Lessons from a Korean mother-in-law (by Jennifer Burton)

This week’s blog post includes a linked audio file. Just click on the link below if you would like to hear the post read aloud. Scroll down to read the text.

When I first met Sung Hyun (승현), my Korean husband—then boyfriend, now ex-husband—in 2006, I was already living in Seoul, South Korea, teaching English as a Foreign Language for eight months. At that time, I spoke limited Korean: hello, thank-you, good-bye, this food tastes good, how much is this? was pretty much the extent of my Korean language abilities. Sung Hyun’s English proficiency paralleled my Korean proficiency, which, as you could imagine, made for an interesting first date!

I could hardly string together a sentence in Korean, yet I found myself constantly being praised for my efforts. Whether it was the old lady at the local food shop, strangers on the bus, or my Korean co-workers and friends, “한국말 잘하시네요!” (You speak Korean so well) they would say. My level-two Korean language teacher at Sogang University in Seoul reminded me on the first day of class, when she told us that while strangers on the street might compliment us for our Korean, we were, in fact, only beginners, and that we did not speak Korean so well. She was right.

It wasn’t until Sung Hyun and I moved into my then mother-in-law’s 250-square foot apartment that I took my relationship with Korean seriously. It was important to me to have a relationship with my mother-in-law, so I quit my full-time English language teaching job and enrolled in Korean language classes. This marked the beginning of our heartfelt (and rather comedic) relationship. I have a collection of fond memories of our time together. In this post, I’d like to share a few stories.  

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