@ marie myung-ok lee: I’ve read all the responses, but unless I’ve missed one, none of the responders seem to be Korean or familiar with Korean culture.

So let me put my two cents, speaking as a Northerner married to a Korean, both of us being professionals — my wife with a doctoral degree — and both of us living in the Ozarks, which would be far more rural than a lot of the Southern communities through which you drove. If you followed Route 66 you might even have driven through our small Missouri town.

I trust that even if you are second-generation or hanmi, you are well aware of how important nuances of speech are in understanding what a Korean intends to communicate. How someone says something, and with what tone and inflection, may be far more important than the literal words. And in Korean, even a slight change in one word can completely change the intent of the Korean sentence.

Let’s apply that principle to Southern English. Let’s start with the literal words. Yes, you are right that “bless your heart” can be the sweet-tea version of “F-you.” Five minutes on Google will tell you that.

The key words are “can be.” Context counts.

A grandmother saying that to her grandchild after he stubs his toe isn’t insulting the child but sympathizing with the “owie.” A mother saying about her son, “Poor John, bless his heart, he can’t seem to get good grades in school no matter how hard he works, but he’s really good fixing the car motor” isn’t saying “F-you” to her son, but sympathizing with his inability to get better grades and saying maybe his gift isn’t “book learning” but rather “working with his hands.” On the other hand, an employer saying, “Oh, that John, bless his heart, he’s trying but he just can’t seem to get the hang of this job and I’m going to have to let him go” is trying to be sympathetic but is certainly being critical.

While all of those responses are different, none of them are an “F-you” response. There are times that “bless your heart” does mean that, but not all the time.

But there’s a problem here. In at least some of these cases, you weren’t told “bless his heart” but rather “bless you.”

That’s a REALLY important difference in wording.

Let’s say we weren’t dealing with autism. Let’s say your son had a physical disability. Perhaps he was wearing an “Operation Iraqi Freedom” cap and was in a wheelchair. And lets say those same Southerners were saying “Bless you” when your son struggled with his physical limitations.

Would you have thought those Southerners were being deliberately disrespectful by saying “Bless you” when they saw your struggles helping your physically disabled son get out of the car or get up a flight of stairs? Probably not. You might still have felt you were being pitied, and that’s a different issue, but you know enough about the rural South to know that a disabled veteran being told “Bless you” is not being told F-you.

Sometimes “bless you” means just that — “Bless you.”

I make no claim to be fluent in Korean. I make mistakes. I pronounce things wrong and misunderstand things said to me.

My Korean friends understand, smile, and sometimes giggle when I say something wrong. I once called a pastor “mashiseo” (tasty) when I meant to compliment him on his suit (“moshiseo” or handsome).

What my Korean friends don’t do is blame me for my mistakes in trying to speak Korean. They appreciate my efforts to understand their language and their culture, even when I fail.

Is it so difficult to ask that you, as a Korean-American traveling in the South, show a similar level of patience with differences in dialect?

Y’all don’t gotta live round bout these here parts. I get it. I’m a “yankee carpetbagger” in some people’s eyes. Living here isn’t for everybody.

But can’t you at least make an effort to give us the benefit of the doubt? I suspect if this were a rural culture in some other part of the world, you’d be happy to try to show at least a bit of cross-cultural appreciation.

Not every culture is the same, and that’s fine. Some people like kimchi and some people like grits and that doesn’t make either person better or worse. Just different. And if you prefer not coming back, that’s your choice. It’s a free country, and as you found out, there’s a Northern and a Southern route to reach your destination.