Anonymity

South Korea has an extremely high population density. Visualize it this way: British Columbia is an 81m� room (9�9) with one person in it. South Korea is a 9m� room (3�3) with 16 people in it.

With that sort of density, it should come as no surprise that there is little open space in Korea and little privacy. Even before the population grew so large, Koreans lived together in single roomed houses and had little privacy. The western notion of apartments for one person, or a house with a grass yard and a fence is alien to them. Even when shown pictures, most people don't believe it.

Because Koreans have spent their whole lives with little space and little privacy, their notion of personal space and of self-consciousness is not like ours. If it were, Koreans would be demented like chickens on disreputable farms that spend their whole lives twenty to a cage.

Koreans have developed a "blind spot" to those around them and pretend that people who are not in their social circle, who are not their friends, family, or coworkers, simply aren't there. To a Korean, strangers don't exist. While this created privacy may save their sanity, it can make for things unbelievable or even appalling to the western mind.

• People who are not homeless sleep on park benches with their shoes for a pillow.
• Mother having their children urinate and defacate next to tree in public places.
• People disrespecting property because it is not their own, such as spitting on the ground or on the floor in buildings, they smoke in places that are explicitly non-smoking, or when they break others property by accident and don't attempt to fix or pay for it.
• Doing things in public that a westerner would only do in private or not at all such as picking their noses and ears or not washing their hands after using a toilet.

Unanimity

Remember in 1994 how Canadians, especially people in Ontario, jumped on the Vancouver Canucks' bandwagon on their ride to the Stanley Cup Finals? Or in 2004 how many jumped on the Calgary Flames' bandwagon? As soon as success comes to a team and their own is a loser, everybody's a fan. Instant success and popularity are not worth anything, loyalty is.

This is also true of fads, be they Rubik's cube, grunge, or computer gaming, I have seen plenty and shake my head at how much time and effort people are willing to waste on them. (Playing solitaire for 30 minutes is one thing, playing Starcraft for twelve hours is quite another.)

I can safely say after living here that Koreans are the world's biggest bandwagon jumpers. I arrived in Korea in July 2001, ten months before the World Cup. How much excitement was there amongst the students? None. Nobody cared one whit about soccer.

But with all the buildup, the hype, the one victory and two rigged games, the bandwagon jumping was a human wave so big I thought the bandwagon would collapse. Koreans driving everywhere with flags draped on their cars and honking horns, fireworks every night even when there were no games, and on and on and on. I was actually glad when it was over, I was sick of hearing kids who didn't care about soccer at New Years' then saying "Korea is the best soccer player!" (I am not a soccer fan, and I can name every World Cup host or winner. Koreans "fans" think this was the first one ever.)

(For those who object to suggestions that Korea's games against Spain and Italy were rigged, think on this: the referee in the Korea v. Spain game, Byron Moreno of Ecuador, is currently in prison, convicted of fixing professional games in his own country.)

Koreans, both children and adults, also claim their baseball and basketball leagues are better than the Major Leagues and the NBA. I heard the Korean Basketball League described as "three Korean guys dribbling and passing to two black Americans who shoot". That's spot on.

Similarly, before Lee Bong Ju won the Boston Marathon a few years ago, running was a sport of the few. As soon as he won, the trails and paths around the city were so full that serious joggers and cyclists couldn't use them anymore. Within a year, all these ragged breathing morons were back at home smoking.

A while back I read a bio about the aforementioned Lee Bong Ju. It turns out his father turfed him out of the house when Lee was in his early 20s because Lee wanted to run and didn't want to take up his father's profession. Because Lee actually had the desire and the will to do something he wanted to that was different or unique, that he chose instead of having it chosen for him, he was rejected by family, friends and society. But once he was a winner, welllllll, now he's a national hero! The hypocrisy is astounding. (Lee's old man died years before, so thankfully he never got the chance to take credit for something he contributed nothing to.)

Fourth-rate Korean "punk rock" bands couldn't get a sniff on the charts a few years ago. One band, Crying Nut, has a hit single, and now "punk" is safe for TV. Witness the success of power-pop band Cherry Filter. Now guitar-bands are side by side with teenybopper dance music.

So what's your point?

The bandwagon jumping is not limited to sports, or even pop culture. Koreans will not do anything if it not socially acceptable. It has to be sanitized and sanctified before it is ever approved for mass consumption. But as soon as it is made safe, it is "approved for use", they jump on it, they buy it, and they consume it like Rush Limbaugh does pain killers.

Koreans are so obsessed with obeying, with fitting in, with doing what is expected that except for a rare few they cannot do anything but obey. The few that do have any originality are ostracized, criminalized and shunned.

This is why in years past the government and police cracked down so heavily on protestors. Remember all those police/student clashes we saw on TV in the early 1990s? The idea of practicing free speech vocally has only recently become acceptable to Korean society. Protests against government policy are only now becoming peaceful, without unprovoked police assaults, because of the rise in protests against the US military in the past two years.

(Korean protesting had its origins in Gwangju in 1980. People were so outraged at the actions of the South Korean puppet dictatorship and the US military's violent actions that they protested peacefully in the streets. In response, the Korean government used force to quell the protest, killing hundreds in the process. Such anti-American sentiment dates back to the 1950s and the Noh Gun Ri massacre.)

Click here to read about the Noh Gun Ri massacre:

In Closing

No one can make an absolute claim that their way is better. We could stand to take a page from them and stop being so self-conscious, and Koreans could stand to learn a little self-restraint.

And don't think I am suggesting that westerners are any less capable of groupthink. Just look at the blind acceptance of lies about Iraq allegedly having illegal weapons, and the mess that the majority let happen by not asking questions. (People still believe Saddam killed the 5,000 Kurds in 1988, a charge he is being tried for as I write in July 2004. The US only sold cyanide-based weapons to Iran, not Iraq.)

My point for Canadians going to Korea is to be aware of and to expect certain behaviours from Koreans which they think are perfectly normal. I said expect, not accept. You can disapprove of something without criticising it openly. At the same time, don't be afraid to express displeasure if a Korean does something you find inappropriate. Being a foreigner and not concerned with "face" can be an advantage.