Daily Life in Korea: At the Hairdresser

By Jacob Lotinga

During my first two years in South Korea, I muddled through having my hair cut – and very poorly, too.  A typical trip to the hairdressers had me show up entirely unprepared, use some guessed-at Koreanized approximation of “haircutting” to state the very obvious fact that I wanted my hair trimmed, and then struggle to make even passable small talk with my hairdresser, a certain Ms Baek.

Nightly Korean classes at Chonnam National University’s language centre changed all that.  Thankfully, the course had included a chapter on the ins and outs of hairdressing that seemed designed to put me out of my tongue-tied misery at the local hair salon.  All of the relevant vocabulary was included – trimming, cutting, washing, drying, how to talk about the fringe, the hair at the back of one’s head towards the neck and just about every bit of hair in between.  Our teacher, Ms Yu, even covered things that I never intended to have done – perms, dying your hair and all that.  For a change, I was about to show up at my regular hairdresser prepared.

Still, Korean grammar and syntax remained enigmatic and elusive (vocabulary, too), so I repeated a few set phrases to myself on the way to have my hair cut.  There was the essential 머리를 자르러 왔어요(mori reul jareureo wasseoyo) – “I came to have my hair cut” – which I intended to get in right away to be sure that I got it right.

The other essential phrase to cram into my real-life hairdressing dialogue was the one about the 유행하는 (yuhaeng ha-neun) style – having my hair cut in the latest fashion.  In reality, I had no intention of letting my hairstyle be dictated by the whims of people who happened to be on TV or in glossy magazines – I tend to be unadventurous when it comes to having my hair cut, and typically ask for the same style as last time (in broken, guessed-at approximations of Korean).  Yet here was another valuable set phrase that I couldn’t waste.

The receptionists, as it turned out, were flummoxed by the fact that my usual hair stylist wasn’t there.  As I tried to tell them the line about coming to have my hair cut in perfectly grammatical Korean, it seemed difficult to get anyone’s attention or to get a word in edgewise.  But I persisted, reciting verbatim from Active Korean 3.  My initial (sense of) triumph gave me the confidence to attempt further small talk in Korean as a kindly member of staff prepared a coffee for me.

As the hairdresser approached – a different hairdresser from usual – I mustered my newfound Korean learning and plucked up the courage to throw in my next set phrase.  As I expressed a tentative curiosity about the 유행하는 style, her eyes visibly brightened at such impressive fashion-consciousness, and within moments I was left examining what appeared to be a family photo album.

Instead of family members, this album contained photos of all those Korean stars I recognised from TV but couldn’t name – the singer, the comedian, the one who was always on some road trip, many others who I had seen in adverts and quite a number who I didn’t recognise but trusted were famous.  Many Korean male celebrities seemed, on closer inspection, to have subtly nuanced variations on essentially the same hairstyle – one that I didn’t want!  I shut the album and tried to attract the new hairdresser’s attention.

Small talk was easier than usual.  (The new hairdresser had recently returned from a long sojourn in the USA.)

This article also appeared in Gwangju News, February 2012 print version.