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As I first got acquainted with Korean culture, I started to wonder why Koreans talk about Harvard so much. I couldn\u2019t help but notice that, when the subject of college came up in any Korean context, it was only a matter of time before someone mentioned Harvard (or rather, as Korean pronunciation renders it, \ud558\ubc84\ub4dc \u2014 habeodeu<\/em>).<\/em>Browsing the tables in Korean bookstores, I noticed that authors with even the most tenuous connection to Harvard got it loudly emblazoned on their books\u2019 covers. I knew, of course, that Harvard has a long history in America, respectable ivy-covered brick buildings, and a great deal of East Coast cachet, but I couldn\u2019t come close to explaining the evident depth of this Korean Harvard obsession.<\/p>\n
I learned the reason behind it from my Korean language-exchange partner back in Los Angeles, after I laughingly brought up the well-known television drama Love Story in Harvard<\/em> (\ub7ec\ube0c\uc2a4\ud1a0\ub9ac \uc778 \ud558\ubc84\ub4dc) in order to explain its misuse of the preposition. \u201cThey think Harvard is the American Seoul National,\u201d she explained, describing for me the way her countrymen conceive of their schools in a purely vertical hierarchy, with Seoul National University (her own alma mater, incidentally) sitting undisputedly at the top. These Harvard-obsessed Koreans, it seems, simply turned around and applied that same thinking to America (the \u201cnumber one\u201d country to many of them, going by a purely economic hierarchy), assuming that the first American university they\u2019d heard of must occupy the top spot.<\/p>\n
When I meet new Korean people, I rarely sense any unbridgeable cultural gaps \u2014 unless, that is, the topic of conversation turns to higher education, which among Koreans (even those long out of college without school-age children themselves) it often does. Sometimes they look surprised when they realize that I don\u2019t give the proverbial two shits about where they went to school, or when I tell them that not every American student who could get into Harvard applies to it (or even considers it), or when I express admiration for those who didn\u2019t go to college at all.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n