I have been chipchasing¹ a bit in Korea, a country that actually surprised me more than Japan. There is even less English speakers here, the streets feel like labyrinths, and sashimi is no salmon or tuna, it’s aphrodisiac shells and live octopus. Ten things I noticed:

• the Internet is deeply embedded in what we call the “old media”. After the Virginia Tech killing, the main newspapers had pages dedicated to online reactions in forums, quoting various people using their nicknames (“for bunny38, the shootings are an isolated act” etc…). And any time a TV reporter appears on television, his email address is printed next to his name.

• speaking of email, I noticed on many of the numerous business cards I received that some people put their private addresses instead of their company’s “official” address..I got some cards with addresses like “elove44@yahoo.co.kr” or “streamline98@hotmail.com”.

• sometimes in Europe you become paul.smith2@yourcompany.com because you have a homonym. Here in Korea the problem is a bit deeper, with millions of people called “lee” or “kim”. So you can easily become kim1242@yourcompany.com.

• Korea is one of those rare country where using Google is not an automatism. The Mountain View giant has not yet managed to effectively serve this cultural island, and most people still rely on local search engines.

• Korea is a Confucianist society, which means that social relations are regulated by age. Huge respect is due to the elders who don’t mind abusing their power a bit from time to time. I was sitting in the subway next to a 60 something guy. After ten minutes, he firmly tapped my thigh with his hand, asking me to uncross my legs. For some reason he didn’t like the way I was sitting. Hum.

• in a country that is so well organized you don’t expect that there is a very relative respect for red lights. Taxis will go through them – sometimes not even slowing down – almost 50% of the time. The older the driver, the more likely he won’t respect the road signals.

• speaking of taxis, most of them in Seoul have no clue of how the city is made, and don’t have a london-cabbie like hippocampus to know where the street you are looking for is. They simply fire their GPS and follow the instructions. In Paris there is a tough exam to become a driver. To be a taxi in Seoul, it seems all you have to do is know how to program your GPS.

• speaking of GPS, the Korean ones are slightly more evolved than ours. First, they are often embedded in phones. Second, they know at what speed you are going and the limit of the road you are currently on. The GPS will start bipping if you go over the speed limit. Also, some GPS seem to be playing ads from time to time.

• Korean sashimi is almost a scientific experience. I was warned by my hosts when they took me to a wonderful seaside restaurant in Jeju: “This is very different from Japanese sashimi”. And indeed it was different. I ate some mollusk I had no idea were ever created by mother nature. Out of ten dishes I probably could identify one or two (the oysters and the shrimps). Lovely experience! And I couldn’t even try the live octopus.

• In Korea, if you press the floor button twice in a lift it will 1) send the order 2) cancel the order. Lifts are sometimes like that, and it’s quite weird. You’re in the 12th floor, trying to go down to the lobby. Press once on “1” (ground floor is 1), the lift starts moving. Press another time. The lift stops, the doors not even opening to let you out. See below.

¹ chipchasing, or try to look at a remote country with the eyes of a technologically influenced ethnologist. From the english Jan Chipchase ;)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 24th, 2007 at 7:35 am and is filed under society, english. 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.