Someone You Know
Describing a person as anun saram (ah-nuun sah-rahm) or “someone I know” does not sound like a significant statement in its Western context. In the course of a busy lifetime, Westerners have traditionally made dozens to hundreds of acquaintances with whom they would engage in social activities or conduct business if an occasion arose.
Such was not the case in pre-modern Korea, however. There the collective and exclusive nature of each core family and its extended family made it impossible for individuals to develop relationships and obligations freely with more than half a dozen or so “outside” people during their lifetimes.
Generally, individuals were not free to make private or public commitments to nonfamily members on their own because one way or another such commitments impacted the whole family or even the whole clan. This situation resulted in Koreans generally viewing nonfamily members and people with whom they had no personal connection as strangers to be wary of and avoid, or simply to ignore as if they did not exist.
The Korean custom of avoiding casual outside relationships was driven in part by the fact that additional relationships would make it necessary to behave in a carefully calculated way toward the outsider to prevent either side from losing face and to avoid the possibility of creating enemies. Outside relationships could also create obligations that conflicted with existing ones. New relationships that were not specifically sought for some special advantage were therefore considered both socially burdensome and potentially dangerous. In effect, nonfamily members were culturally conditioned to repel each other.
Until recent times, ordinary Koreans had absolutely no say in government policy or practices, a circumstance that worked against their developing any concept of public responsibility. This situation was another key factor in Koreans’ generally limiting their contacts and relationships to family, kin, and a few close friends who usually dated back to their childhood and school days.
In present-day Korea the tendency for people to limit their involvements to anun saram, or people with whom they have established personal relationships as a result of school or work, is still a significant factor in both private and public affairs. The exceptions to this are generally age and experience related. The younger the people, the more likely they are to be more casual in developing acquaintances. The more individual Koreans have been exposed to Western influence, through education or work experience, the less likely they are to limit their contacts to anun saram and the more likely they are to feel comfortable about establishing new relationships for personal or business reasons.
Until about the beginning of the 1980s Koreans were notorious for their low level of civic and public interest and discourtesy to other Koreans with whom they had no personal connections. All of this changed dramatically over the next decade. With sponsorship from the national as well as city governments, Koreans became intensely interested in civic and public affairs, including the environment and all aspects of the quality of life, resulting in strict regulations to enforce standards that are among the highest in the world.
The custom of ignoring or being discourteous to strangers also began to change dramatically. Koreans normally put non-Asian foreigners in an “honored guest” category and generally treat them with special courtesy. Often their assistance to lost and otherwise helpless foreigners can go so far beyond normal expectations that it becomes embarrassing.
One conspicuous occasion when Koreans typically treat foreign residents or visitors the same way as other Koreans, however, is when they are all competing for taxis during rush hour and on rainy days.
Foreign businesspeople who visit and spend time in Korea have a significant advantage in establishing relationships with Koreans since in this respect Koreans regard foreigners as “culture free.” Thus natives do not have to be concerned about upsetting social harmony or incurring unwanted obligations by establishing relations with foreigners.
Arirang 알일앙 Ah-ree-rahng
The Korean Soul Song
Few people have visited Korea for any length of time without hearing the song that vies with the country’s national anthem in popularity and, in fact, serves more or less as the unofficial theme song of Koreans. The title of the song is “Arirang” (Ahree-rahng), which is usually translated by Korean-English dictionaries as “folk song” because it apparently is a coined word that has no literal meaning. According to bicultural business executive H.J. Chang, “it expresses the inner soul of Koreans.”
In 1926, in spite of the presence of Japanese occupation forces, Korean actor-director Un Gyu Na somehow managed to produce a movie entitled Arirang that was a powerful protest against Japan’s colonial oppression of Korea. The title of the movie was taken from a famous folk song by that name that is said to have originated in Chongson gun (Chongson County) in Kangwon Province.
According to local folklore, a young girl from the village of Yoryang fell in love with a young man who lived in the nearby village of Auraji, which was separated from Yoryang by a river. On the pretense of picking camellia flowers that grew on the other side of the river, the girl would cross the river on the daily ferry and secretly meet her sweetheart. A fall flood caused ferry service to be suspended for several days. The girl composed a beautiful, sad song to express her longing. The song eventually came to be known as “Chongson Arirang.”
The movie was a huge hit with Korean audiences and has since become a classic, but it was the song, “Arirang,” which reminded Koreans of their suffering under Japanese rule and their longing for freedom, that was to have the most lasting influence. In 1995, Korean writer Jung Rae Cho rekindled interest in the popular folk song and its connection with the colonial period by publishing a twelve-volume novel called Arirang, which recounts in painful detail the crimes of the Japanese colonial administrators as well as those of Koreans who collaborated with the Japanese. The book sold more than one million copies during the first year following its publication. Cho said the book was built on the anger and hatred that the Japanese colonial rulers left in their wake and that his purpose for writing it was to correct historical distortions and help relieve the feelings of disgrace suffered by so many Koreans.
Foreigners who would like to ensure themselves of a permanent place of honor among older Koreans need only to learn how to sing “Arirang” with all of the passion and soul that is so dear to Korean hearts. Unfortunately, since the 1990s the role of this poignant song has waned significantly among Korea’s younger generations. They are more attracted to popular foreign songs.
Chaebol 재벌 Chay-buhl
The Industrial Colossi
One of the most powerful forces contributing to Korea’s astounding economic transformation between 1953 and the 1980s was the emergence of a number of corporate conglomerates patterned after Japan’s pre-World War II zaibatsu (zighbaht-sue). Japan’s zaibatsu, epitomized by Mitsui, Mitsubishi, and Sumitomo, were owned by individual families and together dominated Japan’s economy. All of them were used as instruments of the Japanese government in carrying out its expansion-ist political policies from the 1880s on, including the annexation of Korea in 1910 and its administration as a colony until 1945.
Korea’s post-World War II zaibatsu -like enterprise groups are called chaebol (chay-buhl), which is the Korean pronunciation of the same Chinese ideograms that are pronounced zaibatsu in Japanese—meaning “financial clique” or “group.” (A group of affiliated companies as well as financial groups are collectively known as a jaebul [jay-buhl]). More than one hundred Korean enterprise groups are labeled as chaebol by the government, with the largest and best known being Daewoo, Hanjin, Hyundai, Kia, LG Group (formerly Lucky Goldstar), Samsung, Ssangyong, and Sunkyong. Like their Japanese counterparts, Korea’s chaebol had government support in their early years, but unlike the Japanese firms the support they received from the government
