Love and Marriage Korean Style

Last night I was chatting with my Korean flatmate (room mate for the American readers), she was telling me that that afternoon she and her boyfriend had been discussing their marriage. Apparently the man buys the house and the woman buys the furniture. So they had been discussing things like where to live and styles of furniture, etc. Also the fact that they will probably get married in October next year. I asked her, "How did he propose?" She looked at me strangely, "He didn't propose."

I looked at her strangely!! How can one discuss all these concrete things without having had a proposal? So this morning I asked a couple of my classes about Korean proposals. In the first class it was all older married men. Only one third of them had proposed to their wives the others just got married without ever having asked their wife to marry them. In the second class there was 1 man who is married - he said he did propose to his wife, the other student is an unmarried woman, she looked at me like I was out of my mind. Told me that she was practical and that a proposal was not necessary, she just wanted to get married.

Is it so strange that I think that a woman should be asked "Would you marry me?" Rather than the guy just assuming that she will??

I guess this is part of what is called culture shock.

On the other hand it turns out that some things are the same wherever you are. This evening I was going through a vocab list with one of my classes. The word under discussion was 'Trait,' so I asked the students to list traits that show that you are Korean. The list included things like; black hair, black eyes (they think my green eyes are fascinating), low nose, single eyelid, and short eyelashes. This last led to a  discussion of the fact that women can get eyelash extensions, (something I think is fascinating, and bizarre). Then one of the girls says, "but it's not fair, guys have longer eyelashes than girls," and added in anguish, "and they have better legs!" I remember having this exact same conversation about guys eyelashes and legs when I was her age. I've also heard my students in New Zealand say the same things many times.