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People in Seoul habitually hustle against each other. They do so not only in the bustle of city sidewalks, but also in wide spaces such as hotel lobbies and subway concourses. Even on mountain trails.
Over a half of them, in my experience, do not know how to concede or put any effort into avoid collisions. They would never give an apologetic nod, much less utter words of regret after hitting into strangers. I always yield the way with a bit of frustration to oncoming aggressive grownups, students, children and old women.
It's a peculiar phenomenon that strangers here tend to be drawn to each other like magnets. A young woman with a huge plastic shoulder bag trots along in a wide sparse corridor of a department store hitting my arm with her bag and disappears in silence.
It still spoils my day, though I've been here more than 40 years and have long known that this rather rude culture won't disappear easily. There are a millions of self-styled social reform organizations but none of them includes in its principles to eliminate this everyday vice.
Some would excuse the offensive phenomenon for the congestion of the city. But the citizens of Tokyo don't do that, neither do the people of Singapore. They maintain a reasonable personal distance and if they happen to invade it, most of them profoundly apologize. Where then did Koreans get this, dare I say, bad manner from?
Personal space is the region surrounding a person which they regard as psychologically theirs. Most people value their personal space and feel discomfort when their private air is encroached. Animals too have a similar sense of their individual territory. Wild animals naturally run away when they feel others, especially humans, are invading their safety zone. They know with are in danger of losing their lives if they miscalculate how close to allow others to get before making a move.
Birds resting on aerial wires or building parapets perch lined up maintaining equal intervals between them. And they never bump into each other when flying or landing. A large school of fish turns around beautifully maintaining equally safe distances and the fish never hit or push each other.
The personal spaces people like to maintain around them, according to anthropologist Edward T. Hall are as follows; intimate distance extends roughly 46 cm from the individual and very close friends. Personal distance between friends and acquaintances extends 46 to 120 cm. Social distance is between 1.2 and 3.7 meters. It is known that secret service agents commonly attempt to ensure 4 meters of open space around dignitaries.
Humans have a multitude of senses; sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch. Touch is the first tactual sense humans feel. Newly born babies first sense by touching their mother's skin, and babies won't survive without having that sense of contact. When a baby grows, he or she develops the other four senses and the sense of touch becomes less important. That is until they become the age of puberty.
Falling in love is a process that involves gradually reducing the distance between one another. Most young boys are poor in this important procedure. They attempt to lessen still-cold distances in haste. The youngsters should learn that when the interval becomes naturally warmer it becomes unconsciously narrower until their skins touch. Until then, they should respect the others' need of the personal space.
The same courtesy, of course, should be applied to strangers in the streets.
The writer is a grandmother who rides the buses and subways of Seoul. Her email address is ham1940@gmail.com.
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