This kind of full-on togetherness can also cause friction in Korean-foreigner friendships. Back home, I would accept, “Sorry Dan, I’m worn out and just feel like having an afternoon in by myself watching TV,” as a reason for not meeting me one particular day.
In Korea though, I would never say that to a friend. While plenty of Koreans do want to steal a moment to themselves, openly saying so may cause disappointment. So instead, I would pretend that I had something important to do.
Nobody wants to be alone.
You’ll Never Walk Alone
But the don’t-be-alone mindset does have some advantages. In 2005, I was working for a small investment firm in Seoul. For the first six months, my fellow new hires and I were paid like interns—receiving the princely sum of 500,000 won (around US$500) per month, an amount that barely covered my rent. But we survived, gathering virtually every day after work in each other’s studio apartments, eating instant ramyeon noodles and drinking soju. We didn’t need much money, because we lived cheaply, and we had each other’s friendship. A group of eight of us spent virtually all our waking hours together. I still look back on that time as one of the happiest in my life.
Are You Still Single?
Being single is tough in Korea. People will ask, “Haven’t you met anyone yet?” with pitying looks on their faces. Some couples proudly display their attached-ness by wearing the same outfit as each other. This is known as couple-ot (“couple-clothing”). If she wears a red sweater and blue jeans, so will he. And those who take each other seriously will exchange “couple rings,” to show the world that they are in a relationship.
If you live in Korea and have no significant other, you may find people enjoy telling you, “I know this great guy/girl, let me introduce you to him/ her.” It even happens to me a lot these days. I’m glad people care about me, but I always just reply, “Don’t worry about me,” and tell them I’m a nuni-nopeun saram—a person with “high eyes,” or rather, excessively high standards. I’m not sure if anyone believes that, though!
Life in the Pressure Cooker
I love Korea, and I love living in Korea. But I do sometimes feel grateful to be an outsider here. The reason for this is the perpetual competition. This country has a pressure-cooker environment in which winners and losers are identified from an early age. It starts with education—along with money, the most important element of a person’s social status in Korea—and then moves on to career and marriage. The birth of children then marks the beginning of a new cycle of competition.
This competition mania kicked off in the 1960s, when President Park Chung-hee exhorted the people to go all-out for industrial development. As a nation, South Korea was compelled to hit ever-higher export figures and GDP targets, to overtake North Korea and other countries. Korea had no natural resources to speak of, so everything rested on the optimal use of brains and brawn. This required absolute devotion to academic study, and then absolute devotion to work after graduation.
A Korean classroom Education in Korea is tough: kids study all day long, and then attend after-school academies (or, hakwon) until late. No wonder this poor child is falling asleep.
THE EARLY REWARDS OF COMPETITION
Those who did well—going to the best universities and then working for the best companies, or taking up government service—were rewarded amply. Through their herculean efforts, they rose as Korea rose. They enjoyed elevated social status and wealth. Lee Myung-bak, for instance, collected refuse from the streets to pay his tuition fees at the elite Korea University, and later joined Hyundai Engineering and Construction. An early employee with an extreme capacity for hard work, he became CEO in his thirties, and was later lionized in a TV drama series about his life. In 2007, he was elected president.
Now-former President Lee was an archetype of late 20th century Korean achievement. His personal success is a kind of model—get into an elite university, join a good company, work like crazy, and push your way to the top. Naturally, this is a decent route to take in any country, but in Korea, it is treated as just about the only route. If you stray from this golden path, you are made to feel like you failed.
“SPEC”—A MODERN CULTURAL CODEWORD
These days, 80 percent of young people go to university, with 500,000 university graduates coming on to the job market every year. Unfortunately, high-status companies and government agencies can only create around 100,000 jobs in that time. Because of the importance of being seen to be doing well, people are reluctant to take jobs with less famous organizations, or engage in blue collar work. If they did so, their later marriage prospects and social position would be greatly weakened—so they wait, and build up their resumes.
A person with a resume stuffed full of impressive qualifications is said to have “spec.” Spec can mean Masters and PhD degrees, as well as professional qualifications such as the Certified Financial Analyst (CFA) certification. In other countries, people already working in finance take the CFA, but in Korea, university students feel compelled to do so. Many Korean ex-co-workers of mine had at least the Level One CFA before they even set foot in the office.
It is also considered essential to ace English tests like the TOEIC and TOEFL. People even spend years living abroad to better their chances at doing so, but actual fluency itself is not so important. The exam result is everything, as it is one of the main means by which large companies whittle down their applicant lists.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, of course. There are many young people in Korea with virtually no time for hobbies or travel, because of the perceived need to build spec. One of my best friends is like this. It isn’t that he likes that lifestyle, but rather, he always felt that he needed to concentrate on developing his marketability to survive in this hyper-competitive society.
Top Talent, a competition show for English-speaking performers. English fluency is one of the main ways in which Korean society divides people into winners and losers. Those who can speak English very well are admired and respected for it.
The fruits of one’s labor...
The caption in this recruitment advert reads: “From the time you were born, you were already a global challenger.” Unfortunately, this is a little too true.
Plastic Surgery to Get Ahead?
An advert for plastic surgery. The message is, “Be a more competitive potential wife, and get a richer husband.” But a pretty face can also get you a better job. At one company I worked for, female candidates were regularly screened based on the attractiveness of the mandatory photograph affixed to the application form. There is even an expression, Chwijik seonghyung (“surgery for getting a job”). Don’t label a Korean woman as vain for going under the knife: she may even consider surgery necessary for her career.