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Comment by prawn | Hacker News Reader

I got a laugh out of your story - thanks!

It reminded me of a story on Reddit recently about a couple who adopted an Asian baby and then raised him diligently and positively introducing him to Chinese culture, language classes, special efforts with food and communities, etc so he didn't lose that part of his background. At around 18 years of age after almost two decades of efforts along these lines, the father discovers the kid is actually Korean and can't bring himself to tell his oblivious son or wife!

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Korean here. Really, there's rather little difference between a Han Chinese person and a Korean. People can tell...sort of...at least some of the time...ish. By the time you get to that point, you're really splitting hairs. Which isn't to say that people didn't try and think it was somehow very important in the past when "racial purity" was enshrined in traditional Korean society.

Reminds me of a friend's anecdote about people in Scotland in the 60's talking about differences in accents resulting from being from a town 9 miles away.

Reminds me of a friend's anecdote about people in Scotland in the 60's talking about differences in accents resulting from being from a town 9 miles away.

A lot of places in Europe are still like that. "In USA 100 years is a long time, in Europe 100km is a long distance"

Here in the UK you can pretty much pinpoint where a person's from down to a 10 mile radius if you know the local accents, sometimes finer than that. It's fading a bit and accents are becoming more homogenised, but it's still a thing.

Henry Higgins claimed better precision than that in My Fair Lady.

Same in Slovenia (and other parts of Europe). My mother and her relatives will use words when speaking their village dialect that someone from a short distance away could not comprehend.

In this Reddit story, I think they did things like get him Mandarin lessons, practice various customs, find a Chinese "uncle and aunt" to take him to dim sum and whatever else. Then when signing his son up for college applications, the father noticed the surnames of his kid's birth parents were very typical Korean names. All those good intentions!

In fact (I'm sure you know this but most won't), Korea in Mandarin is Han Guo. There is a lot longer history of sameness than difference.

"Han" in "Hanguk" is not the same "han" in "Han Chinese". Within East Asia, Koreans and Han Chinese are distinct ethnicities.

Within the British Isles, Scottish and English are supposedly distinct ethnicities. How well can you tell this from still photographs devoid of cultural cues? Not very. Are there distinct gene pools? According to the documentary, "A Celtic History of the British Isles," not so much. Basically, there was so much interbreeding under the Romans, there's hardly any genetic distinction left.

I'd expect there to be some small degree of genetic distinctness, but there has always been a history of interbreeding. There's even an old Korean stereotype about rich bewhiskered Chinese merchants who come down to marry a hot young Korean wife.

In short -- Ethnic differences between Han Chinese and Koreans: mainly cultural.

Scotland is still like that FYI.

Ireland too

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