#99. 시월드 -- Your in-law problems, and how a traditional Korean marriage works

As a young child in Korea, it was a normal occurrence for me to go visit a friend's house, and to realize that she lived with her parents and her grandparents (and in exceptional cases, also with her great-grandparents!) Some of these grandparents doted on their grandchildren and their friends, resulting in many sweets and head-patting. Others were more strict and wanted to make sure that we finished our homework, that my parents knew where I was, and that I was well-mannered (resulting in scoldings when they felt that my manners weren't good enough).

They might all live in the same house, and this is not weird at all by the Korean standards.

From the Western perspective, this must seem very odd, to say the least. I can't think of a single friend from the Western culture who lives with his grandparents. From the parents' perspective, this is even weirder -- I mean, this is equivalent to being supervised by their parents all the time when you are on a date, even when you become an adult!

Yet this used to be the norm in Korea until recently; we even have words to describe such families. We call them "대가족," meaning "large family" (in Hanja, "대" means large; you should see this letter on your large t-shirts, for example.) On the other hand, the Western-style small families are called "핵가족," which comes directly from the English phrase "nuclear family," consisting only of the two parents and their children.

While the number of nuclear families, or 핵가족, is on the rise, it seems unlikely that the 대가족 will ever disappear completely in the Korean society. And my personal theory is that a part of the reason is because the Koreans view a marriage differently from the Westerners.

This is probably what English-speakers think of when they hear the word "family."

For the Koreans, a marriage is not only a union between two individuals, but really a union of two families. This is of course true everywhere, but in the ancient dynasties before the modern Korea, this idea was taken to the extreme. There were many different castes in all of these dynasties, and marriages were permitted only between those within the right castes; you had to go to an extreme to gain an exception to this rule.

Therefore, it was common for the parents to do extensive research into the family of their child's potential match to ensure that their family was approximately on par with them in terms of values, social class, education, and wealth. This custom continues into today's Korean wedding, and it is now called a 상견례 (in Hanja, it means to see "견" each other "상" with decorum "례"). Once a couple starts to talk about getting married, their first step is to arrange a place (usually a fancy restaurant) for their families to meet. Korean customs seem to dictate that the male pays for this meal (important later). It is absolutely forbidden to talk about worldly things such as money. It is mostly used to get a feel for each other's family, and nothing important is said at this meeting.

A Korean drama portrays a 상견례.

 If one (or both) of the families find the other to be unsatisfactory, they will voice their concerns to the child about to get married, and some marriages are broken up at this stage. Otherwise, the real wedding planning is underway -- the two families agree on the date and the place of the wedding (many families will actually consult a shaman to find an auspicious date, or in extreme cases, to make sure that the two children are suitable for each other, but this is a story for another day!) and now they must talk about money -- that distasteful thing not suitable for any polite company. Naturally, the two children become the messengers of the two families.

The biggest worry for the newlyweds is to find a place to live. Nowadays, living in Seoul is your best bet for a decent job. Unfortunately, salaries are low and housing costs are high in Seoul. Almost no young couple can afford buying a house in Seoul. And it is not unusual for the parents to chip in a significant amount of money to help them buy an apartment. Traditionally, it is the groom's family that are responsible for the house (a quick explanation is that in the Korean male-dominant philosophy, the woman becomes a member of the man's house when she marries him; therefore, the man's family is responsible for the house.) This puts a huge burden on the groom's family, and the parents might be looking into spending their retirement savings to be able to afford a house (important later).

Every newlywed dreams of a beautiful honeymoon house (신혼집), and matching furniture (혼수) to go with it. Most Westerners work towards it, while many Koreans expect to have it ready before the wedding.

It should be noted that it is very rare for the Korean children to live away from their parents -- Korea is a small country, so often moving away from home means you move within an hour's radius of your parent's place, which is not strictly necessary. Furthermore, this is how the traditional Korean society operated -- the children live with their parents at least until they marry. This means that when the couple finds a home, they have no furniture. Since the groom bought the apartment, the bride supplies all the furniture that goes into the apartment. This furniture is called "혼수." Of course, the furniture is much cheaper than a house (important later).

Once all of this is settled, the bride sends some gifts to the groom's family (remember, a marriage is a union of families, so it is not enough to exchange things -- a house and furniture -- between the bride and the groom). This gift from the bride, which is the dowry, is called "예단." Traditionally, the groom's family would send some silk to the bride's house, and the bride would then sew up the silk and make clothes for the groom and his parents (and this served as a further test that the bride was fit to be married!) Nowadays, the bride sends some cash (a few thousand US dollars to tens of thousands of dollars is fairly common) along with beddings, traditional Korean clothes, and other expensive items such as jewellery, watches, or designer handbags for the groom's parents. These are all wrapped in a beautiful traditional papers and sent to the groom's parents.

An example of 예단 -- the bride's family sends these beautiful gifts to her in-laws as dowry, in hopes that the bride will be treated well in her new family.

The groom's parents then return a subset of these gifts (usually around half of the cash) to the bride's parents, for her efforts in sewing the clothes and the bedding (of course, the bride doesn't actually sew anymore). By the way, the list of items for the 예단 and how much will be returned is determined in advance, communicated through the couple to be married. While it seems unnecessary, the traditional Korean wedding tends to have a lot of items on its checklist. And another step of the wedding is complete.

Finally, the bride and the groom agree on the presents for themselves -- their wedding rings (Koreans often skip the engagement rings, and wear a single ring only after the wedding. If the engagement starts with a 상견례, you can imagine that it is not as romantic as a wedding proposal!), and possibly a few more items depending on what they decide to do. The families also pay for this if the couple do not have enough money saved, and these gifts are called "예물." As the bride already paid her dowry, typically the bride receives twice or three times as many 예물 as the groom.

While there are often no engagement rings, the bride receives many beautiful gifts during this stage of the wedding preparations.

If you think that there is a lot of unnecessary money involved, you would be right. And a lot of it will be paid by the parents, as the newlyweds seldom have a large saving. As there is no love connecting the families of the bride and the groom, the families are often doing their own accounting at this point.

At the actual wedding ceremony itself, the money-counting continues. It is customary in Korea to try to attend most weddings that you are invited to. As a wedding gift, you give some amount of cash called 축의금, equaling about 50 USD or 50,000 Korean won (more if you're very close to the couple, less if you barely know them). The catch here is, you are expecting the couple to attend your wedding at a later date, and that the couple will return exactly what you have paid. Similarly, the parents of the couple will also invite their friends, and these friends are either repaying the parents from their children's wedding, or expect the parents to return the money later at their children's wedding. All of these 축의금 are meticulously recorded and sorted, and returned to the right recipients (in some cases, it is not the couple, but their parents!)

There are a few more money-exchanging steps after this -- a 폐백 after the ceremony (where the bride presents the parents of the groom with some food, and her in-laws thank her with some cash), and then the newlyweds bring back expensive gifts from their honeymoon trip.

Traditionally, you write "축의금" in Hanja on the envelope, but you can also write a short congratulatory message instead.

When you make a grand tally of what the families spent, you will notice that the groom's family comes out short. The housing is so expensive that it trumps any other expenses incurred during the process of the wedding. Now, after a long period of preparing for the Korean wedding (a large part of which is the money-counting), the groom's parents have a lot more that they hope to recover to make things fair. And this triggers what the modern Korean brides call a 시월드.

There is no such thing as free lunch. And for the most part, the groom's parents do not buy their son a house for free. They expect their son to repay their monetary contribution with filial piety (terrible English translation in my opinion), or 효도, which is an idea from Confucianism. It means that they are counting on their son to support them materialistically (via money, gifts, by helping them out with various chores around the house, and ultimately, living with them and taking care of them when they are old and helpless) and emotionally (by lending a sympathetic ear, or by gladly being there for them.) And the bride, having been the recipient of their monetary generosity, is on the hook too. Plus, the bride is not even their own child, so the bride often ends up feeling the brunt of the expectations from the groom's parents, who would rather expect the 효도 from the bride than their own son.

The most common form of 시월드 is asking the bride to take care of all the housework in place of the elderly parents of the groom when the newlyweds visit the groom's house.

This feeling of stress and isolation of the bride gave rise to the neologism "시월드." The letter "시" comes from the fact that almost every appellation of the groom's family by the bride begins with the word "시." The groom's mother is "시어머니" to the bride; the groom's father is "시아버지"; the groom's family is "시가" or "시댁"; the groom's younger siblings are "시동생" to the bride, and so on. So when the bride visits the groom's family, she is entering a 시-world, or 시월드 in full Korean. For the most part, 시월드 ends with the bride feeling stressed or isolated; for some families, it is taken to the extreme where the bride is downright bullied.

For example, a 시어머니 might want the bride to come over at 7am on a weekend so that she can learn to cook the groom's favourite dish from his mother (so that the mother no longer has to cook for her son -- the bride is taking over one of her duties, thus engaging in an act of 효도). The bride obviously doesn't want to go, as she would rather spend the day sleeping in with her groom, but the 시어머니 could be insistent, and as the bride owes her, she feels obliged to go. She might complain to a friend:

"시월드때문에 늦잠도 못자고 정말 힘들어." (I'm so tired from not being able to sleep in, thanks to my mother-in-law.)

 Or, a 시어머니 might pay a surprise visit to the newlywed's home, and nag the bride for not having done the laundry (although she should really nag her own son!) The bride's friend, upon hearing about it, might tell the bride:

"웰컴투 시월드." (Welcome to the world of the in-laws.)

Notice that "시월드" sounds exactly like "sea world" which is probably some fun water-themed amusement park. Of course, the "시월드" is also fun. This word reflects the younger, trendier generation's disdain for the traditional Korean marriage, and how they cope with it by bringing some humour into the situation in a typical Korean way.

The brides seem to feel the most abandoned when their husbands don't step in to rescue them from the 시월드.

Furthermore, as a composite of a Korean prefix "시-" and the English word "world," the Koreans are creating a type of word that does not exist in the proper Korean language! These words are often humorous in nuance, and "시월드" is no exception. This word, from its unusual combination of two languages that did not meet until the 20th century, takes on the nuance of sarcasm and satire.

The best part about this word is that it is not vulgar at all (albeit offensive to the in-laws!) So the Korean media has picked up on this word, and they will sometimes use it to describe the conflict between the in-laws and the bride! As long as you do not use it to your in-law's face, this word is fairly safe to use.

While this custom is the traditional Korean way to get married, I am not really a fan of it. I personally feel that going through this lengthy process of keeping scores and counting contributions will sour the love held between the couple. This also highlights the sexism that is still rampant in the Korean society -- if there were no pre-defined gender roles within the marriage, things would have been more equal!

Furthermore, some people get the wrong idea that the more the groom's family pays for a wedding, the more his family is entitled to the near-bullying towards the bride. In my opinion, some Koreans end up putting a price on something that should never be evaluated.

As a result, many young Koreans are beginning to exclude their families from paying for any part of their new lives as a married couple. This trend of "반반결혼" or "half-half marriage," where the couple splits all the expenses in half, is gaining popularity, and might one day be the norm in the Korean society. I have a feeling that I would be happy to see this change.

Read more

#98. 빻다 -- you're f-ugly

A few years ago, a journalist contacted people of various nationalities, and asked them to photoshop her own face to conform to the standards of beauty of their country.

This is the original picture of the journalist.

I suppose that if less photoshop was applied to her face, then the corresponding culture has a less rigid standards of beauty. Here are some examples of the photoshopped results by various nations. To see more photos, you can visit here.

Australia

Germany

Morocco

United States

I had an interesting reaction to this experiment. While I felt that all these women were undoubtedly on the pretty side, I felt reluctant to call any of these photoshopped images the ideal standard of beauty.

Except the one from Korea.

One Korean netizen commented: "Wow, we even changed her race."

To me, the Korean beauty very accurately reflected what people consider to be ideal. In fact, I feel confident that nearly every Korean will agree that this woman is beautiful.

I suppose this is because the Koreans tend to have a very rigid standards for beauty. For example, you are required to have snow-white and clear skin; your eyes must be large and double-lidded; your face must be oval-shaped and not too long, nor not too square; your nose should be high (but not too high), and narrow (but not too narrow); your lips must be plump (but not too plump) and curve slightly upwards. I could go on, but you get the idea.

I can more or less understand why the Koreans do this; they are ranked from the first place to the last place on their grades from their early lives. This rank largely determines their life trajectory, and so the Koreans remain sensitive to "where they stand in relation to the others." This attitude does not just apply to your grades in school, or the rank of your university that you attended. They tend to want to rank many different things, from the prestige of your job, to your desirability as a potential spouse, to how beautiful your face is.

This means that the Koreans use the word "ugly" to describe someone's face with more ease than those coming from the Western culture. There is a rigid standard of beauty, which you can use to rank everyone's faces, and if someone's face does not conform to the Korean standards, then they must be ugly. And quite frankly, they can be offensive about it.

The most standard way to say that someone is ugly is:

"준호는 정말 못생겼어." (Junho is really ugly).

"생기다" means "to have an appearance." For example, if something looks like a flower, you can say:

"저건 꽃처럼 생겼네" (That has the appearance of a flower).

So, if you say "못생기다," since "못" means "unable," it means to "unable to have an appearance," which is to say, "ugly." While the connotation is of course rude, this word is standard and nonoffensive (for example, if you want to talk about an ugly but endearing doll, you can say "못생긴 인형.")

Unfortunately, as the concept of "being ugly" is so clearly defined in the Korean culture, the slang for "ugly" also has many variations. When I was a child, I remember the popular choice of word for being ugly was to say:

"내친구는 메주같이 생겼어." (My friend looks like a block of fermented soybeans.) 

"메주" is a block of fermented soybeans, which is the Korean version of the miso paste. The Korean 메주 is a lot thicker in texture; so thick that you can mold them into bricks and hang them up.

You ferment the soybeans for a while, then you hang them up like this to dry them. This way, they get preserved for years. From this, you can make soy sauce (간장) and gochujang (고추장).

The reason for calling someone a "메주" is because a 메주 is everything that you don't want in your face. It has a dark complexion; its surface is rough and uneven, and sometimes you can even see pieces of soybean on it; and its shape is a square instead of oval. If you had any of these attributes on your face, you would be ugly by the Korean standards. Thankfully, it seems that "메주" is no longer in fashion, and I have not heard anyone use it in years.

The current choice of word for being ugly is "빻다." This verb, pronounced "빠타," is a standard verb that you can find in a Korean dictionary. It means to pulverize something using a mortar and pestle. For example, you may dry some hot red peppers, then pulverize them to get the hot pepper flakes (in Korean, you would say "고추를 빻아서 고추가루를 만든다.")

The Korean version of mortar and pestle. (절구 is the bowl in Korean, and 절구공이 is the pestle). 

So, if you say that someone's face is "빻았다" (past tense of "빻다," pronounced "빠았다"), this means that they are so ugly that it looks like their face has been pulverized by the mortar and pestle. For example, you might say:

"은영이 얼굴은 진짜 빻았어." (Eunyoung's face is so ugly that it looks like it's been crushed into a powder.)

When this word was popularized (maybe in 2016 or so), many people understandably felt repulsed by the word. This word was mostly used on the internet, as people tend to be more cruel when they can be anonymous, and strongly shunned in real life. You should also stick to this guideline -- never use this word in real life, as it is highly offensive.

Another theory for the origin of this word is that it comes from the 경상 dialect, which says "빠사지다" or "빠아지다" instead of "부서지다" (broken); while this is slightly less offensive, I think this origin is still plenty offensive!

As of very recent, this word does get used in an endearing way in very specific contexts (however, one should still avoid this word in real life). Below is a photo of a girl named 최유정 (Yoojung Choi), who placed 3rd in the reality show "Produce 101," which aimed to choose eleven beautiful girls to form an idol group (the group debuted under the name of IOI, and became immediately popular; however, under the terms of the contract of the reality show, the group disbanded less than a year after their debut.)

Absolutely adorable!

This adorable and talented girl immediately gained many fans. She could sing, dance, and rap, and most of all, she had a ton of aegyo, which won over many viewers.

Unfortunately, she does not meet the standards for the Korean beauty. Her eyes are a tad too small; her face is a little bit too round; her nose is not high enough; and the list goes on. Her talents were more than enough to compensate for it, though, and the Korean fans found this very amusing that this "ugly" girl had charmed an entire nation.

Her fans therefore gave her the nickname of "빻요미" (here, the ㅎ is silent). This is a combination of "빻다" and "귀요미," meaning "an ugly cutie." I suppose this is Korea's way of admitting that there are beautiful girls out there who do not meet the traditional standards for the Korean beauty. 

This style of nickname found its way to other Korean celebrities who are in the same boat as 최유정, namely, not beautiful enough, yet so charming that you can't help liking them. Another example is the Korean girl group Gfriend ("여자친구" in Korean). They are sometimes called "빻자친구" in the Korean internet.

The Korean reaction to these nicknames varies. Some people find this nickname adorable, and they use it with love and endearment. The others are offended by this nickname, and they will get angry when they hear it.

The fact that there is a clear divide between "beautiful" and "ugly" is one of the most difficult things for me to reconcile, having spent enough time in both the Korean and the Western culture. A huge point of debate for the Koreans is the following: some will insist that the foreigners secretly have an identical standards for beauty, and that whoever is beautiful in Korea is also beautiful abroad; and the others will argue that the foreigners all have different standards for beauty, and some "ugly" Koreans would be a top-notch beauty in other cultures. What do you think?

Read more

#97. Pay attention to your dreams (Shamanism 8, Hanja 2)

A popular myth in North Korea goes that Kim Il Sung, the grandfather of Kim Jong Un and the founder of North Korea, had some special powers. He was able to walk incredibly fast by warping the ground and leaping through the folds (in Korean, this is called "축지법.") During the Japanese occupation, he is said to have crossed the Tumen River ("두만강" in Korean) on a single leaf to fight and defeat the Japanese. In this battle, he turned pine cones into grenades and threw it at the Japanese. This sounds crazy!

To the Koreans, this also sounds crazy. But I always maintain that this sounds slightly less crazy to the Koreans than the rest of the world, because we have many other characters in our history who claim to have done similar things (to be fair, there is also Jesus Christ, who walked on water and turned water into wine, but I feel that there are just way more stories like this in Korea!)

The reason for my claim is that the Koreans are really interested in the biographies of the famous historical figures. In fact, you used to be able to buy a set books of 200 (or some other large number) famous historical personalities (I assume you still can, although I'm not sure). Of course, not all of them are actually significant in history, so often myths or legends were inserted into these books to make their lengths approximately equal, and many of these stories became well-known in the general Korean psyche.

One character who is said to have accomplished such fantastical things is a man named 김유신 (Yooshin Kim, if you anglicize it). He was a famous general in the Three Kingdoms Era (삼국시대), which consisted of 고구려 (Goguryeo), 백제 (Baekje), and 신라 (Silla). 김유신 was one of the highest-ranking generals of Silla, and he led the final battles that ended the kingdom of 백제. He was also politically talented, and his political talents ended 고구려 eight years later.

Here is a portrait of 김유신 (595-673 AD).

There are a million myths associated to 김유신. One short myth goes that a soothsayer in 고구려 was about to be executed after being framed. This soothsayer, as his dying words, told the people around him that he will be reincarnated as a fearsome general of Silla, and that he will bring doom to 고구려. Some time later, the king of 고구려 dreamed of the soothsayer, who was in process of entering the body of a Silla woman, of the name 만명부인. When he heard the news that she indeed had a son (김유신, of course!), the king sent an assassin after her son, but it is said that three goddesses appeared and forewarned the general and his mother about this scheme, and 김유신 survived.

You can already tell that dreams occupied an important part of the Korean lives; important enough for a king to act on his dream. The Koreans took their dreams very seriously since the ancient times. As far as the Koreans were concerned, they could tell the future, they served as warnings, and if you acted appropriately, you could avert disaster, or also bring luck into your life. 김유신 had two sisters, and it is said that their fates changed because of one dream.

The older sister, named 보희 (Bohee), had a dream that she climbed the Seoak Mountain (서악산) which overlooks the city of Gyeongju (경주), which was the capital of 신라. In her dream, she urinated at the top of the mountain, and her urine filled the entire city of Gyeongju.

Scandalized and embarrassed, she confided in her younger sister named 문희 (Moonhee) her awful dream. 문희, however, thought that this dream was a positive omen, and that this meant that she would rule over Silla one day. So she asked 보희 to sell the dream to her, to which 보희 gladly and eagerly agreed. For the price for her dream, 문희 paid with a beautiful dress made of silk.

The story of 문희 and 보희 is well-known amongst Koreans!

Just a few days later, 김유신's good friend named 김춘추 (Chunchu Kim) was kicking a ball around with 김유신. While doing so, he ripped his shirt (some say that 김유신 caused this on purpose). As it would not have been proper behaviour for a nobleman to walk around with a ripped shirt, and as they were near 김유신's house, 김유신 brought his friend home, and asked his two sisters to sew the shirt back up. 보희 declined, as she did not want to stay in the same room with an unmarried man as the etiquettes of the time dictated. However, 문희 accepted. And thus 김유신 played a matchmaker to 김춘추 and 문희, and the pair met often and enjoyed a whirlwind of romance.

Alas, while 김춘추 was a nobleman of the highest tier (back in the Silla era, he was a 성골; this meant that he was eligible for the crown), 김유신 was only a nobleman of the second highest tier (진골; while this meant that he had a very high status, he could never be the king). And by law, marriage between different tiers was forbidden. However, 김유신 was not to be deterred. When he found out that his sister was pregnant, he ordered her to be burned to death -- however, her burning was to take place at a very visible place, while he knew that the queen of Silla would be nearby with 김춘추! When the queen found out that 문희 was about to be killed because of 김춘추, she ordered the two to be married despite the difference in their ranks.

It is said that on the day of 문희's marriage, 보희 stayed at home crying and burning her silk dress.

Eventually, 김춘추 unified the three kingdoms and became the first king of the Unified Silla (통일신라), and 문희 was his queen. Their son was the next king of Unified Silla.

Interestingly enough, many Koreans still put a lot of significance into their dreams, and there are many Korean words whose equivalent translations do not exist in English because of this. First, a Hanja:

The Korean name of this Hanja is

꿈 몽.

As in the previous installation where I introduced Hanja, the meaning of this letter is "dream," while the pronunciation is "몽." So whenever you encounter a Korean word that has the letter "몽" as a part of it, you might guess that this word has something to do with dreams. Some examples of such words include:

악몽 (惡夢, nightmare), 몽유병 (夢遊病, sleepwalking), 몽환 (夢幻, dreams and fantasies), 몽정 (夢精, wet dreams), 동상이몽 (同床異夢, two people dreaming of different things even though they are lying in the same bed; two people who seem to be partners while having a different agenda).

Anyway, in the modern-day Korea, people still pay attention to their dreams. Some of the dreams are widely believed to talk of imminent good fortune. There dreams are called 길몽, or auspicious dreams. If you dream of a dragon (the Korean-style, of course, 용꿈), pigs (돼지꿈), or feces (똥꿈...?!), then this means that you are about to have some financial windfall. Many Koreans react to this dream by going out and buying a lottery ticket, or they might try to sell their auspicious dreams to someone going through hard times (like 문희 and 보희) for a nominal amount of money. At the very least, this is a nice gesture, and possibly has a placebo effect, right?

I can't really tell you why the pigs or feces are considered good dreams. I do have some guesses, though. For pigs, as they are generally chubby, they were believed to be the bringers of good fortune from the olden days. As for the feces, Koreans also often say that

꿈은 반대다 (dreams are opposites of reality)

and since feces are pretty much one of the worst things that can happen, maybe it is a favourable dream. Popular urban myths often say that a lot of lottery winners dreamed of feces before winning the lottery.

There are dreams that are opposites of 길몽 -- they are different from nightmares, as the dreams themselves might not be too bad, but they foreshadow some bad things to come. These dreams are called 흉몽 (as opposed to 악몽, which are the nightmares). One widely believed 흉몽 is the dream of having your tooth (or teeth) come out (이빨 빠지는 꿈). The Koreans say that when you dream of something like this, one of your relatives are about to die. If their dream seems very ominous, some Koreans (obviously, not all!) will pay a visit to a shaman to have their dreams interpreted, and to try to prevent the disaster that is to come.

태몽

A final group of dreams that is widely believed by the general population of Korea is called 태몽. When a woman becomes pregnant, either the woman or family members close to the woman are said to dream a mysterious dream. These dreams are supposed to tell you the gender of the baby, the personality of the baby, and the future of the baby. If you ask, many Koreans will tell you their own 태몽!

These 태몽 feature a lot of objects that are stereo-typically associated to a gender. For example, if you are to have a boy, you might see the sun, the dragon, a thunderbolt, a rock, a rooster, a pig, or a peach (in Asian cultures, peaches are very much associated to the male gender, for some reason.) If your pig was particularly lively, this might signify that your child will be a very outgoing child, whose aptitude is in the sports or in performance. If you are to have a girl, you might dream of a flower, a melon, a cucumber, an apple, a seashell, a half-moon, etc.

For example, 김유신's father is said to have dreamed of two planets coming at him before having his child. It is not entirely clear to me how you tell a 태몽 apart from other dreams, but I suppose these dreams remain with you vividly even after you wake up, and it's all about whether you decide to attribute the significance to the dream or not. At least most Koreans that I talk to seem to have no ambiguity about their own 태몽.

I am not sure about my own 태몽, weirdly enough. When I first asked my mom about it, I think I must have been maybe seven or eight years old. She just told me that she would tell me when I became an adult. However, although I became an adult a decade ago, she still hasn't told me about it. I suspect that she didn't have one (or, my family was never very superstitious, so maybe she just disapproved of me getting sucked into the popular shamanism myths!), and she was just buying time before disappointing me -- I will have to ask her again in the near future.

Read more

#96. 오지라퍼 -- your business is my business

The Western society has come a long way.

When I imagine a peaceful medieval town, I imagine a small community of maybe a hundred families. Many of these families probably had children of similar age, and they probably all played together. Their parents probably took turns providing snacks for these children when they got hungry. If one child was not around for a few days, they would be concerned for the child, and also for his parents. They would pay them a visit, and make sure that everything is alright. Maybe they'll bring some bread and soup, just in case. In these towns, everyone would know everyone, and if something happened to one of the families, the news would travel quickly throughout the entire town. If a young couple eloped, the entire town would stop by the parents' house to offer their unsolicited advice.

With time, this familiarity with your neighbours started to fade in the West. Now, the invasion of privacy is a crime. Spreading gossip indiscriminately can be prosecuted as slander. It is impolite to be discussing your neighbours.

The increase of the radius of your personal bubble ensures your privacy. However, with it, you lose the familiarity with your neighbours. You lose the sense of community. And you lose the trust. It's always that if you win some, then you lose some.

The Korean society started out in a very similar way as a Western medieval town.

A very typical imagery for a traditional Korean town. The roof made of hay was extremely common for the middle and lower class families!

While the Koreans grew to value privacy a little bit more, they also clung to the idea that the sense of community, and knowing that your neighbours care about you is still very important. It is still common to have very close neighbours who will stop by unannounced to make sure that your children had snacks while you are out working. They may bring over a portion of their dinner, because they cooked so much and the dinner turned out great. To thank them, you may ask them over to have a bottle of beer. Like the Koreans say, you may get so close to your neighbours that you know how many spoons they have in their household.

But this also means that you are subject to a lot of unsolicited advice. They may have something to add to your spending habits. They might think that your children could do better, if it weren't for your terrible parenting, and take it upon themselves to lecture you on how to raise your children better.

The Koreans have a word for this. When someone sticks their nose in your business one time too many, you can say:

"저사람 정말 오지랖이 넓네." (He has a very wide shirt-front.)

The word "오지랖" doesn't seem to be commonplace in English. We talk about the tail of a shirt, which is the bottom part of the shirt in the back which hangs below the waist. "오지랖" is the corresponding counterpart in the front. If you have a very wide shirt-front, then it will end up covering your pants, leading to an unwise fashion choice. Your shirt is invading the space that rightfully belongs to your pants, just like your annoying neighbour who doesn't know when to leave you alone.

While the grammatically correct idiom is to use it as an adjective "오지랖이 넓다," now "오지랖" itself can be used in many different form. For example, "오지랖" itself can be used as a noun meaning "butting into situations where one is not welcome." For example, in the picture above, the common type of 오지랖s that most Koreans experience are written:

when you're a student, the 오지랖 is whether you're getting good grades;
when you graduate, the 오지랖 is to ask whether you have found a job;
when you're over 30, whether you will marry;
when you marry, that you should have kids;
when you have a son, that you should have a daughter because it's nice;
when you have a daughter, that you should have a son to feel secure;
when you have a son and a daughter, that you should have a third child since two children of different gender (남매) are rarely close to each other;
when you have two sons, that you should have a daughter;
when you have two daughters, that you should have a son;
when you have three kids, that you won't be able to afford having three kids...

It seems incredible, but most Koreans do deal with these kinds of 오지랖! An appropriate response to these unsolicited concerns might be:

"쓸데없는 오지랖이야" (These are useless worries, and none of your business.)

The word "오지랖" itself is completely standard, and you can use it to Koreans of any age (although if you use it to the offending party, they will find it insulting!)

However, the cute neologism popular among the younger Koreans that I have been seeing a lot lately is the word "오지라퍼." And perhaps you can already guess what it means. Well, a "rapper" is a person who "raps," so an "오지라퍼 = 오지랖+er" is a person who doles out generous amounts of "오지랖" to people. As always, the combination of a pure Korean word and an English word has a humorous effect (since it destroys the beautiful Korean language!) so it intensifies the nuance of sarcasm.

It also feels trendy in the sense that the word itself sounds a bit similar to "rapper," almost like "my bro the busybody." This means that you do not want to use this word with your superiors or elders, in case they get offended (although I think most Koreans, except the very elderly who did not have an English education, should understand it). So, if you want to exaggerate your feelings of sarcasm, you could say:

"세호야말로 진정한 오지라퍼야." (Seho is the true busybody, man.)

This has the effect of sounding a bit more vulgar and sarcastic than just saying it in the standard way:

"세호는 오지랖이 참 넓어." (Seho has a very wide shirt-front),

 which sounds relatively polite and almost gentlemanly compared to the slangy sentence using "오지라퍼."

Finally, there is a very similar (and fairly standard) clothing-related slang for "helicopter moms." The helicopter moms tend to hover around their children, and become involved in all of their childrens' businesses. The Koreans call these women "치맛바람," literally meaning "skirt winds." They are so busy chasing their children that their skirts cause wind! :) You can use it in various capacities, such as just as a noun (just like how you would use 오지랖), or you can use it as an adjective by saying "치맛바람이 세다" (her skirt winds are strong), or you can say it as a verb via "치맛바람이 분다." I close this post with three examples:

"요즘 어머니들 치맛바람때문에 못살겠다." (I can't carry on my day-to-day activities these days because of the skirt winds of the helicopter moms.)

"슬기 어머니는 치맛바람이 너무 세서 아이가 불쌍하다." (The skirt winds of Seulgi's mother are too strong that I feel bad for the child.)

"요즘은 학원가에도 치맛바람이 분다." (Nowadays, the skirt winds reach even the hagwons (private academies).) 

If anyone is given the description of "치맛바람" they will of course be annoyed. However, the word itself has become completely standard, appearing in newspapers and other news outlets.

Read more

#95. On the traditional Korean marriages and divorces (Hanja 1: "혼")

I learned something interesting today about the marriage customs in the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1897 AD), so I thought I'd share it in my blog. Just so that this blog doesn't become just a cultural blog, and so that you learn something about the Korean language as well, here is the Chinese letter (hanja, or 한자 in Korean) that means "to wed":

The full Korean name of this letter is:

혼인할 혼

All full names of hanjas are two words. The first part "혼인할" describes the meaning of the hanja. While this first part does not get read out loud when the hanjas combine to make a word, this first part is very important because it tells us how to interpret the hanja. Since "혼인하다" in Korean means "to wed," this first part signals that whenever this letter gets used in a word, the word will be related to marriages.

The second part "혼" describes how it sounds when it is used in a word, and this is the part that you read out aloud when they hanjas form a word. This means that every time you see a Korean word which includes the above Chinese character, you read out the character as just "혼", and not by its full name "혼인할 혼."

So, for example, the word for marriage is "결혼 (結婚)." You see that the second character is "혼인할 혼," so you know that the second syllable of the above word is "혼." Not only that, even without knowing the first character, you know that this word is related to marriage!

And here is a photo of a traditional Korean wedding ceremony. Notice the crazy balance of yin (the woman, and the colour blue) and yang (the man, and the colour red). Marriage, of course, balances yin and yang :)

Other words that include this hanja "혼인할 혼" are:

이혼 (divorce), 결혼식 (wedding ceremony), 약혼 (engagement), 파혼 (break off engagement), 혼사 (everything related to wedding), 혼담 (talk and negotiations of marriage between families) etc.

Even if you didn't know what these words meant, you can make an educated guess by knowing enough hanja. This is why hanja is such an important part of the Korean school curriculum -- it allows you to expand your vocabulary in an exponential way!

Of course, there are other hanjas whose second part is still "혼", so you cannot make the correct guess every time. But this is just part of life of every Korean, and what counts is that you can still make a guess! (Ironically, the Korean word for "alone" is "혼자," and we can be sure that this "혼" definitely does not come from "혼인할 혼.")

The hanja itself is also interesting. It is comprised of two other hanjas, the one meaning woman (女,  "계집 녀") and dusk/darkness (昏, "어두울 혼"). A woman at dusk/darkness? I will leave that one to your imagination (and don't be offended by the implied sexism, because this letter was probably invented in the time of Jesus Christ.)

Anyway, now that the Korean lesson is out of the way, here is an interesting fact.

As we all know, Koreans are pretty traditional people. The laws against adultery were abolished only a year or so ago, and people are still very traditional about pre-marital sex or being a single parent. So I had always assumed that divorces were a recent development, as a bi-product of having come in contact with the west.

It turns out that this is completely false, and divorces (이혼) were commonplace in the Joseon Dynasty, especially among the common folks (but also among the nobles). According to Arnold Henry Savage Landor, a British explorer who came to Korea in the late 1890s, he said: "if a lower-class Korean woman was left a widow by her 20th husband, she'd probably move right on and find a 21st husband."

As such, the process for obtaining an 이혼 was really simple. In order to obtain an 이혼, all they had to do was agree that they did not want to be married anymore! This is because most of the commoners did not know how to write, so they could not write down an agreement even if they wanted to.

But just agreeing to 이혼 in words leaves so many messy possibilities, and no ways to prove the 이혼 should they want to marry someone else! So the man and the woman cut out a part of their clothes and gave the parts to each other, as a token for having agreed to the 이혼. The part of their clothes that they cut out is called "옷섶," and it is marked in the photo below:

This is a woman's traditional top, but the man's top also had a similar part.

It is the little extraneous piece of cloth that serves to keep the two flaps of the top closed and connected. Without it, the top is much more likely to come apart, leading to indecent exposure. It is also symbolic. By getting rid of the piece that held the two flaps together, it symbolizes the splitting of the union between the couple. And so it served as a token of the broken union.

For illiterate plebeians, I found this to be a shockingly direct yet heartbreaking analogy, so I thought that I would share this with you. I hope you enjoyed it!

Read more