not sure how much is individual and how much is culture
One of my Sisters in law is from Korea. She's reluctant to explain customs to westerners and seems to want it to be a trial by error, but what I've gathered from my brother, and seen for myself, there seem to be several subcultures within all that is Korean. I don't know if the subcultures split among family lines or regional or religious. The only one that I noticed was urban vs rural. The main one that seems to unify them is dislike of Japan (due to what happened in WW2) Things that I I've done that apparently offended her...
My house is too big.
I live on a farm. (Geese walk on the driveway, and tend to poop when they walk)
I served too much meat at one meal. (It wasn't that there weren't enough vegetables. She's not a vegetarian. It was that meat was free choice for those eating, as much as they wanted)
I raised, butchered and cooked the pig I served. (She was of the opinion that one person shouldn't do all those things, that I should have hired people to do that. In my religion you should at least once in a while partake of all the chores involved in your meal. So it's a religion clash, but I just don't get her point of view, that it's somehow wrong)
I wear shoes in my house.
The guest room bed was too high. She pulled the mattress off the frame so as to sleep on the floor.
I am allergic to fish. (She was offended when I couldn't eat her california rolls, but OTOH was pleased that I wanted to learn how to make them and even left me a jar of wasabi and a jar of pickled ginger.)
All that said, since she speaks so little English, and the only Korean I recognize is "Yobo", what she calls my brother and "Hajima" which seems to mean the same as the Jaffa word, "Kree," it could be simply that my brother is mistranslating stuff, and he's just enough of a joker that he might be doing that deliberately.
