By Michael Breen
In a post on this newspaper's website, a reader recently claimed that my learned commentary (my words, his was ``tripe,") exhibits contempt for Koreans.
This accusation got me thinking because I recognized that I was, in some part, guilty.
The truth is that, like many expatriates and overseas Koreans, I have to fight against a tendency to think that when something annoys or mystifies me, like the endless demonstrations about shifting issues, which do both, that it is ``Korean."
This mistake is a classic one that counselors would immediately recognize: the leap from the matter at hand to generalized complaints, which is not only based on faulty logic, but is also inflammatory. Arguing couples do it all the time ― like the wife who complains after the husband is home late twice in a row that he is ``always late" and the husband who replies, ``The problem with you is that you are always complaining."
But it is hard to think, for example, when tens of thousands turn up in the center of their capital city every night for weeks on end, as if World War Three were about to break out, to protest against something as obscure as American beef, for God's sake, that there is not something peculiar in the culture.
It's hard to think that when an apparent majority in a country that is a major trading nation protests every time the government plans to allow in imports, that the whole place doesn't have a screw loose. It's also hard, when consumers indirectly protest for the right to pay higher prices, not to conclude that honesty and the exchange of ideas play a minor role in this society, and that all these civic group members claiming to represent consumer interests need to be spanked on the bare bottom.
It's hard to think when opposition leaders turn up to have their photos taken and provoke the police, or when the priests and vicars turn up, obviously admiring the protestors for their vigor and sincerity, that the entire nation does not worship emotive force over ideas and that the people are not deluded into thinking that God wears a headband.
It's also hard not to think that there's something weird in the culture when the people stuck in traffic jams because of the mad cow idiots clogging up the streets just hum away to themselves and when the political leadership fails to lead and indulges the lunacy as if it has a point.
It's even harder when you see the country's major partners letting Korea get away with bad behavior without even a critical comment that they do not think they are dealing with, if not a nutty nation, at least, a wayward teenager in the family of advanced powers.
It's hard, but it is not right.
Because the conclusions I have just expressed amount to shallow bigotry.
Admittedly, it is easy, when you don't understand something that makes you angry, to fill the gap with prejudice. But when you allow that to happen, both truth and decency go rolling down the hill.
In striving for higher ground and a clearer view, we need to remind ourselves that we are living in a country where people are not educated at school to develop and debate their opinions. As such, when someone gets really noisy, other people shut up. This gives we foreign-trained residents the false view that everyone agrees with the noisy people when they don't.
They're just letting them have their spasm.
This lack of yelling on talk shows is actually an attractive quality of Koreans, but it does create confusion which is made even worse by the fact that protestors do not articulate clearly so you don't know what they really want.
The other thing to remember is that people are extra-sensitive to what ``foreigners" say.
The Korean view of nationalism is race-based. In other words, the thing that you are taught in Korean schools and homes that distinguishes you, as a Korean, from other nations, is your race. Although the world is politically structured around the concept of the nation, few countries distinguish themselves by race. Korea is one and that means that when a bald white face such as mine leers at you from the pages of this newspaper, it is immediately recognized as foreign. Yes, it is a vision of beauty, you find yourself thinking, but no, it is not Korean. That means that, even though I've lived and paid taxes here longer than most Koreans, I am immediately perceived as an outsider commenting from my hotel room. Thus, any criticism is taken to be the rudeness of the visitor.
And even when that is the case, it is never meant. OK? Group hug?
Michael Breen is president of Insight Communications Consultants in Seoul. He can be reached at mike.breen@insightcomms.com.
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