I’m sure
everyone has heard of culture shock, it is the difficulty people have adjusting
to a new culture which differs greatly from their own. In general, people tend
to go through four major phases when going through culture shock; the honeymoon
phase, the negotiation phase, adjustment
phase and finally the mastery phase.
It differs
per person whether someone goes through these stages and also to which extent
one experiences these different stages.
As I’ve spent my whole life in the
Netherlands and even in Tilburg to be more precise, I expected to experience at
least some culture shock in Korea. Especially considering the fact that the
majority of the people here do not speak English at all. However, to be very
honest I do not feel that I’ve gone through the honeymoon phase and the
negotiation phase. During the first, the differences between the old and new
culture are seen in a romantic light, where the food, the people and their
habits and all things involved in life seem to be perfect and amazing. In the
latter, the differences between the two cultures become more and more apparent and
these may also create some anxiety, replacing the excitement from the honeymoon
phase. Issues such as language barriers, public hygiene, safety et cetera
normally strengthen this phase and some people actually develop homesickness
and feel very lonely during this period. As said earlier, I kind of feel as
though I’ve skipped these phases. I might have experiences them simultaneously
but I am truly honest when I say I was never truly blown away by Korea nor that
I have ever hit a mental or physical wall here where I was, for example,
disgusted or terribly disappointed by anything. I think this is due to the fact
that my academic life here started pretty much right after my arrival and has
continued without any real breaks here (we have no holidays longer than two
days) and as a result I simply did not have the chance to experience anything
in an extreme, whether that was a positive or a negative extreme. Of course I’ve
experienced great things here and I’ve also experienced (and still am
experiencing to some extent) homesickness (mostly due to the fact that my
girlfriend is not here) but I do not feel that I have experienced these first
two faces according to their definitions.
I quickly
adjusted to life here, developed routines which I repeat day after day here
(every week is roughly the same for me) and I got a feel of the way to treat
the people here very quickly. I haven’t had any negative experience with any
Koreans, as long as you treat them with respect (even if you don’t speak their
language) they will do the same. Being friendly goes a long way. I have made
some close friends here of who I feel they will remain friends even after my
return back home.
The final
stage is the mastery phase, in which one participates fully and comfortably in
the host country. I guess I will never truly reach that stage during my time
here, I can get along well in my daily life but it is still very obvious that I
am only here for a relatively short time and I think to truly master life here
you will need to at least have a basic understanding of the language and to a
further extent the writing system. Pretty much everything is written in Hangul
here which is impossible to understand without studying it. While it is
relatively easy to learn to at least read it compared to, let’s say, Chinese
(the Korean system is very organized and follows very strict rules whereas
Chinese is almost pure memorization), I have not taken the time to actually do
so, also due to the fact that I do not intend to return here after my stay.
While I am
sure that some people will argue I am still stuck in a different stage (I am of
course not a cultural psychologist), I do not care: I feel comfortable in my
daily life here and everything is going quite perfectly. I guess just this fact
means that I am in one of the final stages.
Whether that is true or not, I am
happy and that is all that matters, right?
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