Because Korean Is NOT a Major International Language

Went to see the doctor here in South Korea this morning. Another visit to another doctor! It was just a follow up visit, actually. Three days prior, I went to that particular clinic at the insistence of my Korean wife, who was quite convinced (based on the symptoms she'd looked up on the Internet) that I had a malady that, to be quite honest, I'd never even heard of before. "Air conditioningitis!" Like... what?

Yep. Apparently, the combination of body aches, dizziness, stomach upset, diarrhea and a massive headache amount to air conditioningitis; a disturbing little side effect/consequence of being just a little too cool and comfortable indoors on otherwise sweltering hot Korean summer days.

So what's all this have to do with Korean not being a major international language? Well, for starters, the doctor I got stuck with (bright and early, this otherwise splendid Saturday morning) was not the same nice, mild mannered guy that I'd spoken to three days prior. No big deal for me really, but for the doctor, it did seem to be quite an inconvenience. Or... something.

Basically, when a “weiguk-in” (foreigner) like myself shows up at just about any business that is open to the public, expecting to receive the same goods or services as everyone else, most Koreans are apt to be just as helpful or even more so to a foreign whitey like yours truly as anyone else.  And why not?  In nost cases, Koreans are some of the most polite people I've ever co-habitated with.  They have to be.  It's part of the "culture," after all.

So... what was the problem? I mean, the doctor spoke English just fine. And what's more, I have a lot of experience (having been an English teacher to all ages, including and especially adults, for almost a full decade now) with having to choose my words carefully and being mindful of speaking slowly and clearly, while at the same time, watching the listener quite closely, to see if I am being clearly understood or not. In fact, this particular doctor was quite good at English. So if that wasn't the problem... what then, was?

I'm not Korean.

Well, that wasn't necessarily the issue, you understand. The issue was how much Korean language I may or may not be able to speak at this particular moment in time and physical space. So naturally, when I opened the door of the doctor's office this morning, the first thing this rather distinguished looking older gentleman did was look me squarely in the eyes and ask me quite curtly in Korean if I could speak his beloved language.

Like a lot of Korean men his age (and even quite a few women of that generation too), he seemed to be a rather intense fellow, so I matched his penetrating glare and replied in simple, clear English that “No, I don't speak Korean.” Of course, I can speak some Korean (and remember.... I understood exactly what he was asking!), but the way he asked me made me think he was... yet another one of those hard cases.

All my info from my previous visit was right in front of him on his computer screen, so there wasn't much to discuss anyway.  Yet almost on cue, he asked me rather sternly how long I've lived in Korea. “Three and a half years,” I told him. His eyes narrowed a bit and he started to look like he was about ready to give me the lecture. You know, THAT lecture.

He started to ask why I don't speak Korean, so I very calmly and politely (well, as politely as I could, despite the fact that I found his inquiry and entire manner to be rather brusque, perhaps even rude) that, “Korean is not an international language.”

He finally looked away at that point and gave me a much needed respite from what seemed like his initial attempt to control and dominate the situation. You know, the classic stare down, complete with an admonishment about how I really ought to be hitting the books day and night to learn Korean. I mean, after all, I currently live in Korea, right?

Of course. Good point. However... I didn't like his attitude and it had nothing whatsoever to do with my physical condition. In many countries, his question and avoidance of the real matter at hand, would have been considered to be rather forward and uncompromising.

Maybe that's why I denied all knowledge of Korean altogether. Although actually... I didn't. I honestly didn't. I just knew I didn't like the way things were getting started, nor the icy glare (which was probably little more than the usual for his generation), so I continued by giving him a few more reasons why we weren't speaking Korean at that particular moment.

“I am an international English teacher. I taught English in Taiwan for five and a half years. I taught English in Shanghai, China for six months. I learned to speak Chinese pretty well, but now I am in Korea and when I try to use Chinese, it makes Koreans very angry."

"English is an international language," I continued.  "Chinese is an international language. Spanish is an international language. I am not Korean. I live here so whenever I can, I try to speak Korean as much as possible and learn whenever I can, but it is not my job to teach Korean. My job is to teach English. Even when I lived in Taiwan and China and could speak Chinese, I seldom had a chance to speak Chinese because many people there wanted to practice their English.”

At this point, thank God, he had finally stopped trying to dominate me (Jeosun Dynasty or whatever.. style) with his penetrating glare and had turned his head toward the computer screen to finally get to the real matter at hand. You know, the real reason why I was there in the first place! My air conditioningitis!  He was starting to look uncomfortable, while doing his best to utter the usual nervous chuckle that seems to be so awfully characteristic of older Korean gentlemen of his generation.

But he had started it, so I continued. “I do understand how you feel, of course. I do appreciate your feelings about Korean language. This is Korea. But I am not Korean. I do believe that visitors here should do their best to learn the language and once again, that is why I try to learn Korean whenever possible. But I really don't have the opportunity to speak Korean very much. I am sorry.”

Thank God, the conversation returned to my physical condition. And he damn well must have been more than capable of articulating in English about my symptoms and the treatment (two more days medication, no injection this time, etc.) because he did an awfully good job of saying all of that and even a little more IN ENGLISH. I even made sure I complimented him on his English too!

So what was the big deal? Well, I think I do get it. I really do. I don't think there is a single country on this Earth where people don't expect long term residents to learn the native tongue. In America, we mostly speak English and naturally, we expect others to be able to speak English as well. In short, I just didn't like this doctor's damn attitude.

So why exactly haven't I learned more Korean up to this point? Why did I study so very hard to learn Mandarin Chinese when I was teaching in Chinese speaking countries? Because I never, EVER, NEVER got that kind of attitude from Chinese speaking locals when I lived in Taiwan or Mainland China. AND... I knew that since some form or other of Chinese is spoken by literally a billion plus people in the world AND... it is spoken in more than just a few small countries, exerting the effort to learn it would eventually probably pay off somewhere down the line.  Simple.

In Korea however, I got hit with the whole, "Why can't you speak Korean?" thing in the second month that I was on the peninsula!  In fact, when I was in the pharmacy one day, for the first time here, getting some cold and flu medicine, I found out just how important it is for Koreans to feel that their language deserves to be spread far and wide.

In that particular situation, the kind Korean lady behind the counter could speak English well enough to fill my order AND tell me how much to pay.  HOWEVER... some other lady whom I had no idea who she was, was up in my business, standing way too close at my side (not that that's anything new in horrifically over-crowded, privacy and personal space challenged Asia). And get this; this lady could fully understand every English word I was saying to the cashier and vice versa!

Naturally, I said I was sorry ('cause Koreans seem to LOVE a good old fashioned apology like no other people on Earth).  I explained that I'd just arrived and hadn't had much time to learn much Korean yet. “I can speak Chinese though,” I said, desperately hoping to get a few brownie points with my new Asian hosts. “Here, you have to speak Korean!” this strange lady at my side exclaimed belligerently.

Now, I don't have a clue who this nosy, rude, ENGLISH SPEAKING lady was... to this very day, in fact... but I was so incensed by her intrusiveness that I paid my money, thanked the cashier and left rather brusquely.  I mean, what business was it of hers to butt in where her backside didn't even belong in the first place?  But even more, I guess, because nobody had even yet given me a chance to learn Korean!  Oh well. I chalked it up to the usual encounter with at least one (or sometimes a lot more) of the typically rude folks we all unfortunately have to deal with throughout the course of our daily lives, no matter what country we may live in at any given moment in history.  Such is life.  Right?

But then... it happened again. Just a few months later. My one and only Korean co-worker at a tiny hagwon (cram school) had gotten... well... rather suddenly into a bit of trouble and wedding plans had to be conjured up mighty quickly, if for no other reason than to save the face of the families of the young bride and groom.  No big deal.  I mean, these things happen, right?

Only thing was, on the bus that her family had hired to drive wedding guests up to the reception in Seoul, one of the bride's close relatives approached me. She came over to sit beside me and struck up a conversation in almost perfectly accented American style English. Cool, right? Not exactly. I'd been there maybe seven months or so at that point and had been busy teaching kindergarten. And after that little incident in the pharmacy, I was not all that excited about learning Korean anyway.

Oh... that's not true, really. I'd bought several books in the interim and every chance I got, I did sit down and try to wrack my brain into being able to speak as many Korean phrases as my strained noggin could hold. Though I'd taught myself Mandarin Chinese, I was finding Korean to be particularly difficult at that point though, so I was already frustrated by the language. I mean, every sentence seems to end with either “yo” or “imnida.” Or some other polite ending or other, so....

At any rate, the aunt, or whatever relation to the bride she told me she was, quickly rushed through the usual greetings to pretty much demand that I speak Korean for her. “Tell me all the Korean you have learned,” she said rather abruptly, leaving me feeling sort of like a trained circus animal.

I was a little annoyed at that point because, as I have indicated above, I was finding Korean to be quite a challenging language to learn in the first place. Chinese, despite the intricacies of the written language, is, in my humble opinion, a much more satisfying language to speak. I love Chinese! It's a very direct and quite expressive language that allows the speaker to say quite a lot in just a few words. Korean, on the other hand, I find to be needlessly verbose at times and, to make things even worse, it seems like the words just sort of get all smushed together. To the point that totally different phrases sound quite similar.

So, just like in the pharmacy, and at the doctor's office this morning, I clammed up. For some odd reason, I'd had a lot of trouble falling asleep the night before and was on sleep deprivation anyway. To be quite frank, living in a foreign country with the kind of over-crowding and interpersonal communication related stresses - not to mention the often horrific traffic conditions, rampant displays of passive-aggression, and the fact that the schools you work for may think nothing of putting you up in a tiny one room efficiency apartment that is noisy and located in a dinky little neighborhood where people park their cars along both sides of the street (because there is no parking available) and there aren't any sidewalks either so....

So I was just plain tired. It was the weekend. I was a kindergarten teacher at the time and on the weekends, for at least the first eight months or so, I nearly collapsed from shear exhaustion after a full five days of dealing with screaming, pseudo-insane toddlers who get up to all sort of naughty behavior and, despite their honest to goodness killer cuteness, can simply knock the proverbial wind right out of you. So I was exhausted anyway.

But you can't call in sick when invited to your co-worker's wedding, now can ya?

So my English and Chinese speaking brain just sort of went on overload. I shrugged my shoulders and when I didn't respond quickly enough, this aunty lady got real upset, really damn fast! “But you live here!” she half shouted. “This is Korea! You must learn to speak Korean!”

I clammed up tight, but after a minute or so of deadly silence, I asked her if there was anything else she wanted to discuss. If I remember correctly, she did manage to drudge a few things up, but the damage was already done. I got up soon after that and moved to another seat. I didn't speak to her again that day and, to be quite honest, between her and my precious two or three hours of sleep after a long, hard, stressful week, I was feeling more than a little stressed at the wedding.

I'd been asked by my co-worker (who knew I am a big photography buff) to take some pictures at the ceremony. And I'm usually pretty darn good at that kind of stuff too, actually.  But that day... I was flustered. I mean, if the CULTure in Korea was THAT demanding.... If everything I said, did or didn't say or do was going to be JUDGED like that....

Well, I'd better stop there I guess, but let's put it this way. That was my impression of the CULTure here then and... yeah... after more than three years, my opinion on the matter... sadly, really hasn't changed all that much.

At any rate, being a native speaker, I can quite obviously speak American English and at least conversational Mandarin Chinese. I can read Korean Hangeul (writing) with relative ease ('cause it's phonetic and really isn't that hard to learn, Mr. and Ms. Twenty-something foreign English teachers who think you're such hot shat for learning it -when you really ought to pipe down and try to learn to write CHINESE CHARACTERS) and even speak bits and pieces of Japanese and a little Spanish.  But Korean? I try to learn a little everyday, but I, nor my Korean fiancee plan on living here for the rest of our lives so.... DO LAY OFF PEOPLE, WON'T YA?

Ya see, if there is anything at all that I've learned in my travels far and wide, it is that all things happen in this world in their own good time. And this big blue marble of ours that we call Mother Earth just continues to become more and more of a global and international environment for us puny little humans.  As a result, it's getting a lot harder to play the "Hermit Kingdom" card with impunity the way isolated nations such as North Korea still do (with stubborn neighbor China's continued help, that is).  And, if you ask me, I figure the days of that particular regime are probably numbered anyway.

Either way, peace out everyone.  And... uh... if you WANT to learn Korean, more power to ya.  Come on over and trip over a few phrases, why don't ya?  Give it your best shot.  I know a whole lot of Koreans who will be mighty happy if you do.  ;)

Post Script - After I'd paid for my visit and received the computer printout to take with me to the pharmacy, I went downstairs to get my prescription filled.  When my order had been processed, the lady behind the counter asked me in Korean if she could explain how and when I should take the medication and, believe it or not, I replied IN KOREAN, that it certainly was okay.  She smiled and told me when to take the meds and then, I acknowledged her directions with a nod and then thanked her IN KOREAN.

Now... why couldn't that whole situation with the doctor upstairs have gone like that?  Maybe... it's my usual allergic reaction to "CULTurally" imposed hierarchy.  Like... dude... get out of town!  Or at the very least, GET THE HELL OUT OF THE MIDDLE AGES!!!  I'm not your royal subject and just as long as you treat me with some sort of respect, I'm going to happily respond in kind.  The End.