Korea Is Just a Gig

I'm starting my eighth month teaching adult ESL at a private academy in Korea, and although I do plan to stay in this country and get a university job -- unless a better such job beckons elsewhere in Asia -- I have to say that living in Korea has become rather uninteresting. I registered plenty of new impressions during my first three months or so, but after a while there is little more I can discover from personal observation as a lowly ESL teacher in a regional city. Everything new I am learning about Korea now is coming from books. Personal experience is really quite limited as a basis for learning about most things; our personalities tend to find narrow grooves in our environments. Books are potentially far less limited.

Culture shock was slow to set in and I wondered whether it would manifest itself at all, but ultimately it did quite strongly. The Korean-slash-Asian emphasis on the family, hierarchy, conformism, motivation by negative rather than positive reinforcement, leader worship, etc. -- in short, the Confucian elements -- don't especially resonate with me, as a Westerner or as an individual. I have not found my time here to be a Kumbaya experience, partly because Koreans demarcate a clear bright line between themselves and non-Koreans, and if you are not inside that line, frankly you just don't count. I have had occasions when I thought I had built up good-will by my efforts, only to find that it crumbled at a touch -- that there was no genuine reciprocity. I may be painting with a broad brush, but I would say that although Koreans can be quite kind to non-Koreans in certain superficial (but not the less welcome for that) ways, they simply do not define them as worthy of true consideration. North Korea's pronounced isolationism is an expression of a deep tendency in Korean character generally, not just some anomaly. This used to be called the "Hermit Kingdom," after all; it was the last Asian nation to open to the West, and the undoubtedly justified suspicions of and intense alarm at any sign of colonialism continue to this day (and were strongly exacerbated by the Japanese Occupation from 1910 to 1945).

Korea is a plucky nation with a somewhat unfortunate geographic position, pinned forever between the two great powers of China and Japan -- and these days South Korea is virtually an island geographically, since North Korea cuts off its land access to the rest of Asia. South Korea is dependent on the United States for its very existence -- if American troops pulled out, North Korean troops would push in -- and its citizens are simultaneously grateful for that and resentful of it (most Koreans when asked will tell you that its government's strings are pulled by American puppeteers). An American here, placed in a classic double bind, can easily feel as if s/he is living inside someone else's psychological complex, and that is always wearying.

I have been reading a lot of Korean history -- very compelling history it is, too -- and although that gives me a good context for Korean attitudes and a certain sympathy toward them, I'm never going to overcome a base antipathy toward the relentless, slightly cruel edge of the culture. Koreans work and study what must be the longest hours in the developed world --"diligent" is the adjective of choice here -- but the workplace and school can be phenomenally unpleasant settings, with psychological and corporal bullying both prevalent. ("Back to hell," one businessman student of mine says as he leaves my morning class for work.) Korea has a ridiculously high suicide rate made much worse by the social unacceptability of seeking help for mental health issues. A student in discussing the idiom "rat race" said matter-of-factly, "When a Korean is tired of the rat race, he just kills himself." I looked alarmed and said as reasonably as I could, "You know there are some intermediate steps that could be taken?" She smiled. "Oh yes, we know, but that is still what he would do."

There is of course lots positive to be said about this country too -- adults here are so much more aware of world affairs and geography, for example, it makes me positively embarrassed to think about their American counterparts who can't find Canada and Mexico on a map. I admire some of what I see. But I would be less than honest if I didn't admit that overall, the experience of living in a truly different culture (I don't think I would find most European-based cultures this different) has made me a little more skeptical about the prospects for multiculturalism, and a little less complacently "multicultural" myself. It is so easy to say that you are multicultural, but a little harder to live it. I'm critical of America and the West, sure; but I'm an American and a Westerner through and through, and I'm also proud of that. If I had been a British civil servant in 19th century India, I hope I wouldn't have been an unthinking colonialist; but I doubt very much if I would ever have "gone native," either. At best I would have absorbed and tested some new concepts. I'm one body with one lifetime, and to the extent that there is any "there" there, my cultural definition and limitations are part of it, for better or worse.

POSTSCRIPT: One Korean trait I strongly admire is their relaxed attitude about religion. Buddhist, Christian, shamanist, atheist, no one cares what you are. Politicians are not required to perform any ritual obeisance toward religion; it is not an issue. About one-third of Koreans are non-believers, and will tell you so candidly; no stigma attaches to it. My Korean students do not "get" American religious controversies and culture wars, and I like them for not understanding, because those idiocies of my culture are not worth understanding. The idea, for example, that anything other than hard science including evolutionary theory would be taught in a school is simply preposterous to a Korean.

About the worst thing I can say about religion in Korea is that sometimes the Christian proselytizing can be a little much. There is one guy who has been knocking on my door for months and who waits in the street outside my house to ambush me with the good news -- a stalker for Christ.