Goodbye, South Korea

By Lisa Ghilardi

When you ask expatriates about their experience abroad, one expression that sometimes comes back is the “bubble”: where your time there is like a pair of parentheses in your life, a pause outside of the norm. There is a feeling of unreality that lasts as long as the time before the bubble protecting you from everything else bursts. To me, my semester in South Korea was more like scuba diving: I took a breath of fresh air and dived in to experience a world full of wonder. I saw the equivalent of magnificent corals and vivacious fish that I never could quite touch. But one day I needed to come back to the surface. I had to break out of what in the end was like a dream world and learn to live again.

Why do I compare it to a dream? One might indeed say that instead of a dream, or a world under the surface, during an experience abroad you live more fully, more vibrantly; it is an opportunity to get more in touch with your adventurous side and do things you have never done before. But it is precisely because you do things that would normally be out of character that the feeling of unreality that accompanies you like an aura does not go away. You go on adventures, you talk to strangers like you have not done before, you hitchhike… The world is suddenly full of possibilities that you had not considered. They say that “the sky is the limit,” but one should add, “especially when you are abroad.” You are free and strangely bereft of the habits you had in your day-to-day life in your country of origin, which allows you to create a new “un-routinely” routine, full of exploration and discoveries. In order to have order again in your daily life, you can try and take up new habits. It can be something mundane, like going to buy a coffee every day. But then the barista makes what is a polite sign when you give something in South Korea, with his left arm extended and his right arm folded over, and it is a vivid reminder of where you are, and where you are not. The Korean voices around you in the street can fade into the background, you think you got used to them; but the fact that you do not understand what is being said is a constant indication of the exotic land you are in.

I am going to miss being submerged in such a way in another culture. There is something special in being “the other,” the strange one in a sea of people who have roots in the place you are in. Especially in South Korea, being “the other” grants you a status that few get the honor to have. In my experience there, my impression was that except for a few, South Koreans are rather shy to talk to a stranger and not confident in their English skills. Therefore, they rarely approach you, and when they do, they are a weird mix of being both excited and circumspect about it. I remember meeting some friends of my buddy – a girl in charge of introducing me to the campus and Korean culture – and them being so giggly. You are special, and they do not let you forget it. The few South Koreans who are used to internationals take pleasure in introducing you to their culture, but they rather keep those different parts of their lives separate: They do not introduce you to their Korean friends. You are like an unfamiliar representant of some other part of the planet, and like in a zoo, they are fascinated by their meeting with you. But like how you do not bring back the animal you see in a zoo, they will not include you durably in their groups of friends, with a few exceptions.

This did not keep me from having rather deep discussions with South Koreans about the differences in our cultures. You see, I am entranced by the vision of life a lot of South Koreans seem to have, a mix of modern views with Confucianism-rooted ideals. I am particularly interested in the women’s situation in South Korea which, as I mentioned in my November 2022 article [Gwangju News, issue #249], one could argue was rather bad until recently. Since then, practically each time I was able to have a conversation with a South Korean, man or woman, I tried to have the subject of women’s situation come up in the discussion. It led to thrilling exchanges where I could clearly see the differences in our culture, at least the differences between the way I see things and my interlocutor’s view. I generally liked to start with the military service: It is mandatory in South Korea, but only for men. I was surprised that there was not more talk about it – both from women and from men, for whom, it seems to me, the situation is rather unfair. But it seems that it was only I who thought so: Of all the men I talked to about it, not one of them thought the situation discriminatory. I often got the revealing explanation that service in the military would be too hard for women.

This is emblematic of a point of view that appears to be common among South Korean men, namely, that women, because they are physically weaker than men, are rather more fragile and less apt to do more physically demanding tasks. For example, I remember the incertitude on my South Korean friend’s face and his worry-filled remarks when he saw me about to leave with my big suitcase. In much the same way, a photographer friend of mine confided in me her difficulties in finding a job making documentaries, as photographers and filmmakers are expected to be able to lift cameras for long periods of time. Of course, those difficulties exist in my country, too. It is impossible to deny that women face those kinds of problems everywhere. But it still shows the diminutive image that women have in South Korea, an image that has to evolve if South Korea wants to catch up to the other developed countries in the world. This does not stop the corals from being beautiful and the experience from being such an intense one; I can only hope that one day the elusive fish let themselves be touched.

The Author

Lisa Ghilardi is from France and was an exchange student at Chonnam National University.  She is addicted to cookies and udong noodles. Instagram: @lisa_gf