Disclaimer

I have been trying to write this for a while now. I’ve mulled over it in my mind too many times and still don’t know exactly the right way to articulate what I’m trying to relate. No matter what I say, I come across as a naive feminist who does not want to accept a reality that is evident not only in Korea, but also in the US and every other country of the world: men are mostly in charge, and it’s just part of human culture or our makeup or how God intended it to be – whichever way you choose to look at it.

The topic I have tried to write about is complex and beyond my writing abilities, so forgive the lack that is to follow. Working with Josh has been an incredibly rewarding experience and we both consider ourselves very fortunate to have this opportunity in our marriage. When I write about the disparities in the way that we are commonly treated while living here, it is not to set us up against one another. Quite contrarily, Josh and I have enjoyed understanding how we fit rather uniquely together in our marriage and are well pleased that such situations as follow have only helped us to understand each other more comprehensibly and supportively.

Boys Rule

A key part of being a woman in Korea is being beautiful, paralleled by wealth and followed by being a trained candidate in the ways of a housewife and mother. Smartness is an attribute, but seemingly not as important as being beautiful – really nothing is much more important than that. Being a beautiful Korean woman is composed of having a thin figure, having small feet, and long hair. The thinner she is and the more western her facial features are the better.

At work Josh is smart, has good ideas and is listened to, while I am beautiful, which for me is not any kind of compliment when my education in ESL/EFL is brushed aside and ignored all too often. I am told, “The parents of your students like you because they say, ‘She’s so yeppa, yeppa!’ beautiful beautiful!” Josh is praised for being an incredible teacher with all the qualities needed to succeed in Korea or anywhere else in the world as an English teacher. “Josh is just like, wow!” our directors say. He is given presents and I am not, but parents point at my face and then with a thumbs up say, “Yeppa, yeppa!” which I suppose should be some kind of consolation, but for me is not.

In our marriage I am the one who is more confrontational. When our cell phone company over charges us, I’m the one who calls and displays my persistence with the operator. Here in Korea, Josh has to do all the dirty work. We realized a couple months in that anything coming from my mouth was second rate compared to what he said. After meeting more foreign teachers here in Korea, we recognized that ours was not an isolated situation. Male teachers here will jest about how badly the female teachers are treated compared to the men. They laughingly make comments like, “Yea, the girls at our school have to work twice as hard as the guys. I get praised for doing practically nothing!”
I don’t consider myself a far left winged woman liberalist, but I do see double standards when they exist and get aggravated when I find myself helplessly caught in the middle. I find joy in Josh’s success, and nothing I am writing is meant to negate that; however, the frustrations I sometimes feel cannot be ignored or brushed aside because they are part of my experience here and need to be noted.

Korea has a culture more complex and different than I could have imagined. Witnessing their clash of traditions and modernism is fascinating to see as an outsider and not easily understood. Korea was closed to the outside world for 200 hundred years longer than Japan was and has experienced a surge of wealth and significant western influences only since the 1950’s and more distinctly since 1988 when the Olympics were held in Seoul. Upon first arriving and living in South Korea, everything seemed very modern and consistent with the ideals and values of most first world counties; nevertheless, the longer we are here the more we begin to realize that Korea is in a distinctive struggle between reconciling its traditions that have existed for thousands of years with a rising middle class and the push of the upcoming generations to do away with their traditions and become more like the west, or more specifically, with their perspective of what the west is.

It will be very interesting to see how the culture in South Korea changes and molds to fit such diverse perspectives between the generation that is aging now and the upcoming ones. In what we’ve seen and experienced since we’ve been here, it will be a while longer before women are viewed as a whole lot more than a figure of beauty in this society. Much of their culture is beautiful and it would be shameful to see lost in the apparent race here to become more western. I don’t think it would matter how long we lived here, we would always be outsiders looking in, so there is much that I still cannot grasp about my experiences here so far, but I am enjoying the process of trying!