What Defines a Culture's Values?
Today I happened to come across a video on my YouTube feed. It was about a meeting between President Lee Jae-Myung of Korea, and President Nicușor Dan of Romania during the recent NATO summit held in Turkey. At first, I didn't take much heed of it. Then, I realized how similar Korea and Romania were. It wasn't a factual, reasoned conclusion, it was just a feeling . This really didn't make much sense. Korea is in East Asia. Romania is in Eastern Europe. Korea is based in Sino-Confucian values. Romania is based in Latin-Christian values. The distance between the two countries is 7,916 km . Different language, different history, different culture, different religion. What is it about these two cultures that felt so similar? Then for lunch I visited our favorite Mediterranean place, Layla's. While waiting for my take-out order, I struck up a conversation with the manager. I soon found out that he was Turkish, and I told him that I was Korean. As soon as he heard that he smi...