Food - Drink
In South Korea, It's Best Not To Raise Your Dishes At The Dining Table
By CLARICE KNELLY
Culture shocks one may experience when traveling abroad include little-known dining and restaurant etiquette. The smallest gestures or requests may provoke confused or even offended stares, so being well-prepared is best, and South Korea has its own set of rules one should get familiar with before dining out in the nation.
If you lift your soup bowl to your mouth while dining in South Korea, you won't be met with many happy glances. You might feel that this practice is a quick way to slurp out the last remaining bits of soup, but it’s best to use a spoon instead, as this is proper dining etiquette in Korea, where lifting dishes in general is considered rude.
Similar etiquette is used when eating rice in Korea. When eating rice with chopsticks, it's common in many countries to lift the bowl closer to your face to avoid dropping rice everywhere, but in Korea, the much neater spoon is used to eat rice, so lifting a rice bowl off the table or to your mouth is also considered bad manners.