Korea's Changing Face- Westernized or Modernized? > 영어토론방

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But physical changes aside, the day-to-day Korean lifestyle is not what it used to be in the past. Is it the result of simple modernization or is Korea becoming "westernized", as traditionalists say?

Consider the Korean lifestyle- past and present:

Before 1987 there were no foreign fast food restaurants in Korea, but within just a few years, Koreans were munching on pizzas, hamburgers, french fries, and donuts. By 1995, when a survey of Korean habits was taken, 29 percent of all Koreans said that thety liked western food better than Korean food.

Many of them complained that most traditional Korean foods, including kimchee, were :too hot:. Asked about their favorite foods, they named hamburgers, french fries, and pizza. The only Korean food on their list of favorites was ramyeon.

The tea shops, known as tabang, of the 1980s have almost disappeared and replaced by upscale coffee shops and German-style beer gardens, called hofs. Cups of coffee with exotic names or mugs of draft beer with side orders of french fries have replaced the tea and peanuts.

The primary means of communication among Koreans these days are PCS(personal communications service) and cellular phones, which can be heard ringing everywhere. Nowadays, restaurants, stores, in their cars, or walking along the street. The lines of people waiting to use public phones are definitely shorter than they used to be in the past.

Nowadays Koreans are more likely to live in hi-rise condominium complexes than in houses and do their shopping in huge discount stores or shopping centers instead of at shijangs. An increasing number of Koreans now sleep on beds, communicate through computers, cook on microwave ovens, watch video movies at home on wide-screen TV sets.

Koreans eat, dress, communicate, and entertain themselves much differently than they did just one generation ago, but does this mean that Koreans are forgetting their own culture and becoming "westernized"? Traditionalists think so. But it could also be that Korea has simply modernized and joined the rest of the industrialized world.

Q1) Do you think that the Korean lifestyle (way of libing) has changed very much in the last 10 years? If so, give some examples of how Korean society has changed.

Q2) Do you agree that Korea has become "westernized", as some Korean traditionalists claim? If you think so, in what ways is life in Korea the same as life in the west?

Q3) About one-forth of all Koreans now say that they like western food better than Korean food. How far will it go? Will American food replace Korean food completely someday? Why or why not?

Q4) Many of Korea's older generation are worried that Koreans will forget their culture. Is that possible? Which of these statements do you agree with?
* Koreans should never give up their basic traditions and customes.
That's what makes them different from other societies.
* Change is a normal thing. All societies must change to stay up to date with the rest of the world.

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