Why You Should Never Write Names in Red When Dealing with Koreans Part 1 at Korean Business Blog

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Why You Should Never Write Names in Red When Dealing with Koreans Part 1

By Heejeong Haas | July 31, 2007

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I was in a resell shop for baby clothes and toys on the weekend. My little girl will be 4 in August, and I realized that I was cluttering the house with her old clothes and toys. So, I decided to drop them off at the resell store where they also can donate to the families in need. After I went through the whole process with the store, they gave me a paper to fill out. I looked at the paper, and I automatically shrank. Studying in Canada, working for American corporations and having been living in America almost 7 years working in a multi-cultural environment still hadn’t helped me when it comes to this thing.

What is “that thing”? The pen they gave me was red! And every name on that paper was in red. I laughed at myself yet reluctantly filled out the form suppressing my desire to ask for a different colored pen. While I was driving back home, I thought about a couple of incidents that involved writing down names in red.

About one year ago, I was in my client’s training session with their Korean engineers. The trainer handed out red markers to the engineers to write down their names on the tent card so that they could place it before them on the table. When these engineers picked up the pen, they looked at me as if they didn’t know what to do.

One engineer said, “Ah, but the pen is red…”

One of them responded, “Dude, just do it, they don’t know. It’s ok. We’re in America.”

The previous one said, “But it’s still red. I don’t want to write down my name in red.”

I walked over to the trainer and explained to him about the meaning of writing names in red in Korea, and the trainer was very amused about the new finding and gladly changed the markers to black markers.

Another incident I remembered was that when I was helping an American company plan their negotiation strategy and presentation for their Korean business partner. As we were finalizing our PowerPoint presentation, I noticed that they used the red color to name the Korean team member’s name at some point. I pointed out that we’d better change the color of the names to black and explained to him why they were not supposed to use red to write down somebody’s name when it comes to Koreans. The VP of marketing also was very amused about that finding and gladly changed the names into black.

So, where does this taboo come from in Korea? There are many stories behind why it became such a taboo. However one very reliable theory is as follows:During the Japanese occupation in Korea, Japanese adapted a system called the “family census register” which still is in effect in Korea, but computerized nowadays. Before it was computerized, they used to cross out the names of a dead person in red. Also, during the Japanese colonization period, they used to cross out the names of those independence fighters, therefore people still mistakenly believe that if a perosn goes to prison, then his name is crossed out in red on the family census registration record.

Koreans do not write down their names in red, and this is taught to young children from a very early age as well. It is one of the big social taboos. So, if your business card has your name in red, think before you send it out and localize it. Change your name to black. During your presentations, meetings, or in documents, you can use red effectively as follows for your Korean business partners as follows: