Korea-- summary

I feel like I don't have as many exciting stories now as when i first got to Korea, possibly because everything seems more normal now. Bizzarre English signs are really just-- usual. Okay some of them are still funny-- like the banner posted on campus, "FREE ENGLISH TALKING" and a building I noticed today "WORLD BEST STEM CELL COMPANY."

I think sometimes about how I would describe Korea- or, Seoul-- to someone. Its quite western, sort of. It has all our fast food comforts (though most dishes have a slight kimchi twang). There are stores that look comfortingly like Wal Mart on the inside. The cars they drive look the same as the cars we drive*. They dress about the same, sort of. I've never seen a Korean woman wearing ripped jeans or burkenstocks, and I've never seen an American over the age of 6 wearing sparkly heart hose (or a man wearing a sparly lilac tie, or anyone wear tulle or more than 3 neon colors at once... am I showing fashion-bias here?).

But just when you get to thinking Koreans arenot really that different from us Amurricuns, you find out something really bizzarre and you don't know what to think. Like, a friend being mistaken for a wh*** because she's wearing a spaghetti strap shirt, while Korean women parade around in almost-too-short-to-be-called-skirts and no one bats an eye. Also, Korea has a TV show where foreign women who speak Korean wear neon leggings (I know they didn't pick those out themselves), talk about cute Korean guys, and every once in a while get up and dance. On the other hand, is that really any stranger than watching people dress up to sing and dance in front of a berating panel, or watching fat people run around, or spouses tell each other they've been cheating on national TV?

There are alot of other cultural things I don't understand or see the merit of, but a friend of mine predicted that in a few decades things are going to look very different in Korea as the older generation passes and the younger one, with more Western values, emerges. And is that really good or not?


*Clarification: The cars look the same to the untrained eye. Husband is keenly aware of the Korean cars' differences and, in his mind, shortcomings. But really they're about the same.