What Are Korea Culture and Ethnic Identity

The world has been developing, changing, and globalizing. Of course, Korean culture also has been developing, changing, and globalizing naturally by accepting new foreign culture. New culture is even formed in Korea. However, some of Korean culture are maintained. People who have an ethnic identity try to maintain their conventional culture. Then, what are their culture and ethnic identity which Koreans try to conserve? It is Courtesy, directivity of harmony, and social relations.

Firstly, Korea is well known for ‘the country of courteous people in the East’. A long time ago, China called Korea like that at first, because Koreans have Confucian ideas. So, Koreans consider that Courtesy is very important and their daily life is steeped in courtesy.Koreans not only have respect and courtesy for the elderly, but also speak with respect to others. In addition, Koreans make concessions with each other. For example, we can see easily that young people give their seat to the elderly in the bus and young people do not sit the seats for the elderly in the subway even if there is no elderly. Also, we can find the courtesy in the meal time. Young people should not eat before elderly lift up their spoon. It is a kind of respect for elderly.

Secondly, Korean has a directivity of harmony. In Korea, family is top priority, so loving family is considered very important. For instance, my father was a soldier, and we moved the house continuously because of his job’s characteristic. So, he retired from his job because he thought that moving the house continuously was not good for family and our education. My father always treats family as a top priority. Koreans also try to join other groups well and have excellent spirit of community. There are some examples. People who are involved in any club feel they belonged, and it makes people have more confidence. So they try to join groups. Another example is that Koreans who move into new house give rice-cake to the neighborhood because they have spirit of community. Due to these reasons, Koreans rely on each other sincerely.

Lastly, Koreans consider that social relations are very important. In Korea, hierarchical system is very strict. Particularly, the men who did military duty consider this system more important because military is representative hierarchical system. Because of this social inclination, people want to get the position of high rank in society and want to have good jobs like public prosecutors, judges, doctors, and lawyers.