Performer
There’s a communication barrier separating Koreans and Westerners that goes well beyond language. It’s a gulf that lies at the core of how we view the world, and often prevents any kind of mutual understanding. For the majority of us Westerners logic forms the basis of our understanding. If it doesn’t stand up to reason than it’s hard to justify. In Korea, as the recent beef protests have shown, emotion stands in logic’s place.
I realize this is a generalization, and that a closer look will reveal a far more complex reality than the one described here. But from an outside perspective it seems to me a fair analyses. I also do not intend to make any judgement here. Logic in many ways has made, at least America, a colder place, having crowded out our hearts. In Korea, emotion, that han and jung that Koreans so often point to, is what makes the place so appealing, and so frustrating.
Look at the disparity between how Westerners, both in Korean and abroad, view current events and how Koreans see things. It’s like they talk around each other, rarely if ever connecting, even when speaking the same language, whether Korean or English. One side is trying to apply logic while the other is speaking from the heart. It’s not that one is right and the other wrong. It’s that they just don’t connect.
I got a comment once on an earlier blog asking if anyone could explain the recent protests over US beef. Personally, I think it was pure emotion. There’s a tradition in Korea called hanpuri, a communal catharsis where spectators and performers join in a releasing of pent up emotions. That’s what I think the protests were. But it goes beyond beef. Emotion dictates politics, the media, academia. The whole Dokdo dispute with Japan just thrives on emotion. Or take North Korea’s Arirang Games, a massive display of propaganda and choreography aimed at overwhelming the spectator with emotion. The more there is, the more righteous the cause.
Not to say that emotion plays no part in the US. A recent study showed that most Americans chose their presidential pick not based on policy issues or the like, but purely on chemistry. Did they like, or dislike, the candidate. Emotions can dictate even the most rational of minds.
So, into that age old debate begun millennia ago in ancient Greece between faith and reason I would like to add another category, emotion. Maybe it lies somewhere in between.
Filed under: America, Identity, Korean Society, Opinion | Tagged: Identity, protests, spirituality
