세바시 1846회 | 변화해야 할 아름다움과 지켜야 할 한국인다움 | 샘 리처즈 펜실베이니아주립대 사회학과 교수 ‪@SOC119

무작위 아름다움에서 한국인다움으로

 

Are Competian they speak Korean fluently they have Korean citizens they act Korean in every way they drink sojuice sometimes they snack on gimbap and bibimbap and they eat gimchi with every meal.

So how is this? Are they Korean just like you?

 

 

한국은 '이렇게' 바뀌어야 합니다 그래야 한국인다움 지킵니다

 

 

So one of the questions that most intrigues my students is why do we look so different from one another?

 

And there are two general stories to be told.

The first is that there is some supreme being who created a world in which humans would have different shapes of noses, eyes lips and foreheads.

This being this God wanted us to have different textures and colors of hair and he or she created a world in which
we would have different body sizes and shapes and shades of skin that would vary greatly around the world.

And for whatever reason this God decided that great variety among people would be in our best interests.

The second story does not require the will of a God.

This story is that living organisms including human bodies respond to the climate conditions that are present in different areas of the world at a given time.

So as HOMO sapiens migrated out of Africa and into areas of the planet
that were cold or hot or wet or dry our bodies adapted over time the DNA coating that allowed a body to thrive in particular conditions was passed along to future generations of people living in that particular environment.

So along with this process there were random genetic mutations.

So for example a bump on the bridge of the nose became a common trait in a population group in some region because it got passed along with that group's DNA

even though that bump never had an evolutionary advantage for those who had it it was purely accidental.

So as HOMO sapiens migrated around the world throughout the past 200,000 years there became a great amount of variation in human bodies.

Regardless of which of these two explanations makes sense to you it is easy to combine them.

There is a lesson to be learned.

What we look like is both random and determined by factors and forces that are out of our control.

Look in a mirror and what do you see?

Either a body that God created or a body that allowed your distant ancestors to thrive in a particular region of the world at a particular point in time.

I tell my students that when they look into that mirror what is reflected back at them is a physical body that was essential to the existence of their ancestors.

I tell them to look at their tall or short stature their large or small nose their thick or thin lips the texture of their hair the shape of their eyes.

What they see was important to some groups of their ancestors at different points in time.

So many people in their group who did not have these particular features did not pass on their DNA and they died off.

But your ancestors I tell them were successful because of how they looked and now how you look today.

So now think about everything that I just said.

 

 

Isn't it strange that we humans use our random traits connected with our biological morphology to divide ourselves into those of us who are more or less beautiful, more or less handsome and more or less physically desirable.

It's also so random and yet we give our bodies meaning that is so important to us.

And as such culture develops a shared agreement about precisely which traits are most attractive we start passing that agreement along to our children at the earliest stages of their socialization.

Then as they become adults they think hey I know beauty when I see it but actually they only know the categories that they have been taught by society around them and that is not beauty that is shared agreement about something that is entirely random.

 

 

And of course we can easily imagine that all of us are artists and our bodies are where we express our art in a variety of ways.

We do this with our hairstyles our clothing our makeup our tattoos our cosmetic surgeries our jewelry.

You know I remember the first two Koreans who I became friends with in nineteen eighty four they were married and he was in my master's program.

I can't vividly recall what either of them looked like but as I think back to that time I know that I had no idea if either of them was attractive or would be considered attractive to other Koreans.

Was he handsome was she beautiful?

I hadn't been taught which physical features East Asians would need to have in order to be included in the special group
These were simply my new friends who happened to be from Seoul.

So now moving forward in time three decades to when I first visited Korea I remember thinking that you know had I not watched Korean television shows and films had I not paid attention to K.pop bands and K. Fashion then I would have no idea who the beautiful and handsome Koreans are.

Everyone who I met would have been like my friends forty years ago just a person with distant ancestors from this peninsula a person who shared some common morphological features with other people in the region.

But this is not the case. 

I've come to learn who most Koreans think are very physically attractive and I'm talking about the general consensus among the population so let me illustrate what I'm saying.

So here are the Miss Chunyang finalists from a previous year.

 

 

They're all clearly Korean and most people would describe them as beautiful.

But what if we follow what I'm saying that there are people whose bodies have physical features that match the characteristics that a population of people has largely agreed to be beautiful and they have learned to use makeup and styling in a way that most people in the population would say oh yes they're very beautiful.

And it's possible that some of them have surgically changed their bodies to match the beauty standards that most Koreans agree upon.

But what if we changed how we think about their beauty?

What if we did not think of them as beautiful?

What if we thought of them as people who have bodies and styles that a large number of Koreans have agreed match what they want to label as beautiful?

And when we look at this photo what we see is simply widespread agreement.

So in a parallel universe women with very different features and styles would be those who a majority of Koreans agree are beautiful.

So imagine in your minds a person who has some body characteristic that is extremely unattractive to you and bring him or her into your mind.

Now imagine that you had been taught that that photo in your mind of people with this characteristic is what is beautiful.

And you would look at this photo on the screen and say I don't see beauty here but now I'm going to go in a different direction.

I want to say how what I have just discussed might be valuable for Korea's future because what Korean beauty looks like is about to change more quickly than many of us anticipated fifteen or twenty years ago.

 

 

So do you know who this person is?

She's the most recent Miss Nihon.

Well she had to step down shortly after winning the title because of something related to her personal life but she's Japanese in every way she speaks Japanese she embraces Japanese customs.

The only unique thing about her is that her ancestors do not have a long history in the country in the island country of Japan.

So I'm going to show you a photo and I want you to notice how all of these women look alike.

 

 

Now can you notice that Carolina truly is Japanese?

She blends him with these other women who all have distant ancestors from the island nation of Japan.

Now if Japan was like the United States where we have citizens and beauty contestants and with body features and DNA admixture from all over the world it would not take much effort to see her as Japanese.

But Japan is not like the United States and so this shift in thinking takes an additional step.

So now this is what it looks like here in Korea.

 

 

Ms. Chunyang finalists from a previous year are all clearly Korean and their distant ancestors are all from the peninsula of Korea.

Now imagine that two of them are not of Korean ancestry.

 

 

Imagine that one is of Japanese ancestry and imagine that another is the Canadian ancestry and that she is black because her distant ancestors are from Sub Saharan Africa.

And let's also imagine that instead of Miss Chunyng they are all contestants for Missk Korea and so they truly represent the most beautiful women in your country.

And when you send your representative to the Miss World or Miss Universe contest people all over the world say ah this is the most beautiful and special woman in all of Korea.

So let's stay with this idea.

Here's the stage and these two women are competing the arrows are pointing to them.

 

They speak Korean fluently and with an accent from soul they have Korean citizenship they act Korean in every way they drink sojuice sometimes 

they snack on gimbap and beanbop and they eat gimchi with every meal 

Oh yes and they would never imagine crossing the street if the crosswalk signs said don't walk.

So how is this for you? 

Have they accepted enough of your culture to be just like you?

are they Korean just like you?

are they still beautiful in the way you recognize beauty?

remember beauty is random it's all about cultural agreement and because of your falling birth rate you will soon have many more people living here whose distant ancestors are not from the Korean Peninsula and they will have Korean citizenship and they will be Korean.

In fact Miss Chunyangg Beauty Pageant Committee recently announced that it is currently accepting candidates from China Canada Japan Vietnam and Indonesia and next year there will be more countries added.

So this is what I'm thinking.

Eventually you can and you will see people who today you label as foreigners as fully Korean they will be Korean in the way you understand what that means.

They will act in the same way that most people you know act because Korean culture will be the only culture that they know.

This might be difficult to imagine but average Koreans are going to change their standards of beauty and eventually there will be widespread agreement about what these new standards are.

This country will have no choice but to do this and so it will happen and if you see our random physical features our physical features as random like I do and like other sociologists do then this will be a much easier transition for most people here.

 

 

So what about Korean culture?

Well here's what I'm thinking.

If you accept that foreigners can think and act and speak just like you 

even when they don't look like you then you can accept them as Korean and Korean culture can remain very strong.

So Korea will look different in the future but it does not have to be radically different and all of the things that you love and admire about your current nation and your culture can be carried into the future.

For these new generations of Koreans who have distant ancestors from all over the planet in this era this time of rapid social change there's no reason for Koreanness to weaken if people fully welcome everyone into the culture.

Yeah thank you 감사합니다.