Taking the Good With the Bad Pt.2

(Continued from last entry)

Most of this behaviour, which we foreigners find so bizarre but the Koreans take as normal, stems from (I believe) the social heirarchy established in the country from hundreds of years of confucianism. It has it's ups and downs, though the downs seem to be much more noticeable to me.

Age has a big thing to do with a person's status. Old people will regularily budge in front of you in lineups and get annoyed at you if you don't give them their way. You shouldn't disagree with them, you shouldn't touch them (though they can touch you), and you must be respectful.

So, while the elderly here enjoy a level of respect not generally found at home (not to be rude at all, but the term "useless" and "senile" don't seem to ever come into play when talking about elders here), they have the ability to walk all over young people. Middle aged men are like demi-gods, physically fit, older than most of the co-workers, and while they are responsible for everything, they are required to do little or nothing at all.

I also saw an elderly (40's or 50's maybe?) lady give crap to a homeless man. She was walking down the street, saw this dude squatting down begging for change (they don't sit here, they squat generally), and started giving him grief. While I couldn't understand what she was saying, his and her body language gave me the impression she was telling him to "get it together" and stop being such a waste of space. She then gave him a few good smacks with her umbrella. Poor guy.

As with age, gender also gives status, and men are seen as superior to women. This leads to different levels of mysogeny and abuse, and while I haven't seen or felt the presence of it, I've been told spousal abuse can be as high as 30% of married couples.

What I have seen is abused children, which I've come across a few times now at school. There has been a few young girls now who have come to school with massive black eyes, and I'm convinced it's not from playing around with their friends. There's still not a lot of support for situations like that here, and there can be as many problems with reporting it as there can be with not.

What's really scary (sorry to be dwelling on the bad stuff, but it's on my mind today) is how things are so closely tied with the drinking of soju here. Soju is cheap, and drinking is common, hence, accepted. Normally well-behaved Korean men easily turn into drunk, aggressive and scary people, and while I haven't seen any very aggressive types, there's been many encounters with public drunks now, often running up to us to talk, dragging us one way or another, and just generally getting in the way. For some reason they usually seem to be peeing as we come across them.

Not everyone is like this, and I've met quite a few nice Koreans so far. It does help account for why so many foreign guys date (and marry) Korean women - friendly, they do housework, complain little and "know their place" - while foreign women date Korean men so rarely - expecting women to do housework, they take care of money and family worries, need to feel in charge and act dominant.

Hmmm, a coworker just came in and gave me a Chuseok (like Thanksgiving at home) present. It's a giant box of mushrooms. A little bizarre, but that's what's done here, and I guess they think I'm an okay kinda guy.

Okay, enough for now, I've nearly worn the keys off the keyboard here. I'll be back next Monday as that seems to be my regular writing time. Thanks for your time and for reading my yammerings, I love hearing from everyone so keep the comments coming!