::A Geek in Korea::

There are certain facts about people you only learn after spending a considerable time in their culture, or living with them. For example, my wife and I were talking about ear wax. She mentioned that before she lived with me she didn’t know why it was called "ear wax", but that looking at me digging in my ear with a cotton swap she understood why.  My wife happens to mention to me about how Koreans have different ear wax than I do. This is the kind of conversation that usually ends up with me learning something incredibly strange about Korean culture. I urged her to continue.

My knowledge of Korean ear wax was as follows: Koreans use a long small spoon like device (according to Wikipedia, known as a curette or ear pick) to scoop out ear wax. Families sitting around, perhaps watching television, will get the urge to clean someone’s ears. They go grab the ear wax spoon, which is as common as a nail clipper or emery board in Western households. The person getting their ears cleaned will sit on the floor, usually with their head in the cleaners lap, the cleaner with the spoon will "dig" out the ear wax carefully.

What I learned from our conversation was that that people call ear wax, "kui bab" or literally "ear rice" due to it’s flaky white appearance. The fact that she called it "ear rice" combined with the fact it’s dug out with a spoon gave me a creepy feeling, like it’s some sort of zombie appetizer before they devour your brain whole.

I’ve had my ear "spoon cleaned" before. It’s a rather odd sensation. My wife said that she no longer does this because I use cotton swabs. She said it was better for my "waxy ears". Apparently my ears are much more like "wax" than what Koreans usually see. Who knew?