Sleep, work and people Seoul Korea
pg 10
Living
in Seoul, Korea book by Paul Symonds
Many Koreans seem to have a great ability to be active
and awake in the mornings, something that always surprised
us sleepy Western teachers so early in the morning.
By the time I got to work at 7am in the morning, some
students had already been jogging, to a gym or for a
swim. There are some Westerners who I know who also
 get
up very early, but only a few. One of these is my father-in-law
Antonio, In Italy. He always wakes up at 5am every day,
regardless of what day it is. He used to telephone us
very early in the mornings sometimes for a chat –
but after we failed to answer the phone a few times,
he has started calling later in the day. In England
or America, people very rarely study at 7am in the morning.
People in America and England would only consider studying
at an institute in the evening or on weekends, with
these countries both often offering a variety of night
courses: Courses at 7am are rare. In many things, Koreans
are forward thinkers, so maybe the Korean style of utilising
every hour of the day and studying at this early hour
may eventually catch on in other countries.
There was a saying I heard a few times in Korea about
sleep. The expression said ‘Sleep four hours get
good grades, sleep five get bad grades’. This
expression for me, perfectly highlights the experience
I had teaching in Seoul, with students often coming
into the classroom very tired and telling me of the
fact that they were only sleeping four or five hours
a night, in some cases. There is no doubt that Koreans
often study and work very hard. In England, the expression
‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy’
explains the idea that a combination of work and of
play will make a child well balanced and happy.
The whole idea about how much work we should do and
how much we should sleep is interesting. Margaret Thatcher,
the ‘Iron Lady’ who used to be the Prime
Minister in the U.K., is famous for only ever needing
5 hours of sleep a day. Christine Gorman in Time Magazine,
(Europe, 20th Dec. 2004. Subject ‘Why We Sleep’),
reports that researchers take a practical approach and
say that the quality of sleep if more important than
the quantity. Dr. Pierre-Hervé Luppi at the University
of Lyons in France is quoted as saying that ‘if
you feel sleepy the following day, if you have episodes
of sleepiness or a feeling of major fatigue throughout
the day, it means we are not sleeping enough.’
There is a saying in English that ‘The truth
lies somewhere in between’. This means that for
any disagreement, the answer is usually somewhere in
the middle somewhere. If two friends are arguing for
example, then usually they will both be partly right
and both be partly wrong. With sleep I guess the ‘truth
lies somewhere in between’ in that maybe some
foreigners sleep too much and Koreans generally do not
sleep enough.
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