here’s a free hugs video from korea.

i recently met up with two friends of mine in seoul.

we had drinks - koreans are heavy drinkers; you simply must come and experience it yourself to truly understand what i mean.

An investigation showed on Sept. 13 that South Koreans consumedan average of 4.5 liters of distilled liquor such as whisky and the nation’s most popular alcoholic beverage “Soju” in 2002, ranking fourth after Russia, Latvia and Romania. 
– full article from the Seoul Times here 

this time, though, my friends and i only moved once, which means we only did “2-cha.” cha is a counting suffix for the number of drinking places (be it a pub or a restaurant where you drink) you go in one night - or day, why not. it’s sort of like “rounds” - e.g. “oori uhje 5-cha gasseo” literally means “we went 5-cha yesterday (last night),” which means “we went to five different places to drink last night.” we koreans drink, drink, and drink… then consider moving to a different place for a change of scenery, and type of edible consumables, i suppose, and continue on. drinking is one of the biggest and most important cultures in korea.

anyway, we only did 2-cha and parted because first, it was getting late, and second, i was still hungover from the night before when i lost track of the number of cha’s, and third, we couldn’t afford to miss the last train. and most naturally i gave each of them a hug at the train station. what i got was, of course, eventually a hug in return, but what i got first was an utterance from my shocked friend k:

“what, you’re a westerner now?”

maybe she was just jealous that she wasn’t the first one to get my hug. haha. no, seriouly… compared to australia, i feel that korean culture involves much closer physical proximities in general. friends walk around holding hands, or arm-in-arm (not so much between men though) etc. such physical intimacy is quite evident in the food culture of korea, where almost all dishes are shared amongst the people on the table. you don’t get your own little portions in your own plates apart from your bowl of rice, and sometimes soup - though stews are shared. so basically, an unvited guest at dinner time is not a problem as all you need to provide them with are:

• a spoon
• a pair of chopsticks
• a bowl of rice
• and a bowl of soup, if having a soup, not a stew for that particular meal

yes, you dig in and double-, triple-, and howmanyevertimesyouwant-dip your spoon and chopsticks into various dishes on the table. of course there were gender-based traditions before - for example, women were not allowed to eat with the men in the family - but unless you’re from a really traditional family, you probaby don’t eat separately like that anymore.

now, back to the “hugging” part, i wonder what it is that makes “hugging” a surprisingly foreign practice in korea, especially when physical contacts in other ways and social ties are a lot more intimate and stronger in general. something to think about…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 6th, 2007 at 1:34 pm and is filed under curious, korea. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.