I will be writing a series of articles on what role ‘age factor' plays in Korean culture. I will try to make them easy to read. This will be the first of the series.

Maybe I should introduce myself first for your sake. I am Korean in my mid thirties, 35 to be exact. Although I consider myself through and through Korean, I lived most of my life outside my country. Before I got into college in Korea, I lived in the U.S. for three years and four years in Japan. After college, I moved to Canada and for the last ten years I stayed in Vancouver, Canada. Wait, you say, that doesn't add up to 35 years, right? I served in military for 26 months and that should explain. So that's me.

I wanted to start out with a bit about myself first, because I believe my unique background gave me a platform to think about what I'm about to talk about. I'm no philosopher by nature, and I wouldn't have thought about this matter if it weren't for those backgrounds. I currently work as a Korean translator and that should also play a part,since as a cross cultural writer, aka translator, you are required to put some extra effort on understanding different culture from different point of view.

I didn't even start talking about this ‘age factor,' yet, and, in fact, I won't be in this piece of article. That will begin from the next article, which means this particular article is all about introduction. I'm laying it out this way in order to build credibility on this matter: this is a difficult issue and it's not going to be explained by an outsider nor by an insider. If it gave you an impression that this ‘age thing' must be special in Korea, you nailed it. It's quite sensitive, as well as difficult. If I may be a bit more blunt, foreigners especially those from the West might find this very confusing and even annoying. It is the source of culture shock to them. So let's begin. Follow me up on the next article.