Chalhaesso

Mice and rats had the run of 1950s Korea. Schoolchildren were thus assigned, as homework, to rodent detail and were to bring the tails to school as proof of their kills. How's that for ingenuity? If only we could do the same for nuclear weapons on the peninsula.

I mention this because, in my previous post, I expressed my distaste for Korean groupthink. To be sure, the uniformity of this place can be dispiriting, but that same trait - coupled with a brawny profit motive - helped transform the country from a vermin-infested homework assignment into the world's tenth largest economy.

First, though, some background:

President Park Chung-Hee ascended to power in 1961 through a military coup and subsquently enacted a new constitution that allowed him to "suspend the freedom and rights of the people." It also removed limitations on the number of terms he was allowed to serve. And what if you disagreed with such policies? Park also instituted "emergency measures" making any criticism of the new constitution a crime. Dissenters, as Kim Dae-Jung learned, were punished severely. Park used this authority to push his policies of modernization for Korea: he ordered roads and ports and brought the Chaebols (conglomerates) along with him by giving them the contracts to do the building.

Lucky for Park, Koreans have an innate sense of the Three Musketeers. When they do something, they do it together and they throw their whole being into it - body, soul and mind. You have only to look at their protests, impeachments and World Cups to see that I'm right about this. Korea doesn't do things half-assedly, at least not insofar as gung-ho vigor is concerned.

In the sixties and seventies, however, Koreans had extra incentive to keep their mouths shut and hands busy. And that's exactly what they did. With hard work, long hours and their own brand of loyalty, the workers brought Korea out of the stone age and into the world economy. That same Uri mentality that dictates hairstyles and hobbies also helped Koreans work together for a goal greater than one person. The vision may have been Park's, but the success belongs to the people.

PJ O'Rourke, from the same 1987 article quoted previously, remarked on the local work ethic:

"Gianini and I tried to find the slums of Seoul, but the best we could do was a cramped, rough-hewn neighborhood with spotless, bicycle-wide streets. Every resident was working - hauling, stacking, hawking, welding, making things in sheds no larger than doghouses. Come back in a few years, and each shed will be another Hyundai Corporation. We felt like big, pale drones in the hive of worker bees."

But if Korea hasn't entirely lost its devotion to national progress it may be slowing shedding it. Employees, while still at the whims of bosses who demand long hours, now demand more time with their families, more private time for themselves, more time to browse porn sites on their work computers.

Koreans haven't exactly grown complacent, but they are beginning to relax and enjoy the luxuries they've earned. And you'd be told to get buggered if you asked schoolchildren to catch rats and mice instead of playing Warcraft and studying for the TOEIC test.





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Photo 1 by H. Edward Kim. National Geographic, September, 1975.
Photo 2 by Neil Mishalov