One of the puzzling things of living in Korea is their ways of reasoning (or, as it may be perhaps seen by a westerner as, lack thereof). Even after living here for 6 months it never fails to amaze me some days when going about the simplest tasks sometimes.
I will share a few stories to give an idea as to what I mean by this:
- This first story is one of my first episodes of coming to this realization. This took place last fall when I was with a friend and we decided to walk through some ancient tombs. Naturally, these grounds required a small pay for admittance. Luckily my friend was pretty fluent in Korean so communication wasn't a barrier. However, for some reason that day the man didn't have any change and had to go find some (the cost was only like 1,000 KRW each or something very small). Instead of having us wait until he ran over to grab some change, he just let us in and told us to pay when we got back. Of course, my friend and I are thinking to ourselves "1. Why would you not have change and 2. We could easily just walk in and then leave without paying, so why are you letting us in now." It worked out fine nonetheless.
These next two are two experiences that I've had on my own recently when shopping.
- I was out shopping with one of my co-teachers upon my arrival at my new apartment and I decided that I better buy a few bath towels. We found the bath towel section and there was a special sale price if you bought 3 of the larger towels. Naturally, I grab 3 different colors: pink, green, and blue. My co-teacher responds in saying "Oh I don't think you can get the discount that way. You have to get three of the same color." I'm puzzled with this issue because, regardless of color, all are on sale and all they would have to do on the check out is to scan the same one three times if the computer programming was an issue. My co-teacher found a worker to clarify and he said that I had to buy all of the same color because the computer wouldn't recognize the discount with three different colors. Needless to say, I just left it at that and disregarded the discount.
- For this last one I was shopping at the local E-mart to buy some weekly groceries. I was picking up a few things in the produce section and I grabbed a yellow bell pepper. They weren't pre-packaged, but I found a plastic bag and it put it in there in my traditional western-culture way. I'm thinking in my head that they have a chart with codes for all the produce as they do in any western culture grocery store to ring up the item. However, I get to the check out and the Korean lady at the check out asks me (in Korean) where the sticker is. I'm puzzled and a bit confused as to where I was even supposed to find a sticker to place on this pepper. "Why was it not on there to begin with? Why didn't they just pre-package it with the sticker on their to begin with? Why would they be expecting the customer to wander around and find a sticker to place on their produce item?" I'm thinking to myself. Needless to say, they had a lady in customer support run back to get a sticker for me so I could buy my bell pepper.
So there's just a few examples of how the reasoning of Koreans may seem a bit "backwards" to someone of a western culture perspective. This is not to say that either way of reasoning is either right or wrong, but rather a point in the difference between the two.
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