Relationship Culture (May 13th, 2020)

안녕 everybody~

Welcome to the fourth blog post of this semester!
This week we will be covering Korea's Relationship Culture. This includes relationships between friends, families and even lovers.

In this week's subject, we were more focused on the unique couple culture in Korea which is very open compared to other countries. A lot of cringes from the members because of the matching culture found between couples. Before we jumped into the lovey-dovey relationships, we talked a bit about the formal and informal speaking habits in the Korean language as it depicts one's relationships, especially in friendships.

To further understand how relationships work in Korea, Yoorim saw how the military plays a huge role in affecting relationships. As there is a visible wall between Korean males and females since military time is not compulsory for females, unlike males. Other than that, we saw that Koreans in general refrain from 반말 (informal speech) due to seeming like a rude person to other people.

When we further went into the relationships between family members, it was interesting to see a difference in interactions between family members. Yoorim and Jun talked about how it was already decided for Korean family members to meet at most 4 times a year (grandparents birthdays, 추석 (Korean Thanksgiving) and New Years). While Dori and PJ talked about how their family are usually all together in one household.

After talking about family relationships, we transitioned to friendships. This created very interesting discussions as there was a difference between Korean and other countries when it comes to friendships. Dori thought at times the level of intimacy between friends seemed like they would be dating and for PJ and Yoorim the level of skinship seemed a bit too much (hugging was fine but hand-holding was a bit...). 

We then finally moved onto the couple culture in Korea and it was a ride.

We first covered the matching culture that was booming in Korea where couples would match each other, be it from clothes, shoes, hairs and even phones. Yoorim and Jun especially were seen to be cringing a lot and both of them did not want to be near couples who were heavily into matching.

When we moved on to the question of whether the couple culture was intimidating or not, it was interesting to see some of the answers. Jun said it was intimidating in the sense that the couples were shown to move on quickly from their previous relationship after showing so much affection in their previous relationship. Dori found it intimidating because there were articles where there would be dating apps which keep count of their dating anniversaries. Yoorim found the actions the couples do to be intimidating, in the sense that her friends would have to report back to their boyfriends about their locations to make sure they are "safe".

When we connected this to how some foreigners act like Korean couples, the conclusion was that it was one way for foreigners to learn the culture and language of Korea since they are shown to love and enjoy the Korean custom.

That's a wrap on this weeks topic!