Some Reviews of Books on Korea, Part 2: Mastering Business in Korea

Continuing my reviews of the books I bought last Wednesday, after WhatTheBook I went to the office of the Royal Asiatic Society (RASKB) in Jeongno. If you’ve never heard of them, they appear to be an historical society that provides tours and lectures on various Korean topics, and the Marmot regularly keeps his readers informed of their latest activities. Although sometimes their lecture topics sound a bit cerebral, even for me, if I lived in Seoul I’d definitely join and imagine I’d be quite an active member, but I don’t see much point living in Busan.

Their office isn’t really a bookstore per se (so perhaps I’m too harsh on them below), but they do have many books on Korea for sale there, some of them the RASKB’s own publications, and many old but good ones pretty much unavailable anywhere else in Korea (if not the world), so if you’re a Korea Studies geek and have never been then I definitely recommend going, ideally with an empty backpack and about 150,000 won in hand. Having said that, if you’ve been once or twice before, and don’t plan on joining the RASKB, then another physical visit isn’t worth the trip, especially with their books being available online now. I hadn’t been myself in 3 years because they never open on weekends, and was disappointed to find 95% of the stock exactly the same as back then. Newbies might disagree, but its relatively easy to get English books in Korea these days, and places like Kyobo down the road are cheaper and much nicer places to get new books. And as for the old books? Well, sure, only geeks like me would be there in the first place, but while I’d like to have them on my shelves for future reference, even I will not pay 21,000 won for slim books on abstruse economic and social trivia that have been sitting there getting yellower and dustier since I first visited in 2000. I am not exaggerating, because…ahem…only lack of space in my backpack prevented me paying 21,000 for them back then, when they were already 13 years old! Bear that in mind when you use their website.

After wasting an hour there, which could have been much better spent visiting the newly-restored Cheonggye Stream a few hundred meters away (which will have to wait for next trip), I was thinking I couldn’t leave empty handed, but then I saw the name of the first author of this:

Mastering Business in Korea: A Practical Guide (2007), by Tom L. Coyner and Jang Song-hyon

While I’m much more left-wing than him, but wouldn’t always agree with his opinions regardless of our differing political leanings, Tom Coyner provides an invaluable service to people interested in news and events in Korea by hosting a lot of articles from the web about Korea on Understanding Korea section of his homepage (beware of the automatic music), and you can be informed of additions to it throughout the week by email by signing up to his Korea Economic Reader, on the bottom left of his homepage (note, Outlook doesn’t seem to work, you’ll have to use a normal email account like Yahoo). I’d already raved in October about (re)discovering him, so I definitely thought I could shell out 23,000 won for something on a subject which, albeit in his words, there hasn’t been a similar general survey book for almost twenty years. But remembering that if only I’d spent 5 mins checking out Maarten Meijer’s book before buying it, rather than discovering on the subway en route to Jeongno (and considering binning it several times), I decided to be prudent and check it out a bit first. But he had me sold with the very first page of Chapter 1 (p.18), on What an Expat Manager Really Needs to Know About Korean History:

Most introductory books on Korea provide some kind of five- to fifteen-page history on Korea covering a period of some five thousand years. This book is different. First of all, we assume the reader knows how to use the Internet and can read up to his or her heart’s content about Korean history.

That is so true. Why does every general book on Korea have to follow this same tired routine? Back in, say, 1995 it was maybe necessary, but nowadays can’t authors just refer everyone to the Lonely Planet and just get on with saying something original? A big put off for me of course, but I can’t imagine newbies who already have a general book on Korea would feel they need all that again either.

As a business professional, however, one need not be conversant on historical trivia but one does need to know the important basics that Koreans will eventually expect even a foreigner to know at a minimum – and perhaps more importantly, one should have some insight on the impact of the legacies of Korean history in the workplace. (my italics)

In my own experience, those standards of knowledge that Koreans will hold you to are very low indeed: just so much as mention “Silla,” or the “Three Kingdoms Period,” and most will be very surprised, even if you only just ever so slightly bent the truth a little when you told them that your major was Korean history. Continuing:

First there is the mythology of “5000 Years of Korean History.” This is more of a legacy of the Korean government’s self-promotion campaign of the 1970s than what happened in 3000BC. Many Koreans, however, have swallowed it unquestioningly. In all fairness, there is scant evidence of people inhabiting the peninsula as far back as 30,000 years ago….What is not found is compelling evidence of a civilization with a written legacy going back to 3000BC. There are not even large-scale, 5000-year-old remains such as Stonehenge of Britain….The point is, that the British [and others] do not claim a historical legacy rivaling the Egyptians while many Koreans do.

And maybe the most important point:

It’s probably not a good idea for one to debate this matter with Korean colleagues, but consider this a point of reference. (my italics again)

Naturally, with posts of mine like this one entitled Korea’s Convenient Invasion Myths, and knowledge of what happened last year to a blogger who dared question some of Koreans’ sacred cows, then that really struck a chord with me, and I read most of the book on the KTX home the next day, quite a feat with my daughter wanting to “read” it on my lap too. I’ll have to finish it and look at it again to give a proper review of course, but although I think Tom Coyner wouldn’t like the connection made, I’d have to say it strongly reminds me of the book Culture Shock: Korea that I bought before I came to Korea in 2000.

Written in 1992, it was already outdated back then, and its apologist tone can become tiresome, justifying Koreans barging into you and pushing you out of the way, for instance, by saying that because they’ve never met you and so are unable to place you on a Confucian hierarchy of relationships and appropriate behaviour, then you’re literally a non-person to them….whereas in the rest of the world, we would simply call someone extremely rude and inconsiderate towards strangers an asshole last time I checked, and leave it at that.. The book also falsely gives the impression that if you make one minor faux pas, like giving money with the left hand, then you’ll be ostracized by your neighbours and colleagues, but in reality, Koreans don’t expect foreigners to know anything about Korea at all let alone Korean customs (see my earlier point about history), and so anticipate and forgive many many mistakes. Which is nice of course, although it can get a bit annoying when you’ve been here 7 years, and despite knowing that all too often someone will still treat you like you’d been here 7 days (Waa! You use chopsticks so well!). Having said all that, when it’s not justifying negative aspects of Korean social customs, it does provide a good insight into their origins, and the Korean psyche as a whole.

I mention all this because at my level in the Korean social hierarchy, easily the most trivial person in all but one of my workplaces in my 7 years here, and at 31 feeling like an 18 year-old intern every time I turn up at work, then Korean social mores simply don’t apply to me, and probably 99% of expats here. But with someone merely joining the corporate rat race here…sigh, I can dream….let alone FTA negotiators, then they do apply: consequently, much of what was in that 1992 book fits right at home in this book written 15 years later, albeit in a much blunter and more practical style.

I originally planned to discuss 2 more books here, but I’m reaching my new self-imposed limit of 1500 words, so I’ll call it a day and have to do a short Part 3 tomorrow. But before I forget, if you’ve read any of the books I mention, please give me a buzz, because these are really first impressions rather than reviews per se, and technically I haven’t actually finished any of them yet, so my first impressions may be wrong. And apologies for all the playing around with the WordPress theme all afternoon and this evening, the curse of a blogger with too much time on his hands.

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