I’ll go you one better. I have gotten mistaken for Chinese…
and I’m not even Asian
I guess I have some kind of fold in my eyes that gives people that impression.
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In that same vein . . .
My son invited a friend over. So we were sitting there talking, and my husband said to him, “So, you’re Swedish?”
He reacted violently. “No! I am Norwegian! It’s not the same thing at all . . . Norwegians are royalty, Swedes are low-class, no class people, calling me Swedish is considered an insult …”
I stopped him by saying, “Not to us it isn’t . . . our background is Swedish.”
Just thought I’d get that out there before the anti-Swedish rant went too far. And it worked–he apologized for being insulted by being thought Swedish, although I believe deep in his heart he really did feel insulted. For a minute. (Teenagers!)
But after you’ve perked around in the assimilation melting pot for a couple of centuries it gets harder to make these fine distinctions. As far as I (great-great-great-granddaughter of John Johnson who came to America to lay the transcontinental railroad–I may have too many “greats” or not enough) can tell, this Norwegian kid and my sons look enough alike to be countrymen, and other people have taken them for brothers! But he grew up speaking English & Norwegian and goes to Norway to spend the summers with his father, so you’d think he could recognize a family of low-class Swedes when he saw them.
I can’t tell the difference between Koreans and Japanese but I don’t feel so bad as my ex-boyfriend who was Korean/Japanese admitted that often he couldn’t tell. The difference between Chinese and Korean/Japanese is a lot easier.
For those that can’t tell the difference between Asians, don’t tell bad, I grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio and for most of my life I couldn’t tell the difference at all. It’s only been the past 2 years that I’ve started learning. Rent movies from each country and concentrate on the faces paying special attention to the eyebrows, the shape of the jaw and the thickness of the cheeks. Once you start doing that, it becomes pretty easy to say “So-and-so has Korean features.”
Blimey! That’s dedication.
A career in the UN awaits you.
If what the other girl in the OP said was a joke, and you dismissed that joke with the serious answer “I’m Korean, not Chinese” it could be possible she rolled her eyes and said “same thing” because you steem-rolled her joke. Much like you pointed out that Tae Kwon Do is the art from Korea. The core of the joke is that “all americans think all asians know martial arts.” Hell, you could nitpick that karate is japanese while the joke should have been tai chi instead. Either way you wreck a simple joke.
Then again, she could just be an idiot. You were there, I’m just exploring possibilities.
Well, yes. I am rather nitpicky. 
I can only tell the difference by the Kim Chee farts.
And I probably spelled that wrong to ruin the joke.
Hey, all I know about the asian race is from Donger. " What’s happenin’ Hot Stuff."
Ahem. since I am short on asians in my area (bahahahahaha…short …asians…get it? don’t hurt me) what is the visual difference between the Chinese, Japanese, Koreans and Laotians? ( and all the other ones that I am missing because I am a maroon.)
I blame martians for my coding errors.
BTW, devil, when are you going to sign up for good. Y’know, sell your soul to The Man and all that.
In the South, martial arts are referred to as " Whoop Ass".
Just a little FYI.
So, a Chinese man is sitting in a bar, quietly having a drink, when this old Jewish guy goes over to him and punches him and says, “That was for Pearl Harbor!”
“Pearl Harbor? What are you talking about? I’m not even Japanese; I’m Chinese!”
“So, Chinese, Japanese, what’s the difference?” mutters the old Jewish guy as he walks away.
A couple minutes later, the Chinese guy goes over to the Jewish guy and punches him, and says, “That was for the Titanic!”
“The Titanic? Huh?”
“Iceberg, Goldberg, what’s the difference?”
I have the exact same problem. It’s easy to pick out the Chinese (and Vietnamese) but I get Japanese/Korean confused. But, there seem to be far more Koreans than Japanese in Texas so I’m usually right if I guess Korean.
When my mother was in China, some Chinese people thought she was mixed and growing up in Alabama, a lot of the kids thought she was Chinese. As far as we know, there’s no Chinese at all in my family, only Scots-Irish-English, but she does have kinda Asian features.
Korea gets the short end of the stick when it comes to transmission of the culture to the world stage. Despite Korea’s status as a global ecomic player, very few non-Koreans know anything about the place. They’ve never seen any films by im Kwon-Taek, they’ve never been to Kyongbok Palace, Bulguk-sa Temple, or Sorak-san or Odae-san national parks in Kangwon-do. Non-Koreans don’t know that Admiral I Soon-Shin invented the armored boat during the Imjin War in the 1590s; they don’t know that Koreans created the first movable type printing in the 1200s when Buddhist monks printed the Tripitaka Koreana during the Koryo dynasty; they don’t know that King Sejong authorized the world’s first man-made alphabet in 1446; and they don’t know that Korean artisans taught the backward Japanese architecture and ceramics after Paekje fell to Shilla in 667 AD.
OTOH, more than half of the Korean vocabulary is borrowed from Chinese along with hanja, so I can understand the confusion.
I used to be totally unable to distinguish Korean features from other Asian features until I was watching a film where a lawyer was describing Korean features: he drew attention to the higher cheekbones.
Ever since then, I have found it quite easy to spot Korean cheekbones.
Of course, this is for my own curiosity only – I wouldn’t ever dream of trusting my judgment enough to boldly assume that someone is Korean. I make a fool of myself often enough that I would rather avoid this particular faux-pas. If it were relevant to discussion, I would wait for a voluntarily-offered cue, and, lacking that, I would simply ask.
My first car was a Kia.
I love the Koreans for that.
I read somewhere ( PJ O’Rourke in Holidays In Hell. Great Read about political hotspots around the world when it was printed. Made me envious of the Korean Political Riots he wrote about.) that the Korean language was closer to icelandic ( or swedish/finnish/norwiegn Somewhere North and REALLY cold) than chinese.
I remember asking the Dope about it WAY back and I think the banned Doper Monty did say something about a few similarities, but I don’t remember what and it was ages and ages ago.
/just babbling.
When I was in college, my freshman year roommate was rather impressed with a Pitt football player who had the same last name that I do. My last name is fairly common, so this is not in and of itself indicative of anything.
She asked if he was my brother.
I was somewhat dumbfounded as I am a white Russian/Polish/German descedant and he is black.
It should be far easier to tell a white person from a black person, but I can understand how if someone doesn’t know which Asian country a person hails from, to tell the difference.
I might expect someone to notice that I’m not black, but I wouldn’t expect them to discern only from looks that I am of Russian/Polish/German descent rather than say, English.
If this person knew you were Korean, there is no excuse.
I was told that Koreans are distantly related to Hungarians/Finns. (The latter have very slight eyefolds similiar to those of Koreans).
In the case of Hungary, since the Magyars were originally from Asia, I suppose it’s not too much of a stretch.
Oops, I have quoted the wrong post. I meant to quote the one about the visual difference.
I blame martinis.
Anyway . . . I once worked with a Korean woman. She was very tall. You don’t often see really tall (5’11") Chinese/Japanese women. However, I don’t know if she’s unusually tall for a Korean . . .
(She was married to a Russian. He was shorter. I don’t know if that’s common, either.)
Barbara Walters has one daughter. She was in a private school, college I think, and somehow a teacher asked what the students parents did for a living.
The daughter’s last name, IIRC, was not the same as Barbara’s, to protect her anonymity. The daughter hedged and hawed, eventually saying that her mother was a TV reporter or on TV alot. (don’t exactly remember.)
The Teacher’s eyes went WIDE, " Your Mother Is Oprah Winfrey!?"
I love this story.
I’m not sure, but is the joke that Barbara Walters is white and so is her daughter? If so: hehe. 
And yes, I am deprived because I don’t remember who Barbara Walters is.