Culture Note

Over the past six weeks, I have observed and learned SO many interesting things about the Korean culture. From time to time I’ll add these “Culture Notes” into my blog. Please understand that these are my observations and have not been reviewed and/or approved by the South Korean government and therefore, may not be a true representation of Korean culture.

Culture Note – Fighting

A couple of days ago as we were sitting on the bus waiting to go to work/school, we watched two Korean men “fighting”. It was 8am in the morning and it appeared that the younger gentleman hadn’t paid the taxi cab driver. There was lots of posturing, but there were no punches thrown until the very end of the fight. This “fight” went on for about 4-5 minutes. They were shouting at each other, which was about the only thing that looked familiar for a fighting situation. They kept pressing their foreheads together and then separating, kind of like mountain goats do. They must have done this about 10 times. They also took their shoes off. Oh, did I forget to mention that this fight was happening in the street. There was a friend of the younger guy that at one point, bowed to the two fighting men…not sure what that was about. Near the end, the cab driver called the police and the younger guy started punching him and he never hit back, just kept trying to evade the punches. Evidently, in Korea, if you throw the first punch, you can get fined a LOT of money, so there is a lot of yelling, posturing, etc, in lieu of throwing the first punch. Once the first punch was thrown, the driver was on the phone to the cops. They arrived in about 30 seconds. The bus left, so we didn’t get to see exactly how it ended.