Koreans

Core values & worldview

If you want to understand a Korean, it helps to start with how small the country feels to its own people, and how big its neighbours are. For most of its history Korea lived beside China, the great centre of East Asian civilisation, taking its writing, its Buddhism and its Confucian ideas while fiercely keeping its own kingdom. It was invaded again and again, and in the twentieth century it was colonised by Japan, divided by the superpowers and devastated by war.^•

Out of that history comes a few things you will often notice.

The nation as family. Many Koreans think of their people, the minjok, as a single extended family with a shared bloodline going back to Dangun. Historians such as Gi-Wook Shin show that this ethnic nationalism took shape mostly in the colonial era, as a defence against Japanese rule, but it is powerful. It is why division feels like an amputation, and why Koreans on both sides of the border talk about reunification as a matter of the heart as much as politics.^•

Family, hierarchy and respect. The Joseon dynasty built a society on Neo-Confucian lines: sons owed obedience to fathers, the young to the old, subjects to rulers. Today that survives in the Korean language, which has distinct verb endings for speaking to someone older or senior, in the habit of asking a new acquaintance’s age, and in rites for the ancestors (jesa or charye) held at Seollal, the Lunar New Year, and Chuseok, the autumn harvest festival.^•

Younger Koreans increasingly push back against rigid seniority at work and at home, but the instinct to place people in an order of respect runs deep.

Education as destiny. In Joseon, passing the civil service examination was the route to honour for a whole lineage. That belief that study is the path to a good life, and to the family’s standing, survived war and poverty and became what the historian Michael Seth calls “education fever”. It powered the country’s rise, and it now weighs heavily on children and parents.^•

Han and jeong. Koreans often explain themselves through two hard-to-translate words. Han is a deep, collective sense of sorrow, grievance and longing, something like the ache of injustice that has never been put right; it is often linked to the experience of colonialism, war and division. Jeong is the affection and loyalty that builds up over time between people who share life together, the reason a Korean friend may feed you, scold you and refuse to let you pay. Scholars treat both as cultural ideas rather than fixed national traits, but you will hear them in songs, films and everyday talk.^•

Speed. Ppalli ppalli, “hurry, hurry”, is a phrase Koreans use about themselves, half proudly, half ruefully. A country that went from ruins to riches in two generations learned to move fast, and impatience with delay is part of daily life.^•

Daily life & customs

Eating together. A Korean meal is shared: rice, soup and a spread of side dishes (banchan) in the middle of the table, with kimchi always among them. Asking “Have you eaten?” (bap meogeosseoyo?) is a common greeting. Out with friends or colleagues, meals often roll on to a second and third round: barbecue, then drinks, then karaoke (noraebang). Many younger people now skip the obligatory work dinners their parents endured.^•

Small courtesies. People bow slightly when greeting, pass and receive things with two hands, and pour drinks for others rather than themselves; a younger person often turns their head away from an elder when drinking. Shoes come off at the door. Surnames come first, and just three, Kim, Lee and Park, cover nearly half the population of the South, so people are often addressed by title or role (“teacher”, “older sister”) rather than name.^•

School and exams. South Korean children often go from regular school to private cramming academies (hagwon) late into the evening. On the day of the national college entrance exam, the suneung, offices open late so test-takers can get through traffic and flights are held during the English listening section.^•

Military service. Almost all South Korean men serve in the armed forces for around a year and a half, usually in their early twenties. It is a shared rite of passage, a source of stories and grumbling, and a reminder that the war never officially ended.^•

Faith. South Korea is unusually diverse in religion. In the 2015 census, 56% said they had no religion, about 20% were Protestant, 16% Buddhist and 8% Catholic, while shamanist practices and fortune-telling are still widely consulted. Christianity, a minority faith almost everywhere else in East Asia, grew partly because it was associated with education, modernity and resistance to Japanese rule.^•

In the North, religion is tightly controlled and the state cult of the Kim family takes its place.^•

Hangul. Koreans are proud of their alphabet, created under King Sejong in the 1440s. It is simple enough to learn in days and is celebrated with a public holiday, Hangul Day, on 9 October in the South.^•

Wounds & sensitivities

Japanese colonial rule. For many Koreans the years 1910–45 are the core historical wound: the loss of the country, the suppression of the March 1st Movement in 1919, the attempt to erase the Korean language and names, the conscription of labourers and soldiers, and the women forced into sexual slavery for the Japanese military, euphemistically called “comfort women”. Arguments over apology and compensation are not abstract; they are about grandparents.^•

The war and divided families. The Korean War killed millions and left families split across the DMZ. More than 130,000 South Koreans registered with their government to find relatives in the North; by the 2020s most of them had died without seeing them again. Brief televised reunions have been some of the most painful scenes in Korean television history.^•

State violence at home. South Korea’s road to democracy ran through massacres and torture by its own governments, from the killings on Jeju island in 1948–49 and civilian massacres during the war to the Gwangju uprising of 1980. Truth commissions have uncovered much, but some families are still searching for remains.^•

Sewol. The sinking of the Sewol ferry in April 2014, which killed 304 people, most of them high-school students, became a national trauma and a symbol of a society that, many felt, put profit and hierarchy before children’s lives. Yellow ribbons for the victims are still worn.^•

Being confused with others. Treating Korea as a smaller copy of China or Japan, or assuming any East Asian person is Chinese, lands badly. So does asking a South Korean “North or South?” as a joke.

Modern attitudes

Proud, and anxious. Many South Koreans feel real pride in what their country has become: a democracy that has peacefully changed governments many times, a technology powerhouse and a cultural exporter, from films like Parasite to K-pop and dramas.^•

At the same time many young people describe their society as “Hell Joseon”: brutal competition for a few good jobs, sky-high housing costs in Seoul and long working hours.

Not having children. South Korea’s total fertility rate fell to 0.72 children per woman in 2023, the lowest ever recorded for any country, before edging up to 0.75 in 2024. The reasons people give are money, housing, work and the cost of education, and for many women the burden of a career and a family in a still male-dominated culture.^•

Politics. Politics is loud and polarised between conservatives and progressives, divided partly by region and generation, and by attitudes to the North, Japan and the United States. Presidents have often ended their terms in disgrace or prison; Koreans see this both as a flaw and as proof that no one is above the law.^•

The North and unification. Older South Koreans, especially those with family in the North, tend to see reunification as a duty. Many younger people see the North as a foreign and dangerous country, and worry about the cost of unification more than they dream of it. In the North, official ideology has shifted in recent years towards treating the South as a separate, hostile state.^•

Not all Koreans are the same

North and South. Some 26 million people live in North Korea, a one-party state ruled by the third generation of the Kim family, where information is controlled, travel is restricted and a hereditary class system (songbun) shapes people’s lives. A UN commission in 2014 found crimes against humanity there. More than 30,000 North Koreans have escaped to the South, where many struggle with discrimination and adjustment.^•

Regions. Inside the South, the rivalry between the south-east (Gyeongsang, Busan, Daegu), traditionally conservative, and the south-west (Jeolla, Gwangju), traditionally progressive, still shapes elections. Jeju islanders have their own language and memory of the 1948 massacres.^•

Generations. The war generation remembers hunger and gratitude to America. The “386 generation”, who fought the dictatorship as students in the 1980s, led the country for decades. Younger Koreans, digital and global, are more individualistic and often more sceptical about marriage, unification and old-style hierarchy, and young men and women can be sharply divided over feminism.^•

The diaspora. About seven million ethnic Koreans live outside the peninsula. The largest groups are in the United States (around 2.6 million), China (about 2 million, the Joseonjok, many in Yanbian), and Japan (about 800,000, many of them Zainichi Koreans descended from colonial-era migrants, who long faced discrimination and divided loyalties between North and South). In Central Asia live the Koryo-saram, whose grandparents were deported from the Russian Far East by Stalin in 1937.^•

Around 200,000 Korean children were adopted abroad from the 1950s onward, mostly to the United States and Europe, and many adoptees now search for birth families and question the system that sent them away.^•

Meeting someone

Conversation starters

• Food. Ask about their favourite dish, their mother’s kimchi, or where to eat in their home town. It is the easiest door into a Korean conversation.
• Hometown and holidays. Where they’re from, and what Chuseok or Seollal is like in their family.
• Films, dramas and books. Bong Joon-ho, Han Kang or a drama they love; but show interest in more than K-pop.^•
  • The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture — Euny Hong, Picador (2014)
• Hangul. Many Koreans are delighted if you’ve learned to read the alphabet, and happy to explain how it works.^•
  • The Korean Language Reform of 1446 — Gari Ledyard, Singu Munhwasa (1998)

Topics to approach carefully

• Japan and the colonial period. Don’t wave it away as “ancient history”, and don’t treat the comfort women as a political talking point. Opinions vary, and many Koreans love Japanese food and travel, but the pain is real.^•
  • The Comfort Women: Sexual Violence and Postcolonial Memory in Korea and Japan — C. Sarah Soh, University of Chicago Press (2008)
  • War Memory and Social Politics in Japan, 1945–2005 — Franziska Seraphim, Harvard University Asia Center (2006)
• North Korea. Avoid treating it as a joke or the Kims as cartoon villains in front of someone whose grandparents came from there. Ask before assuming views on unification.^•
  • Separated families statistics (Integrated Information System for Separated Families) — Ministry of Unification, Republic of Korea, Ministry of Unification
• Exams, jobs, marriage and babies. Koreans may ask each other about age, salary or marriage plans, but many young people are exhausted by those questions. Let them lead.^•
  • Birth Statistics 2024 — Statistics Korea, Statistics Korea (2025)
  • Education Fever: Society, Politics, and the Pursuit of Schooling in South Korea — Michael J. Seth, University of Hawai'i Press (2002)
• Gwangju and the dictatorship years. Opinions on Park Chung-hee and his era divide families. Listen first.^•
  • The Park Chung Hee Era: The Transformation of South Korea — Byung-Kook Kim and Ezra F. Vogel (eds.), Harvard University Press (2011)
  • Laying Claim to the Memory of May: A Look Back at the 1980 Kwangju Uprising — Linda S. Lewis, University of Hawai'i Press (2002)

Common misconceptions

• “Korean culture is borrowed from China and Japan.” Korea drew on Chinese learning as all East Asia did, but it has its own language, script, food and traditions, and passed much culture on to Japan.^•
  • A Concise History of Korea: From Antiquity to the Present — Michael J. Seth, Rowman & Littlefield (2016)
• “Everyone in Korea has had plastic surgery.” Cosmetic surgery is common in Seoul, but the stereotype is exaggerated and tiresome to many Koreans.
• “Koreans all eat dog.” Dog meat was eaten by a shrinking minority, mostly older people, and South Korea voted in 2024 to ban the trade.
• “Koreans are desperate for reunification.” Feelings are deep but mixed, and differ sharply by age.^•
  • The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History — Don Oberdorfer and Robert Carlin, Basic Books (2014)
• “North Koreans are all brainwashed.” Many North Koreans know far more about the outside world than their state allows, through smuggled media and markets, and their own views are often more complicated than either side’s propaganda.^•
  • The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia — Andrei Lankov, Oxford University Press (2013)