[KS] 'kumOngkage' as a self-humbling term?

[Antti Leppanen]

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Dear list,

Browsing through my notes from last year's fieldwork in Seoul, I noticed
a reference for using 'kumôngkage' as a humble term for one's business.
The notes were from a discussion about small shops and other similar
businesses with a sort of a local historian, who had an import-export
business himself. "one can use the name kumôngkage of one's own business
even if it was 50 p'yông [165 sq.m.] store to lower oneself in front of
others"  

Of course I never remembered to check this out from anyone else, but I
have never heard anyone to use kumôngkage as a humbling term for one's
_own_ business, shop or something comparable. 
Perhaps the reason I never heard anyone to use a specially humble term
for one's business was that the places in my fieldwork for the most were
humble in themselves (restaurants, laundries, hairdressers,
"super"-markets etc.) and that the keepers of that kind of places have
no need and are not in a position to humble oneself in a neighborhood
where the interaction is ideally done in rather equal terms. (When
talking to me about their businesses, the terms were rather neutral,
reflecting the modest and humble scale of the places.)

Does anyone know of kumôngkage being used as such a self-humbling term?
Or any practice of humbling one's shop/business/enterprise in any
comparable setting?

I am aware of how 'kumôngkage' is often used in the media to denote the
smallest kind of economic activity, or primitive, old-fashioned; a label
to be avoided rather than used even in a self-humbling way. 

Oh, there is a newspaper clipping from Munhwa Ilbo, Oct. 12, 1999. A
director of a supermarket keepers' association refers to their kind of
business as 'kumôngkage', but this in a context in comparison with
conglomerates, which were reported having started entering the
supermarket business in residential areas. But remarkable is that the
association director was talking about 300-500 p'yông (990-1650 sq.m.)
stores as kumôngkages. (!)  (I have also seen Kumôngkage used as a
comparison to criticize or ridicule the big conglomerates; "a chaebôl
can be run like a kumôngkage: you don't need much capital.")

Tried to make my posting sensible, but unfortunately the messy state of
my research shows. 
All the best for the new term, new season or whatever for everyone out
there.


Antti Leppa"nen

anthropology, Univ. of Helsinki
antti.leppanen at helsinki.fi