Nunchi ninja or novice? The art of good manners, Korean-style

One of the biggest complaints about the wellness industry is that it often tries to convince us we’ve got problems we didn’t know we had in the hope that we’ll fall for an expensive solution. This week, however, one of the latest self-help books drew my attention to an area in which many of us really are deficient. Nunchi. Have you got it? Have you got enough? Fortunately, Euny Hong is here to answer all our questions with her elegant manual The Power of Nunchi: The Korean Secret To Happiness and Success (Penguin, £12.99).

Nunchi – which is pronounced noon-chee – is a Korean concept, which translates literally as “eye measure”. In brief it’s the art of reading the room. Hong, who emigrated from the United States to Korea at the age of 12, calls it a “superpower”. The need to consider the feelings and motivations of other people in any interaction is something that Korean children learn almost before they’re able to walk and talk. It’s about social and emotional intelligence. Korean mothers scold their children for not having enough nunchi. No Korean parent ever smiled indulgently when their kid stuck its tongue out at a stranger or asked Grandma “Why are you so fat?” Manners are everything. To cause offence, even accidentally, is anathema. There are even children’s books on the subject. These childhood lessons are hammered home at school and later in the workplace.

I read The Power of Nunchi with a sinking feeling as Hong described the gaffes of a “No Nunchi” type, generously including some of her own faux pas as illustrations. She describes how, arriving late to a dinner party, she burst into the dining room loudly complaining about her journey, only to discover that she’d blundered in on another guest revealing a terminal cancer diagnosis. I recalled all those occasions when my own nunchi had deserted me. Like the time I asked a woman in the pilates studio changing room when her baby was due (it was already three months old). Or the time I explained the process of writing a novel to Hanif Kureshi. He looked very interested. Great nunchi, that man.

Fortunately, Hong distils the secret of good nunchi into a few simple steps. She first counsels that before you head into a new social situation you should try to empty your mind of any preconceived ideas about what might be going on there. Instead, stand outside, take a couple of breaths and, as you enter the room, pause again to ascertain what’s really going on by close study. Are people talking quietly (as was the case with Hong’s dinner party)? Who’s the centre of attention? Who’s the alpha here? Where’s the bar? Actually, Hong probably wouldn’t ask that.

She did, however, advise that when you join a conversation you should be aware of what people aren’t saying. Hong explains that Korean – like English – is a high context language, which means that much communication is based on an understanding of social signals that comes about only through having lived with the culture for a while. Consider that favourite English sign-off, “You really must come to dinner” which anyone steeped in middle-class English culture knows means “for God’s sake don’t suggest a date”.

How do you work out what’s really being said if you’re a newcomer? My favourite nunchi rule, and the one which seems easiest to implement, is “never pass up a good opportunity to shut up”. Hong points out that in the West we have a horror of lulls in the conversation. I know that’s true for me. I plan that next time I’m talking to someone, if the conversation dips into silence, I’ll just allow it to sit there and let the other person…

Finish my sentence? Of course you did. It’s true that if you give people dead air to fill, they will rarely resist the urge to fill it and that may mean you find out something they weren’t actually planning to tell you. As the silence stretches between you, a friend may really open up about a problem they’ve been longing to share. Hong suggests that holding back can also help you ace that job interview. Leave the interviewer space to tell you what they want and what they’re really offering so that you can then tell them you’re exactly what they’re looking for or, conversely, decide to look for another position.

Anyway, the opportunity for me to apply these nunchi techniques arose on an evening out with an old friend. Before entering the pub where we were meeting, I took a couple of deep breaths. Bearing in mind the nunchi advice that you don’t need to make a big entrance, I was careful not to slam the door as I stepped in. Alas, the wind had other ideas and the door crashed shut behind me, shaking the walls and causing a proper “American Werewolf” moment. While I looked for my mate, I tried to read the room. No hipster beards. Jumpers over collared shirts. Lots of labradors sitting quietly beneath the tables. What did it all mean?

I took a little too long to read the room so my friend eventually stood up from her chair and started waving: “I’m here! I’m here!” She greeted me with: “When did you last get your eyes checked?” Later, when she came to the end of an anecdote, where usually I would have jumped in with a complimentary anecdote of my own, I merely nodded and kept it zipped. Perhaps she would pick up the thread again by telling me how the incident in the car park at Waitrose had really made her feel. She didn’t. Instead she said: “Are you OK? You seem a bit…” She hesitated. “…Distracted tonight.”

Having noticed that my friend wasn’t drinking alcohol, I’d gone alcohol-free too. Putting my distracted air and the lack of gin together, she went for a distinctly low-nunchi gambit. “Are you pregnant?” With better nunchi in mind, quickly adapting Hong’s advice for dealing with farts – “Think of a diverting question on an unrelated topic” – I ignored my friend’s gaff and asked what she thought of the peanuts. But the thing is, when my friend told me I seemed distracted, I swear it was on the tip of her tongue to say “weird”.

We all know a Nunchi Ninja, to use Hong’s term. They never say anything wrong. At the same time because they never say very much at all they often leave you with an uneasy feeling. While they’ll know that when you were six, you came last in a sack race and wet your knickers in front of the whole school, you’ll never know their birthday. If you work with them, you probably won’t know the name of their spouse. They’ll leave the company without you ever having known whether they take one or two sugars in their tea (they take no sugar, stupid. Of course they don’t take sugar). There’s a sense that the Nunchi Ninja is building up a healthy stock of kompromat (compromising material). They’re using the power of nunchi for evil. Even Hong herself points out that nunchi can be used for ill by the likes of professional “psychics”.

I think I’d rather be a Nunchi Novice. If the point of nunchi is to smooth social relations, then a night out with old friends definitely needs a different approach from a business meeting. Hong’s advice to hold back from jumping in with a joke or an anecdote to avoid a silence is solid. It’s great to make space for your friends to share what’s really on their mind but there are also moments when everyone wants the conversation to proceed like a game of netball, with the conversational ball being passed around deftly as one joke leads to another and everyone’s pleased when there’s a goal.

That said, I am of the belief that anyone who reads The Power Of Nunchi and doesn’t find themselves blushing probably needs Hong’s eloquent wisdom far more than they could ever know.