Korean 'jeong' keeps people together through thick and thin
When my youngest son was in his second year of middle school, I got a call from the international school he was attending.
Stepping into the teacher’s room, I couldn’t help feeling a little nervous. Any parent who gets called in to talk to their kid’s teacher can’t help feeling humble, as well as responsible for whatever their kid did wrong.
It turned out my son — who was 170 centimeters tall and weighed 80 kilograms — had shoved another boy hard enough to knock him down, and now the other boy’s parents were upset. In all honesty, I was a bit relieved to learn my son hadn’t punched anyone.
But my next task was teaching my son how to avoid creating this kind of situation in the future. We sat down on a bench in front of the school for what must have been the most serious and intense conversation we’d ever had.
“Son, I’m sure you know that while I’m white, I don’t slavishly follow the Western obsession with putting rules above everything else. Given their Anglo-Saxon heritage, America and England put the priority on rules. But what I learned in my childhood in Jeolla Province is that personal relationships come first.”
That’s what I’d always been taught by my friends’ grandparents on their heated ondol floor back in Jeolla Province. In the years since, that has become my basic approach to life.
When I asked my son if he really wanted to be expelled from the school and say goodbye to his friends, he was horrified by the idea.
“Son,” I continued, “if you want to keep your school friends, your only choice is to abide by the rules imposed by the people at this school. Do you think you can manage that — for your friends’ sake?” I was reasoning that for the sake of your valued relationships, son could you obey the rules?
As I spoke with my son, I thought back to what had been important to me at his age. My son didn’t cause any more problems from that point until he graduated from high school, and our communication improved as well.
The practice of viewing relationships as more important than rules or laws is a cherished aspect of Korean culture, as well as the aspect I value most. One day, my older brother told me that many of the Korean values I prize are on their way out. His remark nearly threw me into a panic, but I soon regained my cool. “The people who share those cherished Korean values grew up with me and are getting old along with me. Surely those values will stick around at least as long as I do!”
That conversation with my brother reminded me of an experience I’d had in my second year of middle school, when I’d attended an international school, just like my own son.
My international school in Daejeon was parochial and strictly conservative, and the dormitory had rules that were nearly as strict as a military academy. Four pieces of paper were posted with the rules we were expected to follow printed in a tiny font.
I felt stifled by life at the dormitory and desperately missed my childhood in Suncheon, where I’d been free to play with other kids in the neighborhood. I never missed my parents, but I missed those childhood friends so much that I often cried myself to sleep at night.
The hardest part about the dormitory was the rules that had obviously been made by Westerners. I was supposed to ask permission each and every time I wanted to use a little bit of my friend’s toothpaste in the morning. That kind of Western culture was a serious source of stress for a kid like me who had grown up in Jeolla Province, sharing everything and having little concept of “mine” and “yours.”
While I was struggling with dormitory life, something happened that became a major source of comfort for me. There was an upperclassman in the dormitory named Choi Ki-ho — my hyeong, or “older brother.” I was a little intimidated by the older Korean boy, but I also adored him.
My sole pleasure at the international school was going downtown on the weekend to watch the latest James Bond film or whatever else was showing at the cinema. That particular weekend, I borrowed Ki-ho’s suit and dress shoes with those stylish pointed toes and had a splendid time at the cinema and out on the town. The only problem: I’d taken them without asking.
It was with a heavy step that I walked back to the dormitory that night. Since I’d gone off with the older boy’s clothes and dress shoes without permission, I figured I was in serious trouble.
As soon as I was back, I stepped into Ki-ho’s room, where he was busy doing his calculus homework. I made my confession in a small voice. “Ki-ho hyeong, I took your suit when you weren’t looking and went to the movies in it.”
“Good for you,” Ki-ho said without even looking up. “You can take it off and leave it there.”
When I told him I’d taken his dress shoes, too, he said the same thing. “Good for you. Just take it off and leave it there.”
And I’d assumed I was in for a beating! That’s when I made up my mind to spend the rest of my life around Koreans.
Which are more important — people or rules? Are people here to follow the rules, or are the rules here to benefit people?
Korea has a relational concept called "miun jeong" (literally, “hateful affection”) that doesn’t have a direct parallel in the West. Koreans never stop caring about friends and family regardless of the resentment, pain and loss those relationships entail.
Westerners are apt to say that social order is maintained through rules. But what my experience living in Korea has taught me is that Koreans’ stubborn affection keeps human relationships orderly and makes them even stronger.
It’s not very easy to explain miun jeong to non-Koreans, and I don’t deny that affection of that sort can bring some people to grief. But that relational dedication is what has kept me in Korea for more than 60 years now, and I’m confident that Korea’s jeong culture is more mature and, dare I say, more Biblical than Western culture.
John Alderman Linton, an American-Korean whose Korean name is Ihn Yo-han, is a director at Yonsei University Severance Hospital International Health Care Center.