You know you are bored when ...

... you actually read a blog post about Kim YuNa's break with Brian Orser AND then click on a further link to an article.

I was bored waiting the 10 minutes for the Daily Show to download and logged into The Marmot's Hole. After skimming 2 posts I started skimming the third one titled "Brian Orser Gets Canned". Ok, I admit the only reason I started skimming the post was because I misread it in my boredom and thought it said "Brian Orser Gets Caned". I wanted to see why he was being caned and by who. Oh well.

Then, because I still had minutes to kill and nothing better to do I hit the Forbes link and skimmed their article about the subject. But it paid off because I read something that made me chuckle. Kim YuNa said:

Do you think it's really true that my mother decided on her own to part ways with the coach? I'm no longer a child.

You are a Korean female who is 20 years old. Of course your mother still decides things for you. :)

Sounds harsh? Well, that has been my experience in South Korea. I have known a lot of Koreans, not just women, who are told what to do by their parents. Even when it comes to marriage.

One Korean woman I worked with my 1st year seemed very liberated. She was around 30 and single. She didn't have a boyfriend and had no interest in getting married OR having kids. She hated kids, which is why she taught adults. Then I went home for a month.

2 weeks after I was back in Korea, and at another job, I got an invitation ... to her wedding. 6 weeks before she had no boyfriend let alone a fiance. What happened? Her mother. Her mother decided enough was enough it was time for her to get married. She was introduced to a guy and told she would marry him. Like a good piece of chattel err daughter she obeyed. Now she is married, with child and very unhappy.

I have been told, by Koreans, that this stems from their neo-Confucian culture. It is the child's duty to obey the wishes of their parent. Even if it is something they don't want to do. If they don't do what their parents want they are bad.

Korean parents often do make decisions for their children, even when they are adults, and the children dutifully obey. Which is why YuNa's declaration that she wasn't a child had me envisioning a teenager having a tantrum saying they weren't a child anymore.