Korean's great excuses

The shack A movie ‘The Shack’ came out this year. I saw this movie with the great expectation and good feeling that I took from reading ‘The Shack’ several years ago. There might be some doctrinal and controversial issues in this book, but I can feel enough the author’s struggle to understand and describe God in his own way which is praiseworthy. Although many distinguished scholars try to figure out why some things keep going on earth and what things would happen in the future with an objective historical and macro view, it is clear that their viewpoint and conclusions are very limited and biased because it is impossible for humans to have perfect objectivity and knowledge no matter how hard they observe, test, and collect the data and information unless they have supernatural powers and are mortal. The story of this book starts with a man who killed his father by putting some insecticide in his father’s alcohol and ran away because it was unbearable to endure his father...

Hurry hurry culture in Korea Generally, all kinds of things in Korea operate at a faster pace than they do in other countries. You surely have heard of the phrase “ppalli ppalli” which translates to “hurry up, hurry up.” You also probably have seen many Korean people running in the subway station or in the street, especially in the morning time. I dare to say that you will be touched to see how Korean people do their jobs in a fast and efficient manner in the hospital, public office, bank, post office and all kinds of service industries to save customers’ precious time. Koreans believe time is money and it is not too much to say that the way they do is like an art. I think Koreans get this disposition from the rapid economic growth the country went through within such a short period of time after the Korean War. Plus, technology development and a high-speed communication network have instigated this tendency. Thanks to the technology development, you can do anything you ca...

Churches everywhere in Korea You cannot fail to notice the red neon crosses at night sky in Korea. They are almost everywhere on top of buildings. If a church in Korea shares a building space with other tenants, a red neon cross is placed on top of the building which lights up Korea’s night until the midnight or later. There are also many huge scale churches which have their own buildings with an architectural form of a typical church as you can see in Western countries. A lot of foreigners as well as Korean people get annoyed by these light pollution from the neon crosses at big cities in Korea. "Looking from above, the night scene of Seoul looks like that of a graveyard," one Internet user complained in a posting. According to the number of neon crosses, people might think that a lot of Koreans are Christian. Some research show that 35% of the South Koreans are Christian and there are over 50,000 churches around Korea, over 10,000 in Seoul alone. As a Christian, it...

Why Koreans have a xenophobia I admit that some Korean has a touch of xenophobia which comes from the background of Korean history. Korea is one of the most homogeneous nations on earth because of its geographical position. Since the Korean peninsula is surrounded by water on its three sides, going abroad means you must take a ship which was not easy in the past when air planes didn’t exist. Therefore expats can be easily spotted and identified as a foreigner and a curiosity.  Historically, as a small country, Korea has always been suffering from foreign invasions throughout our long history. It is no surprise that Korean people are hostile towards the outsiders once you learn Korean tragic history. It is no exasperation that there hasn’t been a day when Korean people didn’t have to worry about being invaded and looted by other countries in the past. Our fore-bearer's major means of making a living is rice farming that made people settle down in one place for a long ti...

I just embarked on a new journey. I listed my house in Air BnB . I just embarked on a new journey as a host in Air BnB. I hope that I can help foreigners understand the Korean culture and learn other new cultures from other people. My family is Christian. I've been homeschooling my 3 children for 10 years. Our first son who started going to high school from this year is 16, second son is 12 and my daughter is 10 years old. My husband works for Hyundai motor company. The last family member is our dog who is shitzu. My house is located in near Yadang subway station of Geong-ui Jungang Line which gets you to Seoul within 30 minutes. My apartment is a newly-built and a four-storied building that makes it possible to give you cozy and clean room and all brand-new facilities in my house. My house is on fourth floor with a big attic. There is an elevator, which make it easy to carry your big luggage. There are 6 private bedrooms(two as Air BnB rooms), 3 share bathrooms and 2 livi...

Korean’s great obsession of questioning people’s age. As we are learning English and international manners, Koreans find out that asking personal questions may sound rude and make you look nosey. As long as a Korean speaks English, there is no problem with not asking people’s age. However, when it comes to speaking in Korean, it is a different story. Korean is one of the most super hierarchical languages in the world. Malcolm Gladwell, the author of ‘Outliers’ wrote in his book that the Korean language has no fewer than six different levels of conversational address, depending on the relationship between the addressee and addresser : formal deference, informal deference, blunt, familiar, intimate, and plain. If we don’t know the other party’s age, it makes us have a difficult time in choosing the level. Mostly, we choose the formal deference level between adults when we don’t know well each other though, asking and knowing people’s age make us feel comfortable which help u...