Korean Relationships

Korea is a very couple oriented culture. There are:

• 100 day anniversaries
• Black Day (2/14): When the girl buys the guy presents
• White Day (3/14): When the guy buys the girl presents
• Couple outfits: When the couples match each other (There are even matching underwear, bras, and boxers/briefs to choose from)
• Couple rings: A ring that you wear on your left hand to declare that you are taken. This is not like a traditional promise ring, where it is to show you are planning to be engaged. This is a ring to make things “official.”

Also in Korea, there are many themed cafes:

• Sheep cafe
• Raccoon cafe
• Dog cafe
• Cat cafe
• Hello Kitty cafe
• Princess cafe
• Hanbok or dress cafe

So, of course, lets put the two together and make a Ring (반지) Making Cafe.

On Saturday, April 23rd, my birth mother, Hanbin (our translator friend), and I went out to eat Dak Jjim (닭찜), braised chicken. It was delicious (맛있었어요).

Then we went to the ring making cafe where we spent hours filing, pounding, bending, and shining. Then after all that, the woman at the shop engraved the rings wrong, so they made us whole new rings. In the end, we got rings we never even worked on. The rings ended up beautiful though with each others’ names in our own ring.

Even though the rings are usually for couples, it is sort of cool to have a family ring. I look down and I get to think of her. I think of her braveness and selflessness for giving up her child. I am reminded of how lucky I am to have grown up in such an amazing, loving family. It also pushes me to work harder at learning Korean.

I have finally taken steps to try to actually learn Korean. I have bought a work book and if I can get through level 1, I will hopefully look into a tutor. My motivation is to be able to actually communicate with my birth mom.

We have been so fortunate to have volunteers and friends being willing to translate for us, so we can meet. I just hope that one day I can actually communicate what I did today to her.

When I first got here, I thought I would learn Korean since I was going to be here for a year, but I soon found out, that you did not need to learn the language to get by. I learned the bare minimal to get by in a grocery store, restaurant, and taxi. I was not motivated, because I thought that I would never need to know Korean after this year. Now, Korean is something I will use when I am in Korea and outside of it, so I can stay in touch with my birth mother.

I see myself being more cognizant of my relationship status while be in Korea. I see my friends from back home getting married. I see new friends here being in relationships. I see complete strangers all around me holding hands. It feels as though you cannot runaway from it all.

Now that I am working for a social discovery app (in some countries, a dating app), I started researching dating apps. I never understood Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, Coffee Meets Bagel… the list goes on and on, but I needed to try to understand. That is when I started using different dating apps. I started to understand the feelings that people got when they used it. It was an instant gratification when you were matched with someone. It was fun to just swipe through people, like people watching. There was no fear of being rejected, because if they didn’t like you, then they will never know you liked them. I started to be amazed at the creators of Tinder. They took the real act of scanning the bar to go up to someone, but took out all the negative parts.

When I first downloaded Tinder, I stayed up just swiping and swiping and swiping. When someone messaged me it felt like a compliment. I felt a high. I could understand why some people use it for an ego boost.

Then one night, after I wasted hours just swiping and talking to random people, I realized that I could be spending my time doing so many other things: blogging, reading my many books, exercising, praying. I also realized that these guys that I were talking to were not valuable relationships to me, they were complete strangers. I am taking away time I could be talking to my real friends in Korea and back home.

Then I started to get angry at society. I got angry about how the culture has turned into a hook-up culture and that people are not meeting in person any more. People are glued to their phones and not looking up to meet some amazing people in front of them. In Korea, I am knocked into by at least one person on their phone a day. I look around at restaurants and see friends messaging on their phones and not fostering the relationship with the person they are with.

It just makes me sad.

Then a month went by living in Gangnam and I really hadn’t made any friends in my area. I didn’t have a tight knit community of people to see and hangout with. I honestly would have rather stayed at work then to go home to an empty apartment.

I got lonely.

I had even thought of getting a dog…but my friends talked me out of it (well more like they scolded me/ scared me out of it).

I took time to think about why I was lonely.

I have good friends all over Korea some just a subway stop away and just 45 minutes away in Korea. I have my friends from back home just a phone call away. I have great coworkers that care about me. I have a family that loves me. If I wanted to make plans I could. How could I be lonely?

I had always thought that I wanted to live in a big city, like NYC, and now I was in a city just like that. I had started to realize how a big city makes it hard to create new relationships. People go through their normal routine keeping to themselves. I am not in college where I have people that I know all around me with similar interests and even similar age. I am not in classes or student groups with people that I have known for years. I am in a city of complete strangers…maybe possible friends.

I am pretty outgoing, and even I think that going up to someone would bother the other person’s daily life. Therefore, if I feel this, probably many other people feel this too, so now we are in this never ending cycle of keeping to ourselves, because we care about not destroying the other person’s monotony.

So I challenge you and myself: Lets try to end the monotony, change the norm, and reach out to a new person. Lets get rid of #foreveralone and #nonewfriends. There are over 7.4 billion people on earth. There is no need for someone to be forever alone.

I can tell you that I have tried and it has backfired. I have chickened out talking to someone I think looks friendly or even alone. It is not always easy for an extrovert, but I have also recently had some great relationships made by others starting to talk to me on the subway. Just a simple conversation showed me that when a complete stranger reaches out to you, it can also bring a smile and joy to their day.

Do I still get lonely?… yes. Is that okay?… yes. I am an extrovert that desires human interaction. I do feel relief when I think that no matter what, I do have always someone by my side that is stronger than any friendship can amount to.