Good stuff.

I've realized that, judging from my first two blog posts, someone reading about my take on Korea could easily come to the opinion that Aubrey and I (or "and I", at least) don't like it here.

But that's not true.

What is true is that there are many differences between the US and Korea that we're still navigating and getting used to, and some of those differences can be frustrating. I talk with my dad often about the differences between France and the US -- different philosophical traditions, different views on freedom in general and the rights of citizens in particular, different views on atomic energy, etc. -- but France seems damn close to identical to the US in many ways when compared to Korea, mostly because Korean culture is basically Confucian.

The differences have upsides, though.

For one thing, Korea has extremely little crime. This is the first place I've been where, if Aubrey were to take one of her trademark "hey, it's 1 am but I feel like going out and exploring poorly lit streets and dark alleys" walks I wouldn't go ballistic. (She did this in Chicago when we were dating and in DC after we were married. It drove me freaking nuts.) But a woman can literally just walk around by herself late at night and feel fairly safe in this country. (That doesn't mean it's a good idea, just that it's much less of a bad idea here than it would be most other places.)

For another thing, Korea is a militantly anti-drug culture. If the cops even suspect you of being intoxicated on anything other than alcohol or tobacco (or life, if you're one of those "high on life" types) they can drug test you on the spot with only minimal probably cause. If you're a foreigner and you test positive you're automatically deported and get a lifetime ban from reentering the Korea. That also helps keep the crime rate down. They're pretty serious about that.

Which is a good thing, because if there were even a small black market (which I haven't heard of, having talked with several foreigners over here who have tried to score soft drugs like weed or ecstasy in several big cities to no avail) for any kind of addictive narcotic there would probably be something like an 80% addiction rate among Korean youth. As I've commented on before, the way Koreans are expected to work here is insane. Adults routinely work 80 hour weeks; that's more or less the norm here. For students it's just as bad. How bad is it? Well, picture the way you studied for finals in college. Now imagine that you had only cracked the books once or twice before the final and you had two days to cram in order to pass and a passing grade was a "B". Imagine how much you'd study and how long you'd be doing school stuff for those 48 hours, and you have a rough idea of how Korean students live pretty much 6 days a week. (Saturday is a work/school day here.) It's insane. (It's also upside-down from an American perspective. High school here is so much harder than college, because the focus is getting good scores on the nation-wide university entrance exam that will determine what school you will go to, and hence what career you'll have. Once you get into college, it's like a 4-year party with occasional classes.) Middle school and high school students are often out the door at 7 am or so and don't get back from school and studying until at least midnight. They don't do extracurriculars here, so those 17 hours are straight school and studying. They kill themselves here to succeed (literally and figuratively; Korea has one of the world's highest suicide rate, and suicide is the #1 cause of death among Korean young men, as I've mentioned before). If there was any way they could score some weed, or ecstasy, or speed, or heroin, or coke, or something else to ease their burdens a bit, they'd do tons of it in a heartbeat.

There I go again, bitching about the differences. But I think that this complaint, too, just comes down to the Confucian societal foundation vs. the Christian-individualist societal foundation. Koreans are expected to make others happy. This is not like the Christian ideal of service to others, where the individual is called to serve Christ and the Church by serving others. Christianity is fiercely individualistic. In Christianity, only individuals are saved or damned. Only individuals sin and only individuals can be held accountable. God only loves individuals. Christ only died for individuals. Individuals find their purpose and their happiness by seeking their own small part in God's great plan. It all comes down to the individual. That is not, to the best of my understanding, the case with Confucianism. The basic unit in Confucianism is the family, and the individual and his interests are subjugated to those of the family. That's just part of the Confucian ethic: the individual lives to serve the family, to seek its good above his own to an extent that would be considered unhealthy or irrational in a Western context. It's a big difference.

But all my bitching aside, Korea has been a good place for us. I wouldn't want to live here for more than two or three years, but the people are great -- once they get past their shyness over their often poor English. Koreans are normally reticent with outsiders, but it is often because of their self-consciousness due to their lack of good English. If you speak even a little Korean to Koreans, though, they'll often get all excited and demonstrative and start trying to speak English back to you. I don't speak much Hangul (the Korean word for their language), but other teachers here do, and seeing the faces of Koreans who talk with them is hilarious when the Koreans realize that this weiguk understands Hangul. They start spouting tons of words, mostly nouns, in an ecstatic effort to express themselves. With someone like me who, at the moment, can only aspire to a grasp of Korean as poor as most Koreans' grasp of English, it is often a funny moment when I try to reply to them "in kind" as it were. (It ends up being sort of the linguistic equivalent of two virgins on their wedding night: all excited about what we're doing, but only having a very dim idea of how to do it right.)

Koreans are often scrupulously honest (except when they're not: there's a somewhat different code of honor in this country when it comes to lying; I'm still trying to figure out all the nuances). I've had clerks in the grocery store chase me halfway across the store to give me a 100 won (basically a 10-cent) coin that I dropped when I walked in.

Because of their scrupulous (under their own code) honest, Koreans also don't haggle, which is a relief because I'm a typical American in that I'm an awful haggler. I'm used to being told the price and then paying for it. I know that most of the rest of the world prices merchandise like a car dealership does, and expects to haggle over what the price will really be. But thankfully, Koreans don't do that. They really reward loyalty: they'll give you phenomenal deals if you keep going back to the same store or merchant. But they won't haggle over the price (usually). That's nice for me. It makes things easier.

So those are some good things about this country. Aubrey and I are really enjoying ourselves here. Honest.