The small cultural differences are sometimes the most striking. Take the question of what's considered publicly embarrassing.
God forbid a woman be caught smoking by a male colleague or stranger in public. Korean women who smoke go to great lengths to hide the fact that they smoke, and every building has a secret balcony or hidden rooftop space where these shameful women ply their vice, while Korean men smoke nonchalantly anywhere they damn well please.
Meanwhile, I passed not one but two women casually seated on busy sidewalk benches at different spots, indelicately cleaning the gunk out from between their toes.
Notes for Korean
콩국수 = cold noodles and soybean soup
부터 = from, when
cf. 나를 선생님으로부터 보호하세요 = protect me from the teacher (a student sample sentence)
차지하다= seize, take possession of, make something one's own
편리한 = convenient
적 = [this is some kind of mystery particle... I see it all the time, attached to substantives and followed by the copula... not sure how it works. one dictionary meaning that might fit: "occasion, time, experience" but I'm not sure that's right]
example:
구체 = the property of concreteness
구체적인 = concrete (adjectival meaning, i.e. having the property of concreteness)
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