Online relationships

 While I was surfing youtube channels for English learning, one of the influencers recommended a site for practicing English by making foreign friends. I tried to enter to find out if the site is good for my students and once I accessed the site, I instantly got many messages from members around the world. I was surprised by its speed and quantity of the texts and I responded the person who sent the first. He introduced himself as British living in London. He seemed nice and very active with this type of communication. I responded him but I was getting uncomfortable because he sent too many texts in a short period of time. I’m not a people person and not get used to this communication style. I was hesitated to share my personal information with a person I never met and rarely know. Besides, I don’t talk much through Social media so my responses were always late. He kept sending me texts every day urging my reply since morning until he goes to bed and I felt guilty for not responding him right away. I also felt uncomfortable for his asking personal questions. Actually I don’t want any romantic relationship but I somehow sensed that he may want that kind of relationship and tried to cross the line. When I told him this and tried to stop the relationship then he said he didn’t mean it and he was just lonely.  

Although I had lived in foreign countries a long time and I’m pretty open to new things, my thought about romantic relationship has changed little. My husband was my first love and I never dated seriously with other men. Actually it was normal 30 years ago and Korean women were tacitly not allowed to date with many men. Most couples say love is essential for keeping the marriage but what I believe as the most important thing between a couple is trust and faith. Even they no longer love each other, they need to keep fidelity until they divorce. Having affairs are regarded to be the worst thing in marriage and adultery law was existed until 2015 in Korea. In the past, it was only required to women but I claim this should be applied to men at the same level. I don’t agree with careless divorce however, then it comes to affair, I would divorce without consideration since the person betrayed the partner’s heart. Therefore, when we had to separate due to my study, I kept distance from men while I was living alone in America and treated my husband truly although we don’t express much how we love each other in our daily routine.

In contrast, Americans are free to express their feelings and seem to like to touch and to be touched. They don’t seem to care whether the loved one is married or single. I witnessed one of my girlfriends left her husband for another man. People keep saying “I love you” every day and kissing and hugging in public is normal. By expressing one’s own feeling enough, people feel they are loved. I think it’s a good effect of expression.

Unfortunately, I was born and raised in totally different culture where those expressions were regarded to be unnecessary so I’m not good at showing how I feel. I don’t even enjoy texting on the phone with my family. However, not saying “I love you” every day and infrequent texting doesn’t mean I don’t love my family as much as Americans do. I do love them and they know it. It’s just a cultural difference among different countries.

I feel many Western people fear to be alone and they seem to easily feel lonely and want company. Some research claims that lonely people are more vulnerable to get sick. I agree with it and I understand this feeling but I don’t care of being alone. Sometimes I enjoy loneliness especially after joining the big gathering. Being alone gives you some benefit. You can appreciate art at your pace when you visit an art museum alone. You can focus on yourself when you’re alone. You can make your own schedule when you travel alone. Of course you have to deal with loneliness by yourself though. I don’t say being alone is much more important than being with company. What I’d like to point out is that both times with and without people should weigh the same. The important thing is to keep balance between my own time and social gathering.

Anyway, I don’t feel comfortable with exchanging texts with him but I don’t want to be rude to him either since I think he’s a kind and nice man. He’s just lonely so I don’t want to hurt his feeling. What should I do to stop this without hurting anyone’s feeling?

The reason you rarely hear your first name in Korea

 

When you live in Korea, you can hardly hear your first name called. Every time I introduced my husband to my American friends in a party, I felt a little awkward to call my husband’s first name cause I hardly called him his first name. Strange?

Korea has been under the influence of Confucianism which means Koreans take “respect” and “manners” very seriously according to a person’s age and social hierarchy. Although modern society of Korea has no social class however, there still exists some tacit agreement. Korea had a type of caste system of nobleman and the common people and there were four classes which were scholars, farmers, artisans, and tradesmen. The system was gone when Korea went through the period of modernization, but the concept still exists in Korean people’s unconscious mind. So you should show respect to people whoever is older than you. Even twins have age difference and one who is born a minute late should call one a minute earlier an older sister/brother. Calling first name in Korea is regarded to be an act of looking down or s/he is immature, or the person is in a very close relationship.  

Due to this, we have various words to call people. First of all, “eon-ni”, “o-ppa”, “noo-na”, “hyung” are used in a family. The calling basis also depends on gender. When a girl calls her older brother, she uses “o-ppa”, and her older sister, “eon-ni” while a boy calls his older brother “hyung” and older sister “noo-na”. This concept expands further to a society with all older boys and older girls. These terms are regarded to express closeness in the relationship.

calling of family members

We use other words to refer the relationship in a formal way in schools or worksites which are “seon-bae” and “hoo-bae”. “seon-bae” is the term to call people who are older or higher and “hoo-bae” is for younger or lower. For example, if you are a rookie in a company, you should call all people who entered earlier “seon-bae-nim”. The last suffix “nim” is a polite form to call people. If the person has a title, then you need to add the title after the person’s last name such as “Kim bu-jang-nim” or “Park kwa-jang-nim”. You should never call them as first name in any condition. If the person is a professor then you should call him “Kim kyo-soo(professor)-nim”. If the person is a lawyer then “Kim byun-ho-sa(lawyer)-nim”. When you meet a person who doesn’t have a title then use “teacher” to show respect like “Kim seon-saeng(teacher)-nim” even though s/he has nothing to do with education. So we call people by their titles or their roles in a society, and to people without titles, we even give them a temporary title to show respect. That’s why you hardly hear your own first name in a Korean society.

staff level system in a company

Among married couples, Korean words of “honey” or “darling” are used but since my husband was my brother’s friend I called him “o-ppa” at first and after we got married, I got used to the calling and it was hard to change. One thing which is clear that whatever I change the calling, I should never call him his first name because he’s older than me. The interesting thing is that even older husband rarely calls his young wife first name after they have kids. For example when a couple has a baby named Jane, then they call each other “Jane’s mom” and “Jane’s dad”. Even your parents call you someone’s mom or dad when you get married and have kids. Of course you are called by your first name if you are not married yet but you have to poise yourself to answer all personal questions about marriage.

In conclusion, addressing someone in Korea is very important and you need to be careful to call Koreans.

I got hooked by Phishing

 Today, the last of July, I did the stupidest thing in my life. I got hooked by phishing scam online. I didn’t even realize it until my banker called me. With the help of the banker, I stopped my card and requested a new one however, I felt so insecure, unsafe, anxious, and even scared. What if I lost all my money in the bank, or what if they cracked my personal information online, etc.

So, I recalled and analyzed what I did. I was in the middle of searching for class materials and was surfing internet as usual and there was this site popped up that I won a Samsung galaxy giveaway of Google. There were the images of thrown small pieces of paper with a sign “congratulations” and most of all, Google logo was there. They asked me to survey very simple questions about websites and showed me the device with only $1! If I was cautious as usual, then I wouldn’t click it at the moment I saw the $1 sign. However, as ill luck would have it, I was thinking of switching my old smartphone and the prize attracted me right away. Also, I’ve been googling every day and had friendly attitude so I made an excuse that the possibility of win getaway would be higher. So I didn’t have any doubt when I entered my card number.

With this, I realized how easy for one to be hooked by phishing scam. Generally I thought victims of phishing scam are kind of old and less logical and less rational people. I never thought that I would be the victim of that kind of crime but I had to admit that I was conceited that I’m educated, smart, and understand the way to commit a fraud well. This incident threatened not only my financial status but also my mental balance. Once I knew I got hooked by the crime, I couldn’t be calm. I got angry of my ignorance at first and then scared of possible bad consequences. It hurt my self-esteem and self-confidence.

How can I prevent this? How can I guarantee it will never happen again in the rest of my life? I don’t know. For now, I’m just trying to find someone to blame for this although I know well deep in my mind that it’s me to be blamed on. I’m still scared that literally anyone can be exposed to this kind of crime and can be a victim.