Gay men sometimes jokingly (and even semi-seriously) refer to their “gaydar”, their ability to sense whether someone is gay. Straight men, on the other hand, tend not to have access to such mystical powers, and anyway, for straight men the tension is all about prclaiming oneself is straight. It’s much easier to read someone else when that person is reacting to one’s implicit, “Hey, by the way, I’m straight.” I don’t really have to do that, because I live in Korea and I have met, maybe, one or two obviously gay men in my several years here. And they weren’t foreigners: I’ve heard of one gay foreigner in the country (or two, though one happens to be a lesbian; she also happens to be a wonderful writer by the way), but in general, well, Korea’s a bad place to meet other gay people, so the foreigner gay population here seems to be pretty small.
I think in Korea being gay, for most gay men, probably means being in a secret club and you don’t let anything on until the other guy starts the first step (of a very complicated) proverbial “secret handshake”. You just assume everyone is straight, unless you’re in the nation’s only secret gay bar or something. (And yes, there is at least one gay bar around Itaewon. I’ve walked past it in my searches for Halal food shops with better selection of curry spices.) It’s got signs declaring, “Why Not?” with two male-signs linked, and the subtitle: “Male Meet Market!”
But anyway, yeah, for us straight guys, there this strange ritual described in this well-written article over at The Black Table. I have noticed a variation on it, actually. I have noticed, in Korea, that younger women are often a little tense when they’re around a strange foreign man. They tend to relax, however, when they find out he has a girlfriend. They may get worked up if they hear she’s Korean, and ask a series of questions. But they tend, inevitably, to be more comfortable with a man who is “taken”, as if they take for granted that a man who is “taken” will “behave”. Of course, in my case it’s true: I do behave. But I can imagine a lot of men my age, foreign and Korean alike, would not. It’s funny.
By the way, this reminds me, I’ve only once heard anyone actually say anything negative about foreigners dating Koreans. I’ve seen a lot of funny looks, some rude noises, some nasty gestures, but only once has anyone said anything aloud that I caught. It was a student of mine, a middle-aged woman who advised me that I shouldn’t date Korean women. She said she was “against that sort of thing.” She was fairly outspoken and when I asked her why, she said, “Well, what about when you go back to your country?”
You see this a lot, by the way. Plenty of Koreans assume that, after a certain amount of time, everybody wants to go “home” to his or her “home country”. When I told her I don’t want to go to Canada, she was flabbergasted, and it turned into one of those, “Yes, ma’am, I know Canada’s a good country… and I appreciate it more when I’m not living there myself. I am happier abroad,” kinds of conversations. I could not get the woman to admit that at least sometimes, foreigners dating Koreans might not be a bad thing. I think she’s a nice woman and all, but I do suspect that what seemed to be presented as a logical reason was really just her justification of the position she reached because of basically racist views. I’m not screaming that she’s a racist: she was, as far as I knew, a pretty cool woman, a good mother (I also taught her kid, who was no doubt a psycho child, but a good-natured one), an eager student; she just happened to also be somewhat mediocre politically.
It’s funny. Though I rail at bigotry and racism among people in my own culture, I find it forgivable (though unpalatable) when I encounter it in people like this, people whose backgrounds have afforded them little exposure to foreigners, little exposure to the fact that their own views are bigoted and even racist.
In retrospect, though, I wish I’d pointed out to her the numbers of Koreans who go to live abroad, for a year or in some cases far longer. By her logic, Koreans also shouldn’t date one another until they’re firmly entrenched in the country by a job or some other unquestionable anchor. I wonder what she would have said to that.