David Tizzard is a professor at Seoul Women’s University, holds a PhD in Korean Studies, and hosts the Korea Deconstructed podcast. He has lived and worked in Seoul for more than two decades. Reach him at datizzard@swu.ac.kr.
Learning Korea Without Korean
Courtesy of Day One Frames
By David A. Tizzard
More than once I’ve walked up to a counter in a coffee shop and seen the two people working there silently and almost imperceptibly shift places. The one working the counter shifts her glance backwards; the one pouring milk into a jug slides silently forward into place and replaces her at the checkout, smiling nervously. They have switched spots based on who is better adapted at speaking English. All of this happens so fast that it barely announces itself as a decision at all, and I am sure there are people for whom it happens regularly and yet goes completely unnoticed, like a familiar tune playing just under the volume of conscious attention. I smile, keep my eyes relatively low, and order in Korean. This usually causes a flicker of surprise, but nothing more. And then I ask a question. I make a small comment about the weather. And only then does it become clear that the little dance they performed so efficiently was, at least this time, unnecessary.
It is worth saying that this experience does not unfold in the same way for everyone. Someone who appears Korean, or simply Asian, will not always trigger the same reflexive accommodation. In a convenience store or a mandu shop, the better English speaker is not immediately summoned to the front for customers from China or Vietnam. History, colonialism, global politics, and a whole lattice of largely unconscious assumptions are at work here. Which is to say that what follows is not an argument about Korea in the abstract, but an account shaped by the particular body and face I happen to move through it with.
A Disapproving Buddha
More and more foreigners learn the history of Korea. They eat the food. Walk the streets. Engage in the art. Watch the movies. And, of course, drink the soju as an almost ceremonial form of cultural literacy. None of this is particularly difficult. There are, of course, the repeated tropes: kimchi as an ordeal, han-resonant media as something legible only through blood rather than subtitles. But this is mostly nonsense. We eat the pepper-infused octopus. We cry at the dramas, sometimes in places that surprise us. As foreigners, immigrants, fans, visitors, or whatever administrative or emotional category we currently occupy, we can do much the same as every other Korean person in daily life.
Except speak Korean.
I’ve been reading and learning Korean for some time now and I am still not at the level I would like to be, a fact that feels both motivating and faintly humiliating depending on the day. Admittedly, my first years in this country were something of a lost period. Lost not in the sense of tragic, but in the way time disappears when language is treated as a blunt instrument for getting what one wants, which in my case usually involved alcohol, parties, football and friends.
And so, while Buddha would probably disapprove of the retrospective self-reproach, I do look back with some regret at not having engaged with the language sooner, because once one does, it becomes remarkable (almost embarrassing) how profoundly life changes. Now I read Korean books daily, listen to podcasts, watch dramas, and move through the world much as everyone else does. Korean is no longer something I use; it is simply the air of the day. I even dream in Korean, and, somewhat frustratingly, I seem to speak better than I do while awake.
And yet there are many foreigners who never make that transition to learning the language. There are, of course, many reasons for this, and not all of them are particularly mysterious. Some will say the language itself is too difficult. Others will point to its unfamiliar structure. I have heard friends argue that Korean does not offer the same global return on investment as Chinese or Spanish. Some people simply lack the particular aptitude for language that they might instead possess for music or painting. We are, as the saying goes, built differently.
Race and Reddit
It is also important to acknowledge that this is not simply a matter of individual willpower. English accommodation in daily life, long and precarious working hours, social exhaustion, and the quiet ease of getting by without Korean all make non-learning a rational, even adaptive choice. The city functions smoothly enough in English that immersion can always be postponed until some later, less exhausting version of one’s life, which, in late-stage capitalism, inconveniently, never quite arrives.
But it does become interesting how some people will choose to live much of their lives here and yet never move beyond a rudimentary grasp of words and phrases. Speaking parrot-like, without ever being able to construct or interrogate the language for themselves. Not knowing the advertisements above their heads on the subway. Not reading the multicolored political slogans on lampposts at every major intersection. Ignorant of the internet. Deaf to daily television. Reliant on Reddit, itself a kind of parallel republic with its own myths, grievances, and unofficial experts.
This, in turn, allows people, often quite unintentionally, to construct their own version of Korea. When you cannot hear what is actually being said on the news, or by the group at the next table in the coffee shop, you are forced to fill in the gaps. You become, whether you want to or not, the author of what is happening around you. And while that can feel empowering, even comforting, it also means that society slowly begins to resemble a projection of one’s own internal weather rather than a living, breathing multitude whose contradictions and idiosyncrasies might otherwise unsettle you into growth.
Although this might be a somewhat uncomfortable aspect, race and ethnicity also comes into play here. If you are white, people will sometimes — though of course not always — assume that the responsibility to bridge the language gap lies with them, in English, rather than with you, in Korean. There are two interesting points to this. First, that despite being in their own country, they feel they need to adapt their language to that of the visitor irrespective of their own skills, comfort, or confidence. (And who says Koreans are unfriendly?!). Second, that they would immediately respond in English rather than French, German, Spanish, or Afrikaans.
The language can be daunting, of course. We often want to be brilliant at things and get frustrated and overwhelmed when we cannot immediately understand things. I’m quite sure that I will never be perfect at Korean. There are still many moments when I let out a “ne algetseumnida” but I don’t actually “algetseumnida”. There are sentences in books that my eyes glaze over. And on the podcasts, phrases come out so quickly, or in such a way, that I completely misunderstand what has been said. And yet, this simple and humble practice every day adds up.
The adverts on the buses make sense. The political slogans on the street are all too real. The internet is awash with noise. And the friends are true friends who speak to me in their own language, with their own words. That is why I speak Korean. And so that, more often than not, the small dances of daily coffee shop life no longer have to be performed on my behalf (even if they still are).