As we were walking, we heard him speaking from behind and turned back to look. It turns out he was speaking to a student on the street, who was also a Korean. Perhaps they recognized each other by their looks and started talking? (I don’t know :3) The student had a fanciful haircut. What surprised me was that when he spoke to our family friend (who was obviously much older than him), he immediately became very tensed up and his shoulders were squared. He kept bowing and spoke very humbly and respectfully. Why this surprised me was because his haircut and the way he was acting did not match at all.
Through this, I could see the culture of Koreans' respect towards seniority. I am just merely guessing by the looks of the student that perhaps he led a more liberal lifestyle, being a product of overseas education. Nonetheless, he still showed respect to his seniors. When compared to Singapore, this conscious effort of showing respect to seniority is not such a predominant practice.
Personally, I prefer the culture of showing respect because I think it does not only serve the seniority, but the younger ones can also foster a humbler and respectful character. On the other hand, our family friend also mentioned that sometimes, it could get quite tiring too. There are actually quite many things that one needs to take note of, like for example, we have to take note that even our eye contact should not be too direct, but slightly angled, and so on. So I was wondering, perhaps when communicating with our family friend, there could be some instances when our actions or words could be deemed as disrespectful in the Korean context, but we were unaware of it. Perhaps on his side, he also understands that we, as Singaporeans, have a different culture, so he did not take it to heart.
What can help promote better intercultural communication,
then? On our part, first, we can try to gain more knowledge about the Korean
culture. The main idea behind this, I think, is mainly to lessen (and hopefully
eliminate) instances when we actually do something that makes the other party
really uncomfortable. I do not think that we have to practice all parts of
their culture, not because of self-centredness, but rather, I think, like for example,
if we have to do the angled eye contact, it is just not what we do usually and
it will probably just come across as forced. On the other hand, on our family
friend’s part, he could be more tolerant and understanding that we may perceive
the meaning of certain words or actions differently (which he was already doing
very well).
In any case, I think many things really springs forth from within so having respect for each other from within is more important.
