Korean culture

Some new cultural experience I encountered are:
1) Hierarchy.  I knew Korea had an hierarchy system.  I did not know a lot about it.  My parents reminded me, "respect your parents and elders" and it was followed with "that is the most important."  There's hierarchy in age, rank at the work place (if someone starts work before me, but they are younger they are still my 선배-senior), even at my work place (rank with the bosses)- I call them "원장님" (won-jan nim)  님 (nim) is a polite way to call someone.

2) Business cards are important.  I never thought of making a business card because I never really had an interest in them.  In Korea, business cards are important to Korean people.  They exchange business cards when they meet.  They are in both English and Korean.  I think business cards are used as almost a work ID when people do business with each other.

3) Korea is patriarchal.  The US is too.  In the United States, women can keep their surname, change to their husband's surname or use both.  In Korea, women keep their father's surname.  My Korean name is 박은영 (Park, Eunyoung).  Park is my surname.  When Koreans marry, the children take on the father's surname.  I tried explaining to US born and raised coworkers about this cultural trait Korea has.  I tried to be polite.  I explained the surname is important.  Kids want to do well in carrying on the name meaning, they don't want to "upset" the family name because it's not only them, it's the whole family.  I tried to explain it simple, but polite.

Being a sociology major and taking some interesting cultural classes, it's fun to pick up on unique cultural traits.