Monday, August 2, 2010

Fighting leads to defending K-Pop?

I have had a number of email fights with my Korean guy. An email fight with someone who speaks English is uncomfortable enough but when you add someone who translates almost every English sentence through an electronic translator, you've got real trouble and confusion for both parties.
So far, we have had 2 blow outs. I am waiting for the 3rd any day now in response to my last email.

I would have to say, the most obvious quality in my guy's fight email is fire! He is angry and very hot tempered. And yes, his attitude does prove to be true to the "angry Korean male" sterotype. Unlike a disagreement with a fellow Canadian who would just concentrate on the topic he would bring in his nationalistic pride and his IQ into the picture. Who would involve these 2 irrelivent points into a disagreement that has nothing to do with either topic?
Here's a few classics:

'Do you think that you know(have) knowledges or common senses about all around the world more than me?'

'In Korea, we enter the college(university) over 90% students after the graduate high school.
Korean elementary school children study until 10 p.m. and Korean High school students study at their school until 12 a.m.Do you know why?We do to win others, to survive in the keen competition world.
We study to win Japan, to win America. Have you ever study to survive?But we do.'


'Do you know why Korean B-Boy dance team always win a No.1 prize at the World's dance contest?

Because they dance risk their life.
( I saw that what they said on the newspaper, "We dance risk our life, so we can victory".)'

See what I mean? The issue will never get solved. There is never an apology. There is always an inclusion of this statement ,
"And now, I don't trust you any more."
This one appears so much, I swear it's cut and pasted into the fight email.

So the lesson that I have learned is to pick and choose my battles with him. There are some things that can't be expressed very well through emails. Many things are better discussed face to face to get the other facial expressions involved....as well as having an English Korean dictionary handy and a lot of paper to write/ reword the topic so he really understands what we're talking about.

2 comments:

Flint said...

That reminds me of all the times Koreans throw out "you must understand our culture". Whether arguing with you, defending something (especially something indefensible) or talking down to you it is used too much by Koreans. Especially when what you are talking about has nothing to do with culture (like say US beef).

If someone said "And now, I don't trust you any more." I would tear them a new one and that would be the last time we talked. It is insulting.

International Girl said...

I agree, it's very insulting. Thanks for the wake-up call...it's pretty immature to be that childish during an argument, and especially an email argument.

I am re-framing things now...love/lush is totally blind.