Weekly Blog Post #6

Monday, September 16th, 2013

Cultural Measures of "Intelligence"

In Korea, playing golf is like a cultural imperative. Golf is an intrinsic part of Korean culture, and all adults go out to play gold during weekends, or when they have the time. For example, I had to learn how to play golf at a young age, when I was in elementary school though I forget the exact age. And since then, every time I go to Korea, my grandmother, my dear grandmother, always dedicates around an hour a day to improve my play. Going back to my point, in Korea, golf is a cultural imperative because it is like a social event for adults. As teenagers party, or go to movies, or have sleepovers, to hang out and talk with friends, adults take the opportunity of playing golf to gossip, tell each other news, and all. In Korea, it is not only about the golfing, it is also (and almost more importantly) about the occurrences afterwards, as in the dinner and drinking and occasional karaoke singing. 

My father does not really enjoy participating in these social events. Although he does not admit it, he does not manage to really fit in the Korean population, especially the 100% Korean men. He usually feels at odd, does not appreciate the same things as they do. My father would simply like to play golf and return home, not stay with the other men for hours to talk/argue and drink. My father probably has the hardest time in getting along with the Koreans, and I daresay he does not appreciate Koreans that much, if not at all.

Furthermore, my father is not a really good golf player. He often comes home angry and infuriated. At the beginning, I associated his anger with frustration at seeming inferior to the others playing with him. However, my mother revealed to me how, in Korea, adults often associate golf skills with intelligence. Therefore, my father not playing golf that well may be seen as due to a lack of intelligence. I was surprised. This statement reflected how deeply golf was intertwined with Korean society, to the point that an individual's intellect was measured with his/her golf play.

This whole episode made me think about a number of things. For one, it made me think about the cultural barrier. Though mostly built by language differences, cultural barriers also arise from cultural shocks or differences. My father was facing a cultural barrier when he was with Korean men, because he did not understand (or try to understand) their way of having fun, of interaction, of entertainment. He could not manage to get along with them and befriend them because of their cultural differences, even though they were from the same country of heritage, Korea. It made me think about (once again, out of the many many many other times) how cultural barriers do not need to arise among people of different countries. Sometimes, there were stronger walls between people from the same country, but with different background, different life stories. For another, this episode made me think about the different ways that different cultures/countries evaluate intelligence in individuals. I would never have guessed that knowledge could be so heavily based upon a sport that consisted of hitting a ball with a club. It made me wonder about how I may be seen in front of different cultures. I may have appeared to be an idiot without even knowing it, only because I could not abide to a practice due to my ignorance of its existence and intrinsic importance to the culture.

(As a sidenote, I'd like to say that I play golf well, and that I am not seen as stupid along those standards at least.)