These Korean Parenting Tactics Would Never Fly in America

Korea: Caught in the Middle

Korea is a small country, historically caught between larger neighbors like China, Japan, and Russia. This has created a hard life for people that required sacrifice and discipline for survival. Culturally, Confucianism and similar philosophies that stress duty, responsibility, and social hierarchy have strongly influenced Korean society.

Today South Korea is under military threat from its northern counterpart, and in fierce economic competition with regional rivals. So despite the prosperity of the country today, Korean people still feel an urgency to push themselves and their children to excellence. Next up are examples of how that manifests in parenting.

1. “High Context” Social Skills

In a culture that is high context, individuals need to be able to “read the room” and pick up on unspoken messages. Directly confronting an interpersonal problem causes the other person to lose face, a disastrous faux pas. Children learn from an early age to interpret their parents’ expressions and other nonverbals and act accordingly.

By contrast, it’s not unusual to hear American parents say “use your words.” We encourage verbal expression of our feelings, wants, and needs, and try to communicate those to our children as well. This differs regionally and in individual families. Some parts of the American South, for example, are more high context than the more verbally direct urban cultures of the Northeast.

2. A Collective Mentality

Whereas the West has more of an emphasis on individual rights, Eastern cultures tend to stress social responsibilities. Children may face reprimand for behaving in a way that is perceived as selfish or disruptive to the group, sometimes even if they have a legitimate need.

3. Strict Discipline

Koreans do not frown upon spanking and other physical punishments as much as many contemporary Americans do. Parents maintain strict, rigid discipline in the household and children learn to obey immediately or face unpleasant consequences.

4. Honoring Elders

The Korean language has polite forms of address that are reserved for elders and others who are held in high esteem. Children address adults with this kind of formal speech, listen attentively when they are speaking, and obey their instructions. Parents and grandparents make most decisions for children and young people. Even as adults, Koreans will avoid making a decision that would displease these authority figures.

5. Academic Competition

Most Korean parents are keenly focused on their children’s academic success. They expect them to study tirelessly and make the highest grades. They will often invest in after-school programs and tutoring to help them get an edge. Like the business world, schools and colleges are highly competitive and stressful.

6. Civic Obligation

At home and school, children must participate in cleaning and maintenance as part of a team sharing the work. They learn about the responsibilities of doing their part as a good citizen. This type of early training has contributed to a society today that generally has clean and safe streets and a high degree of social politeness.

7. Little Overt Affection

Korean parents are well-known for being strict and in many cases do not display affection overtly through touch or words of affirmation. Partially, this approach comes from Buddhist influences that see emotion as an expression of attachment that must be overcome on the path to enlightenment. But it is also simply a tradition handed down from the way they themselves were raised by parents who lived through more difficult times in their country’s past, such as the Korean War. There is a sense that too much coddling will raise weak and spoiled children who will not be able to face the difficulties of a hard world.

8. Open to Foreign Influences

It’s not good to over-generalize about any culture. All we’ve said are things that Koreans themselves have remarked upon as tendencies in typical Korean families. But the world is a global community now and Korean people consume Western media voraciously. Many Korean parents are open to outside influences to learn other styles of parenting. This gives them more tools to select from in their parenting toolkit.

The fact that you have taken the time to read this article shows that you, too, are open to learning other ways to do things in your home. Handing on to our kids that kind of open-minded quest for knowledge and improvement may be one of the best parenting skills of all.