Characteristics of the Korean People

Confucius Traditions

Hundreds of years old Confucius traditions and rituals still remain in Korea.
First of all, there are jesa (ancestral feast) they perform on the day their parents
(ancestors) passed away every year and tchare they offer in the mornings of
traditional holidays. For a jesa, the entire family members gather together to
prepare traditional food and pay respect to their dead ancestors. According
to the Confucius way of thinking, women’s roles and men’s roles are strictly
different, which has been a source of substantial discrimination. Today, there
are far more women that are socially active but the status of women in Korean
society is still lower than that of men. The Confucius values are also evident in
the practice of saving special seats for the elderly in busses and subways. It is
a common sense to leave the seats or give up seats for the eldery. You should
not smoke in front of anyone who is senior to you and at mealtime, you must
wait until the oldest person at the table lift his/her spoon before you start eating.
When you have a drink with an older person, you should slightly turn your body
to face away. It is a good tradition to respect manners and rituals but putting too
much emphasis on age sometimes leads to authoritarian attitude.

Tricky Terms of Respect

In the Korean language, the formal and the informal forms of speech are strictly
differentiated. In the former, you should use the terms of respect. You use terms
of respect when you talk to anyone who is older than you, whose position/status
is higher than yours, and who is about the same age as, or younger than, you
but a stranger. On rare occasions, some Koreans use the informal form of
speech just because the person they are talking to is younger than they are
or a foreigner, it is an extremely rude behavior and you should not follow their
examples. It is appropriate to use the informal form of speech between friends
but keep in mind that it is the case only when you are very close to each other.

Hardworking Koreans

Korean people in general are hardworkers and are used to finishing things as
quickly as possible. Some experts ascribe the characteristic to the traditions of
n agricultural society. Korean people have been farming for thousands of years
in a temperate climate where you need to work as hard as possible during
spring and summer to reap a good harvest in the autumn and it is only natural
that they have such characteristic. In fact, one of the expressions foreigners
hear most often in Korea is “hurry, hurry.” Sometimes they rush things too much
and make things go wrong, or ignore job efficiency or safety rules causing
undesirable outcome.


“One People” Philosophy

The Korean people call themselves “one people," meaning that unlike many
other peoples where people with many different ancestries have mixed together,
Korea manages to keep the bloodline “pure” for thousands of years. This
philosophy is based on the founding myth and represents a historical sense
of unity formed naturally over the years during which the Koreans had to fight
off numerous invasion attempts from China and Japan. Koreans used to be
extremely wary of foreigners and interracial marriages heppened very rarely.
However, starting from the 90’s, people became more open to the idea and
there was a significant increase in the number of interracial marriage. The “One
People” philosophy can be effective in uniting the Korean people but could
make you closeminded towards other countries or peoples.

popular culture

Korea has a highly developed culture and produced many renowned artists.
Koreans love both classical and popular contemporary arts. Most prominent of
all is the movie industry. In 2004, Korean movies won the best director award
and the grand prize of the jury at the three most important international film
awards, the Cannes International Film Festival, the Venice Film Festival and
the Berlin International Film Festival. Recently, Korean drama series, popular
music, singers and actors are gaining huge popularity in Japan and other Asian
countries, causing the so-called “Korea Wave.”