American and Korean Culture

I have been working on a culture study for my classes and the more I think about the differences in Western and Korean culture, the more differences that I notice. Korean children and American children have many differences. In Korea, the kids do not have a lunch room and lunch is served in thier classrooms. This is not your average school lunch either. Everyday there is rice, soup, kimchi, 2-3 other dishes, and fresh fruit for dessert. And the funny thing is that the food is wonderful! In America, many kids eat school breakfast and ride a bus to school. Here breakfast is not offered and there is no such thing as school buses. Since everyone lives in apartment buildings, the children are close to their school. In the mornings, you see lines of Korean children walking to school. This includes even the little kindergardener's. In America, you don't usually see kindergardeners walking on busy roads by themselves. Even though the parents allow their kids to walk by themselves, parents are much more involved in their childrens lives here. All parents want their kids to go to school to be a teacher. The reason for this is, in most professions the workers are fired at age 45. They have to then go find a lower paying job. Teachers are not fired for their age and recieve the best pension when they retire. Teachers are expected to be the most moral people in Korea. They also are paid in the upper payscale range. This is extremely different from our teachers who make next to nothing! Parents send thier children to Academy afterschool. Basically, this is just more school. There is English Academy, Math Academy, and so on. Most children do not get home till 10-11 pm and bed times are usually 12. For high schoolers, they do not get home till 1:00. This is dedication at it's highest. High Schoolers spend their whole time in high school preparing for the SAT. The material on the exam is what is taught, and then the students spend the rest of their time in the library studying. This is every highschooler-not just a select few. This is amazing to me considering when I was in high school, I didn't even have to study and got A's. When 3:00 hit, I was done with school as were most of you, I know!! In Korea, the husbands do not usually get home till 11:00. They work extremely long hours. It just seems that these people have a much better work ethic than most Americans. They work and study long hours, and that is just normal for them. Another interesting thing is that Korean's do not like the number 4. All of the Elevators have an F instead of 4. 4 is a Chinese symbol for death and Korean's use many Chinese symbols. They believe that f they live on the fourth floor then they are likely to die. Probally the wierdest thing to me here is the fans. The fans have an automatic shutoff after 2 hours. Korean's believe that leaving a fan on all night will cause hypothermia and death. I read an article saying that many deaths are attributed to fans and autospys are not performed. There has been alot of controversy because these "fan deaths" have other orgins. Another thing is that they do not have guns here (well- excluding the black market of course). The biggest difference in culture is that America is such a sports based country where here sports are secondary to academics. Soccer, baseball, and Takewondo are the biggest sports here. These are just some of the differences. As I discover or remember more, I will write more.