Cultural lessons from Korea

It's interesting how I've learned so much about myself by going away, then again, since we define ourselves by what we're not as much as by what we are, traveling can be a revealing process.

At one point during our trip we tried to come up with possible entries for Canada into an international cuisine contest. The result of putting our heads together were: maple desserts and other maple products, apples and other autumn harvest related dishes, and wild game found only in Canada (ie beaver and moose). The greatest challenge was to find dishes that were truly national, which excluded west coast fare, Quebecois cuisine, and other region-specific cooking.

That query still remains unanswered but I've discovered a few other things about Canadians, at least U of T students, (although arguably they are not representative of Canadian culture.) What follows will probably be unsubstantiated generalizations.

Canadians like to give their opinion.

At least those on this trip. We first discovered this at a conference hosted by the Graduate School of Public Administration of Seoul National University. There were two lectures by distinguished professors, followed by separate discussion periods, in which the 11 U of T students asked all the questions, except for two by their Canadian course instructors. This happened with both lectures, even though one was about Korea.

After a very impressive lunch, there were two student presentations by Korean students with two discussants: one Korean, one Canadian, and an open discussion. Again, we dominated the discussion. Then the U of T team had two student presentations, for which we expected plenty of feedback since they covered rather contentious topics: The Construction of Korean Identity and Civic Nationalism in Japan. None of the 20-odd Korean students in the audience spoke up even when they were specifically asked.

At the end of the day, we all had the same question. Why don't the Korean students contribute to the discussion? Our mealtime conversations had clearly demonstrated their strong English capabilities. So what explains their silence?

However, as the week went on, and we attended presentations at Ewha Woman's University, Korea University, and several NGO groups, I began to realize that the question that needed to be explored was, "Why is it that we love to give our opinion?"

At a typical presentation at U of T, the resident expert will speak for an hour, followed by an equally long period of an hour for questions, including criticisms and shortfallings.

We quickly discovered that this format does not prevail in Korea, as the discussion period is much shorter. After every speech or presentation, we would unleash a flurry of questions. During the actual delivery, we interrupted periodically to assent, to resolve our confusion, to demand a clarification if something was ambiguous. Then, despite being comparatively ignorant on the topic, we would challenge their assumptions, question their methods, and offer alternate views. We demanded justifications and explanations, and drew attention to anything that was omitted.

We're not a particularly arrogant group, this is our U of T (and arguably North American academic) culture.

But why do we feel the need to voice our opinion? Must every presentation be a discussion? For the most part, our speakers were academics or practitioners who have devoted their career to this particular issue, therefore it would make sense for us to accept their wisdom.

And although I have yet to clarify this, it would be logical to assume that such is the case in Korea.

Another more amusing difference is the size of our pop cans. The typical Canadian/North American can holds 355ml, while all those in Korea were a mere 235-250ml, just under a cup. Since the height of the cans are the same, this makes for a much slimmer pop can.

Like pop size, like body size. That would explain why we could never reach the suggested capacity of elevators. It became an algebra equation: If 12 Canadians are less than or equal to 17 Koreans, how many Canadians are the equivalent of 22 Koreans?

If you get the wrong answer, a red light goes off, and then you have to take the stairs. And none of us were overweight either... well, at least by North American standards.