The Culture of We

Quick personal (personnel? bah english) note: All final exams are done and behind me. No it's nothing but teaching and relaxation until I go home and school starts up yet again. For those of you who haven't caught the developments, the trip home has been move up to the 30th of this month in the interest of taking a summer school course which starts July 6th. Less Korea time, but 4th of July barbecue. I think an equal trade off.

Aside from all that, I'd like to talk today about probably the largest cultural difference between Korea and America. Not Confucianism, not diet, but the culture of "we." There are many manifestations of this mentality in the society, and I believe that it can be best summed up as collectivism. It's the belief that Koreans are one people, one family almost, and that everyone is a part of this community of sharing. Maybe you'll understand better through examples.

In English we say "my" all the time. (I watched my team win at my house with my mom) But in Korean it's all about "our." (I watched our team at our house with our mom) Even if your talking to someone not related to you in any way, you refer to everything in the plural. I could be talking to my dad and refer to "our girlfriend" or to my teacher and mention "our house." The concept that a thing could be "mine" is very distant here. Even though she's not anyone else's girlfriend, she is someone's else's something (i.e. a daughter, a sister, a friend, a classmate) an therefore she can not possibly be mine. Though it seems really strange to say "our husband" anywhere but in Salt Lake City, the use of "our" vs. "my" in the language is probably the most noticeable manifestation of the collectivist culture.

Another example is the eating culture. In the West everything is very personal. You would never touch someone else's food and if you were to split a meal with someone you would get an extra plate and then divide it up. Your fork would never touch anything that someone else was going to eat, but here (as you may have guessed) it is different. Most meals consist of a communal set of side dishes that are infinitely refillable and then one or two main dishes (like a stew or a meat of some kind) that are set in the middle of the table. The only thing that would be personal here would be rice and beverages. Everything else is shared among everyone eating. You just have a big pot in the middle and everyone puts there chopsticks right in there. In the event that there is a meat dish, it's not uncommon for an elder at the table to pick up pieces of it and put them on someone else's rice. At first it seemed strange to eat something that someone else touched, but in fact it is an expression of love. The person is concerned for your health, wants you to be big and strong, and therefore gives you more to eat. It's a much more group oriented style of dining, so much so that you will rarely see a Korean eating alone. If you do, there is probably something strange about them. Eating is a group activity and an activity of active and open sharing.

Thirdly I would draw attention to the less obvious example of crime in this country. In any other major city in the world one would have to be wary of pick pocketing, gang violence, muggings, rapes, drive-bys, and the like. Korea is quite different though. There is little to no security and little to no crime of any kind. Tables and kiosks and carts line the sidewalks everywhere, all selling things and very loosely supervised. The streets are bustling and crowded, making it impossible for any vendor to watch their wares all the time. I can't tell you the number of times I've walked past tables full of scarves, completely unattended, and thought how easy it would be to just take not even just one but everything. Remarkably, no one ever does. I have seen people leave purses and laptops completely unattended for an hour and nobody touches them. I had a friend lose a wallet and it was returned to her untouched. In fact the only area with any crime at all is the foreign district near the American military base. Strict law enforcement? No, the police here are pathetic and nowhere to be seen most of the time. I attribute this anomaly to social responsibility. The Koreans believe that they are all a family, all one people, all collective. Therefore, stealing from one is stealing from everyone, even your own grandmother. Who would steal from their grandmother?? There are gangs, but I have never seen evidence of them in anything but cinema and certainly have never seen any violence, even as much as a bar fight. The collective mentality keeps everyone in check and working in the best interest of each other, at least on a personal level.

Finally let's talk about Korean national identity. The "we" culture spreads into what we would call an over developed sense of pride. Best western example of this phenomenon: The football team wins and we say "we won." We had nothing to do with it, but somehow it was our victory as well. That sort of mentality is pervasive here, so any Korean victory is a victory for everyone, and every Korean knows anything a Korean has ever done or been a part of. If Koreans make it to the semi-finals in the world cup, suddenly the world must think of soccer when they think of Korea. If Ban Ki Moon is elected to the Secretary General of the United Nations, every child wants to be a Secretary General when the grow up. They know exactly how many Korean Americans are a part of the American Congress, are governors of states, how many have made scientific advances, were in western movies or TV shows, almost as if all those people were relatives of their own (see where I'm going with this?). Collective mindset dictates that any accomplishment by any Korean, no matter how removed, is a personal victory. But it swings both ways. Any failure or embarrassment is a personal embarrassment. For instance, the Korean who forged lab results a few years back and claimed a cloning success that never actually happened. National shame to this day. More relevantly, the Korean citizen by birth but American by culture who perpetrated the Virginia Tech shootings. Even though he grew up completely American and even though that kid would never have done that had he grown up in Korea (there are no guns here in the first place), the kid had Korean blood and Korean citizenship. I was shocked when the Korean government formally apologized for the shootings as if anyone on the peninsula had anything to do with it, but that's how it goes here. Collective people, collective actions, collective reward, collective blame.

In a way I've grown rather fond of the whole idea. Everything is less personal, less private, less independent (there are countless more examples), but its warmer and more friendly too. When everyone is like family there is a natural pressure not to hurt others, even faceless strangers you have never met. When things are shared, people are friendlier. It's such an icebreaker I find. In America (and capitalism in general-why buy and share one when you can buy two and each have your own?) it's all about personal, independence, buy your own, "get your own box," "two for me none for you," help yourself, and all of that has its virtues but everything is a double-edged sword. All in all it was very strange and very opposite of everything we've cultivated culturally, but it was very easy to get used to. In the beginning I thought of all these countless differences as independent events, but now I can see that there is a definite pattern in the way it works, and sum it all up to this collective culture.