“Which Korea is the Best Korea?” and other facepalm inducing questions

The cocktail-sipping, little-plate full of assorted cinnamony things balancing, small-talk over Christmas this year went a tad more tumultuously than normal.

“So what are your plans for after graduation?”

The answer, “Well, actually… I’m moving to Korea,” as far as I can tell, might as well have been:

Which, I suppose, is understandable.

It’s the follow-up question I did not see coming. “Oh wow. …Which one?”

North. Kim Jong Un and I go way back.

To be honest, though, I can’t point fingers too emphatically.  My own cultural education is pretty shoddy and based more on the countries that catch my personal interest than anything. But still. This seems to be a bit of an epidemic.

Evidence #1

Seriously though. Which Korea IS the best Korea?

I don’t mean to keep being an America-downer of sorts, but it’s too much of a vacuum sealed mason jar up in here, perspective/awareness-wise. It’s odd though; I don’t think the problem comes from a “We’re better than the rest of the world” or even a  “we don’t need the rest of the world” mentality as much as it is “Wait. There’s a rest of the world?”

Yes. Yes there is. And while we aren’t all called to soujourn as goats in Nepal, we probably should explore it to some extent.