and of course Americans don't get round eye surgery -- they have round eyes -- wow, to say you're completely not understanding my post, is an understatement, old one.

[bekinseki]

Central Park is hardly in the middle of the city. Hell, I wouldn't even call Songdo a city.

[Captain Corea]

Americans don't get double eyelid surgery? You sure on that?

[jvalmer]

[1927]

[jaj]

@1927, I'd rather be in a fish bowl than the white porcelain variety that makes a flushing sound that you're in.

I'll ignore the brown-nosers trying to make the case that the adoption of round eyes, white skin and English names is not part of Korea's western redesign.

[The Floating World]

Both Germany and the USA and all of Europe share clearly so many fundamental aspects of western culture which their societies have been and are built on which developed from the Greek and Roman traditions that I'm not even going to point them out.

Western, they all very much are.

[Steelrails]

[1927]

OP, you did not answer my question.

[The Floating World]

Sorry SR but a lot of the fundamental foundations of What we call western society, it's beliefs, institutions, political insitutions and systems, outlooks, philosophies, evolved from Greece and then Rome.

Without the above there is no concievable way we would live in societies recongisable to the ones we live in today.

That doesn't mean Christianity hasn't shaped them either, but it like comparing the doors and windows of a house to the ground under it and the foundations it was built upon as well as the very stone it is made from.

The Greek ideas on the state and their unique take on the concept of the individual, and also the forms (inlcuing in a large way gemeotry and math) and in no small way at all, the concept of the atom are just so part of what NW European and NA society are and have become it is impossible to overlook it.

Of course they in turn were influened from the Arab world and India and no culture lives in isolation (hi Korea) but the directions in which they took all of the above subjects are essential to what western societies are today and in fact, on a structural and technical level what the rest of the world is becoming.

[Chet Wautlands]

OP, the backlash you are experiencing in a result of your awkward first post. What exactly are you asking?

Will Korea try to become the U.S.? No. However, because the U.S. has been the major influencing culture for at least the past 60 years, Korean people (and as a result Korea) are obviously going to gravitate towards that ideal. So has every other country on the planet.

One of your students believes that British English (British Received Pronunciation) sounds higher class than American. She doesn't represent most Koreans and even in most Koreans DID think British RP was of a higher class than American English (a broad term), it would only be because this notion has been established by native English speakers.

What is happening in Korea, Japan, China, Germany, Canada and even in America is a gradual but increasing move towards a more American culture. While this is happening, elements of other cultures will become a part of the American culture. Because of modern technology, this is the first time in history that a culture has been able to affect so many other cultures. I'm curious to see how it ends up, but I imagine that culture, like race, is a term that will have a fairly different meaning in 50+ years from now.