On Korea and Britain: Small talk intensifies

Courtesy of David Tizzard

By David Tizzard

"It might be a stereotype but I've always had the impression that Korean students are quite robotic. That they just study. Lack creativity," he said as we smoked Cuban cigars outside a chapel. My younger brother had just gotten married in the south of England and many of his friends were curious, and opinionated, about life in South Korea.

It perhaps hadn't occurred to the young gentleman I was conversing with that the two children who had been dominating the dance floor for the past hour or so to the guests' delight were Korean. There was nothing robotic about their personalities as they spun under the lights to a collection of pop hits. BTS and BLACKPINK among those chosen by the DJs.

Nevertheless, he continued explaining to me the difference between Korea and England. "In our country, you see, we're a bit more independent. Individualist. Creative." It was a list of positive adjectives he rattled off. It sounded almost like those old books on world cultures that explain to you what 50 million people are like in just a few words.

I couldn't help but wonder what kind of England he was describing: the middle-class accountants from Kent that dominated the wedding's attendees? Or did he mean the clearly overweight and under-dressed people we passed in Primark earlier that week while looking for slippers? The fascinating multicultural British sights and sounds of the local high streets? The toffs in charge that have spent the last decade takin the country into periods of austerity, elite privileges, and backwards rhetoric about our closest European neighbors? What England was he talking about?

The Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie once remarked that the thing about stereotypes "is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story." Many Koreans associate British culture with umbrellas and three-piece suits. With Tom Holland and Colin Firth. With Korean Englishman Joshua Carrott. The reality of life in modern Britain is very very different. There is more than one story.

The differences between Korea and England are both too vast to mention and shrinking in number as globalization and cosmopolitanism take hold. Korean weddings have pseudo-chapels, white dresses, and all the trappings of a British event squashed into a 30-minute ceremony. England has young kids gawking at Korean street food on Samsung smartphones listening to Aespa. Similarities abound. But for the past week, one difference has continued to dumbfound me.

In England, people still say hello on the street. They talk to you while waiting in queues. They quip about their husband's cough. They tell you your old paper twenty pounds are no longer legal tender. Others chime in that the bank will accept them. They apologize when you bump into them. The level on person-to-person interaction among strangers is far greater than what one experiences in Korea. For someone who has spent a great deal of time in Seoul, the noise is almost deafening. While elderly people in Seoul might remark on the cuteness of children, you will not often see two adults who do not know each other exchanging pleasantries as they wait for a subway or an overpriced coffee. What sociologists would call the low context individualistic culture sees people talking to each other more while the high context collectivist cultures are more silent. It's something more than just Confucian demands on language honorifics determined by age that creates this. This is not to say they Korean or British way is better or worse ― they are just different.

And just as communication among people seems to be far greater in England, so is the cost of living. Electricity, water, trains, newspapers are all far more expensive than in Seoul. My most old-man moment of the last week occurred when I complained that a newspaper in England now cost ￡3.50. And with Truss-economics about to become a worrying reality, those economic hardships are about to hit even harder. Britain has a strong and proud history. Its traditions are stories are visible in the centuries old buildings that populate the towns, villages, and cities. It has provided the world some of the greatest aspects of English-language culture. Yet one can't help but feel the country is on a downward trajectory. A continuous descent from a once lofty height into mediocrity ― Churchill replaced by Truss, Dickens by Love Island, and neoliberalism the new Newton.

Korea's trajectory is far more interesting. And it still seems to be on the rise. Granted, it has a president causing diplomatic discontents through his hot-mic comments and seeming desire that journalists not cause further embarrassment to his administration. But the students in my university lectures are awake, curious, and smitten with Netflix-fuelled individualism. They're also largely more pleased with the country they inhabit than journalists and Twitter pundits would have you believe. While they of course know (and study) about the very real problems the country has, the orientalist sensationalist headlines about semen terrorists and the charges of "hell Joseon" do not resonate in the university lecture halls anywhere near as loudly, if at all, as they continue to do on social media.

After all, life in Korea seems safer than the United States, cheaper than the United Kingdom, with less Nazi-affiliated parties than Sweden, and with more freedoms than the Middle East. It certainly is not perfect but there's a reason many want to live here. Maybe it's because in a world of hyper-individualism, no-one talks to them and they like that?

It's not my job to write the story of the Korean people or create the stereotypes that define them. The proud people are more than capable of doing that themselves. To paraphrase the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, "The old country is dead. The new one is yet to be born. Now is the time of Korea."

Dr. David A. Tizzard (datizzard@swu.ac.kr) has a Ph.D. in Korean Studies and lectures at Seoul Women's University and Hanyang University. He is a social/cultural commentator and musician who has lived in Korea for nearly two decades. He is also the host of the Korea Deconstructed podcast, which can be found online. The views expressed in the article are the author's own and do not reflect the editorial direction of The Korea Times.