Respect

I feel young and naive on one subject in Korea.  My inadequate attempts to understand respect have been truly genuine but I simply lack this instinctive tradition.  If Korea was looked at as an entity, a human body so to speak, then respect would be the life blood that pumped and flowed through its veins.  Respect is displayed by foreigners as theatrics, posing as if they truly understand what they are barely aware of with awkward bravado that brushes from the skin as easy as sand.  I put on the penny show knowing that it will make them comfortable but they know and I know that I don't truly understand what the hell is going on.  Within the confines of their social networks the Koreans operate as Italian Mafia.  Each elder is a Don Corleone among their social pyramids.  Respect is force fed at birth and drank like water upon maturity.  Take age for example.  What most foreigners don't know is that the reason why Koreans are one year or two years older is not because they operate on the lunar calendar, which they do, but it is because they count the nine months that they grew inside their mothers womb.  They respect life when they are nothing but an embryo.  Your age is your status in this foreign reality.  A non smoking sign is merely a deterrent for the new generation.  These signs mean nothing to an elder and they shall do as they please.  No matter where you are and in what situation if an older man in his fifties pulls out a cigarette then the so called non smoking establishment will pull out ash trays from the back and not only give him one but encourage him to smoke as many as he pleases.   As an elder you are god among the youth.  I being American and not even part of the culture have been bowed to and I mean a ninety degree bow to where I could rest a plate on the child's back and eat off of it.  There are many pros and cons to this system and since I am living in Korea I will tell you some of the pros first.  The degrees of how it effects day to day life ranges from the simplest form to the most radical.  A very simple way that Koreans respect each other in which I think should be implemented all over the world is that every Korean puts their phone number under the front windshield of their car.  I asked foreigners about this and they said it was for insurance.  Real quick if you ever come to Korea find out answers for yourself because a lot of Americans here have skewed views of the Koreans.  Anyways the number is for one sole reason, and that is that you can park anywhere illegally in Korea, whether it be on the front lawn of the presidents house or the busiest street in downtown Seoul and you will not be towed because people will call you first and tell you if it is an inconvenience for them.  They respect each other enough to give the common courtesy of a phone call to say hey can you please move your car, it's in my way.  Usually though no one will even bother you.  My friend Dong Ho and My friend Ju Young have both told me how nice it is and how many times they had their cars towed in other countries because they parked somewhere wrong for thirty minutes....oh and if you happen to be someone that is very naive that is reading my blog and are thinking well Korea probably doesn't have as big of a population as other major cities.  Think again Seoul is one of the top ten largest cities in the world with a population much denser than any of the other cities.  Oh and also they don't have to pay for meters when they park.  Now for one of my other favorites in dealing with respect.  The reason why the children wear a uniform to school is so that no matter how rich your parents are or poor your parents are you will be seen as equal among the students and faculty.  No one is given more privilege or less privilege than another.  It is something that the Japanese call face.  It is where even if you are a janitor at a nice company they make you wear a business suit so that everyone that enters and leaves the building is given the respect that anyone and everyone deserves.  This spirals off into giving others more self esteem and not feeling worthless because they aren't as well off as others.  No one is treated differently.  The only problem with the idea behind the uniform today is that they allow children to bring their cellphones to school which is a sign of their status in a way.  The rich kids spend as  much money as possible on better phones and it become evident who doesn't have as much money.  In Avalon, it is determined by not only their cell phones but their dictionaries which I assure you are not just your average run of the mill computer dictionaries.  These dictionaries probably have the capability of launching their own satellite and communicating with alien life forms.  All I have seen so far though is that they can take pictures, play video games, watch movies, listen to music, and obviously look up english words when they aren't having the time of their lives on them.  So the idea behind the uniforms was good before say eight years ago but now it is changing with the times.  So many beautiful traditions crumble to the cancer of technology.  I can't complain though because I love technology.  

I almost had an orgasm when I saw the new release of the tablet.  My mom isn't a slave to technology but she is a MAC slave which means that her and all of her friends will have a tablet within the next month or so, only knowing how to operate maybe five percent of what the machine is capable of but loving every minute of it.  Giving a MAC to an old person is like giving it to a monkey because they both learn to only scratch the surface of it.  I think if parents saw what their kids could do with an original x-box they would probably have a brain aneurism.  This is why MAC is so beautiful because it sells people an image, not a product, an image.  It makes them feel unique, clean cut, eloquent, and more intelligent.  I will give it to old Bill the man has destroyed the competition making us the i-generation.  The truth is that mp3 players were out far before the I-pod that were far better and 100 times easier to tamper with.  They didn't market well enough though.  The dinosaurs of mp3 players were a thing of beauty though because they allowed you to put songs onto your player and then transfer every gigabyte of music you had to someone else's computer with ease.  Could you imagine what it would be like if everyone had one of these other mp3 players.  Your home computer list would be flawless....but nooooooooooo everyone has an i-pod which is the first mp3 player that blocked that ability so people couldn't share their music easily.  Once I-pods dominated the market it was only a matter of time before everything else they sold was golden.  I have heard great things and terrible things about i-phones and I have never wanted to get one....but for the first time I do want something they are slinging and that is that cool looking giant i-phone known as the tablet.  The tablet is more of a guilty pleasure I think for most people because all of our lives people have beaten it into our heads not to touch the screen.  Touch anything but the screen and now the tablet is saying touch away.  Use your fingers to your hearts desire.  These devices are so user friendly, which is the only reason my (bless her heart) technology retarded mother can use them.  I still remember that not long ago there was a time that the TV wasn't working and my mothers answer to the problem was saying and I quote "did you try turning the TV on.  Yes SHE can use an i-phone.  (No offense mother I love you to death) Good job Bill.  

Back to respect though.  The bad parts about respect are very evident in the society.  Remember this is all changing because time changes everything but as of now many Koreans have the older mentality.  Koreans say that you can never truly be friends with someone older than you.  They call the people older brothers and sister but they are never true friends.  No matter what because they always have to use respectful words and can never truly be close.  This is not my ideology this is what all the koreans that I have met have told me.  In baseball they always laugh at me because I put my arm around the older guys and most of them dont mind but some of them have told me straight up that they are older than me.  This happens a lot because their is boundaries with age.  This same situation plays out in dating as well.  It not as prevalent in dating but it still exists.  Also as the younger person in any sport you become the punch line of every joke and you can't say anything back.  Also you have an obligation to clean up after all the older people.  My friend Dong Ho spends every baseball practice picking up balls and cleaning up gear half the time.  I help him out as much as I can but they always tell me not to and that that is his job.  This same situation was seen in boarding school on a day to day basis.  The kids weren't in Korea but they still operated on the same system.  Seniors would have freshmen sophmores and juniors carry their bags to school, get them their lunch, and clean up their sports gear.  So when you are younger you have to work so much harder but you do it knowing that eventually you will get to that stage and everyone will be doing things for you.  You can see how this spirals out to all aspects of life.  Once again though I'm still observing.  I haven't posted in awhile because I have been learning as much as I can before posting on something prematurely.  I hope you enjoy these.  I will start posting on things I have been doing in Korea later and good spots to check out if you ever come.