Here, Hierarchy Rains...

There are some things that you just can't learn in the classroom. When I was in grad school, I took a course about managing the human resource aspect of different cultures. (Or maybe it was about managing multi-national corporations?? Yeah, something like that.) So of course I learned about the heavy emphasis placed on status in many Asian cultures, especially within the workplace. What they didn't tell me, however, was the fact that hierarchies exist within every.aspect.of.Korean.life..

A small digression about making friends:

Being the friendly little fairy that I am (and also being new to the country), I wanted to meet as many people as I could. While meeting fellow foreigners (I use this term because in Korea, anyone who's NOT Korean, despite his or her actual country of origin, is not only considered, but also called a "foreigner."), was no task at all, meeting Koreans of the same age is not as easy as walking in a bar and striking up a conversation. (There goes my plan!) This comes as no surprise at all when you consider the fact that they work insanely long hours, are painfully shy, and generally prefer to mingle with people who are already in their long pre-established circles. (When I asked my friend why she didn't bother to invite her good friend out with us so that she could meet another girl, who had just returned home to Korea after living in the U.S. for 7 or 8 or 10 years, she frowned and retorted, "but she doesn't know her." When I pointed out the fact that I (an obvious outsider) had been introduced to both girls, she politely explained that "Korean girls are shy to meet other Korean girls, but it's okay for you because you're a foreigner." Yeah...) In the end, every single Korean male or female that I have met thus far has been a result of my being introduced from another person, and that chain leads all the way to the first person that I met here (co-teachers don't count!): my neighbor. Kinda crazy when you think about it...

Okay, so you came here to hear about heirarchies. (Try saying that 10 times fast. Or not.) Well, it goes without saying that age is the number one thing that determines your daily life, from how you address the store clerk to the type of endings you use for your sentences to even which verbs that you use to describe a situation. (For example, if you want to say that someone is asleep or eating, the verb that you would use would depend on the age of the person completing the action. Con.fu.sing.)  So it's waaay deeper than the pultry "sir" and "ma'am" that we use in the West. Your age (determined by the lunar calendar, which already makes you older than you really are), goes so far as to determine even how you address your school mates and--get this--siblings?! Older and younger siblings get called by different names completely, and there are 4 different words that can be used to address your older siblings depending on the sex/gender (synonymous here) of both yourself and of the older sibling in reference!

Speaking of "referencing people," you usually don't call people by their name. (This includes family members and "friends," which further emphasizes how loosely Koreans use the word. For example, if you meet any random person and they discover that you are both the same age, they will very likely refer to you as their "friend," since no one is of higher status than the other person. Fortunately, many younger, more worldly, Koreans have taken to using American names, so as to get around the whole "my-friends-can't-call-me-by-my-name" thing when dealing with foreigners.) Rather, people are generally addressed by their status (or a combination of one of their names--can't remember which one right now, but one is acceptable and the the other is deeply offensive--and their status), which is why it's so important to know who's higher up in the food chain, during any social interactions. Which is how I quickly learned that when all of the younger Koreans that I encountered asked me my age (Why does the bartender, who is female by the way, really need to know how old I am? Same goes for the nice lady in the museum... Turns out it wasn't the good genes!), they were trying to determine our respective statuses, and thus, establish the roles of each party for the duration of our relationship, however short.


Or maybe they just really wanted to know how to refer to me while talking to their co-workers? "This distinguished person would like a mimosa" versus "That foreigner over there wants to know what time the exhibit closes." (Literal translation of actual words used.)



Call it tomato or tomahto, but in Korea, it's the difference between a mere drizzle and an outright downpour.