Saturday, August 11, 2012

Korean Gestures/poses

The most common pose you probably see me make in almost every picture is the "V" sign. In america, this translates as peace and therefore is outdated and old.




This isn't the case in Korea, it doesn't stand for peace. It's stands for 'victory' loosely. So if someone asks you, hey, how'd you do with your interview? You can flash the V sign. It's also kind of a good luck symbol, so that's why its in pictures. It actually makes pictures less awkward, because you have something to do with your hands, haha!

Other poses include making a V out of your two hands and holding it against your jaw line. This is used to look cute and to also hide if your jaw is square. Another version of this pose is to make two 'v' signs out of both hands and hold them against your jaw in the same position. It, again, is essentially just to hide a square jaw or to make your face look more narrow and pointy.

There are also two ways of showing love for another person at a distance. One is you make a heart shape out of your hands:
The other is to make a heart shape over your heat using both arms:




As for Korean gestures, the basic one is the bow. I bow all the time. It's become a habit. When I see someone for the first time in a day, I bow to them, or if i'm sitting, I do a head nod. I also tend to bow if i'm shaking hands, its just a habit thing.

Another gesture is holding your elbow. This sounds weird, but whenever you give or take something from someone in Korea, the polite thing to do is to place one hand on the inside of the elbow of the other when you receive it. To not do so is very rude.

Calling cabs or even people over towards you in Korea is palm down. If you call someone over to you palm up, it's like you are considering them an animal (since thats how they call animals). So, palm down. Seems awkward at first but easily caught on.

Of course, as a foreigner you can often get away with not doing these things, but people could still get offended that you aren't putting in the effort to learn the culture.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Since when have koreans been doing the "arms above head" heart gesture? (curious, is it a modern phenomena? who started it?)

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