In the Absence of my Wife, my Heart Grows Fonder for my In-Laws

Anyone that has been following my blogs for a while (you never know, there might be some), will know that I have not always had the smoothest of relationships with my in-laws.  I think I have always mentioned what nice people they are, but it has been our cultural differences that have often caused some problems and frustrations.

Recently, however, due to the absence of my wife - who is studying in Australia, where I will follow in a few months time - some of the advantages of Korean culture are starting to show their face, which is causing a greater level of mutual understanding between my in-laws and I.

My in-laws truly dote on their daughter, especially my father in-law, who really treats her like his little princess and becomes quite down and depressed sometimes when she is away.  He is a tough-looking, thick-set, older Korean man with a very vulnerable sweet and gooey centre.  He and my mother in-law treat me like family, but obviously their love for their daughter is unmatched.  As wonderful and understandable as this is, it can create some tiresome situations for me, because when they want to see their daughter, I am usually obligated to tag along.

Because my wife doesn't live with them anymore, they try to take full advantage of her coming to see them. This usually means an all-day marathon of sitting on the floor and drinking (both are not exactly my favourite things to do).  As the day wears on my body gets stiffer and more uncomfortable and my mind becomes weary of trying to understand Korean all day.  At the same time they tend to get more drunk and the Korean comes thicker and faster and is more difficult to understand. Not having the option to go home, I usually start looking pretty miserable and bored, which as a result, makes me feel a little guilty.  I also start to feel guilty about perhaps encouraging them to think about saying we should leave earlier, especially, as we will be living away from Korea and they won't see her as often as they would like.

A Skype call to my wife from Korea

Since my wife moved to Australia, though, such situations have not really occurred and an opportunity has arisen to get to know my in-laws better.  I visit my in-laws once every 3 weeks or so for lunch or dinner and they are always very sweet and kind to me.  My mother in-law usually has lots of food for me to take home (the way to a man's heart is through his stomach, and I am no exception); side dishes, soups, fruits and vegetables, and she even comes to my apartment occasionally and tidies-up, cleans, and puts even more food in my fridge.  She is amazing and I appreciate it more than I can ever express to her (you have no idea how good it felt to come home, after about 24 hours traveling coming back from England, to a perfectly clean house).

And it is not just what they can do for me, but now when I visit them, I actually look forward to doing so.  They feel like a family in a place where I technically have none; it is nice to be useful and chop some wood or move rocks with my father in-law at their house in the countryside and then eat together after. This is often only for a few hours, instead of all day, as it was when my wife was in Korea.

In the presence of my wife, I also found speaking Korean difficult.  Because I had a ready-made translator beside me all the time, I didn't try as hard as I could to get my message across and my in-laws used to immediately turn to my wife if they originally didn't understand me.  Without my wife, there is no hiding place for me or my in-laws, we have to make conversation with each other.  While I am getting a little better at making myself understood, they are also making themselves easier to understand by speaking more slowly and using more basic Korean.  It is all coming together to help us build a better relationship with each other.

With the better understanding of each other, so to have I begun to have a greater appreciation of Korean culture when it comes to family.  I always knew of a kind of unsigned contract (duties) between family members; parents look after their children and their son in-law (let's leave daughters in-law aside, not sure about that one) and then they look after them when they are older (both monetarily, and more directly). They look after sons in-law well because they traditionally pay and care for their daughters. To begin with this can seem a little calculated and even selfish to Western eyes, I think I saw it this way at first.  Parents have children, it is their decision, and there should be no debt to pay (see the first post I ever wrote on this subject), but obviously people often choose to care for their parents when they are older.  That's approximately how I thought about the situation and essentially I still do, but perhaps that is over-simplifying things a little.

I get the strong feeling that my in-law's patience and extra-special kindness towards me is due to the fact I treat their daughter well, period, and I think this is a really nice attitude and makes me feel rather proud of myself.

My wife was a bit of a tear-away teenager who caused her parents a fair amount of strife at middle school, but then settled into the idea of learning English, to pursue a dream of becoming a nurse and living abroad, specifically in Australia.  I think when she became focused on achieving this goal, she started to quell the fears her parents had for her future at the same time. Perhaps they also thought that she might be a bit of a challenge for a man to marry due to her rebellious nature (just theorising, honey!).

With the nursing profession in Korea being almost unbearably stressful, poorly paid, prone to sexual harassment, and in my view hazardous, and England making it increasingly difficult for us to live together there (as well as being a place of increasing social problems these days), Australia became the logical choice (it is also somewhere I have wanted to live for a long time).  I am having to make sacrifices and to use quite a lot of saved money to help my wife study and my in-laws see this and do, quite literally, all they possibly can to help me while I am staying in Korea on my own.

Yes, they are being kind to me for a reason, they also might expect their daughter and I to help them out financially when they are older, because of the care they have given their daughter throughout her life and me for a shorter amount of time, but that unsigned debt that I have to pay them and the care for their daughter feels less like a weight on my shoulders, but something I would pay gladly (from a famous old miser, this may shock some of my friends).

Now, let's not get too soppy, priority number one is me, then my wife and my own family and then my in-laws.  I have no guarantee of success in the future and I'm not going to break my back to fund my in-law's sometimes slightly irresponsible (in my view) attitude to money (they, like many Koreans spend far too much on unnecessary status symbols and gifts, as well as drinking too much soju).  However, if I am able and I am sure that my own parents are well looked-after and happy first, some portion of the fruits of my labours will gladly be spent on making sure my Korean family are happy and comfortable in their old age.  They deserve to have their kindness repaid back to them and for the happy fact that I am lucky to have in-laws that I like, which is not always something that can be said in any marriage, whether it is cross-cultural or not.

My Korean Wedding - Part 2

Picking-up from where we left-off from last week then, preparations had been done - mostly not by me - and the studio photos had been taken, so it was time for the big day. 

We arrived about 3 to 4 hours before the start of the ceremony to be dressed and made to look ultra-pretty.  I didn't need to get that much done so I spent most of the time sitting around outside with my Mum and Dad, who had come to Korea specially for the wedding.  My mother had come to Korea before, but it was the first time for my father.  They both weren't really sure what to expect or what to do, but I just told them that everything would be extremely different to what they are used to and to simply enjoy a day of culture which most people in the world couldn't buy with all the money in the world.

By the time the actual day of the wedding came around I wasn't as anxious about the quality of it as I had been a few weeks before.  This was to the credit of the people at the wedding venue and the venue itself.  As I said last week, it was a really nice place and the staff were extremely attentive and helpful.  Because of all of this, I was in fine spirits about the wedding.

The only thing that was bringing me down slightly was my wife.  This was partly understandable because of the amount of stress she was suffering from leading up to the wedding.  She had a great many things to sort out, not only because of the wedding, but also because she was going to Australia to study shortly after (I am following her there next year) and because of my parents.  My parents really didn't need any worrying about as I was more than capable of taking care of them, but there was quite a lot of pressure on her to translate and from her own parents to make sure they were well looked-after.  My in-laws - I have heard - are not the exception when it comes to worrying about the parents of their daughter's husband and no amount of assurance that the endless etiquette and stresses and strains of a typical Korean family situation need not apply in our circumstances would calm them down about it.  Still, because of this, my wife was ever-so slightly driving me round the bend for a few days up to our wedding day.  Thankfully, the burden visibly lifted off her shoulders as the day progressed and by the end of the day she was back to the her wonderful self and not the fire breathing dragon she had temporarily been in the days previous.

While I was outside chatting to my Dad, I was watching the people who were getting married before us and chuckled slightly when a BMW covertible drove up for pictures and drove the bride about 20 metres to the wedding hall.  The bride sat on the top of the passenger seat and I could here lots of the relatives commenting on the car, which I knew was specifically chosen because it was european and "classy".  It was a bit silly really.  Little did I know, however, that my wife and I were to receive exactly the same routine.  It actually made me smile and was just the start of quite an amusing day.

About a thousand photos later, we had eventually arrived inside the wedding hall, a little early so we could meet and greet the guests.  My parents and I had to wait and greet everyone at the front, my mother looking fantastic in her Hanbok (Korean traditional clothing) and all of us wearing white gloves.  I was determined not to wear these because I had seen them present at every Korean wedding I had seen and didn't really understand the necessity of them, they just reminded me of a snooker referee.  However, when I handed them back to the woman who gave them to me and insisted a couple of times that I didn't want to wear them, her and the rest of the staff looked so shocked that I thought they would stop the wedding.  So adamant they were that I must wear them, I ended-up caving in and putting them on.

While we were waiting for guests, the guests from the other wedding were pouring out and giving me and my family a few stares.  My Mum and Dad were staring back and commenting on how under-dressed many of them seemed, especially the older people.  Older men and women were walking out in tracksuits, hiking clothing, T-shirts and trainers - not what they were expecting.  Even some of the younger people were extremely casually dressed for the occasion.  We were all quite amused by the sights and sounds of the place, but there was one person that was taking the whole thing deadly seriously.

It was my father in-law that insisted on us having a wedding service in Korea for family reasons, to make it all official with everyone, so he was mightily concerned that the family were all meeted and greeted with the utmost care and attention.  Unfortunately for him, I had no idea what was going on in the service itself, so one of the wedding hall staff took me aside to explain what was going to happen.  My father in-law wasn't happy with me leaving my greeting spot and twice came to pull me back, on the second occasion he was visibly angry with the member of staff and while everyone else was smiling and laughing about the uniqueness of the whole thing, he sported the face of the iconic bulldog chewing a wasp.

Despite all the explanations, my parents and I still had no idea what was really going to happen and after a few bows from everyone to each other my wife and I finally made it to the platform.

My Korean language ability has improved lately, however the language being used by the master of ceremonies was obviously quite poetic and a bit outside of my everyday Korean conversations and we had no interpreter.  With this in mind then, my wife did the duties.  My ear turned to her mouth, I simply smiled and nodded through most of it.  I think our guests were quite amused by it all as there was always a delay between sentences as things were explained to me. 

He finally came towards the end and asked in Korean, "it is now time for you to show how much you love your wife" (or something like that).  This sentence was put in such a way, however, it was quite difficult to translate and even once I got the meaning , I then asked my wife, "like how?", and apparently that was up to me.  It all took a couple of minutes to get this straight, though, and those gathered began to murmur and giggle and when we just told the man to skip that bit we got a few more laughs.  It was all working well, despite this, because it was adding to the charming amusement and unique feeling of the day.  I could get the feeling that all our guests were engaged in the ceremony, interested in what was happening, something that I had not experienced in other wedding days in Korea as most people just chatted their way through them and left early to eat.

It appeared, though, that someone had made plans to force me into proving my love for my wife with a few other activities.  I was not surprised that something would happen after the official business because I had seen it before at other weddings.  Usually, a friend or friends of the bride or groom would do a performance, which was often cringe-worthy to sit through.  A couple of such people had offered to do so at our wedding but my wife and I quickly, but politely, refused.  I had three tasks to complete in-front of everyone: The first was to shout, "나는 봉 잡았다!" as loudly as I possibly could (roughly translated it means, "I caught a good one", or something along those lines (see picture below).

The second task was to do ten press ups with my wife sitting on my back.  I was a little worried I might split my suit and I was already quite hot, but managed it fine with a little embarassment.  I was also thankful that my wife had lost a little weight recently.

The third was to do a ten second kiss, which is actually quite difficult to do if you can't use your tongue (definitely no tongues infront of a Korean audience) as it just doesn't come naturally.

With my missions complete, and the people thoroughly amused we only had all the photos and the food to come, while my wife, her close family and I proceeded to the traditional service.

Unlike my friend Darren, I was not especially comfortable with the idea of changing into the traditional clothes for the Korean service.  They looked ridiculous on me and I also wanted to feel comfortable at my own wedding and celebrate where I was from.  I am not Korean, so in my mind, I didn't want to dress like one.  I also wanted to make a statement to a Korean family, who I really like, but am also slightly weary about with how much they like to control my actions sometimes.  I wanted to say that on my day, that I would be doing it my way with no negotiations and no compromises, this was how it was going to be, because I said so, period.  Begrudgingly, they agreed on this before the day, which is why the suit stayed on.

I really enjoyed the traditional part afterwards, I keep using the word 'unique', but it really was and my parents thoroughly enjoyed such an interesting cultural experience.  We poored drinks for our relatives, bowed, and received money in return.  Towards the end, I had to piggy-back my wife around the room and then my wife had to catch a selection of chestnuts and dates (I think that is what they were) in her dress that her parents threw to determine how many children we would have and what sex they would be.  Apparently, we are going to have 4 daughters, which I really hope is a prediction that doesn't come true; 2 children maximum, thank you.

Overall, the atmosphere created by the day was a memorable one.  It was a wedding without too much cliche, that didn't take itself too seriously, wasn't cheap looking, had a great sense of fun, was definitely original, and perhaps most importantly, created great memories for my wife and I.  These are memories we could not have expected to be so cherishable because of our fears about what might have been.  This made everything that much more wonderful and I couldn't have wished for a better day.  The only thing would have been great is if more of my family and friends from England could have come, but I understood that this was not really possible.

What I didn't also realise was the tremendous relief of not having an English style wedding.  The whole thing was over in about 3 hours, it didn't cost us an arm and a leg, we were able to relax afterwards and not have to entertain others, and we also didn't have to worry about impressing anyone, at home or in Korea.  The originality of the fusion of cultures made it something that was not really comparable to anything else, we had managed to transcend all of that without even trying to be different or special, it just was.

Coinicidentally, my best friend from back home in England had a wedding two weeks later.  His was a super-traditional English church wedding, with the reception in a village manor house.  It looked spectacular, and from the pictures I have seen, exactly how I would picture a perfect English wedding to be.  I wish I could have been there and I wish he could have been at my wedding, but I am happy things worked out so well for both of us.  Our respective weddings suited our own characters perfectly and although we couldn't experience each other's at first-hand, we are both lucky guys to have married the women we love and in a manner which suited us so well.

My Korean Wedding Part 1

A couple of weeks ago, I had what I thought would never happen, an actual wedding in Korea.  Now, just in case you are confused, I have already been married for over three years, but as I explained in a previous post, this was a British Consulate job.  The reason for it was I was in love and desperate to be with my now wife, despite the fact I was leaving Korea and going home to England.  At the time, I was having such a terrible time in Korea that I thought I may not return, but I could not bear the thought of leaving without her.

I knew that my wife's parents wanted to organise a proper wedding.  Many of their relatives did not know we were married and my in-laws also did not want to tell them because the way we got married was so unusual.  However, I thought it highly unlikely we would have a more official ceremony because they did not have enough money and I was saving to put my wife through nursing college in Australia.  I told them - in a typically Korean indirect manner, (not quite like this) "I will happily have a wedding, but you will have to pay for it."

Much to my surprise, they were able to pay and the great thing about Korean weddings is that you get most of the money you spent on it back through the guests that you invite anyway, as they all give some money. They hadn't broken the bank after all, so my conscience was clear as well.

It all seemed perfect then, didn't it?  I was getting a wedding day and I wasn't paying a penny or indeed organising anything!  Perfect!  The only thing was that both my wife and I were not really looking forward to it.  The reason for this is that we had both been present a quite a few other Korean weddings and, with the exception of one (my Australian friend's rather unique and interesting traditional service) we had hated every single one of them, or should I say hated the thought of our day being like it (I rather enjoyed the food at each occasion).

My friend's wedding, a couple of months before mine, was very traditional and it really suited his character.  I could have never pulled it off, but he really did and it was a great day.

Let's start with the venues; the wedding halls that Korean people typically get married in are, to me, the least tasteful places imaginable; flashing lights, stupid themes, and embarrassing performances littered many of the ceremonies I have witnessed.  There is a cringeworthy feeling about the whole thing and a cheapness and lack of class about it all.  This was the first fear for my own wedding, especially as I was sure my in-laws would be trying to do it all as cheaply as possible.

Secondly - partly caused by the venue itself - I hated the atmosphere created by the organisation of the ceremony itself and the manners of the guests.  Wedding Hall marriages seemed to resemble a food hall, with people wondering in and out of the ceremony as they pleased and those from the next wedding waiting in line behind them.  Doors to the back of the room where the service took place would be wide-open; people talked through the readings and the vows and babies cried at the back of the room.  Fear number two for my own wedding, and I could imagine my head exploding at the thought of crying children and nattering old ladies spoiling our big moment.

Lastly, most of the weddings I had attended as a guest had a very anti-climatic feel about them and a complete lack of romance or magic.  The services ended quickly and even though they were fast many people would not stay and hastily embarked for the food before the end.  Unlike an English wedding, there was no big party afterwards, no dance between bride and groom, no drunken antics, and none of the majesty and tradition an old English manor or church can convey.  Korean weddings lacked that special something, that x-factor I had seen in most weddings in England.  English weddings were beautiful, Korean weddings were like a factory line of benign similarity, cliche themes, and too much haste.

For all these reasons and more, I was not that optimistic about how my own wedding would pan out.  However, in what turned out to be one of the most pleasant surprises - perhaps of my life - it turned out to be an absolutely perfect day; one that suited my wife and I in almost every way possible and on a number of levels.

You see, the human mind is a strange thing, it yearns for the approval from others and to show-off - a couple of things I have always hated about the concept of getting married - over and above actual happiness, much of the time.  Essentially, most weddings are a big, expensive showing-off exercise that has bankrupted many right at the beginning of their married life.  For one day of extravagance, many people pay the price of an increased financial burden, sometimes for the rest of their married life.  It actually stresses the most important aspect of it all, i.e. the marriage and the relationship itself.  I'm not even going to talk about those who divorce and marry again, incurring even more expense for another marriage.

This was the first burden that was off my shoulders; the whole thing cost us nothing.  In fact, we actually made a few hundred pounds out of it, amazing!  Sounds shallow and money-grabbing, I know, but one can't deny the relief of it and the weight it took off my shoulders.  Added to this was absolutely zero stress in organising anything for yours truly.

A couple of months before the wedding, in about the only thing I had a hand in doing, I went to a couple of wedding halls with my in-laws, and after one truly awful place I was delighted to find quite a quiet, less flamboyant, but classy wedding hall on the outskirts of our town.  My wife's parents weren't that happy about it because the ease of getting there was not quite as good as the other one for all their relatives.  With this in mind, my wife nudged me to make a real fuss about how much nicer this place was (which it really was) to make sure they caved-in to our wishes, so I put on an oscar-winning performance to win them round.  I am glad I did, because I still have not been to any other wedding place in Korea that looked so nice.  Worry number one about the service negated.

Once we had selected the venue, we were taken inside to agree what we wanted for the package, which included a photo shoot.  The wedding photo shoot is what almost everyone does in Korea a few weeks before the wedding and is professionally done in a proper studio.  I had seen the photo albums of this at other weddings and I must admit it was one of the few things that I was impressed with about weddings in Korea.  It seemed a nice touch and was something that would remind us of how we were when we were married - and in our physical prime - in years to come.

I had been warned about the shoot itself from my Australian friend, Darren, who got married a couple of months before.  He said it was about seven hours of posing, sweating, and boredom and he feared for my sanity.  I must say that I have a debt to pay him for telling me about it because, mentally prepared for what was to come, I came through the whole experience in pretty good spirits.  In fact, it was my wife who looked more frustrated with it all, probably because she had more dress changes and attention given to her and her poses had to be more elaborate than mine.

I might be bias, but my wife looked absolutely stunning in all the pictures.

The studio were fantastic and also very efficient in getting the huge number of photos taken back to us on e-mail so we could choose the best for the album and for some photo frames.  I was very impressed with the pictures and was very glad we had it done.  All I had to put up with was a little mickey-taking from back home when some of mates saw the odd photo leaked onto facebook by my wife.  But my wife and I looked great, so I didn't care.

Next week in part 2, the wedding day itself.

The pictures included some taken in Hanbok as well.

Avoiding Conflict and the Korean in-Laws

Those of you who read one of my first articles on this site, ‘My Korean Family’, will know that I definitely do not fit the description of the perfect son in-law in a Korean family.  I don’t give gifts (except at birthdays, Chuseok, and Seollal), I will refuse an invitation to go and see them if I have made other plans, and generally I don’t automatically respect what they have to say, and do what they wish of me.  I think they must know all of this by now, but to their credit I think they are basically content in the fact that I treat their daughter well.  There are, however, still a few problems I have with the culture at large, which manifests itself in their expectations of me.

I’ll be honest, I tend to try and avoid the Korean in-laws if at all possible.  I will visit them as often as I need to and no more than that because it simply is not a comfortable atmosphere.  The problem is that I soon as I step foot in their house or meet them in a restaurant or any other place, I am to follow their instructions without argument.  This means they dictate what I do, how I should behave, where I go, for how long I stay, and even to some degree how I should feel about it all.  They are not nasty about it, they are the nicest people you could possibly meet, but their cultural expectations create something of a benign dictatorship in relations between us.  It is simply unthinkable for me to excuse myself and go home after a long day in their company, for example, or in fact to have any polite disagreement with them at all.  So a bit like a North Korean defector, I slink away under the fence to get away and avoid an argument or any conflict whatsoever.  

My wife and I do this by lying, inventing little stories so that it is easier for me to get away.  It sounds terrible doesn't it, but it is the only way, and I have commented before that in my experience many older Koreans would rather be transparently lied to than have their children or younger family members tell the truth in direct confrontation with them.  I think many underestimate just how much of a factor this kind of cultural thinking plays in the creation of an Orwellian state such as North Korea.  It sounds almost offensive for me to compare my in-laws to Kim Jong Un, but the cultural mindset is the same and along with it the attitude that your parents are owed your 100% compliance and are not to be ever disagreed with, which I am sure is not really the case, but the feeling is there nonetheless.

I see the lack of conflict within Korean families, the workplace, and in Korean society in general to be an aspect of the culture that is flawed and could do with some changing.  Honest discussion - and the intellectual and verbal conflict that arises from it - is how we all move forward because, after all, there is no light without heat.  No light (quite literally if you look at the satellite image of the country at night) has been created in North Korea because there is no healthy disagreement with how things are being done.  Everyone just does what they are told, nothing moves forward, and North Korea is famously stuck in the past because of it.

The fact of the importance of conflict is something that is also lost on an ever-increasingly overly-liberalised Western culture, where many think we just have to accept and respect everyone else’s point of view as equally valid, especially those of a different society, or shout ‘racist’ or ‘bigot’ as a conversation finisher at anyone with a controversial opinion about the behaviour of any group of people other than the particular one that we belong to.  There is also a rather odd attitude present within our own societies (and especially in mine) of bending over backwards to accommodate and understand other cultures, but at the same time – when we travel to other countries – we should always ‘do as the Romans do’ and do our best to conform to others.  With particular attention to Korea and native English teachers, I think part of their role is to give students and their co-workers a true experience of working with people of Western culture.  We would all help Koreans much more if we stuck to our principles and conformed less, because they could learn so much more from it.  But we don’t, we just tend to do what we are told most of the time or try and weasel out of difficult situations like I do with my in-laws.  We all do this in order not to offend, and perhaps also keep our jobs and not get into trouble, although I really believe we shouldn’t, and I readily admit that I find it extremely difficult myself.

Back to my in-laws, and I am often confounded by the reaction I receive when I talk ill of my in-laws by saying I dislike spending too much time with them.  I usually get a range of responses depending on who I’m talking to and how much someone knows about me.  If I am talking to a Western person (who is married or in a long-term relationship) who does not know I am married to a Korean, I am usually met with a reaction along the lines of this, ‘yeah, I know, the in-laws are a pain in the neck sometimes aren’t they.’  If I am talking to a Korean friend or acquaintance and complaining about my in-laws, I also – pretty much 100% of the time – get the same kind of sympathetic response and also complaints about their own in-laws in return.  This is no surprise really as many Koreans – especially women – really do bear a significant burden from their in-laws.  But also, when you think about it, is it really that much of a controversial thing to say that you don’t like spending time with your in-laws?  Is this a rare feeling in people generally around the world?  I think not.  However, you wouldn’t know this if you could hear the criticism I receive sometimes from Western liberal-minded people, who know I am married to a Korean woman.  If I complain about my in-laws then, it is common to receive a barrage of comments saying that I should have known what the culture was like and I need to adapt to it and accept it and that I am simply not trying hard enough.  That is not how it should work, I should compromise on some things because of politeness and custom, but I will not bow down to everything they say because I need to accept their culture.  When it comes to respecting someone to the degree that you cannot engage in honest debate and disagreement with them, no respect shall be given and I say this from a logical, reasonable, and moral stand-point, the difference in culture is irrelevant.

To not be able to speak openly and honestly with someone without fear of reprisal and dire consequences is something that I cannot respect, accept, adapt to, or feel comfortable with.  This is the position I find I am forced into in relations with my in-laws.  The best I can do is tolerate it, I’m afraid.  I love my wife and I put myself through it all because of her, fortunately I do not have to meet her parents all that often and my attitude of trying not to feel guilty about having these feelings means that I can avoid meeting them more than is absolutely necessary.  The horrible thing about it all is that I actually like my in-laws, they are nice, caring, and kind people, it is simply this one aspect of their culture that makes dealings with them much more difficult than it should be.

In Korea, I am uncomfortable that the right to disagree, argue, and debate honestly seems to be taken away from many people.  It is not enshrined in law or indeed in principle, but it is in practice.  The frustrating thing is that to notice this and complain about it in writing or even to friends is often seen as something worthy of shame, stubbornness, laziness, and sometimes even bigotry and racism.  It appears that the West is engaging in restricting debate and freedom of speech as well.  We talk a good game, and freedom to express ourselves may even be written in our constitutions, but again in practice we still try to silence and smear others to end arguments and stop the controversy to avoid a conflict.  Disagreements in opinions and ideas leads to a better understanding of each other, a greater knowledge of your own subject and position, an ability to change and move forward, the acknowledgement of problems and their possible solutions, and – perhaps the most importantly of all – the avoidance of violent conflict or other disastrous consequences in the future.

With me personally, my relationship with my Korean in-laws will always be a difficult and somewhat of an awkward one, which teeters on a knife edge, perhaps prone to a fatal collapse one day.  It is all because we really don’t know each other, in over three years we have never talked openly and honestly about anything, every situation being mired in courtesy, custom, and fear of saying the wrong thing.  At best we tolerate each other, we don’t genuinely respect each other and this situation can be translated to many thorny situations around the world and especially within multi-cultural nations.

To hell with ‘tolerance’ and to hell with causing ‘offence’, I want to truly understand and respect people, not just pretend to.  This is an up-swelling of frustration that has afflicted me since living in South Korea, the feeling that every day I am too much of a coward to really get to know people and that I am valued as a person for holding back on my principles in this regard and cowering away from confrontation.  The fact is though, I should stop beating myself up because at this time the straitjacket would be applied everywhere, not just in Korea.  Most of us are cowards, we need to be and I will settle back into the routine after writing this article of being nice to and conforming to the wishes of others who I really have no respect for whatsoever because, out of a fear of offending them (and vice versa), I have never really known them and they have never really known me.  No wonder we cannot truly respect and understand one another.

Note: This post was first written by me for asiapundits.com but I thought I would re-post it on my own blog as well.

Korean New Year With The Seoul Family

I live in the deep south of South Korea and usually spend the Korean holidays in Suncheon with my father in-law's side of the family, but the other half of my wife's family live up in Seoul.  I was heading for Thailand right after the holiday so it made sense to spend some time in Seoul with the family beforehand and take the relatively short trip to Incheon airport.

I must admit, the two major holidays in Korea are a bit of a trying time for me for the reasons I have blogged about before in my previous posts on My Korean Family, Death Anniversaries in Korea, and Is a Clash of Cultures Inevitable and Irreconcilable?  This post will involve more information and less complaining, hopefully.  Although in the spirit of this blog, I shall have a little moan.

I stayed with my grandmother in-law in her apartment and because of her age and slight frailty we did most of our celebrations there.  The first thing that hit me as I entered her apartment was the amount of people crammed in.  It is not a big apartment but it somehow managed to fit about 20 family members.  I am used to about 6 maximum in a relatively large house and garden when I spend time with family back home in England so right from the word go it was already a little daunting and, of course, I tend to be the centre of attention.

One tradition of Seollal is doing a full bow to your elders to show respect and in return they often give some money.  This being my first Seollal with the family - I have missed it for various reasons in the last two years - I was unaware that they don't just do this with kids but with younger adults too, like myself.  The welcome surprise of about £40 between my three uncles in-law was the result, maybe it wasn't going to be all bad.

However, fairly immediately the unorthodoxy of my wife and I's relationship was coming into question.  Not only am I a foreigner - a bit of a shock for the family as it is - we don't plan on staying in Korea to live, we also don't plan on having a baby for at least another 3 years, and considering we have been married for nearly three years already this is more than a little strange to them.  Babies usually follow marriage in quite a short period of time in Korean culture.  In fact, I was encouraged (in a joking but strongly suggestive manner) by a couple of my uncles to get on with it in Thailand and get the job done and settle down in Korea.  I laughed, smiled politely and then told them to mind their own god dam business (the last part was inside my head).

I have heard that in most families in Korea there is always that one uncle that people just really can't stand and mine is my uncle on my mother in-law's side.  He is the eldest and he perceives this as giving him the entitlement to tell everybody what they should be doing with their lives.  He is a conservative-minded Korean and so everyone else should be in his eyes.  I also find him rather materialistic and arrogant.  My other two uncles in-law on this side of the family are just fine.  One seems to have a lot more going on upstairs, appears to understand me quite well and holds fast on the advice giving, and the other is kind, sincere, and generous, despite not being as wealthy as the other two.

Anyway, we ate, were given some advice, ate a bit more, were given some more advice, ate again....well you get the picture.  I ate, smiled politely, nodded in agreement, and again told them to mind their own business (of course, in my head again).

Everyone left and I was pretty shattered as I also had to be up early to take the bus to Seoul in the first place, which took about 4 hours.  My wife and my mother in-law were busy though, tidying up for grandmother, who obviously could not be expected to do it all.  They also cleaned the whole apartment from top to bottom as it needed a thorough clean.  They were both angry at how none of the family that lived in Seoul helped my grandmother in-law clean up, but couldn't say anything to their face, especially as the oldest uncle (the one I dislike) paid for the apartment and any criticism of himself or his wife might well end up in them caring less or being less generous.  So while they were around my mother in-law just had to suck-up her frustrations and be ultra-nice to them because they held all the cards.  I tried to help but was ordered not to and anyway my wife knows that dirt and dust tend to follow me around wherever I go anyway, even when my intention is to clean-up.

The next morning, we had to go to my grandfather in-law's grave-site to give our respects, which usually involves an offering of food and soju and some bowing.  His grave was part of an extraordinary cemetery on the outskirts of Seoul with thousands of people buried on the mountainside.  I desperately wanted to take a picture of the place, which was coated in snow, as it looked quite beautiful and was extraordinarily large but refrained for fear of being disrespectful, something that is very easy to do in that kind of situation.

Then it was time to take a trip to my eldest uncle's local temple, which he frequents on a regular basis and so is friendly with the monks.  My mother in-laws side of the family are Buddhist and I think even my wife might call herself culturally Buddhist, much like people back home in England are culturally Christian but don't believe in any of the nonsense and don't really believe in god.  They all got the cushions out in the temple and did their deep bows to their knees to Buddha as I just watched.  We all then went back to a kind of portacabin with lots of computers and a warm fire where a monk sat and made us all coffee between boxes of artistic Buddhist calendars that they were selling, which left me thinking I needed to do a little bit more study about what it meant to be a Buddhist.  I was also confounded by my rather brand name, money, and materially obsessed eldest uncle's devotion to Buddhism and his local temple.  The monk then proceeded to give me and my wife some advice, so I smiled and nodded politely and then told him to mind his own business (last part... you get the idea).

Fortunately for me, we were quite close to a place called Uijeongbu, which is famous for having a large base for American soldiers but more importantly is the home of the best Budae Jiggae in Korea, one of my favourite dishes, so we headed to a restaurant for lunch.  Budae Jiggae is a spicy soup with noodles, some processed meat like spam and little frankfurters, and a few other things thrown into the mix as well.  It is no coincidence that Uijeongbu is famous for this and American soldiers.  The dish is a fusion of traditional Korean flavoured spicy soup with the kinds of ingredients available to them during and after the Korean War, brought by American soldiers, i.e. processed meat like spam and baked beans.  Needless to say, I lapped it all up like a dog that hadn't eaten for a week, much to the delight and amazement of most of the Koreans around me - it never ceases to amaze them that a foreigner likes their food and has the ability to eat it in the first place on account of how spicy it is.

It was time to go back to grandma's place and relax before I flew to Thailand in the morning.  On the way we had a conversation about how rainy it is in England, the smog in London, and a few other stereotypical things about England, which prepared the way for a more serious and stern advice giving session from my eldest uncle when we got home, reiterating the need to settle-down and have a baby quickly, stay in Korea and help the family.  After a little more smiling, nodding, and the rest, Seollal was over and I could look forward to a relaxing vacation (which he made clear he did not approve of, but who cares) as my reward for all my patience and restraint.  Although amid all the irritations it was a fascinating couple of days of pure Korean culture, a privilege and a learning experience for this stubborn Englishman.

Are Korean Parents Getting More Than They Bargained For When They Send Their Children Overseas to Study?

Traveling to other countries can profoundly change a person and when they live in other countries this change can be even more pronounced.  Spending a long time in another part of the world can also cause people to make friends and create new habits that can last a lifetime.

Just consider myself, for example, I am now married to a Korean, I experience reverse culture shock when I go back home to England, and I never eat sandwiches anymore.  It's always a hot meal for lunch and rice for me and I could not do without a rice cooker these days.  

It is now standard practice for wealthy Koreans to send their children away overseas for study.  The USA is the most popular destination, but the UK and Australia are also attracting students, with Australia especially popular for studying English.

By sending their children away to foreign countries to study, Korean parents are hoping for the best education and therefore the best prospects for them in the hope that they get a nice well-paid job at the end of it.  However, their children often come back to Korea with more than just a degree certificate in their hands and I have seen examples of it and learned of many more.

The ultimate nightmare for Korean parents is when their child says that they have fallen in love with someone while they have been in another country, of which there is a varying degree of horror.  I will start with the least troubling and finish with the most - this is according to my wife's family who we carefully questioned on the matter:

- Their daughter is in a relationship with a white man who is not American
- Their daughter is in a relationship with a white man who is American
- Their daughter is in a relationship with a white, mixed race, South East Asian or other ethnicity (not black) man who is not from an English speaking country
- Their son is in a relationship with a white woman who is not American
- Their son is in a relationship with a white woman who is American
- Their son is in a relationship with a white, mixed race, South East Asian or other ethnicity (not black) woman or man who is not from an English speaking country
- Their son or daughter is in a relationship with a black man or woman
- Their son or daughter is in a gay relationship

This needs a little explaining.  It is clear that if there is fierce prejudice in Korea (in fact in many countries) it does regularly fall on black people and gay people the most, so therefore it is no surprise why any relationship involving this and their children is not considered a great thing (with exceptions of course).  I did not include Far East Asian men or women in this because of the difficulty of categorising them.  For instance they might not think a Chinese person or Chinese American would be so bad, but they might think of Japanese as less inviting and Korean American might be the best.  White men are generally not so bad but are still touch and go with many Korean parents as the pure Korean blood thing is important for some, not to mention the problem of the clash of cultures.

There is a difference between the sexes also.  Sons are considered more important generally because of their potential for future income and looking after their parents in old age and for the fact that Korea is still a patriarchal society.  The expected duties of a daughter in-law in Korea are also disrupted if their son marries a non-Korean and especially a Westerner.  How many Western women would run the gauntlet for their Korean in-laws the way a Korean daughter in-law normally does?  Sometimes Korean parents can be turned around to the idea of their daughter marrying a white Western man quite quickly as well because of the positive prejudice of Westerners being quite wealthy, handsome, and sophisticated.

There is another issue, which has to do with the image of Americans in the eyes of a lot of Korean people.  Although Koreans are thankful for the help the US has given them in the past, some are not too enamored with the idea of their son or daughter marrying an American because of the reputation of American soldiers.  This has given many the view that Americans are wild, loud, and rather crass (their words not mine, I promise).

Whereas someone like me, an Englishman, has a rather better reputation as a true gentleman - despite the fact that in reality a trip to England will probably put you in contact with some of the wildest, loudest, vilest human beings around at the moment, particularly if you choose to go out on a Friday or Saturday night).  I on the other hand, fit the charming English stereotype rather well I think and it certainly worked in my favour with my Korean family.  They were often very quick to interject when their friends assumed I was American and proudly say that I was, in actual fact, from England.

These are obviously only opinions based on my Korean family but I have heard many other stories that confirm much of what I say here.  I am certainly no expert on the matter, however, and would welcome any further comments on this.

The only thing worse than saying you have met someone, for a Korean studying overseas, is to say that you are pregnant and even worse still that you are pregnant (or have made someone pregnant) and you are going to keep it.  This is a pretty obvious one, however, and I think it needs no further explanation as this would probably be a nightmare for most parents from any country.

The other thing that Korean students can bring back with them isn't so tangible, but can become just as much of a nuisance to their parents, and that is a change of personality and attitude.  This can be split up into two categories; a positive and a negative change in character, although both are bad from the perspective of the majority of Korean parents:

Positive - Koreans incorporate some Western values during their time studying and start to believe in the rather infectious ideals of individuality and equality.  This erodes some of the Korean core values of respect and group unity.  They now value their own opinion more over their parents and can disagree with them more frequently on a range of issues.  They might even change the path of their career and may even want to live outside of Korea because of the pressures to conform within their society.  This is undoubtedly positive as they have become more world-wise and can identify what is best in their culture and keep it along with their newly acquired ways of thinking.  They also care less about what others think; this can make them happier and more innovative, expanding their horizons and creating opportunities.

Negative - All to often, however, it is some of the negative aspects of Western culture that are brought back home.  Sometimes the need to express oneself as an individual can make one selfish (a common accusation Koreans make of Westerners).  This selfishness can be expressed as a lack of responsibility derived from the university/college atmosphere of drinking and partying.  The less conscientious can embrace merely the licentious part of Western culture and come back with this attitude.  Some come back to Korea expecting a good job, and when they can't get one don't do anything at all, not accepting work they see as beneath them and just sponging off their parents.

I could add arrogance to the negative aspect of going abroad to study or travel, and my wife constantly grumbles about this when she sees some Korean people who have studied abroad or traveled extensively.  Status being highly valued in Korean culture, travel and studying in other countries is something a person can drop into conversation to elevate themselves and some people do just that.  We all know the 'I've been there' people from back home but some Koreans do take this to new levels of conceit.  This goes not only for the people who have been overseas themselves but their relatives also.  My wife and I bought a scarf as a souvenir, while we were traveling in Europe, for my wife's grandmother and she ended up telling everyone in her apartment building about her well-traveled granddaughter's gift from Rome.  There is nothing wrong with this kind of pride in your family but when it turns into a game of 'my family is better than yours', which it so often does, it is not exactly perfect conditions for people to thrive in community happiness.

I have always thought it a shame that what is found so appealing about Western culture is regularly the worst aspects of it.  Other cultures seem blinkered to the good stuff and assimilate only the licentiousness, partying, fast-food, the dog-eat-dog world of capitalism and big business, and celebrity worship.

My Korean students, co-workers, and other acquaintances regularly stereotype Westerners as selfish, unhealthy, arrogant, concerned only with money, rude to elders, fat, and love to get drunk at the weekend.  I regularly take exception to this but funnily enough some Koreans who have traveled to these countries often come back home with at least one or two of these factors imprinted on their lives.

Fortunately, though, some come back with the best of Western culture and the values of the enlightenment branded onto their personality.  Freedom of expression, human rights, equality, originality, imagination, debate, moral philosophy, and individuality.  All these are values that we ourselves under-appreciate but this is the good stuff and worth exporting to the world and it is also worth other cultures following our lead on these issues.

I believe (at least I hope) that these principles are infectious and that Far Easterners that study in the West do in fact bring them back to their countries, this would be great news for people in this part of the world even if their governments and parents don't quite know it yet.

Korean Family 'Pension' Outing

As well as the more controversial article I wrote the other week, I also posted a piece to another website, which was an adaptation of my blog post on my Korean family.  I again received praise but also some quite fierce criticism.  Most of the criticism was based around the argument that I was not trying hard enough with my Korean family.  To summarise what was said I essentially needed to learn more Korean, stop being so selfish, not be so tight, and generally pull my finger out.

On the other hand it was interesting to see where most of the praise and sympathy for my article came from. Almost every time I have had positive comments from readers of my blogs or articles (from articles to do with my Korean family) they have come from Koreans.  I think this is because many Koreans have the same frustrations as I do with their in-laws.  I think most of the negative comments come from Westerners who have a highly politically correct and idealistic attitude towards life, after all I would not be the first to be uncomfortable with their in-laws, regardless of culture.  A few came from Western men married to Korean women in the same position as me, but many came from people who could not really understand my position.

It is important, however, when one receives criticism to analyse it to see if it is justified.  My critics for this piece were not calling me names or building up straw men.  These people had read the article and they disagreed with my attitude and behaviour towards my Korean family.  Did they have a point?  I think it would be very unwise of me to dismiss what they said, they did have a good point although without really understanding my own family background may be they could not know if I was being genuinely lazy or whether these sorts of situations are, frankly, more difficult for me than most people.

With all this in mind it was quite a coincidence that last week my wife, her family, and I were due to go away for the weekend for a family trip to a valley in the mountains.  I had accepted some of the criticism and was set on trying harder and trying to fit in and enjoy myself more in their company.  We had a 'pension' booked in the mountains.  This is a small house that you can hire for a day or so, this is what the word 'pension' means.  The origins of the word appear to be from English, but I have never heard of it meaning a house for hire in the countryside.

The first day was actually rather nice, we found a spot on the river, had a barbecue with lots of food and then cooled off for a swim.  After this we checked into our accommodation for the rest of the day and night.  It was very pleasant, crucially with air conditioning but as always no chairs, just the floor.  We ate more food, then some more, everyone had a afternoon nap and was then ready for even more food; a second barbecue of the day.  It is quite extraordinary how much food my Korean family gets through, they always seem to be eating, they are grazing all day.  None of them are fat, however, and my guess as to why they aren't is that they only really eat meat and vegetables, hardly any carbohydrates except for the odd small bowl of rice and never any junk food.

My wife had a bad stomach so for most of the night I was having to hold conversation with her family by myself, which went quite well.  I think I gave the false impression from my article that I speak very little Korean, from my perspective of having a Korean wife and family, I think I do not speak that much, but from a foreigner in Korea standpoint I am probably rather good at speaking Korean.  With my family I feel especially inadequate, though.  Because we are always in such a large group it can be difficult to get in on conversations and concentrate hard enough about what is going on.  Hours of listening to 6 or 7 plus people speaking Korean very fast with some slang thrown in can be very tiring, trying to listen is the only way you can get a foothold in the conversation and speak yourself.  One on one conversations are always much easier, but I rarely get the chance of these when I am with my wife's family.

My wife's uncle was trying to encourage me to go for a walk in the morning to a temple about 5 or 6 Km away.  I was at least partially interested, except he wanted to leave at 4am in the morning, so I said I would think about it and see how I felt.  When the morning came he tried to wake me up at 4am and there was no chance I was going to go.

Whenever I have spent a weekend with my in-laws or spent back to back days with them, my struggles have often been most apparent.  I think there are a few reasons for this; a) after a long day of sitting uncomfortably on the floor and sleeping on the floor my body is usually a little achy the following day, b) I feel mentally drained from listening to so much Korean and speaking it, c) I never know where or what we are doing next, and d) I have eaten so much protein and not enough carbs that I feel tired.  On the Sunday, therefore, I realised that my patience might be tested, however I was ready to work hard at not get too fed up and take it all in my stride having accepted the critics viewpoint.  It was to prove to be a really frustrating day.

The rough plan was that we would be leaving the pension at 11am and may visit a couple of areas, but be home by about 1 or 2 o'clock.  After some general wondering around going back and forth and not really doing anything, it seemed like it was about time to go home, but the head of the family had other ideas.  The father in-law wanted to go to a near-by town (Damyang) specifically to eat in one famous restaurant.  When I say near-by, it was actually an hour and a half drive away, just to eat lunch remember.  I was slightly irritated but tried to check my frustrations remembering the criticism I had received.  On arrival at the town we could not find the restaurant and were stuck in traffic by a popular noodle-eating spot with lots of restaurants where we sat and ate.  Still determined to find the restaurant, however, my father in-law asked around, got a little more lost and eventually, about 2 and a half hours after we had set off to find it we arrived.

The next problem was because of the restaurant's notoriety, it was heaving with people.  We asked at the desk and the waiting time was about one hour.  We were ordered to sit it out by my wife's father.  With a calm outward appearance, except for the odd twitch starting to develop in my left eye, I asked my wife just why we had taken a now 3 and a half hour detour just when we were supposed to be arriving home merely to eat in a restaurant.  She said that there are different specialty foods all over Korea that towns and provinces are famous for and many Koreans like to visit and sample it for themselves.  Apparently it simply can't be imitated with the same quality, even if other towns or cities are only a matter of tens of miles away.  I was sceptical.  There is a Korean type of logic and reasoning present in many situations that is quite lost on me, I suspect most foreign teachers living in Korea will know what I am talking about.

The situation was being made worse by the searing heat, over thirty degrees and humid.  I hate Korean summer and for the first 20 minutes or so we all had to wait outside as there were so many people waiting inside already.  The owners of the restaurant had some rabbits outside, maybe to amuse the people who had to wait and a few people were going over to feed them, so I had a look.  I have never been overly satisfied with the treatment of pets in Korea and this was no exception; 3 rabbits in a tiny cage, no bedding, dirty, and in the middle of summer with no water either.  One rabbit looked as if it might drop dead right in front of us, so hot it was unable to move.  I asked around for some water for the rabbit, but was looked at rather strangely and then thought the rabbit would probably be better off if it died sooner rather than later anyway and stopped trying.  It was turning into 'one of those Korean days'.

Despite all this, I put myself into a frame of mind where I was not going to be too bothered by it all.  My brother in-law had actually been complaining for about 2 hours that he needed to get back home and meet a friend and was looking thoroughly unamused with it all.  This didn't go down at all well with the rest of the family but I had some sympathy for him, whilst at the same time being rather proud of myself for lasting for so long and not breaking before him.

We eventually sat down and the food came and it was alright, nothing overly special.  The food was tteokgalbi, which I thought I had before but was something rather different, basically it was posh hamburgers with the usual side dishes.  None of us were that hungry as we had eaten noodles a couple of hours previously, so it was all rather a strange exercise to go to so much trouble to eat a restaurant when none of us actually wanted to eat anything.

After another couple of hours in the car driving home, we eventually arrived 5 hours later than planned.  I was exhausted and hot (I slept with an ice cold bottle of water under my shirt most of the way back) but the wife was very happy with me, so I guess I performed well over the weekend.  My attitude was probably a little better but I still view these outings as a bit of a trial.  It is difficult not to when you are not in the loop, and this has nothing to do with the language barrier either as my brother in-law and my wife are not in the loop either.  Decisions are made completely on the whim of the older men, my uncle and father in-law and we all have to follow.  I can improve my attitude and try harder but I find it hard to believe that I will ever be entirely comfortable with that situation.

Death Anniversaries in Korea - 기제

This month I had the pleasure (or the misfortune) of experiencing a traditional death anniversary with my wife's family here in Korea.  Basically what happens is this: every year on the death of a close family member the family comes together to remember them and make offerings to their spirit in the form of lots of food and drink.

Usually, the women do all the preparing of food, set it up, and clean everything up at the end while the men just sit around eating the food and drinking alcohol around one table.  On another table, food and drink is presented artistically around a picture of the dead family member, or if there is no picture a possession of theirs or a note.  Once everything is in place, relatives of the deceased then take turns in bowing three times at regular intervals to the table, alcohol is poured into a bowl and spoons are placed inside bowls of rice and other dishes so that the spirit can eat if they choose to.

These are the sorts of occasions that some might say I am privileged to be a part of as I receive a true window into Korean culture, and most visitors to Korea would be excited by the thought of sitting in on all this 'culture'.  It is great that I am seen as part of the family and expected to be at these occasions, but I have to say I do not really share the enthusiasm of many for such things and, in fact, it is these occasions that I really dread with my Korean family.

I feel (and must sound) very selfish when I write and say such things and after all I actually do nothing at these gatherings except sit and eat lots of delicious food and do the occasional bit of bowing.  These are also important days for my Korean family so I should just stop complaining and get on with it, right?  Well, here is my problem; there do seem to be a lot of important family days in Korea, with Korean New Year (설날) and Korean Thanksgiving (추석) each lasting three days each and most bank holidays demanding that families spend time together.  On top of this there are the funeral days, wedding anniversaries, and birthdays.  

My problem with it all is the demand, indeed, the command to be present and be present until the oldest in the family think it is alright for you to leave.  This is where my culture's important value of freedom and Korean culture's value of duty clash head on.  Even though I am essentially not doing anything but consuming food that has been made for me while everyone around me is being almost overly kind and courteous to me, I am anything but comfortable.  The care everyone else is showing to me is actually making me doubly uncomfortable with each comment about how I'm feeling, if I am comfortable, if I'd like to stretch my legs, if I would like to eat anymore, if I want water, do I want a lie down, etc.  I feel like they are poking me with a stick, cajoling me into an ever smaller cage as they are asking these questions with an air of advice giving, in effect saying that I should do this and I should eat or drink that.

I want the freedom to choose; a) whether to go in the first place, b) how long I will be staying, c) to be able to make myself comfortable with out being told what position I should sit in or where I should sit, d) to decide what to eat without being told that I should eat this because it is 'good for a man' or whatever other quality the food has or its importance or history in Korea, e) to be able to get my own glass of water, and f) to generally have some control over the situation I find myself in.  The reality is that when it comes to 'f)' I have absolutely no control whatsoever, despite all the pleasantries all I am is a lowly private being ordered to peel potatoes by his superior.  Why?  Because he said so, and I don't have any choice in the matter unless I want to get in big trouble.

It is the benign nature of the situation that makes the time pass even more slowly and also makes me at the same time feel ungrateful for the care and concern that everyone is showing.  They are, almost literally, killing me with kindness, or at least killing my spirit anyway.  Added to this is the inability to relax at any time as I am constantly harassed about how I am feeling or ordered to bow or something else.  It really is the strangest feeling to have to be completely compliant to a group of people while at the same time have them being relentlessly caring about you.  I can assure everyone that in my case, it is not the wonderful experience of genuine culture that it might look like from the outside.  Genuine culture it certainly is, wonderful is certainly is not.

As I mentioned above, it is the killing of the spirit, the feeling that my mind, my freedom, and resistance are being broken that most troubles me about such meetings with my Korean family.  My brother in-law's spirit does seem almost completely broken when he is with his family, which is pretty much the only time I ever see him.  He does not appear to enjoy the company of his family, but he is always there for them.  It is an admirable but ultimately sad feeling I have for him as he is so duty-bound to his parents at all times.  I am gradually learning that what is valued by much of the older generation in Korea generally, is compliance and doing what you are told and/or expected seems never more important when you are with family.

For a good example of this, I shall retell what happened in my second death anniversary gathering just a few weeks ago.  My wife, who is a surgery room nurse, was on emergency surgery all week and she had to stay late at the hospital on the same day as the anniversary of her grandfather's death. This was good news for me as come nearly 9 o'clock she was still working and it looked like I would not have to go.  But, despite my wife having worked for over 12 hours solid that day without a lunchtime they still wanted her to take the 30 minute drive to her uncle's house and stay there for a couple of hours to do the usual things they do.  I was tired too and a little annoyed to be going out at 9pm on a weekday when I usually go to bed at 10pm anyway.  

I was not happy and to cap things off as well as placing food and drink for an offering to her grandfather her family also lit a cigarette for him and place it at the table.  Having a severe hatred for the smell of smoke and already tired and a bit irked at being ordered out at this time, I decided to move to another room and just sleep on the floor.  Being very unsocial I layed there for about two hours not talking to anyone.  I thought I had been quite rude, but when it was time for me to leave they could not have been more thankful to me for just showing up.  I was being part of the family and doing what they had told me to do and they were happy with that all they expected of me was to be there.

This compulsory element to family life leaves me a bit cold and blurs the line of what is genuine kindness and love and what is merely duty.  I have no doubt that there is genuine love and kindness present in my Korean family but what I find difficult to see is exactly when it is showing.  Why are they looking out for me, is it out of genuine worry and love or out of duty?  This leaves me terribly confused sometimes and maybe I regularly mistake kindness for lecturing and family duties and vice-versa. 

The really frustrating element to it all is that I cannot be honest with my parents in law.  Because of this they will never truly understand me and my culture and who I really am.  I think they love and accept me as part of their family and I think I understand them.  However, the truth of the matter is that, in all honesty, I do not love them and they absolutely do not and will not ever understand me as a person.  To love them as family I require them to listen to my honest opinions about matters and respect my freedom and this, quite simply, is not going to happen. 

Due to the respect culture of Korea and the Far East in general a have the strong feeling that parents would prefer to be lied to by their children and be denial about problems or issues but still have the outward show of compliance, respect, and obedience from them.  This is certainly the relationship I see between my brother in-law and his parents and he and I are a mirror of each other when family meets up.  We are both fairly quiet, after all we really have nothing to say, we are just compliant.  This also does nothing to help my Korean speaking.  The problem is I have nothing to say to my in-laws; I have never been one for small talk and like to get quite deep in conversation and this I cannot do.

Sadly, the way I see my Korean family is like a benign dictatorship.  When they want to see me, I have to go, when there are special days I have to be there and for a length of time that they decide, and they are the ones whose advice I should be following.  I can get out of these obligations but I have to lie, or my wife lies for me.  As much as I understand their culture and the reasons they are this way, I value my freedom far too much and for this reason I cannot love them and as time goes by I am increasingly left frustrated by their company.  For this reason, despite the fact that I like them as people, I could not live in Korea for much longer.  One more year is enough.

My Korean Family

In case you hadn't been reading my previous blogs, you might not know that I am an Englishman that is currently living in Korea and married to a Korean woman.  This has given me first hand experience of a fairly typical Korean family.  This is an experience that has not always been plain sailing and is interesting because the nature of the family here in Korea is completely different to that in Western countries, and a million miles away from that of my own.

To give you some idea of the differences I will need to briefly tell you about my own family in England.  My own family is a little broken up.  My parents are divorced and I have two half sisters and a half brother.  I have five (I think) half nephews that I have never met, and two others that I see now and then, and I rather ashamedly admit, I have not much interest in, maybe I will have more interest when they are older, as I am not generally a fan of young children.  It sounds horrible, but that is just my family.  We are all so self-reliant that it seems as though there is not much closeness.  Of course this is not the case and I love my family as much as other people love theirs (the core of it anyway).  I can quite happily go six months without calling my mother or father from Korea, and if I don't they are not seemingly that concerned either.  We don't really worry about each other.  I also have Aunts, Uncles, and Cousins that I haven't seen in many, many years.  I am not saying that this is typical of all Western families, but I am guessing it is not all that unusual either.

Contrast this with my wife's family.  All relatives meet each other fairly regularly and even distant relatives meet up at least once a year.  Before I was married to my wife she was on a strict curfew of about midnight until she had to go home.  This was often trimmed down to about 7 o'clock when she was with me (she was about 22 at the time).  Indeed it was not until our relationship was about 8 or 9 months in that her father knew about us at all.  He just assumed that she was out with her friends all the time.  She was not ever allowed to stay the night at my place even when he did eventually know, and her mother didn't allow it before then.  This really is only culturally permissable when the couple is married.  They usually pestered their daughter with phone calls all the time, and worried about her incessantly.  All this was before I had ever really met them.  When I eventually did meet them (under the guise of a boyfriend and not just a friend), the reception was frosty at best.  I can remember our first dinner.  Her father did not speak to me apart from asking why my parents were divorced and how he thought that this behaviour was bad and ran in families.  He did not walk with me to and from the restaurant, and looked thoroughly pissed off the whole time.  We then came back to their house where he walked straight into his bedroom closed the door and started watching the TV.  I wasn't intimidated actually, I was angry.  I thought that he was being extremely arrogant and rude, (and I was supposed to be bowing to him) and my wife and I had a little argument about this afterwards.  She told me to be patient, and that Korean parents usually never like their daughters boyfriends and will 'test' them for a bit.  This continued for a couple of months until my wife fell into a comatosed state after drinking too much at a staff dinner one night.  I ended up carrying her to her parents house, and after my wife's friends told her father that I had come from my own night out with friends to rescue her, he seemed a lot happier with me. 

Although the cultural problems and misunderstandings were numerous at this stage in our relationship, I can only remember one situation that caused a major argument.  One of my wife's uncles was down in our city for the weekend, and I met them after work one night.  Unfortunately, I missed the dinner because of work, but they wanted to talk with me so we went to a bar for one drink.  I was told by my wife that they liked me and wanted to invite me for dinner the next day.  Great, I thought.  The next day, just before going out, my wife informed me that they wanted me to pay for dinner.  This would have been a bit irritating if there were 2 or 3 people, but there were 10 people!  I knew them a day, they invited me for dinner, and they wanted me to pay (I am also a famously tight person).  'A bit f#%^ing cheeky!' I thought.  And I said as much to my wife.  She understood but said that she would pay instead and say that it was me that paid, which I was even less happy with.  It was my Western principle of fairness against Korean culture and I was not budging an inch.  I refused the invitation and didn't go, but then was pestered for the rest of the night by her cousin calling.  After much arguing I was persuaded out by my wife to just have some drinks and some pizza with her cousin and her boyfriend.  Her cousin tried to say that it was a joke (about them asking for me to pay), which was obviously not true, and if it was a joke, maybe be the worst one ever recorded.  She then preceeded to pay for everything in secret, which made me feel terribly guilty and that all I cared about was the money.  It doesn't help that I can't stand her cousin, as she maybe the least sincere person I have ever met.

A few cultural problems later and after a fairly short period of time, my wife and I decided to get married, after just 10 months.  Some might think that this decision was too fast (and I'd be among them at the time).  But the situation made this the only option if we really wanted to be together.  At the time I had a really bad job and was having a hard time in Korea and desperately wanted to go home.  The problem was that I was deeply in love with my wife, I couldn't stay in Korea but I didn't want to leave her.  We had an idea to go to England but she couldn't stay unless we married, so we married.  It seems an unromantic reason, and it was a British Embassy marriage, no ceremony, just a form signing and a stamp in Seoul.  It seems crazy what we did, but it's nearly two years later now and we are very happy together.  We plan on having a proper marriage ceremony at some stage, though.  I suppose some might think it all stupid and not how they want to get married, but it was just pure love, not a marriage of convenience, not to make other people happy, not for money and not for fear of loneliness or insecurity.  We just loved each other and did not want to be apart.  Seems like the best reason to get married to me. 

All of this was achieved with the semi-knowledge of her parents, who were a little in denial about it all.  We told them of our plans to go to England and they reluctantly agreed to it all, as they had no choice (my wife would have gone anyway).  Not being a family man myself, I never really feel like part of their family and never really dreamed they would see me as part of theirs, as an outsider and a foreigner.  To their credit though, this really is not how they think.  Once they had accepted the idea, I was made to feel part of their family, sometimes nicely so, and sometimes uncomfortably so.  There was one moment that I clearly came to realise that I had a Korean family and that was when we had our picture taken together before we left for England.  I thought they wanted a little picture on the mantlepiece of us all, which is understandable.  The next time I entered their house, however, I was greeted by an almost person-sized picture on the wall in the middle of the room with me and her immediate family in it.  It was a little overwhelming, in a scary way, for a person with a very different kind of family.  I think this was the moment that it hit home just what I was getting myself in for.

It was time to go to England, which in retrospect was a poorly planned move at the time.  A couple of weeks before, I saw her family frequently as they wanted to see us both a little more before we went.  I have to admit to being a bit of a selfish man and not really enjoying spending a lot of time with any of my own family, let alone a family from a different culture and language.  It's not that I don't like family but, a couple of hours over dinner is about all I can handle before boredom sets in.  In these weeks before I left I would be subjected to their company all day, and it was getting tiring.  I don't think I would be the first to feel extreme tiredness when spending the whole day listening and speaking in a language that is not my own.  Again 2 hours is alright but all day is not, and I was never very good at hiding my boredom and tiredness (much to my wife's annoyance).  I still have days like this with my Korean family, I am dreading Chuseok this year for this very reason.

It sounds as though I really dislike my Korean family, but I don't, it is just my upbringing and culture that makes me unable to tolerate what they see as normal family behaviour.  In fact they are often very sweet to me, and have welcomed me into their family with amazing warmth.  I am slightly ashamed to say that I just cannot reciprocate this warmth, there is a wall in my personality for things like that, but it is appreciated nonetheless.  My mother in-law is especially sweet, and regularly makes food for me when I come to their house and cooks food and puts it in our fridge in my house too (she cooks it extra spicy too, which is great).  I genuinely feel that if I had any problem at all, my Korean family would jump through hoops to help me and not just because I am married to their daugther, but because I am part of the family now.  That is a nice feeling and they show great affection towards me despite the fact that I don't show great affection towards them.  I am also ashamed of the fact that I have made rather a piddling amount of progress in learning the Korean language, I wish I could speak to them a lot more.

There are some annoyances, however, which particularly grate on me and leave me thinking that it is just as well that I don't speak Korean very well.  My mouth might just get me into trouble.  You see, as sweet as my parents in-law are, highly enlightened they are not.  This is not their fault, they just have that old-style way of Korean thinking, mired in tradition and inflexibility to new ideas.  The amount of advice they try to give to my wife and I is staggering and I don't agree with any of it.  It is all fossilised rubbish, that irritates me to listen to.  Anyone that knows me would know that I enjoy a good argument, on almost any topic.  I don't argue to upset people and generally I stay pretty unemotional, but I have been known to upset people by simply having a rather blunt and aloof different opinion.  If I argued with my parents in-law in my accustomed style, it would upset them and I am sure if they really knew what I thought on a myriad of different subjects they would probably string me up by my testicles, or at least call for a divorce.  So maybe my poor Korean speaking is a blessing in disguise, because I don't think I could resist the urge to argue with them, if I could, and arguing with the in-laws is just not done in Korea (I think this fact would make me want to argue even more).

If a week went by in England without my wife calling her parents, they would be upset.  But phone calls via skype were usually a daily rather than a weekly occurance, a far cry from my dialogue with my family.  I was quite relieved to not be spending so much time with them, but also a little guilty that when they called I could speak only a little to them before passing them over to my wife.  The phone calls were often about how much they were missing their daugther and about how difficult things were at home and it usually made my wife feel guilty about leaving them.  Her parents were therefore delighted to hear that we would be coming back to Korea after just one year in England. 

They were clearly happy to have ther daughter back but also to see me.  Again I stress that I really don't do anything for them or show them any affection at all, but they show much affection for me, it is almost as unconditional as my own family (I know, I am shit aren't I!?).  I have now been back in Korea for about six months and their treatment of me remains unchanged.  However, their treatment of my wife does perplex me a little sometimes.  They smother her with calls and constantly want to spend time with her, which hasn't changed from before and I understand this as them being normal parents and from a culture where family is of greater importance.  It is not this behaviour, but it is what they say to her when she does see them that leaves me puzzled.  They are constantly pestering her to be a better wife for me, to cook for me and clean the house more, and to make a greater effort to be pretty for me, even when she is just sitting around at home.  Now, I have an easy job, get home earlier than my wife, and work far less hours.  Should I expect her to cook and clean for me when she gets home?  I think not.  I try to do most of the housework if I can (I have to admit to not being very good at cleaning) and this might come as strange news to some people but my wife (although being Asian) does not enjoy cooking or cleaning.  She also looks pretty and almost all of the time too (the exception is after a few bottles of soju), and she does make an effort most of the time.  I just can't understand her parents attitude.  Their attitude just makes my wife sick of spending time with them and answering their calls.  It is caused by over-worrying about her to the point of insanity.  I hope I won't be like that when I am parent, I am 99% sure I won't be.

I think I understand full well exactly what my parents in-law expect of me and most of these things I am not going to do.  I am not an especially good bearer of gifts, but this is a part of the culture in Korea.  Each time I go to their house I should bring them a gift.  I think I brought them a watermelon once.  Sons in-law are also expected to give their parents in-law money.  I have already made sure that my wife and her parents know that this is not going to happen either, unless I become filthy rich.  If they are in need of hospital treatment, however, of course I will help.  I am there for emergencies only.  If you think I sound like an ass-hole, I am not, I am nice, kind and friendly, but I do have principles that I like to keep.  If I am not going to give my own parents money when they are older, why should I give money to my in-laws?  I have also paid rent to my mother whilst growing up which is not done in Korean culture.  The parents usually pay for everything sometimes right up to the age of thirty.  I don't wish to treat them to regular gifts as I think it's unnecessary, a couple of times a year is fine.  When I have children I will teach them the same as my mother taught me, she said to me, 'We had you because we wanted you, it was for us, we don't expect anything in return when we are older.  It is our responsibility to be able to take care of ourselves when we are older or have the money for others to do so.'  This sort of attitude is one that would encourage me to be more helpful to my family in their old age, than if they were to expect me to help them, and to support them when they are older.  The plain fact is that I respect the way my mother thinks and acts far, far more than my in-laws think and act.  Many may say that this is cultural, and that I should have a more understanding attitude to this cultural difference, but I don't.  Children do not owe their parents a damn thing.  There is no debt to pay, like a unsigned student loan agreement.  Where Korean culture may have a better culture of family togetherness than ours, the attitude of the old towards the young, even when they are in their own family is horribly shallow and unhelpful.  There is a statement that rings through my head when I see and hear about how older people, fathers, mothers, and bosses expect to be treated by those younger than them in Korea and that is this; 'Respect, whatever your age, has to be earned and it certainly cannot be demanded.'  If respect is demanded you get none, and all you promote is a sense of duty and fear in those younger people that you are supposed to be caring for and love.

My Korean family are good caring people, and I hold them with very fond affection.  In fact, their caring goes beyond the normal.  It makes me think it is truly cultural, and when you look into the history of Confucianism, there are some explanations for it all.  Everyone in Korean culture has a duty and place to fit into.  I fit into their family and it is my in-laws duty to take good care of me and educate me, this explains a lot, and the education bit is probably what I could do without.  But they care so much it is touching.  However, there are so many differences between myself and them that a general understanding and empathy for each other will always be a difficult thing to come by.  I can fully appreciate the kindness they have showed me, but we really are like oil and water, we will never mix well.