Ouch, My Seoul Hurts

Seriously, that's the last Seoul joke. I couldn't help it.

Here is the account of the rest of our time in Seoul. We had one day of presentations about various things we as EPIK (English Program in Korea) teachers would need to know, such as the opening ceremony where a traditional Korean performance team played drums (which seemed a little loud in light of the previous day's activities), a lecture on Korean history and Culture by multilingual language teacher and Korean native Hyunwoo Sun, and another lecture on Culture Shock and EPIK Life by a former EPIK teacher, Eddie Young. All of these were really great - super interesting and engaging - which came as a little bit of a pleasant surprise.

What came as a not-so-pleasant surprise was how some of my fellow countrymen behaved in these presentations and towards the presenters. First, a little background about Korea. In the Korean culture and language, politeness is extremely important. There are even two different sets of words for if the speaker is desiring to show great respect to the listener, versus being more comfortable with the person they are speaking to, and thus not necessitating such a high level of politeness. One way this politeness manifests itself is that the Koreans really won't tell you not to do something, even if that thing is against the rules. For example, when we were at the art museum I could tell they didn't want us to take pictures, but they wouldn't tell us not to because that would be rude (I just took photos with the flash off, since I believe this is the reason photography is prohibited). Another example is how after 2 nights of dozens of EPIK teachers drinking beers in and around our dorm building, they finally announced in our class that we were not allowed to have alcohol on campus, even though the security guard had been right there the entire time. I think he just would have considered it rude to ask people not to, even though it was the rules and he was clearly within his rights to say something. And I think people were drinking because they thought they could, or else he would have said something.

So of course, to every yin there is a yang. Americans are apparently the yang in this scenario. I think probably most other foreigners have an inherently less polite culture than Korea, if only because
politeness is SO VERY important here. I understand that. But still,
there comes a point when it's not just "Korea being polite", it's
Americans being impolite. Being the so-called Ugly Americans I dread
having to call my fellow citizens.

I was literally amazed at some of the things I heard people say and do
during the presentations. Yelling out, demanding air conditioning.
Clapping loudly when the presentation had run a little long so the
presenter would end. Yelling out "You know what would be really
helpful?..." to a man who knows 7 languages at the age of 27 and who
was currently teaching us Korean. Yeah, there's a chance on Earth
that HE doesn't know what would be really helpful, but you do. Sure.
Rudely asking why we aren't getting paid for this mandatory weekend in Seoul, never mind that we missed 3 days of work and got a free trip to
have a blast in Seoul which included sightseeing and a performance by NANTA, which was amazing. Who do these entitled, demanding, rude
people think they are?! And since when does Korea owe them
something? And what makes them think they know everything?

Of course, when I would hear this extreme rudeness, was it in a
British accent? Was it in that beautiful, lilting South African
accent that I adore? Did it include the word 'aboot' and end with the
word 'ey'? No. It was in an easily recognizable, ugly American
drawl. Lovely. I personally went up and apologized to each presenter
that I felt had been visited on by an Ugly American. It was the very
least I could do, and I hope it showed that we are not all mannerless.

I really hope Koreans don't base their opinions of America on just
these negative experiences. We wonder why we hear stories about other
countries hating us, and surprise, surprise, maybe they even have a
valid reason. After this, I don't even like us very much.