Let Irishman Conor Purcell give you his take on the South Koreans.
In general, he finds their constantly making "round eyes" with their fingers at him to be an annoying behavior:
The work itself was challenging and in a field I am interested in. But soon the office politics began to get wearing. As did the garbled conversations in Korean the rest of the office employees would have, interspersed with "waygook" and followed by glances in my direction and staccato giggling. One day, one of my co-workers started pointing at my face and laughing. "So red, so red," he exclaimed. He bounded over and started rubbing my face with the back of his hand. "Ooooaaaahhhhhh!" he shouted and soon the whole office was laughing at the poor waygookin (foreigner) who couldn't stand the 86 degrees Fahrenheit the office is normally at.
To stop this farce I literally had to grab his hand and tell him to stop. "Stop, stop," he mimicked and bounded off as happy as Larry. These moments of juvenility were to be expected and I usually laughed them off, knowing that these people really did not know any better. I often wondered how Korea managed to become the economic powerhouse it was before the IMF crisis. I had visions of Chaebol chairmen rubbing U.S. congressmen's faces in Capitol Hill boardrooms.
More of Conor's Seoul Times articles at the link.
Posted by floridacracker at October 20, 2005 06:21 PMPJ O'Rourke described the Koreans as the Irish of Asia, so this chap should be right at home. My dealings with the buggers have left me with the impression of rude, pushy and wilfully ignorant people who wear plaids that would make a colour-blind Ohio aluminium-siding salesman blush. And as to the whiff that results from kim chi, KB beer and broiled dog, pee-euuw. They also made the most brutal POW camp guards for the Japs in WW2, and are the dominant racial group in the Boryokudan.
They're handy at running convenience stores in high-crime areas though, as they're more aggressive and beligerant than the residents.
His whole series of articles were very interesting. All the gawking is so odd. Surely they're used to Westerners by now. Plus, it's just rude.
Posted by: Donnah at October 21, 2005 09:27 AM