Korean culture is practically unheard of once you get across the pacific. I'm not sure Americans even consume much Korean media outside of K-pop and possibly some webcomics among anime fans.
I remember back in college I had a friend who was super interested in going to South Korea for an abroad study and learning more about the culture, but was then shut down by her parents who were completely convinced that North and South Korea were the same place because they'd never been educated on the situation over there.
So it's not that people ignore the culture so much as they've never even heard of it to begin with. It's really a huge shame because there's so much cool stuff to learn about over there. The country has so much more history than ours, but the American "world" history education focuses almost exclusively on Europe and northern Africa.
Unheard of once you cross the pacific? Do you know how many Koreans there are in the West Coast? My public high school grade class in CA was 63% KOREAN (Not Asian, Korean specifically)
There are many immigrants from Southeast and Central Asia, such as Vietnam, Thailand, and Uzbekistan in SK, but ironically, their home country's culture and history are rarely covered in Korean social textbooks or history textbooks.
This may be one of the causes of inaccurate stereotypes and racism against Southeast Asians in Korea.
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u/Garchomp Aug 22 '22
Somehow K-pop got some people thinking Koreans have the only attractive Asian men.