Nia Cho, a Korean barista and YouTuber based in London who likes to chat with customers, noticed a glaring difference in how Westerners and Koreans respond to a question: "How are you?" “While working at cafes in London, I casually engaged in small talk with about 80 percent of customers.” “In London, asking ‘How are you?’ worked like a magical conversation starter. In Korea, however, when customers were asked the same question, they replied, ‘Pardon me?’”
Her viewers and subscribers — posting predominantly in Korean in the comments — found her interactions novel and refreshing. Some wrote that they felt the need to “learn how to make small talk and practice before going abroad.” Casual chatting with strangers seems to be a common challenge among Koreans. In Korean society, at large, small talk is absent. When ordering at cafes and restaurants or checking out in stores, only the necessary questions and answers are tossed back and forth between customers and clerks. Once you place your order and pay the price, interactions end.
In elevators, on park benches or on the street, people largely refrain from exchanging greetings. Even if they make eye contact, they often deliberately pretend not to have seen each other and walk past one another — as if it were an unspoken norm. This does not, however, necessarily mean that Koreans are not talkative or callously apathetic toward others. If not antisocial, then why do Koreans shy away from small talk with strangers?
Noh Hee-young, a hairdresser with 25 years of experience, still gets hesitant when welcoming customers, especially new clients she has never met. In the blink of an eye, she scans whether a customer is communicative, which she described as the most mentally taxing part of her job. Quite often, she strategically remains silent. “Some customers keep their eyes closed throughout the service from the moment they sit in the salon chair,” Noh said. “In these situations, I do not ask questions or initiate conversation.” Short or barely audible replies to her small talk attempts as indirect signals that they prefer silence.
Koreans’ implicit tendency to avoid small talk can be seen as a mindful gesture to respect others’ boundaries and err on the side of caution to avoid unintentional disrespect or overstepping. “It is slightly different from the Western concept of personal space.”
“In the Korean language, maintaining silence or holding back are not meaningless or void actions. They convey thoughtfulness and discretion. Thus, not starting a conversation does not necessarily equate to indifference. It can rather be seen as a gesture meant to prevent a situation causing discomfort to strangers and their counterparts.” In this context, the ability to read the room through unspoken cues — known as nunchi in Korean — matters. Koreans attune themselves to settings and others’ moods through implicit clues.
“While Westerners assess the personalities of strangers or those nearby through small talk, Koreans just gauge them through nunchi in silence,” Kim said, noting that communication in Western culture is more centered on explicit statements. A Korean professor attributed the lack of small talk to Koreans’ belief that “everything has a single correct answer.” “Small talk is supposed to be about minor, casual topics. However, Koreans cannot constantly get away from being mindful about what the most appropriate topic would be. This seals their lips.
In addition, relationships in Korean society are largely hierarchical, and Koreans are overly attuned to judgment. Whether to begin a conversation and the range of conversation topics is based on their counterpart's job title, social status and age. Koreans, when speaking with such personal details out in the open, tend to be excessively conscious of how they might be perceived for what they said and how those words would affect their reputation” .
The importance of sizing up your conversation partner is perhaps — ironically — most evident in online chat rooms, forums and comment sections, where participants throw around slang in the most informal level of politeness. As long as faces and identities are concealed, Koreans communicate with apparent freedom from the pressure of being judged.
Our notion of “us” has evolved differently from that in Western cultures, with the Confucian principles of communal values losing ground in some aspects to a highly competitive societal mentality that seemingly starts as early as childhood. “While Westerners deem strangers potential neighbors, Koreans are likely to view them as potential competitors, which ultimately constrains the possibility of small talk. Koreans are natural-born chatters within their inner groups, but they tend to become stiff and reserved when encountering strangers.
Koreans' tendency to stay away from small talk may be partly due to a unique linguistic factor. “While calling anyone ‘you’ in Western culture is not offensive, referring to a stranger as ‘neo' or 'dangshin’ or calling someone by their name during an interaction between people who have never met before in Korea can be deemed impolite. Kim Ji-woo, a Korean who previously worked at a franchise cafe in Osaka, Japan, spotted a subtle difference in how small talk unfolds even between Koreans and Japanese. Kim said chit-chat with Korean visitors was more personal. “While Japanese customers usually offered warm encouragement, Korean customers were more interested in my personal background, asking why I was working at a cafe in Japan or whether I was residing in Japan,” Kim said.