- sbat,
It's really not complicated.
Try telling a Korean person that all Koreans look the same. Or a Japanese person or a Chinese person.*
Then see if they are less offended if you continue making lots of arguments that you are correct that all the people from their nation looks the same.
They will be offended.
* I honestly don't recommend this.
Ah, there it is! That's not at all what I said or what I implied.
I said I could distinguish with high accuracy between people in those three groups - I exaggerated at 90, but based on my quiz average, let's say 70%
Unless you're suggesting that in fact, they ALL look alike regardless of nationality, it's not an unreasonable claim. Why? Well the fact that we have the Caucasoid, Negroid, and Mongoloid groupings, which are defined, among things, by physical features, we already acknowledge that there are broad physical characteristics that are shared by racial groups.
People that identify as Korean do so because they share blood with other people of that social group. People that share blood tend to look alike. For example, you look more like your mother and father than you do anyone else. You probably also look similar to first cousins, grandparents, and nieces and nephews. The further away from your immediate family you move on the human family tree, the less and less resemblance there is (aside from random coincidence), until you get to me, where there is no question that we are not of the same nation or race.
The political, biological, nutritional, and economic history of the region has played a role in the mini-biological drift that has prevented complete miscegenation (and therefore distinguishable physical traits between the groups).
Ultimately, you can choose to see racism or the sentiment of "they all look alike" in what I'm saying. If you do, it's something that you create in my words. I'm not making any value judgement raising or lowering any race, and I've already acknowledged at least a 30% error in my ability. I haven't said that "all Koreans have this" - I simply said that having a look at the face of a Korean, Chinese, or Japanese person, I have a 70% probability of being right at saying where they come from.