When tourists or expats exclaim, “Oh, the people there are so great!” it is usually subjective hype- a good Samaritan returns a lost bill, the local service workers seem exuberant, a few serendipitous encounters introduce friendly strangers, no one gets their pocket picked, and hey, why not look on the bright side of life? Only Scrooges complain about vacations and foreign travel. But the truth is not so rosy. I met many friendly individuals in South Korea, sure, but to characterize the Korean people, above other characteristics, as friendly would seem a step too far. The real question is who- what people- are friendly above all else. I suppose, as an Iowan, I always have my radar out to detect for friendliness and folksiness, so this became a real search for me. If someone visited the places I did and ranked Korea as an especially friendly place above others (it is often a very reserved and well-behaved place) I would dispute it with the argument below:
Friendliest: Thailand
Runner-up: USA (mostly in the Midwest)
Thailand is nicknamed “the Land of Smiles” for good reason. Most every place I tried out my marginal Thai speaking ability, or where I gave a polite wai (prayer hands and bowed head) greeting, I was met with a big smile and a compliment: “You SUH-PEAK Thai soo GOOOD.” I found the few beaches I saw in Thailand crowded, dirty, and touristy; the thrill for me was just trying to ask kind-looking strangers questions or order food in their language. The laid-back sa-baai (relaxed) attitude in Thailand, and their welcoming interest in foreign visitors- not just eyeing me as a walking cash cow to be milked, although that element definitely exists in Thailand’s dirty alleys and shopping arcades- was a highlight of my time there, although the openness did backfire on me.
The ubiquitous, super cheap massage parlors (legit ones; get your mind out of the gutter) were advertised by the masseuses sitting around on the porch and calling out “MASSAGE!” until they had hooked your attention. I made the most of the availability of dirt cheap massages by going almost every other day. But every time the massage lady found out I could speak a little, or nitnoi, Thai, she peppered me with a stream of questions like a chatty beautician in an American hair salon. I couldn’t answer any of them past my name, age, occupation, where I was from, and what I was doing in Thailand, so I had to constantly apologize, “I don’t understand. I don’t understand,” as my overeager acquaintance told me indecipherable lines in Thai and broken English how happy I would be in Thailand.
And yet, unlike in the Philippines, I never got the impression the people were trying to butter me up and work me over. Negotiating price with tuk-tuk drivers and bartering with shopkeepers was never really stressful, but straightforward. I’ve never found it to be true in America or anywhere else, but smile in Thailand, and the Thais smile with you.
Even Ronald McDonald is more friendly and polite in Thailand.
I say the American Midwest is the second friendliest place I’ve ever been because, even among Americans, I’ve heard of people visiting my home state (Iowa) and being taken aback by store clerks greeting customers or saying “Thank you,” strangers holding the door open for each other, and drivers passively letting pedestrians and other cars cross in front of them first. It’s not quite the Garrison Keillor caricature, especially among the younger generations, and sure, the Midwest isn’t THAT much friendlier than other places in America- also, lots of other places have high standards for public manners (get over yourselves, Canadians)- but growing up here I was exposed to a lot of gentle adults who treated me with nothing but kindness. It was just expected that nice people would joke around with you or take up light teasing when they met you out in public, then depart with a smile or a pat on the back. While it seems that my unpleasant experiences close to home have more than balanced out the kind encounters, whenever I visit another place and see the people almost uniformly acting rude or stone-faced to each other, I worry about what’s wrong with them. As soon as I got back to Iowa from abroad, and an oncoming truck driver stopped well short and waved me to walk across the street, I remarked, “That would never, ever happen in China. Ever.”
Least Friendly: Korea
Runner-up: USA
Re the woman’s face in this picture: restaurant advertisement or hostage video?
Sometimes it seemed like no mystery to me why the two halves of Korea are in the midst of the world’s longest ongoing war, not counting the unending hostility Israel has faced from its neighbors since day one (July 1953 marked the armistice agreement between North and South Korea, not the peace treaty). I can think of no disposition so stubborn, grief-mongering, and hostile to outsiders as what I witnessed in modern South Korea. Sure, China’s “People’s” government is also engaged in a constant push of anti-Japan, anti-foreign oppressors propaganda through school curricula, popular media, and official statements, and the present day disputes of China vs. Japan seemed just as petty as Korea’s in some cases (“These barren rocks belong to us! You can see in this mildewed, moth-eaten map that these two black blobs in the middle of the ocean must represent our ancient, irreproachable claim to this territory. Your claim is groundless and absurd!”), but I never got the feeling that everyone in China was carrying a chip on their shoulder towards the outside world, or that they defined the outside world as “everyone not directly in my relative social circle.” Chinese people, in my encounters, looked at the USA and foreign visitors as country bumpkins who didn’t quite know how to contain their curiosity and so might point and shout out “Laowai!” (“Foreigner!”), or just march right up and bombard me with questions or gawk at me. South Korea is the only country I’ve been to where I received the reaction I thought had died out in the modern world: a little girl walking towards me suddenly looked up and gasped, “Waygook-een!” (“Foreigner!”) and turned on her heel, running in panic back to her father.
In my daily experiences in Korea, I often felt like indignantly apologizing that I wasn’t the one to pickle all of my grouchy strangers’ sour kimchi, so why was I getting the mean, frowning looks and calloused treatment? I was warned by some Chinese friends who’d been there that Koreans had a holier-than-thou attitude that Korean culture was superior to all others and Korean people were the best. Still, I had a hard time handling my shock as I’d get cut in line three times in a row as I stood immediately outside a bathroom door, or pushed and scowled at on the bus or subway, or grouped in people’s minds together with every expat drunk and sexual deviant as a foreign bogeyman, or treated so explicitly and embarrassingly as a foreigner that the concept started to take on a dirty meaning, or often excluded with an icy invisible wall. I had heard from other Americans who’d been there and back that Koreans are hard to get to know personally, but once you do the friendship is binding, intimate, and lifelong. I can say that I definitely experienced the first half of that equation, but my hopes of crossing into the latter were never met.
Koreans even have a word, or cultural concept, to describe their feelings of bitterness and unrequited revenge: han (“haan”), or 한 in Korean script, or 恨 in the Chinese root. I read that han is a deep and difficult-to-understand concept, but as soon as I saw it identified in text I thought, “Yes, from every unflinching frown I seem to tangibly feel, I know exactly what they’re talking about.” According to the Wikipedia article (motto: “27 million contributors can’t be wrong”), anthropologists have even “recognized han as a culture-specific medical condition whose symptoms include dyspnea, heart palpitation, and dizziness.” (Wait, can I quote a Wikipedia article? It’s bound to change a week after I post this. I suppose I could just go and change it back, but then I might get into an editing war with a presumptuous Wikipedia editor. Ah, life can be so stressful. I think I might be developing an appreciation for han.) Han is supposed to include bottled-up feelings of sorrow, passive aggression, and an abiding thirst for vengeance against oppressors. As a side note, I can’t be the only one to have noticed that han is a perfect pun in the Korean language for the “Han” people and “Han” country, or Hangook and Hangook-een: “Korea”/”Korean”. I think that the developed han concept is all a self-important gloss for what my grandma would call bein’ ornery, i.e. people acting stubborn, grouchy, and vengeful. Like every comic book villain will teach you, nursing a grievance and spending life seeking to avenge old injustices is a recipe for evil. Not that Koreans would ever listen to a foreigner, but please, let it go. I don’t care about Dokdo Island. I don’t think anyone outside Korea does. Bury all the hatchets.
This is me on one of the two rocks of Dokdo. I’m probably one of a dozen non-Koreans to ever visit this jingoistic symbol.
To be fair, and honest, I met lots of Koreans who were happy to have me around and were delighted to meet me due to my foreign-ness and “so handsome” looks, or even because they genuinely had fun with me in their group. And Koreans’ disposition wasn’t a walking cartoon of clenched teeth, sharply frowned brow lines, dark appearances, gray clouds, and grumbling- but it often seemed close.
I was sometimes asked by Korean acquaintances if I wouldn’t want to stay in their country long term, get a nice English-teaching job, find a Korean girl, have a family and settle down. The thought was tempting, truly- I think Korea is, despite the difficulties, a very comfortable and fun place for Americans to live- but I couldn’t shake the dread of living to be an old man and still having people act surprised at how well I could use chopsticks or read the Korean alphabet, still placing me not even at the bottom of the social totem pole but somewhere out of sight, or having them finding unhappy ways to blurt out “Really? But you’re a foreigner.” I have already dug myself a deep enough hole with any of my remaining Korean friends, so I think I will just quit now.
A perfect metaphor for han?
I say the USA is the next least friendly place I’ve ever been because I think that Jesus’ statement to his home synagogue in Nazareth: “A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country, and in his own house” has always seemed to have a general application to me in the familiar places I’ve lived. In nearly every foreign setting, just being different has sparked many excited conversations that have to rely on fundamental human connections over language subtlety and status. The closer I’ve been to home, the more I had in common, the more people could assume about me, and the more it took to impress them. So, unless I’ve had a job or reputation worth boasting about, most of my conversations with neighbors have stop before they ever get started. People overseas were eager to ask me simply where I was from. Obviously, no one in America was interested in this information unless I really stood out as a tourist or something, and even then my answer wasn’t special enough to spur the conversation on. Most things could just be assumed and went without saying. I’ve also found that Americans closest to my age or social situation like to assume I share most of their same opinions, so if I ever fail to laugh at the same political jokes or fail to echo the social vibe, this puts an uncomfortable damper on the relationship. And, an axiom that people everywhere seem to say is that bad people are everywhere. The insults and cold shoulders sting that much more when I’m literate in the language and context.
Foreign exoticism cut both ways. Whenever I went to tourist spots, strangers would ask to take their picture with me, like this young man. Fun attention, at times, but also overwhelming.
Rudest: To avoid being redundant, I will just link to some stories of my rude encounters in China here and here. Or, just look up “The Real China” category link in the sidebar. Not as bad as China- not nearly- but there were nonetheless a lot of boors in South Korea, especially with the kids who fought, screaming and stomping and hitting and kicking and pushing, without ever getting an adult censure, and the older men and women who pushed and shoved to get into subway cars and elevators and tight spaces.
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