By Michael Breen

When non-natives criticize something about the country they live in, should they be seen as resident insiders or, as the Latin root of the word expatriate suggests, people living outside (ex) their real country (patria)?

I wondered about this recently when I received an e-mail from a reader saying I had been too harsh in a column.

``I am a little bit sad that you are sometimes so negative about Koreans and just see them externally," she wrote. ``I guarantee you that Koreans are very warm and kind. If you try, you will see very beautiful Korea culture."

I found this depressing because I love Korea and the writer knows me well.

If she had said that I was sometimes so negative about bus and truck drivers who have those loud horns that make you jump, I would jump on board. Or if she'd said that, if only I tried harder, I could see the beauty of the business culture, I would listen.

But she said I was negative about Koreans. I don't know what to say about this. I know that, in their shallower moments, people dismiss an entire nationality as being guilty of some shared offense. The British and the French do it as a national sport. But it is mindless. The idea that the people from a certain country are the same in any meaningful way disappears on closer examination and natural human variety takes its place.

Now, it is possible that the way I write suggests that I am negative about where I live and the people around me. If that is the case, then I have done a poor job of expressing myself. That's always a risk in journalism because it is the nature of the profession to be critical and to pick problems as topics for discussion.

But the other side of this issue is that my name and photograph place me as forever the outsider.

Unfortunately, in our present age, there is a tendency to first and foremost define people by their nationality. Short of an invasion by Martians, that's unlikely to change in the near future.

That means that those who are not born in a country or are not the same color or speak with an accent are seen differently. They are not accorded the same rights in a non-legal sense.

And one of those rights is the right to criticize.

But the fact is that foreign residents in Korea are not here on extended vacations, nor are they missionaries or anthropologists living among the natives and pining for civilization. You no longer see books they've written with such proud titles as ``Fifteen Years Among the Top-Knots" and ``I Married a Korean."

This is our home, too. I have lived in Korea longer than most citizens and am more positive about the place than many of my Korean friends. Does this foundation of knowledge and affection not give me the right to criticize? Or must I keep oohing and aahing about how well Korea has done since the Korean War and how wired the place is?

May I not say how I dislike seafood? May I not say that I have zero interest in Dokdo, that the anti-Japanese brigade are a vocal minority, and that I would like to personally tear gas the protestors who yell outside my building every Thursday afternoon without being accused of disrespecting the entire Korean people?

All I ask is that people accept, and I mean really accept, that my home is in Seoul and that I was born in Aylesbury. Where? Exactly.

Michael Breen is an author, former foreign correspondent and the chairman of Insight Communications, a public relations consulting company. He can be reached at mike.breen@insightcomms.com.