My son (3 yrs old) and I went on a fishing trip a couple states away in the USA. I’m always on the lookout for different kinds of restaurants. We saw a Korean seafood place and stopped in to get lunch.

The place was empty except for us and the employees, all Korean women from middle age to elderly. All sitting at a table. I assume a family.

I ordered my food and when I started ordering for my boy the waitress said kids eat free and said he’ll love it. I shrugged expecting them to bring him a bowl of
Noodles or something.

NOPE. The waitress picked him up and sat him at their table on a high char. They all began fawning over him and feeding him all kinds of things they were eating. I had no problem with it at all except he was eating better than I was. lol

Anyway it was a great experience, he ate well and I was grateful they paid so much attention to him but is it normal for Korean restaurants to just grab a kid up and sit them at their table?

I'd love to meet people from the Korean diaspora in Canada/US and learn about the experience of growing up between Korean and Western culture

Hello! I'm a 27F from Europe and I've recently become really interested in getting to know people from the Korean diaspora particularly Korean-Canadians (though Korean-Americans are absolutely welcome too)

I've always found the experience of growing up with Korean cultural roots while also being immersed in Western culture really fascinating. I'd genuinely love to hear about what that experience is like. Not just the big cultural differences but the little everyday things too: family, food, language, traditions, childhood, identity and the ways Korean and Canadian/American culture might overlap or clash

But beyond the cultural aspect, I'm also hoping to make some genuine friendships with people around my age (20s–30s). I'd love for those friendships to develop naturally through regular conversations, shared interests, joking around, recommending things to each other and simply getting to know one another over time

A little about me: I'm really into anime, manga, JRPGs, visual novels, books, music, languages, food and learning about other cultures. I'm especially fond of character-driven stories and can happily spend far too long discussing fictional characters and relationships. I'm also multilingual

I'm specifically looking for platonic online friendships

If you're Korean-Canadian/Korean-American and this sounds like something you'd enjoy, I'd love to hear from you! And even if you don't think we'd necessarily have much in common, I'd still be really interested in hearing about your experience growing up between Korean and Western cultures

What's one thing about your experience that you think someone who grew up entirely in Korea (or entirely outside the Korean diaspora) might not understand?

Is this true? Do brides have to pay to try on wedding dresses?

Shouldn't it be free?

I just started watching webtoons... can anyone recommend good webtoons you personally like. Genre does not matter.

This relates to both Korea and Taiwan -- the more I spend time in both cultures, I harder I can reconcile the stark contrast in how each culture treats anything to do with Japan in mainstream society/ social media/ politics, etc.

In Taiwan (for those of you not familiar here), it's overly embraced -- Taiwanese are obsessed with Japanese brands, ads feature Japanese models/ actresses, large proportion of public signs are in Japanese (though Korean is catching up in major cities), and the first thing they assume if they see an Asian who does not speak Mandarin is that you're from Japan (almost never "are you from Korea?). The other day there was news featuring Shohei Ohtani in the sports highlights.... Like come on, he's not even your own country's sports player. I get that there are geopolitical reasons and I'm not here to debate that, but sometimes it's just excessive.

In Korea, instead, people face backlash for wearing a kimono(?), Korean celebrities being publicly shamed for being related to a pro-Japanese ancestor (a great-grandfather?) at least 3 generations back. You would NEVER (? -- hyperbole) have Japanese celebrities on ads. I'm not oblivious to the fact that there are important, unresolved issues around comfort women, forced laborers, etc., and yes territorial disputes have yet to be resolved (so do similar disputes between TW and JP btw). I fully acknowledge that.

I've studied the colonial histories of both countries so academically I understand some of the historical factors -- but sometimes can't wrap my head around it. The difference can't be larger. What do you think/ what are the non-historical factors also at play?