There’s a bow in Korea that’s so small I’m sure it’s probably imperceptible to most foreigners. If you don’t know it’s happening you won’t be able to see it. It happens in a fraction of a second and involves the head dropping but a couple of millimeters. (Actually most of the time the head seems to go forward, horizontally from the neck across the shoulder blades, rather than down). If you pay attention most of the normal bowing protocol still applies in that the eyes shift down and the eyebrows raise slightly. Some, the braver and bolder in society, will maintain eye contact during all of this however. This bow, this tiny invisible Korean bow, doesn’t really have a specific name. And it doesn’t have a name for the wonderfully paradoxical reason that it’s so damn ubiquitous. It’s literally everywhere. And like the story of the fish who don’t know what water is or how I had to try and come up with a term for the Korean culture or leaving phones and laptops on tables to mark space, the things which most fill our daily lives are often the least described. The tiny
