Shame Culture

I once heard a British American gentleman say, ‘Americans are busy telling you how wonderful they are, the moment you meet them. Brits, on the other hand, expect you to know how wonderful they are without them having to tell you.’

I chuckle, because the longer I observe the western culture, the truer the above statement appears to be, however stereotyped it is. I apologise to anyone who may find the comment offensive, but I mean it in an endearing way. But I don’t wish to talk about Americans or Brits, but Asians—in particular Koreans, because I know something of the Korean culture. It is something I cannot get away from, since I cannot get away from myself. There were times when I wished I could.

We are a little different from Americans or the Brits. The way I see it, we, Koreans, are a people who humbly tell other people how unworthy we are, while on the inside we take great pride in our immeasurable worth. We bow deeply before our elders and observe great courtesy to others, then congratulate ourselves on our marvelous humility. We insist we have so little to boast of, while subtly dropping hints about our superior family connections and background. In short, we are a people who have honed the art of hypocrisy into a form of discipline. This may sound harsh, but I believe much of this is true of my parents’ generation.

Now there are many redeeming qualities about the Korean life that I love and would fight to retain, the wonderful food culture, strong family values, rich community life, and in particular our innate respect for the elderly. But I cannot get away from the fact that ours is also a ‘face’ culture. It means we must never lose ‘face’ in front of people, and we must do everything we can to maintain it. This ‘shame’ culture prevails in much of Orient. The fear of suffering shame as an individual or family is a powerful engine that drives the Korean psyche. Someone once said, ‘Guilt is feeling bad about what you’ve done. But shame is feeling bad about who you are. Of the two, shame is worse.’ Perhaps this is true. Shame drives people to hide in the dark, or behind a mask and a lie. It shackles them to the deep fear of exposure. Shame and the need to hide go hand in hand. I’ve seen this many times in many forms.

The flip side of the shame culture is, lusting after honour and praise of people. The desire to look good in other people’s eyes can be an all-consuming pursuit in the Korean community, in particular among the older generation. When how we appear to people is more important than who we actually are, it is a recipe for breeding hypocrisy. So from childhood we, Koreans, learn to put our masked selves on display in order to win the approval of our parents’ social circles. The pressure Korean children face to make their parents look good among their peers can be crushing.

When we grow into adulthood in a culture like this, the line of distinction between the masks we put on and our real authentic selves become blurred. We no longer know which is the mask, and which is our real face. Then we begin to believe our self-advertisement and the manufactured persona, and the deceiver becomes the self-deceived. Of all deception, self-deception, I believe, is the worst and the most damaging because we don’t just tell a lie, nor do we just live a lie, we become the lie. When an entire family or community operates this way, the confusion a young person can suffer about reality and her sense of self can be severely disorienting.

What grieves me the most about this particular aspect of the Korean culture is the damage the parents inflict on their children. I know a couple who has more or less cut off contact from the larger community because they are afraid someone will find out their child is disabled. I know parents who cannot 'lift their face' in front of their friends because their children have married 'down.' I once received a shock when I found out that a Korean family I knew of, had a grown daughter that no one had heard about. That daughter had married an African American in the US and gave birth to Afro-Asian children. It was a source of deep shame to her family. I could cry rivers of tears for the little ones. This is more than racism, which is grievous as it is. This is the evil of the shame culture so powerful, that it compels an individual or a family to disown their own flesh and blood.

I encounter variations of this diseased mentality in the mundane Korean life I live. It often stares at me in the eyeball in the most unexpected places.

About a year ago, my mother-in-law was visiting us from Korea where she and her husband are temporarily residing because of my father-in-law’s work. My mother-in-law was understandably concerned for her husband who had to cater for himself in her absence. One weekend she rang him to make sure he was OK, but he didn’t answer the phone. She rang his mobile, he still wasn’t picking up. When he didn’t answer his phone at work, my mother-in-law went into a full panic mode. She convinced herself her husband had a heart attack all alone at home. She rang one of his friends, who then drove to their apartment in Korea to check on him. An hour later my father-in-law rang back in great annoyance. He was in a nearby town, working with a client.

I’ll never forget what my mother-in-law said after she hung up, with a great relief on her face. ‘Thank God he is ok!’ she breathed, with her hand on her chest, ‘otherwise how can I face the people? It would have been so embarrassing if your father-in-law passed away in my absence.’

I stared at my mother-in-law. I blinked several times. ‘Embarrassing?’ I repeated dumbly. ‘How can such a thing be embarrassing?’

She stared back at me in total lack of comprehension. ‘I meant, what would the people think? It would look me look bad.’

I gaped at her half in horror, half in fascination. ‘Why should you even care what anyone thinks or says if a family member passes away in any circumstances?’

She looked at me in bewilderment. ‘How can I not care?’

I tried a little breathing exercise, then started again, doing my best not to sound like an adult scolding a child. ‘Mother. People don’t think about you or me as much as we’d like to them to. We just are not that important to them. And if people want to think unkind things about you, let them! You just live your life, Mother.’

My mother-in-law didn’t understand my reasoning. But then I didn’t understand what was so embarrassing for my mother-in-law either, so our lack of understanding was mutual. So we agreed to disagree and to avoid the subject altogether lest it lead to even less mutual understanding. But my mother-in-law could not resist hinting subtly that I’ve had inferior "home education" as a child, therefore I lacked basic manners. That has always been her unspoken estimation of my family. She may be right. I do come from a less sophisticated, less educated parents who call a shovel ‘shovel’, not an agricultural implement. But then in my mother-in-law’s eyes and to many Koreans, speaking one’s mind equates to bad manners. While I admit I’m not known for great tact, it must be said that our culture protects ‘face’ at the cost of ‘truth’.

I believe children pay for the society’s sins, and in particular for their parents’ sins.

My husband and I did our best to dissuade Tina, my husband’s younger sister, not to be influenced by the hypocritical aspect of our culture. Before I go any further, I must explain that my sister-in-law is a stunningly beautiful woman. Actually my in-laws are an exceptionally good-looking lot, including my husband. They have the dominant genes in the looks department. My mother-in-law, even in her sixties, is a beautiful woman, and she comes from a once-prominent family in a major city in Korea. So she takes great pride in her family background, in her looks, and in her children, especially her daughter who is renowned for her beauty. In fact, she often couldn't resist making subtle comparisons between her daughter and her daughters-in-law in family gatherings. I wasn’t too bothered by it since I myself have an oversized ego. But it was a different story for Tina.

Tina had been under great pressure to appear good throughout her life. Looking good was just part of the equation. She was expected to fulfil the role of a perfectly well-trained female, groomed in the perfect family, and perfectly prepared for her future groom and his parents. In truth Tina’s life had been nothing but a confusing maze of rebellion against that stifling pressure, while at the same time struggling pitifully to measure up to her parents’ standards and failing miserably and repeatedly—in another words, she was a beautiful mess.

Over the years I’ve come across many girls who are the victims of the ‘face’ culture. It is a heavy burden for a young person to bear, living life in order to please other people, to measure up to their standards, so to earn their approval. I know girls who’ve developed serious psychological problems, struggling to live with that pretence and lie. Enforced hypocrisy upon the young has serious consequences. Human beings are not designed to live lies, I’ve concluded over the years.

Tina, after all her romances failed, decided to look for her soulmate via the arranged marriage route. She was tired, and there was the added pressure on her now as she hit the big 3-0 mark. Tina was also bitter from her mother’s constant disparaging, ‘your cousin married an elite Princeton graduate. What are you doing?’ My mother-in-law is not an ogre. In fact, she is a very patient and compassionate woman. But until very recently she had an astounding blind spot when it came to the damage she was inflicting on her children. She incessantly demanded that they live their lives to make her look good before her peers. She was driven by her fear of people’s judgment. My husband and I have tried to help her see the flawed thinking, but to no avail. It was something she had to come to grips with on her own many years later. Meanwhile we kept incurring her wrath for refusing to live by her expectations and standards.

My sister-in-law eventually went on a worldwide search to choose from amongst the best Korean suitors, introduced to her by professional matchmakers. And many a young and able man with plenty of future potential beat a path to her door. But with so much emphasis placed on the external all through her life, Tina had great difficulty distinguishing true substance from false varnish, especially in men. Tina consulted us a few times, and she let go of a wealthy Harvard graduate and a surgeon amongst others. When she did choose her man, a rather 'unlooking' MIT graduate who was quiet and gentle, we approved. If she had to settle for someone through an arranged marriage, then we believed he was a good choice. We felt he had intelligence and character. My parents-in-law were pleased, but for different reasons. The guy later turned out to be an heir of a business tycoon.

Tina married him, a virtual stranger. But time showed her choice to be a wise one. Tina’s husband proved to be a good man, and over time she’d grown to love him, and they now have a beautiful child. And marrying into an insanely rich family gave Tina the insight she so desperately needed—that being rich, being envied by others isn’t all it's cracked up to be, that her sense of self-worth, happiness and contentment must come from within.

I am grateful that Tina’s story continues to be a happy one. But not everyone has a happy ending. I’ve watched young people build their lives on lies, that spiral out of control and then crumble. Thankfully my parents-in-law began to open their eyes as they grew older and as they lost control over their children. They began finding out that much of what their friends and peers boasted of, was ultimately trivial. Those things could not hold them up through the time of testing, which inevitably visit us all. They have finally begun to see through the transient and fickle nature of the popular opinion and approval that they had once so valued.

I do not expect my parents’ generation to overcome this handicap of the only culture they’ve known. But I do know that the younger generation must learn from their mistakes.


I have made my home in the land down under. This hard sun-burnt country is the land of my adoption. I have found that Australians are different from Americans or Brits. And they are certainly different from Koreans! On the whole I find that Australians are a tough people. They are straight shooters. What you see basically is what you get. This is a breath of fresh air for me, even a gust of cathartic gale wind that I so need to fill up my spiritual lungs with, and cleanse myself of the residues of untruth. Here, I am determined to learn the freedom to live and breathe as my raw, unadorned self.