The tiny invisible Korean bow

Courtesy of Yekaterina Golatkina

There’s a bow in Korea that’s so small I’m sure it’s probably imperceptible to most foreigners. If you don’t know it’s happening you won’t be able to see it. It happens in a fraction of a second and involves the head dropping but a couple of millimeters. (Actually most of the time the head seems to go forward, horizontally from the neck across the shoulder blades, rather than down). If you pay attention most of the normal bowing protocol still applies in that the eyes shift down and the eyebrows raise slightly. Some, the braver and bolder in society, will maintain eye contact during all of this however.

This bow, this tiny invisible Korean bow, doesn’t really have a specific name. And it doesn’t have a name for the wonderfully paradoxical reason that it’s so damn ubiquitous. It’s literally everywhere. And like the story of the fish who don’t know what water is or how I had to try and come up with a term for the Korean culture or leaving phones and laptops on tables to mark space, the things which most fill our daily lives are often the least described.

The tiny invisible Korean bow (tiKb) happens when you walk behind someone. When you accidently get in someone’s way. When someone gives you something while you’re talking to someone else. To the security guard as you enter the complex.

In this sense, it’s a beautifully pragmatic contraction of behavior. The same way Korean words get shorted in both speech and text: How hello becomes a simple “nya sayo” and “Yes, I understand completely and I will do that” becomes two little ieung circles typed next to each other on Kakao. The “tiKb” is a way of bowing without bowing. It allows both parties to acknowledge that a bow has been offered, even if the bow itself was not even remotely visible.

It stands in stark contrast to the memes you see online with people bowing to such incredulous degrees that their heads are level with their feet and their eyes greeting their own ankles — a level of contortion that is physically impossible. This particular meme was featured in KPop Demon Hunters as Huntrix and the Saja Boys both try to outdo each other in the humility stakes.

I encounter the “tiKb” frequently in the corridors and elevators of the university. The students I know will of course greet me happily, some even bold enough to shout my name as they see me approaching in a way I’m quite sure they would not do with Korean professors. The idea of shouting out “Jihye” to your sociology professor or “Bum-seok” to the old man who teaches you quadratic equations is almost criminal.

Nevertheless, as I walk the corridors by my office, I often encounter students I have never seen before. Some will, of course, in a wonderfully polite Gen Z way completely ignore me. Scrolling as they are strolling with buds in their ears. Other students will greet me completely formally. But it’s the “tiKB” that fascinates me the most. It’s there, I promise. I’m not making it up. You receive it. You give it. And the world keeps turning.

It’s part of nunchi, I’m sure. The social gaze that operates around the country as a high-context society requires a lot of conversation and instruction to take place without words. Koreans move in silence (when they’re not protesting, singing, or fighting, of course). In some ways, the tiny invisible Korean bow may be one of the purest expressions of nunchi because it exists almost entirely in the realm of implication. It is not spoken. It is barely performed. Yet somehow both parties receive the message perfectly.

A famous Korean expression says “aneunmankeum boinda” (You only see as much as you know) widely attributed to the Korean scholar You Hong-june who popularized it in his book. He argued that if you don't know the history and stories behind a cultural site, you are essentially looking at a pile of old stones. When you know the history, those stones come alive with significance. The more you learn, the more vivid and meaningful the world becomes.

I wonder that if now one or two more people know about this tiny invisible Korean bow, they will begin to see it more often. In the dramas they watch. In the movies they enjoy. In their interactions with friends and family. It might help them with their nunchi. Because once you know about the “tiKb,” honestly, you begin to see it everywhere.