The Beginning of a New Era

By “beginning of a new era”, I really mean that I’m going to use this Writing Fiction blog for Communications now to do my e-portfolio. I’m not even sure if this is supposed to be online, but oh well, it’s going to be online anyhow. What’s hilarious, though, is that I’ll really be writing about the same things that I was before: showing clips of K-pop idols and then obsessing over them. But really, now I’m going to actually analyze it instead of just being like “Omo they’re so cute~~~”. But you know I’ll be doing that on the inside. Anyhow, onto the first post!

                This clip is super relevant to what we just learned about high and low power distance cultures and to the concept of culture shock.

Just for a little context, this clip is of Strong Heart, which is a talk show in Korea. The guests are celebrities in the acting and musical world of Korean entertainment. The person who is talking in that clip is Henry, who is a singer who was born and raised in Canada and went to China/Korea to debut as part of Super Junior-M. His native language is English, though he knew Chinese, but learned Korean during his time in Asia (thus, his speech is a little awkward).

During the clip, he described the different social norms of Asian versus Western countries, and expressed his culture shock when he arrived in Asia and interacted with his team members for the first time. He expressed how he was unfamiliar and uncomfortable with the members’ interactions with him because Western culture is less touchy-feely than apparently Asia is now. He went through the four phases of culture shock it would seem extremely quickly. Henry mentioned that he was awed by the building, which was the excitement phase. Then he said he was shocked that the members slapped his butt (disenchantment phase), but he quickly got over it (beginning resolution phase). However, he did not reach the effective functioning phase during his story, since he was still not coping completely well (as he was uncomfortable with the affection and thought that Heechul was a transgendered person).

Also, during the clip we can see that Korea is a much more high power distance culture than Canada is. There are many more honorifics in Korean than there are for English – if you call someone “mister,” it is not showing the proper amount of respect, as opposed to in English, it is as respectful as you can get. However, when Henry interacted with the host of the show and Lee Soo Man (in his story), he disrespected them because of the lack of equivalencies in language. It shows that there are less inequalities between people in Canada/Western civilizations, and status symbols (such as honorifics) are not the norm.