As some may know, I am a Buddhist. While many assume I became a Buddhist as a result of my time spent in Asia, in fact I became a Buddhist while staying at a monastery near San Diego, California. However, in my third year in Korea, I happened to befriend a monk who ran a very small temple near my workplace. We would have lunch after Sunday services.
After a month of this, he invited me to perform sugye (수계), the Korean Buddhist initiation ritual. The ritual involves formally taking refuge in the three jewels of Buddhism: the Buddha, the Dharma (teaching), and the Sangha (community), and accepting the five precepts (enumerated below). During the ritual, the initiate is touched with a burning incense stick. The monk explained that this is to leave a permanent mark which serves to remind the initiate of his promise to uphold the five precepts. During (or right after) the ceremony, the initiate is given a Buddhist name.
Later I will upload a photograph of the laminated card I was given after my sugye ceremony.
I have translated both the Hangul and Hanja on the card. It reads:
—
Three Jewels
Buddha Dharma Sangha
Five Precepts
I will not kill.
I will not steal.
I will abstain from sexual misconduct.
I will not lie.
I will not drink excessively.
Name:
Buddhist Name:
Birthdate:
Initiation Date:
Buddhist College, Jogye Order Special Parish Chaplain
Chunggukseongbul Temple
Master/Monk:
—
This religious initiation is not entirely different from the Catholic sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation, sharing some elements of each. In a baptism, a child is initiated into the faith. During confirmation, a person agrees to keep the precepts of the church and is given a new name.
My sugye ceremony was held at a temple on a Korean Air Force base. I was initiated along with about a dozen airmen. The monk asked me before the ceremony whether or not I wanted to be burned. I asked him what he meant. “Some of the airmen do not want to have a mark or scar, so I will touch them with the unlit end of the stick.” I told him I wanted the traditional ceremony. We were chanting as he came around with the incense. I noticed he tapped everyone three times. When he got to me, he jabbed the stick into my arm much harder than the others. After the ceremony I asked him why, and he smiled and said “Because you are my student.” Then he pulled up his sleeve to show me his sugye mark. It was three one-centimeter round burns, which were raised like moles or warts. This type of burn would be caused by temple incense, the kind you buy to make a temple offering. Each stick is as big around as a cigarette. Their commitment is obviously greater than mine!
Recently on a post over at Hub of Sparkle, Western Confucian talks about abortions in Korea.
I have a friend who is a doctor in Korea, and I asked him about Korea’s ban on abortions. Here is what he had to say (paraphrased from memory): In Korea, it is illegal to perform elective abortions. Because of this, most doctors performing abortions will report that the abortion was necessary for the health of the mother.
According to the post on Hub, a group of gynecologists is banding together to take doctors performing illegal abortions to task. That seems difficult if doctors can claim it is for the health of the mother, and patients of course won’t be coming forward. This would require a level of monitoring that would cost money. A lot of money. We’ll see what happens.
In the United States, doctors have a practice obliquely related to this one. I once had a cyst removed from my face. My doctor said “Listen, I know with 99.9% certainty that this cyst is benign. However, your insurance won’t pay for me to remove a benign cyst, so we’re sending it in for biopsy, not because we need to check, but just so the insurance companies are satisfied that it isn’t an “elective’ procedure.” But it was an elective procedure. I had that cyst for years before I finally had it removed.
So in both countries, doctors are claiming something different from reality in order to justify an elective procedure that might otherwise not be allowed.
The other day I interviewed for a part time job with a Korean hagwon. They told me the maximum rate they pay their part timers, and I told them I typically get 25% more than that. They asked me if I’d accept 12.5% more than their maximum instead. I told them that would be acceptable. We agreed on a schedule, and I left. Three days before I was to start, they called and asked me if I’d accept their standard maximum. I told them I would not. They said “Well, thanks for your time then,” and hung up. Then they called yesterday and said “Can you start in two hours, if we meet your payment requirements?”
This reinforces the idea that in Korea, the deal isn’t agreed upon until the contract is signed, even if a verbal agreement is reached, or one party declines the offer.
I’d like to stress the fact that when negotiating with Koreans, it is vital to have an alternative to working with them that you don’t find unappealing. Having a good fallback gives you much more negotiating strength. If I absolutely NEEDED that job, I would have had to take their offer.
NOTE: Someone left a comment to this post expresssing doubt over whether or not I am in Korea. It was written in rather pointed terms and violated my one rule: be nice, so I did not allow it to appear. However, I will answer it. I am currently NOT in Korea. This interaction took place outside the country, which is why I didn’t mention specific amounts of money, as they are not in won. I have worked for Korean-run hagwons teaching Korean students English in three countries.
This is the second post in my series on my observations while working for the Republic of Korea Air Force.
The Korean military has a vastly different system when it comes to assignment of personnel. Most enlisted conscriptees doing their military service go to recruit training and then are assigned to a base, to which they usually are attached for their entire term of duty. Those who are accepted into the officer program (called “short-term officers” may be transferred once or twice during the three years they must serve. Long-term (career) officers are usually transferred yearly, although in some cases may spend two years in a single place.
This means a Colonel retiring after 30 years service has between 25 and 30 different units on his service record. I was told it “looks good” to have served in many different units. In practice, I find it highly inefficient. It often takes the new commanding officer four to six months to learn the job, get to know the strengths and weaknesses of key personnel and the unit as a whole, and then after six to eight more months, he or she is gone. Initiatives that may require more than a year’s oversight are difficult to maintain. I say “maintain” because they do not seem difficult to begin. It is not uncommon for new commanding officers to immediately reverse plans or policies that a previous CO may have enacted with an eye to the future.
Another interesting thing is how absolute orders seem to me. I will tell a story to illustrate what I mean. My unit arranged for me to privately teach several lieutenant Colonels, a full colonel, and a brigadier general (base chief of staff). I became known as a “person of influence,” because of this, although this was not really the case. One day a coworker with whom I was friendly came to me, to tell me that he had orders to another unit. This was a unit he had previously been attached to, and he did not want to go. He asked if I could pull some strings and get his orders changed. I was taken aback, not by his asking for help, but because he actually thought that I somehow might be able to.
I asked him what he thought I could do. “Talk to your colonel friend or your general friend,” he suggested. This didn’t make sense to me. In the U.S. Navy, when orders are issued, they come from BUPERS (Bureau of Personnel), and its equivalent in the other services. These orders are generally arrived at through complex manpower planning. Any given colonel could not pick up a phone and stop a captain from being transferred. Said colonel could make a request: they could explain to personnel why the captain in question should remain. Even so, it is a given that no person is irreplaceable in the military. Such requests are rarely made, and even more rarely honored. I explained how it worked in the USA, and he said “Oh, not in Korea. Any higher ranked person can get an order changed or belayed. Our commanding officer has already tried to help me, but he was recently promoted to Lt. Col., and the Lt. Col. who signed the order is senior. I need a colonel or higher to help me. One of your friends could do it with a single phone call. He just needs to call up the Lt. Col. who signed my order and order him to assign someone else.”
I was pretty surprised. I’ve asked a half dozen other officers who all tell me that his facts are correct. If this is the case, how does the South Korean military do any sort of cohesive personnel planning?
End to the story: Making this kind of phone call and stopping a transfer requires use of a kind of “social capital” that high-ranking officers are loathe to give up without good cause. If you go around meddling in other people’s command decisions on a regular basis, you develop a bad reputation which may hurt your chances for promotion. He was transferred the following week.
I spent a year working for the Republic of Korea Air Force, and now that I’ve got some distance from that job (left a year ago this week), I’m going to start a series of posts on what I observed.
The Korean military has some similarities and differences in terms of rank structure, and how personnel of various ranks relate to one another. Both the officer structure and enlisted structure looks (on the surface) to be very similar to the American structure. However, the differences are significant.
The Korean military actually has another “class” of personnel altogether: those doing their two-year obligatory service as an enlisted person. They have a four-grade rank structure all their own. I mention “as an enlisted person” because one can apply to do their service as an officer. This is a competitive application, requiring a bachelor’s degree. Those who are accepted must do three years service instead of two. However, they come in as officers, meaning they get much more substantial pay, have much better quarters, and it looks much better on a resume. While officers often get easier duty, this isn’t always the case. I regularly saw 1st and 2nd Lieutenants outside sweeping up when the base commander was scheduled to visit.
The social differences between the ranks are interesting. I had students of all ranks, from Major General to Private, which afforded me the chance to talk to lots of different kinds of people. A 1st Lieutenant once summarized how various ranks feel about each other thusly: “The temporary duty enlisted think they are better than the career enlisted, because they’ve got plans to finish university and then get a good job. The career enlisted think they are better than both the temporary enlisted and officers because they’re snot-nosed kids. The temporary officers think they are better than all the enlisted, because they’re young officers who think they’re going to get out and set the world on fire., and the career officers think they are better than everyone.” Take this with a grain of salt…its a gross generalization, but it shows what some people think, and knowing how people generalize tells you something too.
If you think Korean society is hierarchical, that goes double for the military. One salutes someone of a higher rank. In the US and most Western militaries, enlisted salute officers, and officers salute superior officers, but enlisted do not salute each other. Not true in South Korea, where you see Privates saluting Corporals, and even other Privates who are senior. When saluting, a motto is stated. In the ROK Navy, Air Force, and Marines, it is 필승! which means “Sure Victory!” The Army says something else. This is also stated as a “verbal salute” when answering the telephone, and identifying the caller as of higher rank. The conversation would go something like this: “Foreign Language Institute, Instructor Lee.” “This is Manager Kim.” “Yes. Sure Victory!”
In the Korean military, people are usually referred to by job title, not by rank. A section chief who is a Captain would be called “Section Chief Kim” (김 과장님), not “Captain Kim.” This means knowing his/her unit is very important. I knew a Captain who was a Manager (실장) of a small unit , and a Lt. Colonel who had the same title at a much larger unit.
Another difference is that in the US military, each service has their own names for each paygrade. An Air Force Senior Airman is equivalent to a Navy Petty Officer Third Class, a Marine Corps Corporal, and an Army Specialist. In Korea, the same title is used in all services.
This concludes my first post on the Korean military. Stay tuned for more.
These are the 10 most-read posts at Jumping the Asymptote. Note that older posts have had more time to be trafficked than newer posts. It is also interesting to note that the top post has twice as many views as the number two post.
Just a micropost this time:
I was in a taxi today, chatting with a cabdriver who asked me how much I made, so I told him. He said “Wow, that’s great! I make 1.2 million a month.”
This is a 63-year-old man, who presumably has been driving a cab for a long time. I wonder what entry-level cabdrivers make.
This leads me to the wider question: What does EVERYBODY make? You can go to salary.com and answer that for just about every position one can think of in the USA. I wonder if some sort of equivalent exists in Korea. If I can find one, I’ll start posting comparisons.
Observations of Korean medicine in contrast with American medicine:
Ever notice that doctor’s visits in Korea tend to be quick, with little waiting? Sort of an in-and-out experience, unless there are extenuating circumstances? Ever wonder why? I’ve got a friend who is a doctor serving with the Republic of Korea Air Force, and I’ve had the good fortune to be able to bounce questions off of him now and again.
There are a couple reasons for this difference. First and foremost, doctors in Korea aren’t compensated by the hour, like they are in the United States. They are paid per patient. Therefore, volume is key to profitablity. In the USA, a doctor will see you, chat with you a bit sometimes, take some extra time to explain your condition, prognosis for treatment, possible treatment options, etc. He or she is getting $300+ an hour no matter how long it takes. In Korea this is not the case. A secondary reason is because like other experts in Korea, doctors are generally not questioned, and patients trust their advice, so it needs no explanation. For example, it is a common experience for me and friends of mine (both citizens and non-citizens) to visit a doctor and be given medication, but not told what the medication is. I’m always told what it is for (e.g. “Take this for the pain.”), but if I don’t ask specifically what it is, I’m not told. This doesn’t seem to bother Koreans. For me, I’m strongly conditioned not to take anything if I don’t know what it is. God forbid I’m rushed to the emergency room for an unrelated accident and the doctor says “Are you currently taking any prescription medication?” and I have to say “Yeah, a little green pill for back pain.”
Because Americans are socialized to be “informed consumers,” and because American doctors are more than willing to inform us about conditions we may have, Americans tend to have a lot more knowledge about the medical specifics of conditions they may be suffering from. Think about a chronic illness you have or someone close to you has. How much do you know about it? I can tell you an awful lot about astrocytoma, a type of brain cancer that someone very close to me had. I know about prognosis, treatment options, the works. I know even more about asthma, as I suffered from it as a child. A Korean friend of mine with asthma just knows to puff the inhaler, although he doesn’t know what’s in it. In contrast, I used an albuterol “rescue” inhaler, and an Advair diskus later when they came out. if I required a hospital visit, a nebulizer was employed. When I was very young (before the nebulizer), I just got epinephrine shots. Why do we know all this? Because we’re socialized to be critical, and to take responsibility for our own health. We’ve got to make sure the doctor knows what he’s doing. Yes, he knows a lot more than me about my condition, but if he prescribes a course of treatment markedly different than another doctor has in the past, I won’t blindly accept that; I’ll want to know why.
Have you noticed that Koreans tend to go to the doctor for every minor symptom, while Americans often will not see a doctor until they’re sure they’ve got worse than a common cold? My guess is that this is because Americans are socialized to handle little medical issues themselves, due to the high cost of a doctor’s visit. With a $20 co-pay (assuming you have insurance) plus more for medication, the illness must justify the cost of a doctor’s visit. That’s easier to do when you’re paying 5,000 won, medication included, for the same visit in Korea.
The last couple times I’ve been to a clinic for treatment of cold/flu symptoms, I’ve been given very short treatments of antibiotics (e.g. 3 days of penicillin). I usually throw them out, because I know that less than7-10 days will likely just cause the flu to become resistant. I asked my doctor-friend about this, and he said “That’s a big problem in Korea. Patients expect medication, and so doctors do not want to disappoint (else they lose customers to other doctors willing to meet patient expectations). There is a major problem with drug-resistant illnesses in Korea for this reason.
Recently I took a vacation to Jeju Island. I wanted to do some horseback riding, and found a place on Hallasan. They had 10, 20, and 30 minute packages for 20, 30, and 50K won, respectively. We were there the week before the peak season started, and the place was practically deserted (every place was…we were the lone tent in our campground, right on Hyupjae Beach). I offered them a deal: How about me and my girlfriend both do the 30 minute ride for 75K?
They discussed it, unbeknownst to them that I could understand what they were saying. The proprietress said to the horsehand: “How much of a discount is that?” He responded, “Twenty-five percent.” “That’s too much of a discount.” The horsehand respectfully declined my offer. My girlfriend (who is neither Korean nor American) said to me (in English): “They’d rather have the horses stand around for that extra 10 minutes and make no money than pick up an extra 25 thousand?”
That’s a very Western, dollars and cents mentality. If there are no customers (and none expected) then any money is better than none. Why don’t Koreans think this way? As usual, I asked a few. My university students didn’t seem to understand this mentality either, so I had to talk to a couple of older Koreans. “Its the principle,” one said. “In a situation where haggling is not customary, the price is the price. By giving you a discount, the owner may feel he or she is being taken advantage of, and the fact that they’ll make more money by agreeing to your request isn’t the most important principle in this situation. Their service has value. By paying less than that value, you’re literally devaluing it. It may be a point of pride to be able to say “Sorry, sir, but our services don’t come that cheaply.”
I thought that was interesting. This exists in American culture as well, but I don’t notice it to the same extent I tend to notice it in Korea. This may be simply because Americans aren’t as likely to negotiate on prices, so there are less instances for me to have noticed the phenomenon.
Ever wonder what might happen if you got on a KTX train without a ticket? I saw it first hand the other day. All verbal exchanges that follow are in Korean.
A mid 40’s-looking Korean man was riding the KTX from Seoul to Busan, sitting in the same row across the aisle from my girlfriend and I. A college age woman got on at a stop and it appeared he was sitting in her seat. He smiled and moved to the window seat. He began to chat her up, apparently unaware of the “don’t talk to me” signals she was clearly broadcasting. Eventually, she got up and moved to the seat behind him. He sat quietly after that.
Five minutes later, a conductor came into the compartment with a handheld device that verifies seat assignments. She stopped at his seat and double checked her readout. “May I see your ticket?” she said to the college student, who promptly produced it. At this point the man got up and went to the bathroom. As he moved into the aisle, a terrible stench emanated from the area in which he had just been sitting. The conductor said to the student “Why aren’t you sitting in your assigned seat?” The student told her that the man had been bothering her, and that she thought something about him wasn’t quite right (smiling, she covered her nose and mouth with her hand). The man returned, as if on cue, and the conductor asked him for his ticket.
He smiled and said “No ticket.” The conductor asked him if he could pay for a ticket. “No money,” he said, with a second, guilty smile. She asked where he was going. “Busan.” She got on the radio and called her boss, who arrived almost immediately. The boss explained to him that he would have to get off at the next stop. He shrugged and got up, exiting the compartment to the rear. The boss got on the radio and summoned help, and three KTX employees followed him to the rear of the train and kept him there until the next stop (Miryang), where he was put off the train. We saw him sitting there on the platform, likely waiting for the next train to finish his journey.
In the United States, someone pulling the same stunt would likely have the police meet them at whatever stop they were put off the train at, and charged with theft of service.
I don’t know how a foreigner in Korea might be treated differently (more harshly, easier), but assuming all things are equal, it seems there is no economic disincentive to attempting to ride illegally, as once caught, you’ll be asked to purchase a ticket.
