Cross-Cultural Dialogue
Working-Class Mr. Ahn's Unscheduled Visits to Dr. Yeon's Clinic continues...
Missed Part 1? Start here → PART 1
Warning: this post deals with some heavier psychological topics and dark fictional elements. Everything here is totally fictional.
Glitch in the Matrix
J: Sorry for the weird drama — I just checked the sent mail again, and all the sentences are intact, even from the first sending. I have no idea why… I feel like I'm being pranked by Gmail, like what the heck hahahaha. Glitch in the matrix I tell you.
Asuka! Don't worry — I'm just happy I got to read what's sure to be the most thrilling chapter three times! Just uploaded a new vid and now I'm heading to shower. Burned the midnight oil for the first time in a while. Time to get ready for bed while sipping the tea you brewed for me.
J: Hi Asuka, I archived everything on my blog before Big Brother Google could collapse our arc lol. I wanted to fit everything in one post, but apparently Google loves giving users drama — couldn't add any more text to the first post, so I had to split it into part two. Added some black and white photos while updating too. Since everything on the blog is a feast of metaphors, allegories, and allusions, I guess I wanted the photos to also have that film photography vibe that oscillates between reality and unreality, haha.
Time to slowly savour the soup you've brewed this weekend — with my amateur critique, I'll put my heart into making your new hot tea come to a boil.
Oh, to answer your question about BL. Like I mentioned before, it's like saying 'there's not much prepared, but please eat a lot' (the table's already bent). So basically, this country has tons of euphemisms and double-speak. I've watched many relocated foreign colleagues around me struggle with these Korean linguistic quirks.
People probably love BL as a commercial product but find 'actual' BL burdensome. Especially here, where they hush-hush about checking out, mental health issues, and homosexuality — though for the first one, it's already well-known we're world champions. For mental health issues... probably everyone's suffering but no one talks about it openly. Looking too weak to be responsible for anything at work isn't a penalty anyone wants. And the last one? No one's opening up because that's just easier for everyone... Yet it's ironic that BL content is the hottest-selling thing in the media industry.
Jen
Forbidden Fruit
A: Oh my, I just saw the picture of that popsicle sticking up in the sun, hahahahahaha, it's so pretty and so funny at the same time. Thanks for enhancing the visits to the clinic (and to grannie's house) with these tasteful pictures. They do have that summer dream vibe. So authentic.
I did have a feeling BL as an artistic product is very hot selling in Korea. I was more curious what the attitude to actual BL relationships is. I gathered that more than 1/4 of Korea identifies as some sort of Christian (the largest percentage of the East Asian countries), and Christianity is generally disapproving of BL. But I suspect the true resistance to actual BL is due to a strong cultural conservatism that runs through the country, rather than religious reasons. This might make reading and watching BL kind of like secretly enjoying forbidden fruit, no? (I could be very wrong here. This is all pure speculation from someone who can't even speak Korean. I hope I am not being very offensive!)
BL is also very hot selling in Japan, where there are entire buildings devoted to selling such literature (to a mostly female clientele). But as for actual BL relationships, in Japan, no one really cares one way or another. It's more like, the city Japanese try to mind their own business and not care about their neighbors' preferences. So reading BL openly in, say, Akihabara or Shinjuku doesn't have the effect of tasting forbidden fruit. And real BL dating — city people don't really care, it's like 'you do you'.
Not sure why I wanted to explore this haha. I guess I wanted to 'feel the milieu' better, to know what Si-Eun and Suho have chosen to live through (even though it's happening in deluluverse.)
Oh and soup Part 2 should be boiled within the next two days. Head nurse, kitchen prepping.
Confucian Face
J: Hi Asuka, sitting in a cafe before my commute home, waiting for the train and grinning like an idiot reading your email. That Melona popsicle is probably older than I am — it's been Korea's beloved stick treat for decades. I pictured our two puppies sharing one: Si-eun holding the wooden stick while early-twenties Suho devours more than half. I imagined them walking home after boxing practice by the Han River, their silhouettes fading into the distance. (Suddenly all my work frustrations just melted away)
I was envisioning their place — the house Suho's grandma left him, somewhere in Seoul's old quarters, shabby and weathered. Beom-seok's family obviously lives in some posh villa overlooking the Han from Gangnam or central Seoul. Si-eun's parents probably made a strategic move to Gangnam's most academically competitive district right before he started high school.
For Suho to attend Byeoksan High, assuming school districts go by address, he'd need to be in the Gangnam zone, so he and Grandma probably rented space there. So when I'm dreaming up this house in delululand where college-aged Si-eun and high-schooler-again Suho live together — grandma's only inheritance in some forgotten, undeveloped corner of Seoul, all rickety and worn — I'm thinking "this doesn't quite add up..." but what can we do? HAHAHA.
And if our two puppies are going to bloom their romance in grandma's old house, there definitely won't be any fancy keypad locks to punch. Instead, Suho will come home from his delivery runs in Seoul's bitter October dawn air, pushing open that paint-chipped jade or blue metal gate. The screech of metal will reach Si-eun's ears as he waits with his anatomy books. (Ah... drowning in the depths of delusion again, lol)
Oh, and Korea's fortunate to have almost zero religious conflict. (For a divided nation sandwiched between superpowers like Japan and China, with our geographically cursed location, adding religious strife would just be cruel.) Being ethnically homogeneous helps... but it's less about religious influence and more about deep-rooted Confucian culture. We obsess over "face" — how we appear to others.
Si-eun's mother is exactly that type, I think. The first thing she did when she brought her son home in S2 was stage loving mother-son photos. Both gorgeous and smiling tenderly, sure, but her son was actually lying awake with severe depression and guilt. She doesn't even know he's carrying the weight of Suho's lost youth, something he can't afford to bear.
The subtitles said "Your friend Suho's grandmother came looking for you," but it was actually "That grandmother of your friend named 'Suho' came looking for you." Si-Eun probably didn't elaborate, but maybe she lacks the bandwidth to look deeper into her son's heart, or instinctively senses it might stray from her idea of "normal" and chooses not to know. Still, Si-eun leaving for Singapore to study, leaving Suho behind for his mother's sake — that was striking. He's such a warm kid.
Anyway, having many Japanese colleagues gave me lots of cultural insights. Japan is definitely much more open about sexuality and treats it as recreation. In Korea, we're too busy worrying about others' opinions to enjoy things openly. People get uncomfortable when sexual topics come up in groups. This probably won't change, and honestly, I don't think it needs to. I'm a local here too, but honestly I don't expect much from this country. I just live here because I was born here, haha.
Head nurse, I'll savor the soup Part 1 you've brewed during my train ride home. Jen.
Who is Jennie? Bricklayer. Local correspondent for the Yeon Clinic deluluverse. A sous chef who checks whether the soup actually tastes like Seoul. A specialist who designs this kitchen to hold more than Suho's coma — philosophy, history, society, culture, stacked one recipe at a time.
Who is Asuka? Head nurse and main chef of the Yeon Clinic. A Scheherazade who sings the Song of Achilles she found shelved next to a book on Zen Buddhist masters. Fluent in several languages, conversant in single malts and the precise emotional damage of Weak Hero Class 1. Signs off as ASL. (Always starch linen.)
This free ebook will ruin you. In the best way. A character analysis of Si-eun, Su-ho and Beom-seok that goes beyond what subtitles can carry. Take it — it's free → DOWNLOAD HERE
This post was originally published on Jennie's blog in the autumn of 2025. The original blog has since moved to Blogger due to hosting changes — welcome to the new home.
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