Sebae (세배) Revisited and Identity Politics

[samedi]

When I mentioned sebae (세배) - the tradition of bowing to one's elders for the lunar new year - in an earlier entry I hardly thought that I would have further reason to write about the subject until next year. Guess that was a premature conclusion

Comments

[samedi]

And 외국인 doesn't really mean "foreigner," it means non-Korean person (sort of literally "other/out-land-person"), as Brian's article points out.

外國人 may not always mean "foreigner" but there are certainly times when it can be interpreted that way. There was only one instance where I translated 외국인 in my post, and my use of 'foreigner' seemed acceptable due to the fact that (1) she asked me that question at a time when I didn't use any Korean in the classroom, so the linguistic association would have been harder to make, and (2) most of the people who read my LiveJournal are not familiar with Korean culture and norms, and may therefore have been confused had I typed Teacher, are you a non-Korean-person? as a translation. Plus, it was late and I didn't want to go into a deep deconstruction of the term at 3:00am (when I finally hit the 'submit' button for this entry.) ;)

Without specifically asking her which meaning she had intended at the time all we can do now is guess. Interestingly, the comments to that entry and this later blog post by Horace Jeffery Hodges/ Gypsy Scholar suggest that there are indeed Koreans who use/accept the word to mean "foreigner" and not "non-Korean person". (Assuming they answered his queries accurately, anyway.)

I think my own linguistic background may also play a role in how I choose to view 外國人/외국인. The second language I learned was French, which uses the word étranger to mean:

1. adjective
      1. foreign;
      2. ~ à [person] not involved in [case];
      outside [group]; [fact] with no bearing on [problem];
      se sentir ~ to feel like an outsider;
      3. unfamiliar.

2. noun, masculine, feminine
      1. foreigner;
      2. outsider;
      3. stranger.

3. masculine noun
      à l'~ abroad.

Additionally, the related étrange is used to mean:

1. adjective
      strange;
      chose ~ elle n'a pas répondu strangely enough she didn't answer.

2. masculine noun
      1. strangeness;
      2. l'~ the bizarre.

One word with connotations of "a foreigner", "a stranger", "an outsider", "foreign", "strange", "weird", and "bizarre" covers a lot of ground and presents interesting scenarios when trying to perform translations into English. (i.e., Albert Camus wrote a book titled L’Étranger that I have seen translated as The Stranger in American releases but as The Outsider in British releases. However, as the protagonist is a French national in Algeria he also happens to be a foreigner to the local culture.) Having this framework in mind makes it easier for me to accept the terms "foreign" and "non-native" as very fluid and overlapping, perhaps more so than is generally allowed within English. This ties in to my interpretation of 외국인, as to me it seems acceptable to use "non-Korean" and "foreigner" interchangeably.

I went to read your earlier post and found it - and the associated comments - to be very interesting. However, one thing that struck me is the following (from one of your comments):

I love so many things about the group mentality (which I get more from my interactions with Se Jin's family and some other Korean friends than from taekwondo because almost all the other kids at the studio are under 14... we're in a tiny area), but I also don't want to lose who I am over here. So I check myself now and then.

Can I ask what you meant by the remark about losing who you are? That was the part that stood out the most to me ...