Stick out like a thumb

I've been in this country long enough to notice foreigners as much as Korean people do. Even then, I don't notice them for the same reasons, or have the same reaction to them, but my eyes do tend to dart around when I notice someone that clearly isn't from here. Even when there aren't any foreigners looking out of place to notice, you still find people that stick out in one way or another.

I spent the day in a water park about an hour away in Cheonan. For a few hours in this crowded indoor building I was the only foreigner I could see. Judging from everyone else's reactions, I probably was the only foreigner they saw as well. Despite several thousand other people swimming, rafting, sliding and wake boarding there weren't any other Westerners walking around besides me. Other than the occasional stare, or the awkward introductory speech from some well meaning but misguided person that wanted to talk to me, I wasn't bothered by this at all.

In this mono-culture, the other physical differences between people are magnified to a great extent. When everyone looks so similar, the hammer of conformity falls hardest on those that differ. I'm willing to bet the the tremendously fat man I saw walking around with his daughter, bumping into people with his stomach got as many glares. His polar opposite, the father so frail looking the slightest wave looked like it could break his visible ribs probably got his share of whispers too. It's just a bell curve plotting people along it's curved path.

When I was on the bus returning from the park, a group of black men wearing hip hop clothing crossed in front of the bus. The driver and some of the passengers remarked how "tall and scary" they looked. I don't think any of these guys were any taller than I was, and nothing about them seemed scary. I was on the bus right sitting behind the same people making these comments. I don't tend to think of myself as very frightening, and no one was avoiding me on the bus, so yet again there seems to be even more of a standard beyond that of just "foreigner". Even the degree of strangeness varies by looks and mannerism, and probably race.

It doesn't matter how much you try to fit in. Someone else is going to label you by your appearance and judge you by it. The only things you can do are either accept it and work to improve their opinion of you if it's worth the effort, or ignore them. I'm guilty of this too, in a way, as I do tend to notice the occasional foreigner sticking out, but I try not to judge them if it's possible.

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