Intercultural Life

Tag: my korean husband (Page 18 of 128)

This Side

This Side

I’ve read that when someone returns to their home, where their parents still live, they tend to act more like their teenage self and revert back to that type of behaviour. That definitely plays a part in how Hugh can act at home. He will argue with this parents, be stubborn and annoying, and torment his sister. He directs some of that sisterly torment at me too, and it’s seriously like dealing with a 16 year old sometimes. That’s not to say he is always like this, because usually he is a mature, level-headed, compassionate man, but he has his teenage times.. luckily we aren’t living here long term and will be moving to Seoul.

Hugh had already seen my sulky and moody teenage times at home in Australia so he was fully aware of that before he married me. But because we moved to Korea after 2 years of marriage, this was more of a surprise for me. In international relationships you always have that change in a partner when moving to another country. Many women married to Korean men find that after moving to Korea long term, that their carefree husband has turned into a stressed workaholic because of Korean work culture. There needs to be understanding on both sides. That’s why marriage is about deciding every day to love someone, even when they can be at their most annoying.

And I bet Hugh gets his revenge on me in a ‘My Australian Wife’ comic!

INTERCULTURAL MARRIED LIFE: AUSTRALIAN/KOREAN COUPLES

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!

Check out Rachel and Nick’s YouTube channel, The Drunken Bear here.

Check out Sophie’s blog on raising a bilingual child here.

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.

(A video with Korean subs will be coming).

Name Change

Name Change

Hugh and his sister watched this drama, so I saw bits and pieces of it but didn’t watch all of it. I was glad to see that a popular drama has a lead male that wasn’t another rich son of a CEO, like almost all other dramas. Apparently it has sparked an interest in men in the special forces though.

What I find a bit ironic is that now there is this interest in how soldiers speak and even some women (who don’t have to do compulsory military service) have started trying to talk like a soldier. Previously, men who finished their service could be self conscious about their automatic soldier speech, especially because people might make fun of it. But now it was in a drama, it’s suddenly “cool”. How fickle people are…haha.

Speaking of name changes, it used to be hard to change your name in Korea, but these days it is quite easy. I don’t think Hugh should change his name though…

My Australian Wife: Tree

MYAUSTRALIANWIFETREES

Hugh says:

“My wife talks to trees. She talks to things a lot of times, not only trees. Sometimes I thought she was talking to me but she was actually talking to a thing. And it was quite strange. Actually sometimes it is quite cute.”

(I just think out loud a lot!)

Korean Culture: Flowers and Photos

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.

Hugh’s first Kpop Concert: Block B

Hugh’s first Kpop concert! We were given some tickets for Block B so it was the perfect opportunity for him to go (he always complains about ticket prices other times I’ve tried to get him to come). Luckily Block B is considered a cool enough group… haha… especially since member Zico was a producer on the popular Rap elimination TV show ‘Show Me the Money’. Bobby from iKON was also a previous winner on that show, for those who want to know how rap and Kpop and ‘Show me the Money’ is all related.

Something I also said in the video, but was edited out because of length, was that this stereotype of Kpop stars just being guys with pretty faces who are not talented and can’t sing so are just auto-tuned, is not really that true. It is for some groups. But the groups that make it really big aren’t like that. They have to be super talented, they have to be able to write and produce. The title of “Kpop” can be really damaging to a lot of groups because of that dismissive way people talk about it. Especially because it’s popular with teenage girls (and we all know how much people want to shit all over teenage girls). G-Dragon has even made the point recently, that all music from Korea gets labelled as Kpop and can have those negative associations, but he doesn’t feel that BIGBANG necessarily fits into that label. I think in recent years especially, there has been more of a push for creative control for Kpop stars. There will always be completely manufactured groups churning out crap for a certain audience, but most really successful groups that last the distance are hardworking, talented, and capable of writing and producing.

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