Korean Stereotypes of Foreingers.

Ok so every country has it’s stereotypes about people from other countries and South Korea is no different.

One of the stereotypes that black and white people from either the Americas or Europe are all loaded! Just like in the Caribbean, if you can afford to actually leave the country you were born in, somehow people assume that you can luxuriously float around the world and just travel all the time. Also, with this stereotype is that we’re very loud, very lazy and on top of that we sweat a lot and smell bad. But actually in my opinion, that last sentence was totally accurate. Most of the foreigners here are loud and lazy and smell bad even by my standards, but by Korean standards, these foreigners are totally obnoxious and have no work ethic what so ever. The funny part about this stereotype is that old Korean men and women, not all of them, but a lot of them can be as loud and rude as they like. Omg. It can be totally silent on a train, and they will start shouting down the phone for like 20 minutes, and then when they put the phone down they can tell someone else to be quiet. So often they just push to the front of lines,  and once, I caught an old woman going through my shopping bad, without ever saying a word. I swear, old people in this country become exactly what they hate about foreigners. As for the sweating and smelling bad…I’ve honestly never come across a single Korean who smelt bad. Of course they sweat, but for some reason Korean people don’t smell when they sweat. To the extend that you can’t find deodorant anywhere. People here have no need for it. (actually no I take that back, maybe you can find a single brand really expensive roll on stick in some beauty stores in Seoul, but that’s about it, it’s a far cry from the shelves and shelves of it we have back in the UK.) It’s just not fare *sigh*

From what I can tell it’s better to be any type of foreigner than American…wait no, Koreans hate the Japanese, but as far as non Asian foreigners go, it’s better to be anything but American. Purely because of some controversy that happened back in the day and some people still hold grudges…

Foreigners can’t use chopsticks or eat spice food.

Another Korean stereotype is that all Caucasian women have a very similar body type of giant boobs and giant buts…and long legs too >.> I don’t really understand how they missed black people in there because that’s pretty much the western view of black women. But if you look at most Korean women who generally have very slight curves, its easy to see how that can think that.  Haha now, if you are a Caucasian girl with blond hair and blue eyes, you must be a Russian prostitute. I..I…I don’t know, don’t ask me why, I don’t know. But actually, my one and only American friend here, Tori… She’s white, and has blonde hair, and even though she has brown eyes, she still gets asked quite a bit if she’s Russian. Haha. It drives her insane. So be aware women, if a Korean old man asks you if you’re a “Russian saram” whilst raising his eyebrows and being all creepy, he’s asking you if you’re a Russian person, meaning “will you accept my money for sex” >.>

Also, if you are from South East Asian, aka: the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, then you must be uneducated and be a prostitute…

I also hear a lot that if you’re a black man or have dark skin then it’s pretty common for people to say that you look like Obama. Personally I haven’t had this but I’ve heard. I do know that people here are so uneducated about other ethnicities that people (mostly children) will ask if the colour of the skin will come off, or if you go swimming will the water get dirty. It’s not like an angry fuelled racism, it’s just curiosity but honestly if someone was asking those questions back in the west, that would be seen as completely offensive.

Apparently Chinese people don’t wash… I can tell you that this stereotype is far from the truth. In fact quite the opposite. My Chinese friend group in Daejeon are all obsessed with showering and cleaning. They seem to think that anything and everything with the human body is dirty so they must constantly keep cleaning themselves. (But I know that it’s a general Asian thing to consider the human body to be a dirty thing.)

Another stereotype is that English teachers are unqualified (mostly true) and we’re the ones who bring STDs to Korea, which is why I had to have such an intensive medical examination before I was allowed to roam free in Korea. We bring the diseases to Korea and all Korean people are clean apparently. Speaking of diseases, homosexuality is apparently a disease which foreigners bring to Korea and “infest” them with it…

When it comes to interracial dating in Korea, when a Korean guy is dating a foreign girl it’s seen as something cool. It’s just seen as something that’s cool and will be fun. The Korean guy will get to experience exotic new things and it’s not something that’s seen as something that would ever lead to marriage. Hey just ask Sai about it, she can tell you all about that. ^^  Now the reverse, if you’re a Korean girl dating a foreign guy, people will look down on the girl for it. Apparently it’s because foreign guys are more sexually open and perverse and bring all the diseases. But to be fare it’s true that not just foreign men but all foreigners are more sexually open than Korean people. Sex is like the biggest taboo here ever.

So yeah, that’s it for this blog…

A bit of an up date.

So it's been a while since I actually updated you on what I've been doing over the past month and a half so in this blog i'm basically going to throw a ton of pictures at you with a brief and kind of vague explanation.

Weekends
So I've gotten myself into a routine of travelling a lot on weekends. My typical weekend is: travel to Jeonju on Friday night, Saturday I travel to Seoul and on Sunday morning (normally after not sleeping) I travel to Daejeon, and on Sunday night I'll travel back to Seosan.  So besides the generic, yey i met my friends/new people and we played all day and night, here's photos of what I've been doing on my travels.

oh and dont be fooled be the weather in these photos. in most of them it looks cloudy, but thats because we're in monsoon season now. it's still constantly around 30 degrees. once that's over it should be shooting up to the high 30s.. Dx

first up is a festival where they commemorate the kings of old in these massive temple grounds. all the old kings bodies are kept here and their chambers are only opened once a year for this event. unfortunately i couldn't get a decent photo of the festival because there was so much press everywhere.

Next up is Buddah's birthday festival, starting with a lantern parade. Sai's boyfriend at the time was also performing in the parade so went with him back stage with everyone while they were getting ready. We went to the parade with them and eventually got dragged into the parade itself while thousands of people both on the street and on TV watched live. 

                                 

Following that I've been to a B-boy (street/hip hop) dance contest, which was actually surprisingly formal and well organised with some impressive guest artists.

and to match i got myself a korean student hairstyle...

I've actually forgotten who this is a statue of, but here's photos anyway...

This is King Sejong - this is the man responsible for the creation of Hangul (the korean alphabet) and some rather important social changes in Korean society.

This is one of the palaces and it's grounds... again i had to visit here twice to get all these photos. It's hard to get a day without 50million tourists everywhere.

This is pretty common in Korea...
people, particular students, are falling asleep everywhere, all the time. but I can't blame them knowing how brutal their education system is.

I got free tickets to a concert called Ultra Music. It's one of the most anticipated music festivals in the world, and it's only held in 3 locations. Seoul is one of them, and some of my favourite music artists were performing, so I fought through ravers and fangirls to get to the front and got some really good photos.

and again I returned to that first temple when there were less tourists to get some more photos of the temples and stuff. though I haven't had time to play around with the contrast or anything yet. You'll also notice there's pictures of food being prepared. I'm not sure if they do this on the anniversary of the death of the kings or they do them all at once but they prepare a meal for every king here once a year.

So I guess that brings you up to date. Appart from Sai and Tori, I haven't spent any more time with foreigners. At night i've obviously been playing with my friends in nightclubs and what not. I've also met a few  upper class Koreans in Seoul who are all good friends with the celebraties and that kind of thing. We've exchanged numbers and drink together but it's not something I'd ever take photos of really.

As for school, everything is still going well. We still have our regular trips with all the teachers, and we're due another school trip this month before school ends for summer. I'm in the process of decorating my appartment, I'll upload photos when I'm done but yeah...that's it.