We ask questions to Australian/Korean married couples! How did you meet? What aspects of your partner’s culture have you adopted? Best and worst things about international/intercultural relationships? Advice or other couples?
Big thank you to everyone who helped us make this video!
There is a reason why we don’t do these videos regularly: they sure are a pain to edit! But we had been wanting to do something like this for a long time. This video is just Australian/Korean couples, but we may in the future do another video with a bigger mix of people. We wanted to focus on the culture rather than race aspects, as too often people focus on race and what people look like. But culture is what we should be talking about. How do you navigate and international and intercultural marriage? It’s an ongoing exploration and discussion.
I’ve shown this in a comic recently here, but we also made a video about this flower culture in Korea.
The flood plain next to our village is bare all through winter, but in preparation for spring, canola seeds are planted. They come up really quickly as the weather gets warmer and then suddenly there are yellow flowers everywhere! We usually go there at the end of the day when there are less people. So for this video we filmed while there weren’t many people and as the sun was setting.
There are lots of nice things about Korean couple culture and dressing in matching clothes and taking nice photos together is something I think is lovely.
Canola flowers grow on the flood plain next to the river in our village. They are deliberately planted so people can come and enjoy them. During the week I see a few people wandering through but on the weekend there were so many. People arrived in cars from all over to walk through the flowers and take photos. We were riding our bikes around the village in the afternoon and were shocked to see lots of people. Usually we see no one in our area besides from a few old people.
Taking photos with flowers is pretty popular in Spring in Korea, so people were all dressed nicely, and one couple were even doing engagement photos. However, Hugh was in his “home clothes” which are old and falling apart clothes, and had gross, unwashed hair. Very different to how he looks in Seoul! It’s fine when it’s just old people that see you, but a bit different when there are large groups of nicely dressed people! So after grumbling at how many people have invaded his village sanctuary, we rode our bikes somewhere else instead.
We filmed this before we were in Australia for 6 weeks. This is the ancestral memorial rites for the Gwon/Kwon family. Hugh and I were researching online the exact word for this type of one but couldn’t find it, there doesn’t seem to be as much information about it. It is Jesa, the ancestral rituals, but not exactly the same as the more commonly done ones. This one is done once a year with the head family and it honors 8 or 9 generations back. Because the Gwon family were part of the yangban (the traditional ruling class) they have all the records of how far back their family goes.
In Korea, Catholics, Buddhists and the nonreligious practice ancestral rites, but protestant Christians do not usually. Although I identify as Christian myself, I have a lot of issues with the type of Christianity in Korea and how culture can be erased when Western missionaries push their own beliefs but that’s a discussion for another day. These ceremonies show appreciation and respect to the family’s ancestors as well as strengthening ties with living family.
You can see the different treatment of men and women in Confucianism in traditions like this (and still to this day in modern society). But it is gradually changing. Just recently for Lunar New Year Hugh’s immediate family decided it wasn’t fair for women to have to do 4 bows when men did 2, so it was changed to women doing 2 as well, because as Hugh put it, “Confucius was sexist”. At the Gwon family ancestral memorial I could see the difference in attitudes depending on how old the male family member was. Hugh was actually quite shocked that the women couldn’t eat with the men and had to prepare all the food, and a middle aged family member was helping carry the food across for the women, while the older men didn’t seem to give it a second thought. Confucianism has some good elements, but some benefit from some modern changes. The culture can be kept but updated for a modern Korea. In fact modern Korea could benefit from going back to some Confucian ideals of not having corrupt leaders, but again a discussion for another day.
This was the first time Hugh had done this particular ceremony as usually only his father does it. Being in an international marriage and mixing your culture with another does make you start to appreciate your own culture and where you come from. It’s good to understand your own heritage as you also adopt another. In recent years I’ve discovered more about my own ancestors and my ancestor who arrived as a convict in Australia on the first fleet. My father and I visited her grave and contemplated how she was just a young girl who had stolen some fabric and was sentenced to death, but then transportation, and how hard her life must have been. I was incredibly moved to visit her grave but also felt helpless as there were no words or rituals to be said in respect for her. So because that is lacking in my own culture (unless someone dies in a war) I can appreciate these rituals in Korean culture.
We talk with our friends Kirstin and Jerrold about what it’s like to be Korean American. What’s it like coming back to Korea? Also, what cultural aspects they keep in the USA and how different both their experiences are. You can check out their YouTube channel here.
We were hanging out with them while they had some wedding photos taken. We showed you the accommodation in this video:
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