'Nunchi' levels: up

In Korea, some things are nonnegotiable. You’re gonna have to work hard. Education is going to be everywhere. At some stage, you’ll develop a skin care routine. Bowing is a must. Kakao is life. And then there’s “nunchi.” Literally meaning “eye measure,” it is one’s ability to understand unspoken social dynamics.

And if you’re coming from Latin America or the Mediterranean region, you might find yourself gob smacked by just how quiet Korea can be. So much of life is unspoken. The things you need to know are unsaid. The way you’re meant to sit, eat, talk and move is all broadcast in deafening silence. This, of leaves many floundering in a sea of confusion. Or even worse, thinking Korean people are cold and standoffish.

Neither of these is true, obviously. Korean people are incredibly warm: full of laughter, tears and livers that would make a sailor blush. They just do a lot of daily life more quietly than you might be used to. An expression taught to me by popular psychologist Lee Seo-hyun says, “Gichimman haedo anda (You should know someone’s intentions even from a cough).”

And in a way, Korea has long valued nonverbal communication. You can see it all through Buddhism and Taoism. One of the most famous stories goes like this: During a sermon, the Buddha silently held up a lotus flower instead of speaking. While the rest of the assembly sat in confusion, his disciple Mahakasyapa understood the gesture and smiled. Recognizing this profound, wordless breakthrough, the Buddha declared that the true essence of the Dharma had been transmitted directly from mind to mind.

We all have different levels of nunchi. Some of us are expert-level room-readers, able to gauge the vibes of a room before anyone else even notices. Others struggle with it, unable to pick up on even the most obvious social cues. Or, apparently, flowers. Though, to be fair, what one person considers an obvious social cue is often the very thing another person has spent the last three hours lying awake trying to figure out. But perhaps the difference is not simply how well we understand one another. It’s what we think we owe one another when we do.

The West has long celebrated the individual who speaks their truth, even when society threatens to kill them for it. We tell the stories of Socrates and Jesus, men who refused to back down from what they believed, even when it cost them their lives. The message is familiar: speak up, say what’s in your heart and don’t be cowed by the crowd. Of course, Western societies have never been particularly good at practicing what they preach. We love the idea of the courageous individual right up until they say something that makes dinner awkward. Still, the ideal remains.

Korea has its own traditions of moral conviction and speaking truth to power. Yet Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism also offer ways of thinking about how we should adapt to the people and circumstances around us. Sometimes, the right thing to do is not to say exactly what you think, but to consider who you’re talking to, what the situation demands and how your words might affect everyone else. You learn to flow like water, adjusting your speech and mannerisms to the people around you, often with age determining where you stand. This sounds lovely in theory. In practice, it can mean spending an extraordinary amount of time trying to determine whether somebody's “It's fine” actually means it's fine, whether it means it isn't fine or whether the fact that you're asking means you've already made it not fine.

Korea, of course, used to be much noisier. Nunchi is associated, in my mind at least, with modernity. People don’t seem to shout here much anymore. The buses are outrageously quiet. You can sit on a train surrounded by hundreds of people and hear little more than the mechanical hum of the carriage, while everyone communicates with a small rectangle of glass held a few inches from their face.

Just as “ppalli-ppalli” (hurry, hurry) became a shorthand for the breakneck economic modernization of the 1970s and 1980s, nunchi offers a way of understanding something about contemporary Korean life. Not that Koreans have suddenly discovered how to read a room. Rather, the environments in which we're expected to do so have changed. If anything, it has given us more people to read, more situations to navigate and more ways to get things wrong.

Politics becomes easier because of nunchi as well. When, in my lecture rooms, we discuss things like democracy, feminism, sexuality, immigration and, perhaps the most sensitive subject there is, BTS, everyone is aware of the presence of others. Nunchi means that while people are reasonably honest in their opinions, they also know they have to sit with these people again tomorrow, next week and for the rest of the semester.

So it’s better to use your nunchi and get along with people. Even if you’re a raging leftist, rightist, capitalist, socialist or “Ji-kook” shipper, it’s best to temper your opinions somewhat as well as your judgements of others. We all eventually know where everyone stands, we all take our positions, but we allow the nunchi to keep the classroom free of cancellations and protests. The important distinction is that nunchi can produce both social consideration and social conformity.

Sociologists will go much deeper into this subject from the perspective of a “high context society.” Those more focused on psychology will be able to tell you how this all affects autistic people trying to manage life in a society built around social cues that no one takes the time to explain. Nunchi can be a tool of ostracization that makes people feel alienated, alone, and, perhaps even worse, as the “wang-dda,” which translates to social outcast.

Of course nunchi is not unique to Korea. There’s nothing secret, special or unique about it. We are all humans and we all have the capacity for everything to varying degrees. Nevertheless, repeated patterns of behavior, handed down through generations, has meant that life here moves in a particular way. Nunchi is calming and, at the same time, restricting. Nunchi is what gets you through life in Korea. And that often means it happens without speech. And with lots, and lots and lots of nunchi.