LEE KRAMER'S ROOM: With Views

[PegnVA]

THE KOREAN SECRET TO HAPPINESS AND SUCCESS WITH "NUNCHI," ALL YOU NEED IS YOUR EYES, YOUR EARS AND A QUIET MIND.
By Euny Hong
Ms. Hong is a journalist who writes about Korean culture.
Nov. 2, 2019

I was born in the United States and raised in an English-speaking household. My parents spoke Korean with each other — it was great for secret conversations — but not with me and my siblings. Nonetheless, some Korean words were impossible to escape.

One of the first I learned was “nunchi”— literally translated, “eye-measure.” Nunchi is the art of sensing what people are thinking and feeling, and responding appropriately. It’s speed-reading a room with the emphasis on the collective, not on specific individuals. It might be the most important word I ever learned.

As with most Korean children, I learned it in the negative, with my parents chiding, “Why don’t you have any nunchi?” In traditional Korean child rearing, nunchi is on a par with “Look both ways before crossing the street” and “Don’t hit your sister.”

In Korea, nunchi is woven into everyday life. Take, for example, business cards. Even in the era of LinkedIn, Koreans still exchange business cards, and the exchange approaches ceremonial levels: You must take and receive a business card with both hands, as if it were fragile, and study it respectfully for a few seconds. You never stuff it in your wallet. This ritual gives all parties a chance to take a beat and use their nunchi — to eye-measure each other to get a sense of the implied hierarchy and whether one is reckoning with a future ally or a foe. It also connects the giver with the receiver, laying a foundation for trust.

There is a Korean expression, “Half of social life is nunchi.” You need nunchi to get along with people, to get what you want out of people in a purely pragmatic sense and to protect yourself from danger. Nunchi emphasizes speed — if you are a skilled nunchi practitioner, Koreans don’t say you have “good” nunchi, they say you have “quick” nunchi.

Whereas the average person enters a room focusing only on a few people (the ones they like or hate or want to sleep with), a skilled nunchi practitioner takes a mental snapshot of the whole room. Is the atmosphere light or heavy? Why? Is a soccer game on TV in the 89th minute? Did someone’s ex just walk in?

Maybe you have nunchi already: Do you sense when a host secretly wants you to leave? Do you accurately sense when dangers are real before your friends do? Then you probably have quick nunchi. When a work meeting is about to end, do you jump in with, “I just have one more question”? Do people roll their eyes when you speak? Then you need to work on your nunchi.

The great thing about nunchi is you don’t need to be rich, privileged, or even in a good mood to employ it. In fact, Koreans say that nunchi is “the secret weapon of the disadvantaged.” It’s especially useful to women and minorities in the workplace who, like me, are tired of being given contradictory feedback — that they are either leaning out or leaning in too much.

Nunchi exists so that the embattled can focus on changing the circumstances within their control. You don’t need to be the loudest in order to present your ideas or ask for a raise; you just need to have the best timing.

Nunchi is also helpful for those who suffer social anxiety, like me. Anxiety often comes from fear of judgment, and there’s no better antidote than focusing on the room as if you were raptly watching a play.

The English language has terms that are vaguely related to nunchi, like empathy and emotional intelligence. But the road to hell is paved with empathy. In the West, for some reason, empathy holds a kingly position among the virtues. Empathy might be what sets you apart from sociopaths, but it cannot protect you from sociopaths.

Excessive empathy can be dangerous. Narcissists are known for targeting empathetic people. It’s great to put yourself in another’s shoes, but the logical extension may be that you lose yourself. It’s destabilizing. Nunchi, by contrast, puts quiet observation first, which allows you to stay on firm ground while still listening to the other person.

What’s more, concepts like empathy and emotional intelligence are ill adapted to the 21st century: They are no contest for the hermitry that technology allows us to indulge in, or for the expectation of instantaneous responses from others.

Nunchi, despite being as old as Korean civilization itself, is extraordinarily suited for modern life because it requires speed and adaptability. All you need are your eyes and your ears. And — this is the hard part — a quiet mind.

You might well wonder, if nunchi is so great, why isn’t the world doing it already? Well, aspects of nunchi are horrifying to the 21st-century Western mind, the opposite of what we teach our children. Nunchi requires that you admit the value of collectivism, of introversion, and above all, of never passing up a good opportunity to shut up.

I am living evidence that nunchi works. When I was 12, my parents decided to move back to their homeland, South Korea. Despite knowing no Korean, I was placed in a Korean school. I had no lever to pull except to watch what the other children were doing.

A Korean education is a nunchi education: In my day, students were not allowed to ask questions during class. Teachers gave students intentionally vague information about everything from what school supplies to bring to where exams were taking place. Working out these mysteries on your own by using your nunchi was part of your education.

Within a year, I was at the top of my class. Within 18 months, I was class vice president. All this despite the fact that my Korean was still pretty bad. My success was all down to my forcibly honed nunchi.
-newyorktimes.com
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/02/opinion/sunday/nunchi.html