Tag: mulan dishonor on you

Sometimes he doesn’t get my movie references. Also his family lives on a farm in Korea, which was why he was insisting they don’t have a cow. Also I love (the Disney movie) Mulan.

So I bought 2 new books.The Korean Mind by Boyé Lafayette De Mente and Korean Thought and Culture by Chai-Shin Yu. I have a bunch of other books on Korean culture and Korean Thought but I like learning more and seeing how books on it differ. I’ve found reading these types of books helps me immensely as they just make things so much clearer. Learning about Korean culture from the average Korean only gets you so far, as they are not usually able to articulate certain aspects of Korean culture or even realise how something differs to another culture. It is actually quite hard to explain your own culture and it usually takes an either an outsider or someone who has studied extensively to adequately explain well to others. Which is why I really appreciate these types of books. They explain things that my husband can never explain to me. Sometimes things are explained that I was wondering about, but other times it’s something I hadn’t even consciously realised but once it’s explained it gives a much bigger picture of Korean culture. Which of course, benefits our relationship as my husband’s ‘Koreaness’ is a vital part of who he is and it’s not something that can just be separated from him.

Unfortunately there just aren’t enough books on modern Korean culture. South Korea has changed rapidly in the past few decades and I don’t think literature has really caught up properly yet. Even in the past 5 years Korea has changed a lot. I feel like I’m still waiting for a really good comprehensive book on the subject. That’s not to say there are no good books – there are – but I think they could be better. For example, The Korean Mind by Boyé Lafayette De Mente, this author is widely regarded as an expert on Asian culture and has published so many books. But when you open the book there are very obvious spelling mistakes in the Hangul. The idea of the book is to look at many different words in Korean and show how they relate to Korean thinking and culture. But with such big mistakes quite obvious as soon as you open the book, it makes you wonder what else is wrong in it. That is disappointing.

The big question is: Why is did he throw the books on the floor? Because he wanted to have a nap and was lazy and tossed everything off the bed. I think that’s just him and not anything to do with Korean culture.