Sebae (세배) Revisited and Identity Politics
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 ( Read more... )
1) I believe and want to believe that the kids who made a bow (sebae) to you are well educated how to behave. It is no wonder to me at all that the kids mad sebae to their teacher. Whether you are foreigner or not does not matter.
2) Kids love to take sebae-don (the money or reward for the sebae) so often they do sebae for the reward. Kids do not know the real meaning of sebae so they just simply do it if they are ordered to do or just for fun.
3) All the defintions of foreigner or 외국인 works when Koreans say 외국인 to 외국인, and you must interpret the meaning by the occasions and by the context. It could be simply a legal status or could be a rather insulting term. I would say, in general, 외국인 or more often used as 외국사람 is meant by non-Korean by the blood and the heritage. Quite recently, a German-Korean became the president of the Korea Tourism Organization (한국관광공사). His name is 이 참. He had been living in Korea for 30 or 40 years and speaks fluent Korean. He still complains that some Koreans consider him as 외국인.
I realized very recently from flickring that some non-Korean residents do not like the word 외국인 as they are called by others. I can sense that they got "no-so-good" feeling about the word. It is like "an acorn in the dog's foold". Foreigner and stranger have some commons. Camus's book title is I guess Stranger, in English, but is 이방인 in Korean. If any one does not belong to the majority group, he is a foreinger and a stranger unless or until they accept you as their member. I would also say that all Koreans living in USA with U.S. citizenships in their first generation of immigration, have lived and still are living as foreigners or 외국인 to the majority Americans. My nephews who were born in the U.S. believe they are Americans not Koreans and they don't speak Korean. I wonder what they have felt when they studied American History which has nothing to do with their parents.
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