The Look of Korea

Korea - Day 3 - 6am

I've done so much walking and exploring of the city within the last 48 hours that I have blisters all over my feet. It's hard to walk now. I realized last night how sedentary and inactive my life had become over the last year. Hopefully within a couple of days, my feet will strengthen and callus.

Before coming to Korea, my head was filled with the words of many of my peers, consisting of Korean adoptees and Korean Americans that had travelled to Korea, and my fellow Korean National teammates and classmates. The focus of our conversations was always about the superficiality of Koreans. I was warned they dress nicer and are much more beautiful, and that I would stick out like a sore thumb. I took their words fairly seriously, especially since it matched up with a lot of the images I saw in Kpop videos and Kdramas.

But I now know, from witnessing it myself, Korea is just like American (and probably any other country for that matter) in that there is a wide spectrum of people here, both in superficial looks and clothing style. To put it bluntly, and I mean this in the best of ways, there are ugly and fat people here too. I've seen chubby people walking around on the streets, and a lot of dudes in sweat pants and soccer gear (sad I didn't bring mine too). Spending some of my childhood growing up in Hawaii, my teachers were all overweight and wore muu-muus. So I could care less how big people are, but the fact that not everybody here in Korea looks like Hyolee or TaeYang makes me feel more comfortable and at home. Also, I don't think a single person has commented on my clothing, or even cares. I will admit though, for the Koreans within my age range, who care about clothing, their standard of dressing up is much higher than the average American (who is also the same age and cares about clothing). And this is what gets lost in the generalizations.

So the lesson of the day is the obvious. There is a reason why the words bias, opinion, and perspective exist. Every bit of advice, filled with all the impressions and generalizations about Korea and it's people, were really just filled with people's happy, sad, positive, negative, superficial, bitter experiences.

That said, today while leaving the subway, I saw and heard an old grandma/grandpa couple making fun of an overweight girl walking in front of them. I kinda wanted to tell them off, but my Koreans not that good yet.