For the past year and a half, I’ve gotten my hair cut by a woman who runs a small barbershop in eastern Bupyeong**. After today’s haircut, she handed me back three 1,000-Won notes after I handed her a 10,000-note. She’d smiled and said something I didn’t understand, but indicated that she was aware she was giving me 3,000, which means the new price is 7,000. This is the first time I’ve paid that price. / Alright. It’s still half what I paid in the USA.
In all my visits to this woman, she has never once tried even one word of English. Our limited communication is in Korean. I appreciate that, even though it means very limited communication. / There are some foreigners of my acquaintance here who have located an “English-speaking barber” in central-Bucheon, to whom they shell out 20-25,000 (about $20) for a man’s haircut. I consider that a waste of money, but “to each his own”.
** — “Bupeyong” (부평) is an older neighborhood between Incheon and Seoul. I live to the east of Bupyeong, in a newer development called Jung-Dong, Bucheon. I have always felt a bit more comfortable in humbler Bupyeong than in self-consciously wealthier Bucheon. Bupyeong is also where I used to play soccer. See post-6. Actually, the barbershop is just above the anchor-point of post-6’s map. I found it once on the way to play soccer, and I’ve stuck with it.
What about tips for haircuts (and other services) in Korea–like in the U.S.? And if there is no tipping, I wonder if Korean people who come to the U.S. would participate in our more or less standard practice of tipping (for taxi drivers, waiters, barbers, etc., etc.) and if they would even know about it?
There is never any custom of tipping in South Korea, not in any circumstance that I am aware of.
In some cases, I’ve actually heard (and this sounds very strange, I know) that if you try to tip a Korean, he/she will get a bit angry and offended — you are, in effect, calling him/her a charity-case, “a poor person in need of handouts to survive”. Taxi drivers will always give exact change, even when a bill comes to 3,900 Won, and you hand him 4,000, he hands back a 100-coin (100 Won=10 U.S. cents).
My first Korean boss, who I profiled in post-48, several times talked to me about the Western custom of tipping. She had a strong opinion on it. She insisted that it was “stupid” — I can’t quite remember if she used that word, but that was the spirit of her sentiment on that subject. In a way I can’t disagree that obligatory tipping in the USA has become just a plain-old surcharge, rather than a true appreciation of good service. Still, a cultural total-ban on ever tipping at all (S.Korea) may be too much…