Travel Korea Day 2: Gwen’s Hospitality

As I talked with Gwen to plan my stay in Gwangju, she mentioned that I could stay in her apartment. What I didn’t realize in the planning stages was what that meant. The night I arrived, she and her boyfriend walked me back to her apartment after playing pool. Once there, they explained how different things worked, handed me the spare key, and showed me how to lock the door. I thought all of this was unusual until the wished me to “take a rest”—and then it clicked: They were leaving me by myself! I was profoundly affected by this and filled with so many questions: Where would she stay and why wouldn’t she stay with me?

Having had a chance to mule over the incident, I feel as though hospitality like this speaks volumes to Americans. For one thing, we love control. We think of hospitality as largely an allowance: This much I will permit you to do or to enter, but the rest is mine and off limits. Though I’m still a bit unsure of the Korean modus operandi at large, Gwen’s seems to be one of service and trust. She trusted me enough to open her house to me and allowed me access to virtually everything there, serving me by her actions and wishing me to make myself at home. To give up control of her things for an almost-stranger is for the American something unheard of! Again, I was like a traveler in Old Testament Israel, a foreigner welcomed in the midst of the people.

We Americans might at first take offense to our host not staying with us; we feel somehow wounded and sense a sharp lack of acceptance, sure that such conduct can only be inhospitable. Gwen opening her home to me, however, makes me think of hospitality differently. She wasn’t trying to offend, but instead trying to provide for my physical needs through providing me privacy. Americans value privacy, but in general I feel they (myself included) don’t think of it as a way to be hospitable or gracious. Koreans, I feel, take many human needs into consideration and go out of their way to provide for them, including this need. By letting me stay at her house by myself, Gwen gave me a sense of privacy that I might, in other circumstances, not have had. She was able to spend time with her sister while her guest was able to unwind a little from her travels.