Describing the Korean Notion of Han

In the Los Angeles Times, an enigmatic aspect of Korean culture is described:

For South Koreans han is as amorphous a notion as love or hate: intensely personal, yet carried around collectively, a national torch, a badge of suffering tempered by a sense of resiliency…Scholars have called it an all-encompassing sense of bitterness, a mixture of angst, endurance and a yearning for revenge that tests a person’s soul, a condition marked by deep sorrow and a sense of incompleteness that can have fatal consequences.

Adding to its obtuse nature, it is also described as “a sense of hope, an ability to silently endure hardship and suffering in a relatively small nation with a long history of being invaded by more powerful neighbors.”

As history forcibly shapes any culture, the indelible memory of wrongdoing and pain is something that trickles down to the individual level through the notion of han. We can begin to understand these invisible notions of culture when they manifest through behaviors and actions, but only if we know what we’re looking for. I often use the phrase “you don’t know what you don’t know” to illustrate the importance of learning culture when working in global environments.

We would love to hear about your thoughts on other idiosyncratic feelings central to a specific culture, especially those that are more easily understood viscerally than anything else. What comes to mind?

Sean

RW3 CultureWizard