The Koreans: Who They Are, What They Want, Where Their Future Lies - Softcover

Breen, Professor Michael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312326092 ISBN 13: 9780312326098

Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin, 2004

Synopsis

The rise of South Korea is one of the most unexpected and inspirational developments of the latter part of our century. A few decades ago, the Koreans were an impoverished, agricultural people. In one generation they came out of the fields and into Silicon Valley. In 1997, this powerhouse of a nation reeled and almost collapsed as a result of a weak financial system and heavily indebted conglomerates. The world is now watching to see whether the Koreans will be able to reform and continue their stunning growth.

Although Korea has only recently found itself a part of the global stage, it is a country with a rich and complex past. Early history shows that Koreans had a huge influence on ancient Japan, and their historic achievements include being the first culture to use metal movable type for printing books. However, much of their history is less positive; it is marred with political violence, poverty, and war--aspects that would sooner be forgotten by the Koreans, who are trying to focus on their promising future.

The fact that Korean history has eluded much of the world is unfortunate, but as Korea becomes more of a global player, understanding and appreciation for this unique nation has become indispensable.

In The Koreans, Michael Breen provides an in-depth portrait of the country and its people. An early overview of the nature and values of the Korean people provides the background for a more detailed examination of the complex history of the country, in particular its division into the Communist north and pro-Western south.

In this absorbing and enlightening account of the Koreans, Michael Breen provides compelling insight into the history and character of this fascinating nation.

About this title

About the Author

MICHAEL BREEN is a writer and consultant who first went to Korea as a correspondent in 1982. He covered North and South Korea for several newspapers, including the Guardian (UK), the Times (UK), and the Washington Times. He lives in Seoul.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Koreans

Who They Are, What They Want, Where Their Future Lies

By Michael Breen

St. Martin's Press

Copyright © 2004 Michael Breen
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-312-32609-8

Contents

Title Page, 
Copyright Notice, 
Dedication, 
Preface, 
PART ONE: SOCIETY AND VALUES, 
1. The Three Miracles, 
2. Image and Identity, 
3. Korean Heart, 
4. Shaman Under the Skin, 
5. The Generation Gap, 
PART TWO: HISTORY, 
6. Ancient Tribes, 
7. China's Little Brother, 
8. The Broken People, 
9. Two Ways to be Korean, 
PART THREE: ECONOMY, 
10. The Spectacle of Growth, 
11. Conglomerates, 
12. Mismanaging, 
13. Foreign Business, 
14. Working and Consuming, 
PART FOUR: POLITICS, 
15. Breaking the Law, 
16. Dictators, 
17. Struggle for Democracy, 
18. Human Rights, 
19. The Korean Disease, 
20. Towards the Third Miracle, 
21. Next Generation, 
Notes, 
Selected Bibliography, 
Index, 
Copyright, 

CHAPTER 1

THE THREE MIRACLES

Most foreign journalists I know, at the end of a three-, four-, or five-year stretch in Seoul, will admit as they leave, 'I can't figure this place out.' This is not false modesty, but, for a journalist, admission of a serious professional problem.

There are many contradictions and obstacles to understanding. The Koreans are forthright and obscure at the same time. It is difficult to know when they are telling you what they think, what they think you want to hear, or what they want to happen. This last one is especially irksome for the information-gatherer. For example, a government specialist on north Korea might not discuss a collapse-and-absorption scenario for reunification with you, even off the record, because the government is afraid of it. He will predict gradual reunification as if willing it to happen.

This kind of communication failure manifests a lot in business. The foreign manager of the luxury Samsung-owned Shilla Hotel in Seoul once commissioned a marketing study by a consultancy. After some months, he wondered what had happened to it. The staff member who was handling the report had moved to another Samsung Group affiliate. The finished study was sitting on the man's desk, but his replacement had no idea what it was. The outgoing person had simply not mentioned it. This manager found that staff would never report bad news to him, because they saw it as ammunition that could be used against them, not as a means to improve customer service. He arranged for customer-survey sheets to come to his desk. By bypassing his own bureaucracy, he could get a sense of how the hotel was doing.

The local media can be extremely misleading as a source of information. They generally do not see their role as a check on government and business, with the result that government intentions are frequently reported as facts. A huge proportion of news stories, when you follow them up, turn out to be speculation, trial balloons, rumour and deliberate distortion.

Opponents engage in a high degree of melodrama and posturing of the hold-me-back-or-I'll-hithim variety. This creates another serious problem for journalists. Given that media thrive on words and images, it is easy to assume that posturing is the real thing. Given the absence of information and lack of understanding about north Korea, this can lead to very dangerous escalation. In the 1990s, the United States became very alarmed by north Korea's refusal to permit international inspection of its nuclear power sites. On two occasions in the 1990s, international TV reported that war was imminent on the peninsula and flew in correspondents to report on the 'mounting tensions' caused by north Korea. One of these moments developed in 1994, after a north Korea negotiator had lost his temper with a south Korean counterpart and threatened to turn the South into a 'lake of fire'. I was in a group that flew into Pyongyang around this time. We found the north Koreans almost oblivious to the excitement in the outside world. The mounting tensions were in Washington.

For the person trying to nail down information and make sense of it, these difficulties make Korea one of the harder places to deal with. As one foreign journalist put it, 'You need a high-level bullshit indicator to figure out what's going on.'

Korea may be hard to read day to day. But viewed over the long term, its issues have been quite simple and definable. In the 1950s, the two halves of the country went to war. The question was, would the southern side, which the West was supporting, win and survive after the terrible slaughter was over? In the 1960s, the weaker South began to develop economically and the question was, would it succeed? By the 1980s, the question was, would democracy ever come? In the 1990s, the question is whether the powerful South could switch from a centrally directed, or dirigiste economy, to a truly free-market economy. Another current question is, what will become of north Korea? Will this communist nation reform or collapse and be absorbed into south Korea?

Underlying these simple issues has been a deeper question. The story of Korea is about the recovery of a lost national identity that equally affects 47 million people in south Korea, 23 million in north Korea and several millions in America, Japan, China and elsewhere who, although naturalised, may still consider themselves to be Koreans. After the Second World War, the Koreans came out of a half-century of Japanese domination with such a profound sense of worthlessness that they seemed to have lost any notion of who they were or where they came from. One foreign scholar recalls daily conversations with Korean students in the 1980s: 'There weren't many foreigners on campus and people always asked me where I was from and what I was studying. I'd say, "I'm studying Korean Thought" and they'd give me a puzzled look and say, "But we have no Thought." They didn't know the wealth of their intellectual history.'

Not only did the Koreans feel worthless and powerless. They were also a divided people. The barbed wire was rolled out along the 38th parallel in 1945. After much violence, it separated out left and right. This North-South border cut right through families, creating ideological enemies under the same roof, and eventually forcing millions of non-ideological Koreans to live in permanent involuntary separation from their close family.

In a cruel sense, the division of Korea after the Second World War served as a way out of worthlessness. Broadly, it seemed to offer two options, two alternative ways to be Korean. The underlying question for four decades was not how the two Koreas might be unified but, which alternative would win? Korea will be whole only when this choice is made, when one of the options is adopted by all Koreans.

The Koreans were forced apart by major powers. But, despite all the propaganda on both sides to the contrary, they have not struggled to come together again. Each side has struggled for ascendancy. That struggle is now over and the south Korean option has won. The south Koreans are the ones who are creating for all Koreans a sense of worth and a place in the world, and it is they who will set the tone for the future unified Korea. The question now is, will they manage it peacefully?

The reunification of the Koreas would certainly be an interesting event. But, beyond that, is it relevant to the West?

One of the big concerns since the end of the Korean War in 1953 has been a renewed warfare. Technically, north Korea's opponent is the United Nations. Practically, it is south Korea, the United States and several other countries, including Britain, who fought in the first war under the UN flag. South Korea has become important to us in other ways. International reaction to the financial crisis in 1997 was an indication of how important Korea had become. Most developed nations have some of Korea's foreign debt and there were fears that a default would trigger a monumental crisis in Japan, where there was already a banking crisis. The International Monetary Fund came in with its biggest ever bailout, lending the Koreans $58 billion to pay off short-term loans and avert bankruptcy.

We find ourselves increasingly drawn into a relationship with Korea. Once known as the Hermit Kingdom, the country was sealed tight against the outside world until this century. Although still obscure and inaccessible to the western perception, the Koreans are probably destined for leadership in the next century.

South Korea has provided an important development model for China and the developing eastern European states. Koreans also provide a crucial argument for the universality of democracy. Millions of Asians are convinced by the arguments in defence of authoritarianism and collective rights made by Asian intellectuals and politicians. They point to western social ills and blame democracy for what they see as western decadence. They say that they need a different type of democracy, one more relevant to their family-based heritage, a democracy with Confucian characteristics. The Koreans are disputing this position by virtue of their example, and demonstrating that democracy is universal. As Kim Dae-jung, the south Korean president, has put it: 'Culture is not necessarily our destiny. Democracy is.'

Another reason that Korea will be important is because it has the will to be. No nation has been great without its own sense of manifest destiny. The south Koreans have been lifted up by a nationalistic self-assurance. In another time and in other circumstances, such sentiments may have led to imperialism or some kind of aggressive expansion. But the realities of the global village are likely to make the Koreans graduate into a confident internationalism. This is the paradigm change that Koreans are currently being pressured by the needs of their economy to make. If they are successful, as I believe they will be, their nationalistic energy will be transformed into a creative force behind a new generation of entrepreneurs, teachers and artists.

The Korean growth of the past decades has been led by small groups of powerful men in politics, business and in the military. The downside of their success has been the stifling of the creativity of the broader population. Many Koreans have emigrated, notably to the United States, where they have excelled in business and in education. The change is now coming that will allow for a flourishing of more individual economic and intellectual creativity within Korea itself.

Once they have our attention, we find there is so much that can be learned from the Koreans. Ironically, they are the last to acknowledge that they have something to teach the world. Although in public they assert a confidence, privately Koreans are extremely critical of themselves.

In many of the contradictory aspects of Koreans, I have found the most interesting lessons. They combine great flaming emotion with an extremely fine sense of etiquette. They devote themselves to work and they devote themselves to family. They often appear incompetent and yet they achieve. They ascribe to collective values and yet are probably the most individualistic of all east Asians. As Confucianists, they have an instinct for relationships. They can be quite aggressive, but extremely hospitable. They can be very sacrificial, yet realistic about their own needs. They are materialists. They pursue status and titles and yet these often just function as a guide for their behaviour, not as a source of ultimate worth. People of high status can be very sombre and serious and self-important. But then with their mates they're as free as little boys and girls. Grandmothers hire coaches with their pals and get drunk on outings. They can be puritanical about sexual relations and yet more uninhibited than lapdancers. They are naturally conservative and yet have an ability to absorb differences. The stereotypical Korean is a materialistic shaman-Confucian-Buddhist-Christian. They are fascinating for an outsider to observe and work alongside for they have telescoped development which took several generations in western countries into the span of a working lifetime.

This passionate mix of contradictions can be difficult for the more ordered western mind to handle. As I have suggested, foreigners often find themselves responding in contradictory ways. They criticise Koreans a lot and yet they cannot tear themselves away from them. They might declare there is nothing good in the country, except of course their Korean spouse, who is the most important person in their life.

This contradiction is nicely symbolised for me by the way in which I grew to like Korean cuisine. The first time I was confronted by a soup in a Korean restaurant, I found it was too salty and too spicy, and full of murky items which for all I knew had been dropped in it by mistake. I was glad my host did not reveal the contents. It came surrounded with small plates on which there were leaves and twigs which we were plainly expected to eat. I picked up a bulging green pepper and bit into it. It was so hot it almost blew my face off. 'You're supposed to dip it in here,' another foreigner said. That's the Koreans, they dip peppers in a salty paste to spice up the taste. The proud master of these side dishes was a tight roll of what could have passed for used bandages. 'Have some kimchi,' my host said. So this was kimchi. I'd heard of this. It was strips of cabbage parts which had been drenched in red pepper juice. This was what smelled on people's breath in the underground. The courses kept coming. The side dishes were all shared. Everyone poked at them with their chopsticks. In the end, it was difficult to measure how much you had eaten, especially as half the food was left. This food was all washed down with beer.

But now I have grown to love this food so much and the socialising that goes with it that in Britain I have withdrawal symptoms. This cuisine is not the kind you admire visually. It's a kind of assault on the mouth, spice and salt, and so tied up in my mind with long nights with friends and sources and fascinating conversations and arguments that I can't be objective about it. For me, it's the best food in the world, after fish and chips. So, too, with the Koreans. They assault you with their fury and nonsense. I reckon if you were stuck on Mount Everest in a prolonged storm, there would be no more reliable and courageous companion than a Korean. The trouble is, he would be a smoker. If the cold didn't get you, the smoke would.

The Koreans are a very artistic people. It is a pity that much of their literature is inaccessible internationally because of language. Although the young generation prefers western music and films, there are some excellent local film-makers and musicians. One of their most powerful traditions is pansori singing. This art originated as a kind of blues. Ballads performed as a one-man or one-woman show over several hours to outdoor audiences. The pansori artist speaks, shouts, sings and mumbles her way through a tale. The mixture of forms was partly designed as a way to talk about the upper classes and let off steam in way that only the lower classes could fully understand. This old form was introduced to the younger generation in 1993 by the film director, Imm Kwon-taek, whose movie Supyonje told the story of a wandering performer who blinded his daughter so that she would stay with him and discover the soul of her art. Imm waited for years before he found the singer who he felt was right for the part. Seoul itself is packed with shops selling traditional folk craft. Antique chests and furniture, paintings and ceramics and pottery. Ancient stoneware and pots are still being dug up, usually illegally, and sold, at rising prices, mostly to Japanese tourists.

Someone several years ago described the Koreans as the 'Irish of the East'. You could pick other comparisons. They have suffered in this century as horribly as the Poles, their nation severed in two and millions of their people slaughtered. They are as vigorous in their character and the defence of their identity as the Israelis, and as chaotically attractive as the Italians. But the Irish label will do best, for it allows us most fully to highlight the broad themes of both the national character and their relationship with their neighbours. Because they are a divided people, like the Irish, they strike the casual outsider as being their own worst enemy. Their hatred has turned inward as a consequence of terrible violence. Of all the national divisions of modern times, that between north and south Korea has been the most vicious and extreme. However, like the Irish, the Koreans are also a lyrical people, inclined to the spiritual, and exhibiting a warmth and hospitality that belies their violent image. They can be unrestrained in their passions, quick to cry and to laugh. One of the nicest aspects of Koreans is that they are not raised to feel that displays of emotion are a weakness. They push themselves to study and succeed. At the same time they can be embarrassingly earthy and blunt. If you have an ugly spot on your nose, the English and the Japanese will politely pretend it's not there. The Korean will stick his finger in your face and inform you, 'Hey, you've got a spot.' As if he couldn't tell from the deep fingernail grooves around it that you already knew.

There are, of course, constraints on Koreans, as there are on any other people. Law does not play such as central a role in controlling behaviour as it does in western society, but the need to be accepted by peers is more crucial for survival. There are aspects of Korean society that westerners would recognise in their own. (I've been surprised a few times after describing the authoritarian culture of a company to a westerner to be told, 'Yes that reminds me of this British company I worked for ...'). Most differences are explained by legal, political or economic factors. But there is a fundamental divergence between Confucian and Christian ideals, which underscores many of the differences between east Asian and western society. In our society, our lingering class structure notwithstanding, we basically take each person to be of equal value. Society is ordered by an idea of justice. Law is therefore crucial in restraining and guiding behaviour. Noble feelings do not beat in the heart of each member, but there is a general ideal of equality. In east Asia, proper relationships are the ideal. These relationships are mostly understood as variations on family relations. Koreans actually call strangers by familial terms – ajossi (uncle) for an older man, eggie oma (baby's mum) for a young mother, halmoni (grandmother) for an elderly lady, and so on. There is an active effort to cultivate affectionate relationships with people in society whom you see as your 'family members'.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Koreans by Michael Breen. Copyright © 2004 Michael Breen. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
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Edition details

• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0312326092
• ISBN 13: 9780312326098
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 286