Hi, all. You've got Katy again this week. It has been a relatively uneventful week, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to address a cultural comment that I've been thinking about a bit recently. Many of you have heard eastern cultures to be generalized as "collectivist cultures" while the western world is characterized by being "individualistic." These are generalizations, and certainly don't hold true all the time, and when they do, they come in so many variations and with so much complexity that they are really subtle. That being said, there are those moments when I think to myself, "oh that is what they mean!"
The instigating event that had me thinking about this was a Korean lesson in which the features of Kakao (a Korean messaging app) were being explained to me. There is a method in the app for purchasing gift coupons and gifts virtually to send to friends. The categories for these purchases range from cash to house warming gifts, and, something called (rough translation of course) the loner-gifts. When I asked my friend what this meant, she asked what the word was in English for people doing something by themselves. "What do you mean?" I asked. She specified that it was something of a prefix in Korean, a 2 character set that you stuck on the front of a word to indicate that the person was doing whatever it was alone. She went on to explain that this is a very new term, practically slang, that only the youth really used yet. Apparently there wasn't a unique term for specifying "lone (verb-ing)" previously. As we talked longer, she explained that these days it is more relevant to be able to express that when you say someone has an apartment, that they are specifically living alone. Or that if someone is traveling, that they might be doing so solo. It isn't that Korean doesn't have a word for "alone," but that these days it is becoming practical to have an easy way to specify the alone-ness of an activity. This is indicative of the traditional cultural assumption that one would never live alone, go out to eat alone, raise a child alone, travel alone, etc. I believe that the need to draw attention to whether someone is doing something alone or not, says something about societal expectations and degree of deviation from cultural norms it represents.
One of the reasons that living alone needs specifying here, is that it is relatively uncommon to live anywhere other than your parent's home or on a college campus until you are married. A lone-habitor (the best way I can approximate the Korean phrase for non-cohabiting situation) is pretty uncommon. As the country develops and foreign trends are adopted, this is becoming more and more desirable for many youth, hence the population inventing and using the new term. It is also, understandably, more common in the big cities. Here in Goheung, for example, it is extremely rare for an apartment to house less than two or three people that are related in some capacity. If you have been following this blog, you know that our apartment is quite small, and difficult for just Jamie and I space wise. Our neighbors have the same size space, but the apartment houses a family of 3, including a pre-teen boy. Living in such close quarters is hardly given a second thought, though I'm sure they would upgrade if presented with the opportunity. In this case, however, the divide between western - individualistic, eastern - collectivist breaks down a bit, as it is also something I experienced living in Latin America. So who's to say what the cause really is, but in considering the differences potentially attributable to a collectivist culture, this came to mind.
Another demonstration of that underlying "we/our" assumption, is ordering food at a restaurant. Between just two or three people, a dish each is common enough. But even in small numbers, some types of restaurants are simply not set up for individual servings. It is common, especially in big groups, and almost always at home, to order or cook food for the table, not for individual servings. For example, on a normal lunch out, Jamie and I might order one roll of kimbap, one bowl of ramen, and a pork cutlet, which the server will place between us, in the middle of the table, assuming we are sharing it all. We are rarely given our own plate. Individual bowls are more common, because sharing soups, and some pasta dishes are hard to eat without spilling from a bowl that is not directly below your mouth. In large groups, there is generally just a spread of food down the middle of the table which each person picks at with their chopsticks, taking the food strait to their mouth, rather than dropping a portion on an individual dish before feeding themselves.
Along the same lines, payment is never, under any circumstances, done separately. Korean people consider it a very funny-foreign thing to do to "Dutch pay." One person always pays for a meal, and it can be considered quite rude to hand a server multiple cards. It is also rude to handle money excessively at the table, so individual parties pulling out their meal money and combining it on the table is never seen. Even when money is exchanged, it is generally done in envelopes in public so that the actual bills are not obvious, or better yet by transferring money online. People simply pay each other back by taking turns paying for every other meal. In the case that you will not see the person again, or the hierarchical gap is very big, the invitee (usually the older/superior) always pays. There is simply no splitting the check. Whether this aspect of the culture is due to a collectivist nature, the social hierarchy, or patriarchal structure, I can't really say. I'm sure the answer is not so simple.
The final example comes from Jamie's stories from the classroom. Due to the culture here, saving face, maintaining relationships, and operating in groups is the norm. Because of this, public humiliation, or singling a student out is the most effective punishment in a classroom. I have heard many stories of Korean teachers asking a misbehaving student to simply stand up, and the singled out attention brought the student to tears. In the same way, Jamie has expressed that it is very hard to get the classroom to engage in discussion if you ask one person to answer a question. Asking tables to come together and come up with a group answer gets a lot more participation out of the students. Some of this is similar to student behavior in the States, of course, but the degree of refusal/discomfort acting individually in the classroom setting seems stronger here. There is never any competitive hand raising or "teacher pick me pick me" that I have heard about in Jamie's stories.
As I mentioned, it is hard to say what parts of culture are a "collectivist" nature coming through in behaviors and expectations, but filtering my experiences this way this week was an thought provoking exercise.
As always, if you have any questions, feel free to comment here on the blog. I get those comments directly to my email, so I won't miss them! Oh, and I apologize for the lack of pictures this week. I know I for one am not particularly inclined to read a wall of text on the internet. Hopefully next week's post will be more visual.
-K
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