How are you?

So let's imagine you're walking past a work-related acquaintaince in the hallway of your office. What do you say? Probably some variant of "Hey, how are you?" right? Depending on your level of intimacy with this person, he or she could either say "Fine. How about you?" or proceed to tell you all about that awesome fishing trip last weekend, the recent divorce, and/or what he or she had for breakfast.

So recently, I asked my Korean language exchange parnter how to say, "How are you?" in Korean. He looked at me for a second with a furrowed brow. "You know, 'how are you?'" I repeated. "What you say to a casual acquaintaince just to make conversation or add a little more than just 'hello' to your interaction."

He thought for a good long while and concluded that there was no Korean equivalent to "How are you?" a ubiquitous question in Western social interaction. In fact, it's so important that there are multiple variants of how to say it, some of which I will here repeat for the sake of color.

How are you?
How's it going?
What's happening?
What's kicking?
What's shaking?
What's up?
How's it hanging?
Who's your daddy?

(Okay that last one wasn't real.) But you get my point. Shin Woo told me that the closest Korean equivalent would be "What did you do yesterday?" but this, to me, is a very different sort of question. It asks for a particular response and specific information. I have no particular desire to know what my coworkers did yesterday. "How are you?" on the other hand, is a very open question. Depending on your level of intimacy with your conversant, your amount of free time, and your desire to share information, your reply could be quite comprehensive or a single word. And everything in between is okay.

Differences in a language almost always reflect differences in a culture. So what does this phenomenon signify? It could grow out of the more socially stratified nature of traditional Korean society, as contrasted to American society. "How are you?" is an open and flexible question, and Koreans are traditionally anything but open or flexible. Either you're intimate with someone or not. No grey space, and no room for inviting intimacy where it does not already exist. But if anyone else has theories, I would love to hear them.