KIBUN

Working with Koreans for the last five and half years, and having had the experience of climbing the company ranks, I am still as baffled and as curious as the day I started working for the company September 1, 2001. My introduction to the culture of my Bosses, friends, subordinates and acquaintances has led to so many complicated and complex feelings about myself and about them.

Not only has it been largely difficult due to the language barrier between us, but also the cultural barrier as well. Several weeks ago, a friend who has just arrived from Korea after nearly a year's stint together with another who used to work in Korea visited me in my office. The entire night was spent on rants about living in Korea, rants that I felt I can relate too, but rants nevertheless I think deserved to be spoken somewhere else.

Part of Korean culture, or mostly those that I know of, I have learned to love, appreciate and respect... But I suppose that circumstances would be different if I actually lived in that foreign land. I have had the opportunity of visiting Korea twice but I suppose that the treatment was very different because I was already "pusajangnim" (vice president) at the time. Today, I wonder what was in me that made me pusajangnim in the first place in so short a period of time. I also wonder, up to what heights will I be allowed to climb given that I am not Korean.

I appreciate the fact that I have heard different perspectives from many different people about Koreans. I live in their midst as well so that basically provides me a closer insight into what they are and how things might turn out eventually. That same friend introduced me to a Korean concept which I have always used to exemplify the difference between Koreans and non-Koreans... that concept is called...

Kibun (기분 -- variously romanized, roughly pronounced 'gee-boon') has been translated into English as 'mood' or 'state of mind' or 'feeling', but these are pale concepts compared to the Korean one. In Korea, Kibun is regarded as much more important a matter than most westerners would regard mere mood. In another of those seeming contradictions of Korea, Koreans have a tendency to dwell, involute, on their more delicate feelings, despite their rough-and-ready, earthy exteriors. The degree to which they can focus on their emotional states can seem almost effete to a westerner, particularly one who, like me, grew up in a rough, tough northern town. Kibun is of overarching importance in social relations, is constantly discussed, and attempts are always made to ensure kibun is preserved.

It might be described as the part of you that goes beyond your physical presence, that not only permeates your being but surrounds you, invisibly, like a cloud. But it can be damaged, by unhappiness or disrespect, by losing face, by thoughtlessness or humiliation, by anything that's disruptive to the harmony you feel with other people. Damage to your kibun is damage to your essence, and can have negative effects both mentally and physically.

It is this consciousness of an inner life, one that is molded by the degree of harmony one achieves in one's relationships with other people to whom one feels any degree of responsibility, that gives Koreans their almost preternatural ability to sense peoples' mood, and their character, and modify their own behaviour to lubricate the social gears. That's the nice part. The infuriating flip side of that, though, for many foreigners, is the tendency to dance elegantly away from any potential confrontation. An angry waeguk-in, until they understand what's happening, is likely to become angrier when the Korean with whom they have a bone to pick says 'Maybe' when they mean 'No', or 'tomorrow' when they mean 'never', in order to try and re-establish harmonious dealings. The accompanying, ever-present potential too, is that when someone is pushed too far, and they lose face, in which case 'social harmony' can take a flying leap, and the only way to regain face and salvage personal kibun is to blow up and stomp and yell. This happens a lot, too.

In this consciousness of the relationships between people and its effect on your own wellbeing, rather than the 'correctness', 'objective truth', or self-interest of an individual or his arguments, there is a minefield of potential misunderstanding. Most foreigners to Korea trip through it over and over again, myself included, before they realize that putting the kibun of the people around you first, even in a situation of confrontation, will bring results.

(As an aside, this is what the Americans do not seem to understand, or care to, when they deal with North Korea. The patterns of seemingly-irrational behaviour on the part of the DPRK negotiators isn't (always) irrational at all, from their own perspective.)

The importance of kibun for Korean people should never be underestimated. It's not merely convention, it's baked-in. Koreans can make crucial, important decisions based on kibun. Business decisions, choice of a mate, career and employment choices, all may be taken on the basis of what feels right, or what will result in the most socially harmonious outcome for all concerned. Koreans will discuss kibun, but rarely attempt to analyze it in this way. To do so would perhaps damage their kibun.

This is not to say that decisions, important or otherwise, are made strictly on a non-rational, intuitive basis. Things like love and marriage, about which westerners can be decidedly irrational, are approached with a combination of cold, rational analysis and intuitive leaps here, for example. It is another of the contradictions that make up so much of what it means to be Korean.

In future, look for more on this from me. Kibun is only one of the six controlling concepts of the Korean psyche : chemyeon, neunchi, kibun, bunuiki, jeong and han, and the interplay between these guiding forces is what makes Koreans so unique, and, at times, so difficult for the non-Korean to understand.

[originally published January 2002, revised and updated 2006]

Posted by Chris on June 19, 2006 8:49 PM
http://outsideinkorea.com/inside/2006/06/on_kibun.php#more