Caught between Two Worlds: A Non-Verbal Account of the Culture Shock in the First Bilateral “Exchanges” between France and the Joseon Kingdom (Korea)

International relations often cause culture shock not only for the foreigners visiting a country but also for the residents of that country. While nowadays this shock can be diminished by making people who move to another country become more aware of and understand the differences between cultures through all sorts of sources of information, this was not so easy at the end of the 19^th century.

In this paper, my intention is to bring to light the culture shock experienced by one of the first French persons to set foot in the Joseon Kingdom (current Korea) and by the first Korean woman who travelled to France at the turn of the 19^th century. I will investigate some non-verbal elements of culture, such as artefacts, food, and habits, which often make foreigners feel frustrated and confused, becoming incapable of interacting in a meaningful way in the new culture. The framework I will use is the “culture shock model” put forward by Oberg (1954), according to which this phenomenon unfolds in 4 stages: the “honeymoon”, the crisis, the adjustment, and the adaptation. The data is provided by Kyung-Sook Shin’s (2007) novel, Yi Jin, based on a true story (translated into Romanian as Dansul privighetorii de primăvară, 2017, Humanitas), from which I have excerpted the most relevant fragments regarding the topic.

The paper concludes with the idea that, at least in the time which creates the temporal backdrop of the investigated novel, the absence of intercultural encounters, the lack of solid information about each other’s cultures as well as the different patterns of experience of the main characters lead to their estrangement.