Being a foreigner
is both a common and unique experience.
We all go through the day-to-day struggle with the language barrier, and
we all have to find our own substitutes for our favorite products at the supermarket. We’ve also all jumped through the various
hurdles of government bureaucracy (although as a white American male, those
hurdles aren’t nearly as high for me as they are for everyone else).
At the same
time, foreigners experience their host country in widely different ways (again,
largely dependent on how you look/which country you’re coming from). Having spent significant amounts of time in
both Germany and South Korea, I thought I’d share some of the differences between
being an Ausländer and a 외국인.
The
absolute biggest difference is my ability to blend in here in Germany, which is
something I was really starting to miss towards the end of my time in Korea. As long as I keep my head down and speak very
little, I can maintain anonymity in Germany.
In Korea on the other hand, I always knew in the back of my mind that
whatever I did in public would often be taken as a representation of all foreigners
there. In Korea I was always on display,
whereas in Germany I’m just a dude on the street.
Going with
this is the ability to play the foreigner card. Whereas the U.S. and Korea have quite a
cultural gulf separating them, only the Atlantic "pond" separates the U.S. and
Europe. As a Westerner and someone who
knows German language and culture pretty well, I’m much more aware of what’s
okay here and what isn’t. Consequently,
I feel like I’m much more reserved in the way I act here – although I did
pretend not speak German the one time I was caught schwarzfahren. Not so in Korea. Whether we were brazenly walking into a
singing room with backpacks full of beer, or taking over convenience stores
during frisbee weekends (both of which are admittedly very, very fun), I think
we always knew in the back of our minds that our lack of Korean ability and our counterpart’s lack of
English would guarantee that we never got any flak. And while I also don’t think we were ever outright
rude to Korean’s when we did this (we always took our beer cans with us after a
night of beerio cart in the multi-bang), we did take advantage of our
position as foreigners in Korea. After
all, I rarely saw Koreans acting the way we did (unless of course we were on
frisbee weekends). In short, the foreigner
card was much more playable in Korea.
All in all,
living as a foreigner for a while is almost guaranteed to give you a change in
perspective. You may find yourself
playing the foreigner card at every opportunity, or you may have to
watch your every move, knowing that to many people in your host country, everything
you do will just be attributed to your foreignness. Whatever happens though, hopefully you’ll
gain some empathy, which seems to be in short supply right now.
