Thoughts on Korea

by Roger White

January 1994

I have been in Korea just over two months now, here are my observations on what I've seen so far.

My most enduring impression of Korea is that it's a land dedicated to "family values," and has been for centuries. As such, it's a place that demonstrates what can go right with an intensive devotion to family values, and what can go wrong when "family values" are valued too highly.

The right side of family values is that crime is low in Korea, and respect and friendliness are highly developed. As an English teacher here I'm the center of attention of about fifty people, and this has made Korea a very warm place for me to live. Even though I don't speak the language, I'm usually only a few minutes, and never more than a few hours, from finding someone who can help me solve simple problems. For instance, I've wandered the busiest train station in Korea, Seoul Station, without assistance, and managed to navigate passably well through the station, even though I met no one who understood more that pidgin English, and all the signs are written in Hangul--which I can't read yet. I would simply stop strangers and ask them in my best "Hanglish" where to go to catch my bus. (Seoul is slightly larger than New York City, so this is like wandering around in Penn Station in downtown Manhattan.)

Korea has kept this orderly and friendly society even though the country has gone through economic and social changes at a rate that even Americans would find blistering and bothersome. In 1910 there were no two story buildings in Korea and no railroads. The Koreans before 1900 thought about little but growing rice, passing government examinations and writing poetry. From 1910 to 1945, thirty five years, the Korean peninsula was occupied by the Japanese--who were going to industrialize Korea if it killed them (the Koreans, that is). In 1950 the Korean War was fought from one end of Korea to the other, with the help of two allies who were quite practiced in waging total war: fascist/communist-fighting Americans, and capitalist/imperialist-fighting Chinese. Between them they scraped Korea clean of buildings and industry once again. There are only a handful of buildings in Korea that date before 1950. Each half generation in Korea experiences a completely different life from the half generation that precedes it. In spite of this rate of change, the Koreans still practice family values and maintain an orderly, courteous society.

But... there is a dark side to pursuing family values, and the Koreans experience this dark side as well. The Koreans show so much respect for family attachments and older family members that they have a hard time dealing with new ideas. Their history, their stories and their current thoughts all seem to be framed by concerns of relations to family, and relations to government. This thinking is so single centered that for me it's monotonous to listen to, and I fear it leads to a reluctance to deal with new ideas. This reluctance to deal with new ideas was the root of Korea's decline in the 1800's, and lead to the aforementioned traumatic Japanese occupation, which in turn lead to the devastation of the Korean War. Total dedication to family values can bring long periods of social stability, but those periods of stability will be punctuated by devastating instabilities.

The Koreans are still trying to understand the concept of generating new ideas on their own. Ninety years of trauma have taught them how to accept new ideas from the outside, but in my conversations with students, I don't see signs that they learned how to value generating of new ideas from within their own society. This may be a distinctive difference between Korean culture and American culture, or it may simply be a constraint of the prosperity level. Now the Koreans are prosperous enough to imitate, perhaps by the next generation they will be prosperous enough to innovate. Or perhaps their devotion to family values will compete with the urge to innovate, and those that stay in Korea will always be much better imitators than innovators. Many Koreans migrate, so the innovative ones may be those that leave.

Korean and Japanese history since 1700 have a lot in common: both closed their societies after a devastating series of wars. Both used closing as a tool for social control, a way of keeping bad outside influences out of their societies. Both concentrated on agriculture development in general and rice productivity in particular. Both admired China as the civilization to emulate.

The big difference between them in the 1800's was simply that the Japanese decided to get on the industrializing bandwagon voluntarily, while the Koreans decided to hold out and redouble their efforts at maintaining a controlled society. The Koreans had to be conquered and colonized before they would accept a new way of living. The Japanese showed them many new things, including industrializing. How much difference will this make in the long run? I don't know. Right now the Koreans are tracking with the Japanese in growth, but lagging them by ten to fifteen years. The Japanese occupation started Korea's rapid growth, but the Koreans don't see any good as coming from the occupation.

My feeling on the Japanese occupation of Korea and Formosa is that the early 1900's were Japan's first chance to be a colonial power, and as a result they did a lot of things wrong, as well as a lot of things right. What they mostly lacked was tact--they were "nouveau rich" imperialists. Their defeat in 1945 was a wake up call--their equivalent to the British losing the American colonies in 1780. They've learned at lot since then, and they're still learning.

Korean-American similarities

I've been reading Korean history and Korean folk tales. I've been talking for hours with Korean students as I've taught them English. I've found a lot of similarity between America and Korea. When I look at life as a series of functions that must be accomplished, I find that Koreans accomplish perhaps 80% of those functions in the same ways Americans do, but the institution that covers the function may be different.

Take shopping as an example. In America there are strip mall shopping centers and shopping malls. In Korea there are shopping streets that act like strip mall shopping, and there are open air markets that act like shopping malls. These institutions perform similar functions for each society, but they look quite different at first glance. But looking deeper, these differences reflect differences in the framework within which each operates. In Korea people travel from place to place by walking, bus or taxi, so shopping is optimized for "walk by" trade. There are a lot of little shops, and the shops have zero parking space nearby. The sales volume in these shops is fairly low, the inventory is high, and the markup is high. It amazed me when I first saw it, but almost every shop in Korea has a TV blaring in the middle of it. It's for the owner/clerks to watch while they are waiting for customers to show up. Shop hours are long, but labor costs are low, and the clerks aren't busy every minute. This is a system optimized for walking and bus riding shoppers.

In America there are perhaps a tenth as many retail shops per capita as in Korea. These shops service a lot more people, turn inventory much faster, and have lower markups. There are no TVs in American shops because clerks have ten times as many customers to service in a day--clerking fills the day, and when the day ends the clerk leaves the shop and goes somewhere for entertainment. But, for the American system to work, most people have to travel by car. A shop in America can't exist without parking. The customers drive, the clerks drive, and the supplies are delivered by large trucks that need to easily drive right next to the shop. Cars and parking lots are what change the optimization between Korean style merchandising and American style merchandising. The more Koreans increase their per capita car use and the more parking lots they build, the better American style retailing will fit into Korean life.

Shopping is an example of Korean and American societies functioning the same, but with slightly different optimizations. Another example is barber shops and massage parlors. In Korea some barber shops are combination barber shops and massage parlors--you get your hair cut, and you can get "special services" as well. For some reason massage parlors ended up standalone in the US, and combined with barbershops in Korea. The same demand is serviced, but the institution which services the demand is different.

Korean-American differences

Koreans think first last and always about their relation with other members of their family, and define what they will aspire to accomplish based on that matrix. As a result I've seen some thinking that I think will remain distinctively Korean no matter how prosperous Koreans become.

One of these differences is that Korean history doesn't center around military exploits. In fact, I can't find a single decent military history of Korea written by or for Koreans. To find out about Korean military campaigns, I have to read Chinese or Japanese military history.

Another is that the highest aspiration for young men throughout most of Korean history has been to become part of the government bureaucracy. The goal has been to study for a civil examination on Confucian ideals and poetry writing, and those that get good marks in reciting Confucian ideals and creating poetry are rewarded with government administrative positions. Society's brightest and best are trained to be reciters of rules and creators of rhymes, then they are turned loose to run the real world. From all I can determine, these "eggheaded" people have traditionally carried all the prestige and power in Korea. Traditional western sources of alternative ideas--the military and the merchants--carry no respect in Korea. They have low caste status and even a beggar nobleman commands more respect than a rich merchant. These groups carry little respect, but they still have much power. Korea has been ruled by Army leaders during many periods of it's history, including the latest 1950-1993. President Kim, the current president, was the first non-military leader since the Korean War occupation.

A third difference is the astounding lack of trading tradition in Korea. Here's a land surrounded on three sides with ocean and thick with good harbor sites, but there's no history of initiating trade with anyone. It's not until the 1960's that any Korean government has looked upon trade favorably.

Here are some specific examples to support these observations:

I've read cover-to-cover two Korean history books and parts of two more. The stories these books tell are impressive mostly for their vagueness. Historical Korea dates back to about 200 BC. Since that time Korea has been invaded a couple times by the Japanese and a couple times by the Chinese. But I can't find any detail on the military campaigns of any war except the Korean War. Wars as long and hard fought as the American Civil War get a paragraph or so in Korean history. Saying something like, "In 1500 the Mongols overran Korea and forced the court to retreat to Hangsan island." The only reference to specific military event is the victory of Admiral Yi over the Japanese in the 1500's using turtle boats. That's it, period.

I'm now reading Admiral Yi's diary covering that period. It's pretty dull. There are no maps, and there's no analysis of the events surrounding Yi's actions--it's just his diary and it's treated as if his words were poetry--the translator even apologizes that the magic of the words is missing. It isn't poetry, it's a series of diary entries and memos to the King. In other words, a primary reference. The spooky part is this is the only Korean military history book I can find! There's no follow up analysis of Yi's actions, no discussion of enemy intentions, no discussion of strategic constraints or consequences, no comparison of Yi's tactics with anyone else's. (The biography included at the end of Yi's memos is interesting. It reads just like Rick "Demolition Dick" Marchenco's book. Yi is portrayed as an innovative, dedicated popular officer who makes as many enemies as friends within the organization, and occasionally his enemies win.) For comparison, consider writings about Admiral Nelson or Napoleon. In both of these cases, it's hard to find primary references, and there's copious analysis of the framework within which these events happened.

Koreans don't view war with the same perspective as Europeans or Americans. My feeling is that Korea has actually had a very peaceful existence for the last 1500 years. Most European nations fight a war per king, that's about 75 large and small wars per nation in 1500 years. Korea appears to have had about three major war periods and another three or so minor fighting periods. By European standards these people haven't had enough fighting to fill up even two centuries of history.

But, as a result, Koreans are severely traumatized each time they do fight. After a major Mongol invasion in 1500 plus a couple of minor scuffles with early European explorers, the Koreans close the national gates and bar them--for three hundred years. The Japanese occupation pries the gates open, and the occupation is viewed as the Korean Holicost.

War doesn't define the Korean culture, and I'm having a hard time relating to that. Without wars to provide the framework, I can't figure out what these people did for 1500 years.

I suspect the Korean reluctance to trade has the same roots as their reluctance to fight wars. These people haven't sailed and haven't traded. I find a couple of references in the history books to individual Koreans who have set up commercial trading empires, but trading is never supported by the government, and as soon as the individual who sets the trade routes up dies, the trading ceases.

This choice to not trade is supported by the people, at least to the extent that I don't read about endemic smuggling in these history books either. I read about the army being sent out to repel invaders and capture pirates, but not to capture and imprison smugglers.

The Koreans define themselves as scholars and farmers. In most times they define themselves even more narrowly than that: they are scholars of Confucian family values and farmers of rice. They support just enough artisan and military activity to allow them to keep being Confucian scholars and rice farmers. To be this tightly focused for 1500 years has lead to a lot of monotony, and this is a big difference between Korean and American thinking. As best as I can tell, the Koreans consider the goal of Korean industrializing to be allowing for more comfortable and more elaborate ancestor worship.

Since 1900 the world has whacked the Koreans on the head a couple times, so they're paying attention, but these people still want to be scholars and rice farmers! When Korea becomes a rich and famous country, I expect to see Korean video portraits showing the family proudly sitting in front of its collection of calligraphy CD's, and Dad waving from his rider rice cultivator as he tends the front yard rice paddy.