Table of Contents
- Korea Focus - Febuarary 2014 - TOC - Politics 1. Is Unification a Jackpot? 2. Asian Paradox and BESETOHA Universities 3. Korea’s New Frontier 4. South Korea Yesterday and Today Seen from New York 5. Ahn Jung-geun and Peace in East Asia
- Economy 1. Is It Time to Cut Interest Rates? 2. Green Climate Fund’s Future Depends on Korea’s Leadership 3. [DEBATE] Casinos on Yeongjong Island 4. Market Failure is Government Failure 5. National Assembly Idles Away Despite Snowballing Household Debt
- Society 1. Country with No Personal Data 2. Korea, Too Far Away from Global Talent 3. Soaring Suicide Rate is the Result of Failed Social Policy 4. Is 35 Years Too Old for Childbirth? 5. Dealing with the Republic of Korea’s Third ‘Surplus’
- Culture 1. Secret behind the Smile of Gilt-bronze Pensive Bodhisattva 2. A Word on Soju-based Mixed Drinks 3. Any Other Space in Danger of Being Tossed Aside? 4. Trap in the Era of 200 Million Movie Admissions 5. Former President Chun Doo-hwan a Savior of Art Market?
- Essays 1. Politicization of Online Neo-nationalism in Korea, China and Japan 2. Korean Economy Follows the Path of Japanese Economy 3. Korea’s Trade: The 50-year Journey and Current Status 4. Religious Exclusivity of South Koreans in Interpersonal Relationships and Politics
- Features 1. Kang Sue-jin to Lead the Korean National Ballet
- Book Reviews 1. Donghak Peasant Revolution and Hangeul Spurred the Birth of Modern Koreans 2. Danjae’s Nationalist Movement Pursued People’s Liberation and Anarchism
- Interview 1. Lie Sang-bong: ‘It’s time to show Asia’s energy and power in fashion.’
- COPYRIGHT
- Is Unification a Jackpot? - Asian Paradox and BESETOHA Universities - Korea’s New Frontier - South Korea Yesterday and Today Seen from New York - Ahn Jung-geun and Peace in East Asia
Is Unification a Jackpot?
Yoon Pyung-joong Professor of Political Philosophy Hanshin University
“In a word, reunification of the two Koreas would amount to hitting the jackpot,” President Park Geun-hye said at her New Year’s press conference on January 6. The comparison hit the mark. Indeed, it was the most impressive statement at her first formal press conference since taking office 10 months ago.
Elaborating on her observation two weeks later at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on January 22, President Park said, “Unification will be a jackpot not only for the Republic of Korea but for all neighboring countries in Northeast Asia.” While “jackpot” is not a word expected from a state leader at an official function, President Park, widely reputed for her choice of refined language, picked up the term apparently to maximize the rhetorical effect of her message.
It worked. Her pronouncement garnered a 70 percent public approval rating, much to the chagrin of the opposition parties who normally dominate the discourse on unification-related matters. They were caught off guard, just as they were when ruling party presidential candidate Park preempted attractive election campaign pledges such as economic democratization and extensive social welfare programs to deliver fatal blows against her opponents.
Opposition parties and progressive civic groups have responded by claiming President Park is
misleading the people with a catchy word that conceals attempts to attain unification by absorbing North Korea. The exaggerated economic benefit overlooks thorny processes toward unification and is quite inadequate and irrelevant amid the prevailing tension-ridden inter-Korean relations, the oppositionists say. Although there is some truth in their claims, the objections were drowned out by the comparison’s strong appeal. It was attractive enough to dispel the conventional notion that the conservatives are predominantly concerned with security while the progressives are attuned to national reunification as their primary mission. The sudden buzzword “unification jackpot” involves “political engineering,” or political manipulation. Domestic political debate last year was largely preoccupied with the merits of the opposition camp’s allegations that the state intelligence agency meddled in the December 2012 presidential election. Floating the idea of a jackpot shifted the political climate overnight by putting unification in a fresh limelight on the future agenda. It had been more or less identified as a banner hoisted by North Korean sympathizers. Unification, an abstract target, has now been coated with a dramatic expression and emerged as a realistic goal. The shift must be a bitter pill for oppositionists to swallow.
Notwithstanding, for reunification to hit the jackpot in reality, there are mountains of challenging tasks that have to be strenuously carried out. The first task is to change the prevailing attitude: people in general admit the inevitability of unification, but they have reservations as to its actual necessity. President Park has rekindled public awareness of reunification through a sort of shock therapy. However, the populace would become forward-looking only when they are convinced that unlimited opportunities stemming from a national unity would more than pay off enormous unification costs. Popular spontaneity is a must for attaining unification.
A second requirement concerns the economic aspect of unification, the core of the unification jackpot theory. Economic requirements of reunification can be sufficiently borne by the economically powerful South. The time also seems ripe for the South Korean government to work for inter-Korean rapprochement with its new unification policy based on “trustpolitik” or trust-building process on the Korean peninsula, an ungraded formula incorporating both the conciliatory “sunshine” andhardlinepolicies of previous administrations. To begin with, Seoul should take advantage of the peace overtures recently made by Pyongyang, which must need to mend its relations with the South amid chilled ties with Beijing following the execution of pro-Chinese leader Jang Song-thaek last
December. Third, South Korea should strengthen its own capabilities to effectively confront North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction, specifically to neutralize nuclear missiles. It needs to be pointed out that the U.S. assurance of “extended deterrence” alone is not sufficient enough to safeguard the South’s security.
A fourth requirement is that we must be armed with a broad perception that the Korean unification is a question that directly influences all of East Asia. In historical perspectives, the Korean peninsula is closely related with China that often made military interventions on its soil, the last during the Korean War of the early 1950s. However, the U.S. presence and the remarkable upsurge of South Korea’s national power in recent decades have reset the geopolitical structure. For the first time in history, the Republic of Korea has room to maneuver in complex international settings. The space must be maximized to cover its engagement with North Korea and other neighboring countries, including Japan, and with the world.
Would the buzz over unification bring a windfall indeed, or merely end up in failure? President Park has already experienced setbacks that hurt her credibility. She has failed to fulfill her much publicized election pledges of economic democratization and stepped-up social welfare programs. Should she flounder in materializing her proposition of unification jackpot as well, the president would suffer much greater damage in her leadership as well as historical regression. In order to ensure the national yearning for reunification comes true, the president has to display bold leadership in close harmony with the people.
[ Chosun Ilbo, February 7, 2014 ]
www.koreafocus.or.kr
Asian Paradox and BESETOHA Universities
Lee Hong-koo Advisor to the JoongAngIlbo Former Prime Minister
It almost seems as if a splendid march has stopped abruptly on the edge of a precipice. East Asia, once vaunted as a model of rapid economic development and various other fields and a potential global hub in the 21st century, suddenly has started to stagger. Volatile friction has erupted among East Asian countries that played key roles in the region’s progress. The cause is not a natural catastrophe or a drop in trade or tourism revenue but political and security conflicts between neighboring states.
During the past week (the first week of December), ominous signs of war hovered over East Asia. Have envious detractors cast a curse on our success? It is true that East Asian nations have been so engrossed with retrieving self-respect, developing rapidly and strengthening their national power that there is less preparation for the next historical stage. During the age of imperialism led by Western powers beginning in the 19th century, Asian countries suffered all sorts of indignities and humiliation. Afterward they experienced harsh tribulations while building new state systems amid the vortex of the Cold War waged by the United States and the Soviet Union.
After navigating the twists and turns, East Asian countries have attained their current positions but failed to establish a new order with an independent vision that assures peaceful relations among neighbors. Now, in a vacuum, they are in transitional confusion. In a historical transition when the
balance of power shifts in all areas, including politics, economy, military and culture, psychological uneasiness is prone to prevail with destabilized international relations.
In order to overcome such uncertainties, long-range strategies and consolidated programs should be placed under the aegis of objective and innovative visions to forge a new frame of coexistence and co-prosperity in the region. As such, who should take the lead in this historical mission? One can hardly expect political or business circles to play this role. They are inherently fixated on attaining immediate gains. Rather we may well count on the university community that is intrinsically committed to elevating the function of objective and comprehensive thinking and its practice.
Amid the flaring tension, an annual session of the BESETOHA Forum, consisting of presidents of four representative national universities in East Asia, was held in Seoul last week to discuss the future directions and tasks of university education and cultivation of Asian community spirit. Held under the theme of “Asian Consensus for Education,” this timely meeting was attended by the presidents of Peking University, Seoul National University, University of Tokyo and Vietnam National University in Hanoi.
The participants unanimously stressed the urgency of preparing for an Asian community, while expressing regrets and self-reflections on a lack of mutual understanding among East Asian nations. What they underscored is that geographical proximity does not necessarily engender mutual goodwill. Instead, it tends to foster misunderstanding and disbelief. In fact, amid today’s sweeping tide of globalization, understanding of distant countries in Europe or the Middle East has increased considerably while perceptions of next-door neighbors tend to remain superficial.
Wang Enge, president of Peking University, who is a physicist, emphasized the cultural and social responsibility of universities to nurture mutual understanding. Seoul National University president OhYeon-cheon noted that now is the time to reflect on how the current level of mutual understanding in the East Asian community should be evaluated in the global context. Junichi Hamada, president of the University of Tokyo, speaking on the theme of “Asianization of Asia,” proposed a new direction of Asian studies. To promote Asian studies in the region, he said, education of Asian languages and their use are as vitally needed as English. He cited Japan studies as an example, suggesting that in addition to research by Japanese scholars, in-depth studies by foreigners, especially Asian scholars, would be instrumental in attaining a higher degree of objectivity. PhungXuanNha, president of Vietnam National University, emphasized the importance
of cultural exchange as a shortcut to understanding the commonalities and differences of East Asian societies.
The university presidents discussed a wide range of issues, from problems pertaining to a steady increase in the number of students studying abroad and evaluation criteria of Asian universities to the introduction of cross-border online lectures and credit exchanges among the schools. While watching them debate the mission of universities in research and cultivation of human resources, I found a ray of hope for the possibility and dynamism to overcome the ongoing political friction in the region.
The time has come, albeit belatedly, to start taking concrete steps to create an Asian community, a task that tests the self-esteem and pride of we Asians. No longer should we cling to narrow-minded nationalism or be held hostage to emotional dogma in this age of mass communication. By establishing a principle of “reciprocity and equality� that befits the sentiment and norm of Asians, we ought to turn Asia into the center of the global village in the 21st century. Let us believe that the conflicts and uneasiness that have inflicted our neighborhood over the past several days were labor pains that will help Asia find its rightful place.
[ JoongAngIlbo, December 9, 2013 ]
www.koreafocus.or.kr
Korea’s New Frontier
Koo Bon-young Chief Editorial Writer The Seoul Shinmun
The late General ChaeMyung-shin, former commander of the ROK Forces in Vietnam, demonstrated true comradeship when he died on November 25. In accordance with his lifetime wish, he was buried in a regular 3.3 by 3.3 meter plot at the enlisted soldiers’ burial ground, rather than a section for generals, in the National Cemetery. It was the first burial of its kind in Korea’s modern military history. His admirable action came days after global remembrance of U.S. President John F. Kennedy on the 50th anniversary of his death.
It was quite a revelation that we had such a hero in our tough world where everybody is quick to find fault with others. But in retrospect, all of our soldiers who were killed during the Vietnam War deserve to be called heroes, don’t they? A total of 320,000 South Korean soldiers participated in the war. About 5,000 of them were killed in action. The blood and sweat they shed laid the foundation for the industrialization of South Korea.
Regardless of the justification for dispatching South Korean troops to Vietnam, there is no denying that the hard currency those soldiers sent back to their fatherland, the U.S. military aid and the $5 billion earned by South Korean companies thanks to the war, served as seed money for the Park Chung-hee government’s first and second five-year economic development plans.
The security environment on the Korean peninsula and in East Asia has undergone rapid changes recently. China stunned us by unilaterally declaring an air defense identification zone, which includes the submerged shelf of Ieo Island in South Korea’s territorial waters. The rise of China, now one of the G2 members, and responses by the United States and Japan, which are trying to hold it in check, are stirring up raging waves in Northeast Asia. There also is a thuggish regime in North Korea that is threatening us, wielding a nuclear weapons card. In a sense, we are being buffeted by waves from three sides.
Worse still, our economic growth engine is running out of steam. Some commentators have even likened the nation’s current situation to the last years of the Joseon Dynasty, when Korea lost its sovereignty amid aggression by foreign powers and internal division between pro-Chinese, proJapanese and pro-Russian factions in the government. It may be irrational to compare Korea then and now, as our national strength has grown phenomenally in the past century. But it is also true that we are currently blocked on all sides.
Still, we have demonstrated the ability to find a way out every time we are driven into a cul de sac. With $500 million of grants and low interest loans it received from Japan in 1965, South Korea laid the groundwork for its modernization by building Pohang Iron and Steel Company and power plants. We overcame two oil crises in the 1970s with money remitted by our workers from overseas construction sites. The Middle East, then an unfamiliar land of hot deserts, turned into a land of opportunity that breathed fresh life into the South Korean economy. Why are the Americans still fondly remembering Kennedy even though he didn’t finish his term and had few remarkable achievements before he was assassinated? The answer may lie in his presentation of a “new frontier” to the Americans. He imbued a sense of challenge into the American public by seeking to put a man on the moon and dispatching Peace Corps members around the world.
In this situation, we naturally ask ourselves where a new frontier for us to pioneer lies. If internal resources have been exhausted, we should look proactively for a new frontier. It is high time that we should seek a proactive unification policy, instead of advocating the past division under the pretext of peacefully managing the peninsula. Despite risks, we should open doors to the outside wider by participating in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Any leader with a forward-looking vision should make resolute decisions in this process, braving risks. Perhaps, the Park Geun-hye administration may have to make such decisions during its term.
After all, we may be a “frog in a slowly boiling pot” from both security and economic perspectives. We cannot afford to further waste our energy on never-ending political wrangling when we should be seeking a way out as quickly as possible. “Men resemble certain little birds of prey in whom so strong is the desire to catch the prey which nature incites them to pursue, that they do not notice another greater bird of prey which hovers over them ready to pounce and kill,” said Niccolo Machiavelli who regretted the decline of his fatherland, the Florentine Republic, as a result of antagonism and jealousy. This is an aphorism that should be pondered by both our ruling and opposition leaders, not to mention the president and her staff, who have merely engaged in scuffles for nearly a year since the presidential election.
[ December 5, 2013 ]
www.koreafocus.or.kr
South Korea Yesterday and Today Seen from New York
Jung Kyung-min New York Correspondent The JoongAng Ilbo
“Pack up right now and leave!” U.S. President Barack Obama shouted at U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in August when the countdown to U.S. air bombing over Syria began. Ban asked in response, “Why are you in a hurry? Let’s talk after we listen to U.N. chemical weapons investigators.” At Ban’s insistence, Obama had to revoke his bombing order. By the way, I did not learn about this episode from the New York Times or the Washington Post; I heard it from a South Korean diplomat who happened to be on the scene at that moment. I still remember last year’s Times Square New Year’s Eve celebration. Rapper Psy stood shoulder to shoulder with Justin Bieber, Taylor Swift and M.C. Hammer, American celebrities whom we had been watching on TV. I heard lyrics of “Gangnam Style” reach a wide audience all over the United States. I felt great, even amazed. I was very proud of Kim Yu-na when she visited New York after winning a gold medal in the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. When he played at Yankee Stadium in New York, I discovered that pitcher Ryu Hyun-jin has a lot of courage.
In addition, one in every 10 vehicles sold in the United States these days is made by a Korean company. Korean automakers have already outdistanced their American counterparts, and their cars vie with Japanese and European brands in terms of performance and functions. Korean products take the most prominent place in every electronics goods shop in the United States. This was also the case
with shops in Brazil, Chile and Mexico. Ten years ago when I went shopping during my training in the United States, I felt embarrassed to see Korean TVs gathering dust in a corner. Indeed, 10 years ago, the “world history” in the making was a mere “fire across the river” that we had to learn indirectly through foreign media. In the meantime, such a history became our own story that we can hear in Korean from a Korean source. The civil war in Syria, a story about a coup in South Sudan, Apple’s persistent but dirty lawsuits, and Toyota and Honda having a hard time after massive recalls ― all these stories are no longer others ’ stories, but “matters of immediate concern” to the Korean people and companies. South Korea’s voice is no longer regarded as the sound of “distant drums.” It has become a lead player in history that no country can ignore. Until recently, we simply had to run after others on a playing field they had leveled. But this is no longer true. As befits a lead player, we should blaze the trail ourselves. Moreover, the situation in and around the Korean peninsula is touch-and-go.
By the way, do we deserve to be a lead player? This question I have constantly raised to myself while working as a New York correspondent for four years and six months. We had better think of how the world is looking at us, rather than fighting among ourselves in a deep, narrow well. I would feel rewarded if my small voice had awakened people from sleep on a dark morning.
[ December 21, 2013 ]
www.koreafocus.or.kr
Ahn Jung-geun and Peace in East Asia
BaeGeuk-in Tokyo Correspondent The Dong-A Ilbo
Early this month, Kazuhiko Togo, director of the Institute for World Affairs at Kyoto Sangyo University and former director general of the Japanese Foreign Ministry’s Treaties Bureau, unexpectedly asked to meet with me. He said that he wanted to discuss Korean independence fighter Ahn Jung-geun. At the time, Seoul-Tokyo relations were further chilled by Chief Cabinet Secretary YoshihideSuga, the Japanese government’s spokesman, who said, “Ahn Jung-geun is considered a criminal in Japan.” As soon as he sat down in a coffee shop in downtown Tokyo, Togo said, “There are many Japanese who respect Ahn, aside from DoshichiJiba.” Jiba was a guard at the Lushun Prison in China where Ahn was confined after he assassinated Ito Hirobumi. At first Jiba hated Ahn, but became gradually moved by his theory on the peace in East Asia and came to respect him. They became friends, and Jiba called Ahn a “patriot.” After he returned to Japan, Jiba prayed for the repose of Ahn’s soul everyday in front of an altar with his picture and calligraphy.
From his bag, Togo took out four books written by Japanese writers about Ahn. One of them immediately grabbed my attention. It was not because of its provocative title “Why Do the Japanese Hate the Koreans?” The book was written by Hisahiko Okazaki, a leading conservative writer. Okazaki served as a minister counselor at the Japanese Embassy in Seoul in the 1970s and purportedly
is Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s tutor on foreign affairs. Upon opening the book, I found something unexpected. It said, “In fact, Ahn Jung-geun was an educated patriot in the late period of the Joseon Dynasty. Since he was young, he had attained a lot of courage. He had leadership, given that he excelled in both scholarship and martial arts and led a volunteer army to fight properly with Japanese garrison troops. If he were Japanese, he would have been rated among top-class patriots during the Meiji Restoration period like Sakamoto Ryoma (18351867).”
Okazaki said that the Ahn Jung-geun Memorial Hall in downtown Seoul is a must-see. He wrote, “Almost every Japanese visitor I escorted to the memorial hall said, ‘I wasn’t aware of all this.’ Many of Ahn’s calligraphic works still remain, because many Japanese rushed to the prison to get them after they learned that Ahn was a great patriot. If this is true, the Japanese have taught us that Ahn was a ‘terrorist,’ even though they knew a lot about his greatness.” Okazaki said that a U.S. political scientist once called Ahn a “Korean fanatic,” because the United States has been interpreting the modern history of Korea under Japanese influence. He pointed out, “America and Japan need to become mature through study of modern Korean history until both nations can naturally say ‘Oh, the Korean patriot’ whenever Ahn is mentioned.” “It’s not surprising,” Togo commented. He said, “Any Japanese who knows even a little about Ahn respects him.” He lamented Suga’s shallow judgment. At the same time, he also expressed regret over the Korean government’s attempt to set up a monument in Harbin, where Ahn assassinated Ito. He explained it is because using Ahn as a symbol of rejection of Japan for Korea and China is incompatible with Ahn’s mind. He said, “Ahn said he shot Ito for Japan’s own sake. He advocated peace in East Asia rather than nationalism. You shouldn’t lock him up in a narrow frame of nationalism.” At a time when tensions are mounting in East Asia, Ahn can be a “beacon” of reconciliation and cooperation for all three East Asian nations, Togo said. I ruminated over his remarks that lingered long in my mind.
[ December 23, 2013 ]
www.koreafocus.or.kr
- Is It Time to Cut Interest Rates? - Green Climate Fund’s Future Depends on Korea’s Leadership - [DEBATE] Casinos on Yeongjong Island - Market Failure is Government Failure - National Assembly Idles Away Despite Snowballing Household Debt
Is It Time to Cut Interest Rates?
E. Young Song Professor of Economics Sogang University
I often cite different treatments of a cold to explain the difference between classical and Keynesian economics to my students. An advocate of classical economics tells his patient there is no cure. He says if the patient simply rests, the cold will soon dissipate. He also tells the patient to exercise regularly. On the other hand, a Keynesian proponent will prescribe strong medicine, saying the patient, having a lot of work to do, need not suffer. Of course, each of them will send his patient to the emergency room if he has pneumonia.
Classical economics is the foundation of conservative economics in advanced countries. Its advocates demand market principles be applied to strengthen economic fundamentals and raise growth rates in the long term.
As such, many conservative economists are opposed to attempts by central banks to adjust business cycles and are critical of quantitative easing. They claim the market’s regulations will be weakened if interest rates are slashed to an unwarrantedly low level, exonerating households and corporations of their profligacy. They also claim that quantitative easing, which permits the government to determine bond rates, paralyzes the bond market’s risk evaluation and supervision functions. Their views have hardly wavered despite the 2008 market crisis.
Economic conservatives in Korea are different. At the first sign of contraction, they seek a cut in interest rates and a weak Korean currency. They exhibit a pro-market tendency when they demand that property taxes be lowered and that regulations on property lending be eased. But in an aboutface, they support special measures designed to help the “house poor” and a new property lending system that permits the government to partially cover investment losses. They claim that the measures are needed to keep Korea from slipping into a Japanese-style, long-term slump. Still, they lack the kind of due respect for the market that conservative economists share.
A call for lower interest rates, which was prompted by an unjustifiably pessimistic economic outlook in spring last year, subsided when the central bank accommodated it and the U.S. Federal Reserve Board started to refer to the tapering of quantitative easing. But a rate cut has been mentioned again since the beginning of this year.
Bond rates are on the rise in the United States as quantitative easing is being tapered. Almost all think tanks forecast Korea’s actual economic growth rate will be higher than 3.5 percent, nearing its growth potential. Then why is an interest rate cut being mentioned again? The rationale that is being advanced is the need to protect the nation’s exports by keeping the Korean won from strengthening against the Japanese yen and the low possibility that inflation will surpass the target range.
The world remains stable and Korea is set apart from other emerging economies in the financial market. These developments appear to be assuring that a rate cut will cause no disruption. Added are political considerations. Expectations are high that when the new governor of the Bank of Korea is inaugurated in April, a benchmark rate cut will ensue in his response to the president’s three-year plan to raise the nation’s growth potential to 4 percent.
When a long-term perspective is taken, however, I do not believe it is proper time to cut interest rates. With the Korean economy already in an expansionary cycle, the short-term real rates will drop naturally when the consumer price index, as expected, inches up this year.
The Korean currency, which plummeted in 2008, has stabilized, although a sharply weakened yen creates the appearance of excessive appreciation. Given the real effective exchange rate, which takes into account the differences between Korea’s trade volume and consumer price index and those of Korea’s trading partners, the Korean won cannot be said to be too strong. It is confirmed when its value is compared with the years immediately preceding the 2008 global financial crisis.
What I am worried about is that the Korean economy is vulnerable to the risk posed by a rate increase. Even a small increase will make household and government-invested corporations, both highly leveraged, groan. The Korean economy will be pushed out of the safety zone if a rate cut coincides with interest rate increases throughout the world and instability in financial markets.
A rate cut will not strengthen the Korean economy. The government will have to seek to raise the nation’s growth potential to its target of 4 percent, not by cutting interest rates but by strengthening the economic fundamentals and promoting a creative economy.
[ Maeil Business Newspaper, January 17, 2014 ]
www.koreafocus.or.kr
Green Climate Fund’s Future Depends on Korea’s Leadership
Cho Hong-sik Professor of Law, School of Law Seoul National University
The Green Climate Fund, the so-called “World Bank for the environment,” opened its secretariat in Songdo, Incheon, on December 4, a year after Korea was chosen to be its home country. The selection of Korea reflected global recognition of our nation’s efforts to sustain green growth and cope with climate change, and raised local anticipation of a windfall for the Korean economy.
However, the difficulty in securing initial funding for the Green Environment Fund and the Adaptation Fund is a reminder that it will take time for the organization’s system to become fully operational.
In Cancun, Mexico, in 2010, developed nations agreed to create a $100 billion fund by 2020. But the contributions made so far amount to a mere $6.9 million, which is earmarked to cover the secretariat’s operating expenses. The Warsaw Climate Change Conference, which closed at the end of November, failed to set a specific goal of funding the GCF. Instead, agreeing that the initial funding should be substantial, participants decided to complete preparations for financing by the end of 2014. Germany, Norway and the United Kingdom offered to make contributions. Yet, developing countries also are called on to provide funding. The Korean government needs to take leadership in financing the organization. The GCF’s future will
depend on whether or not it is fully funded. But it is not easy to produce an agreement between developed and developing countries. In the forthcoming negotiations, Korea will have to play an appropriate role as host to the organization in helping reconcile the interests of both sides. If Korea does so, then the launch of its secretariat will help turn Songdo into a “global hub of green financing.�
The Korean government has been striving to this end. In August, it concluded an agreement with the GCF and passed a bill that provided a legal framework for its stable operation. Together with the Incheon metropolitan government, it also provided the GCF with financial help and assistance in securing a workspace for the secretariat. But these efforts were not enough to overcome heightened confrontation between developed and developing countries over the governance of the GCF and its business model. The GCF board soon has to agree on the organizational structure of the fund and its secretariat.
Reality is often put before formality in the international community. It should be kept in mind that the secretariat may be able to expand its authority, depending less on what authority it is given in the initial stage than on how it is exercised.
What the Korean government needs to concentrate on is the core operating system on which the two sides are unlikely to agree anytime soon, including funding and resources allocation. It is necessary to produce accords on what will be the proper size of the fund, how it will be financed and what countries will be permitted to ask for support from the fund. It is necessary to determine what projects to support and how to support them.
What is also needed is a business model that can bridge, with assistance from the private sector, the gap between the GCF’s target for funding and contributions from developed countries. In acting as the mediator, Korea will have to help developing countries devise plans to adapt themselves to climate change and to research and develop necessary basic technologies. The Global Green Growth Institute and the Green Technology Center may serve as useful tools for those purposes.
[ Korea Economic Daily, December 9, 2013 ]
www.koreafocus.or.kr
[DEBATE] Casinos on Yeongjong Island
[PRO] Lee Seung-joo Managing Director, Business Promotion Bureau Incheon Free Economic Zone Authority
[CON] Kwon Byung-hwi Co-president Korea Network for Control and Improvement of Gambling Industry
A debate is under way on whether casino resorts should be built on Yeongjong Island, which is a short drive from Incheon International Airport, the main gateway into Korea. The Paradise Group, which operates several casinos in Korea, hopes to open a foreigners-only casino resort on the island in 2017. Also, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism said that it is willing to review any applications by foreign casino operators to open a facility on the island. The Incheon metropolitan government is actively supporting the idea of a large-scale casino resort on Yeongjong Island because it would help create jobs and induce foreign investments. But civil society organizations oppose the idea.
[PRO] Resort Complex to Create Jobs and Foster Service Industries
One of our most pressing issues now is how to create jobs for sustainable economic growth. The government is pushing for an economic recovery but the prospects are not so bright. On the other hand, China recently launched a pilot free trade zone in Shanghai as part of its globalization strategy through continuous reform and opening up. As such, it is time for us to tighten our resolve to make
our country Northeast Asia’s business hub.
The Yeongjong district in the Incheon Free Economic Zone, an urban complex near the worldrenowned Incheon International Airport, has the potential to be an attractive international tourist destination. However, strained inter-Korean relations and the global economic slump are obstacles to foreign investments as well as investments by Korean business enterprises. We must strive to attract foreign direct investments, create jobs, boost growth, accumulate capital, and globalize our economy.
Since 2010, the Incheon metropolitan government has been pushing for a project to build a resort complex in the Yeongjong district. The project would help the government attain one of its greatest policy goals ― creating jobs and boosting the service industries.
Singapore is among those who have successfully developed resorts and turned them into global urban hubs. Tourists from five nearby countries ― Indonesia, China, Malaysia, Australia and India ― are now flooding into Singapore. Singapore has thus raised its economic growth rate to 14.8 percent, created 50,000 jobs, and increased inbound tourists by 20 percent and tourism revenue by 48 percent from the previous year.
Japan is also wooing investments in resorts, as Macau, the Philippines and Taiwan have done, as a means of helping its economy turn around. It has been talking with Sands Corp., MGM Resort International and Wynn Resort about resort complexes that would include foreigners-only casinos. But they have been withholding direct investments because they are not confident about profitability.
However, Caesars Palace and other resort developers and operators are showing a keen interest in developing a complex that would serve foreign tourists in Korea. As such, investments in that kind of resort complex may not be far off.
The complex on the drawing board would directly and indirectly create jobs for 820,000 people and generate an estimated 13 trillion won in annual tourism revenue. In addition, with the Yeongjong district playing host to the anchor project, related businesses would likely move into the Incheon Free Economic Zone, encouraging investments in the zone, raising tax revenue from it and boosting the regional economy. Simply put, a resort complex would be of great help to the nation’s economy, as witnessed in the Singapore case.
Korea has such strengths as the hallyu, or the Korean Wave, and K-pop. If they are combined with a
resort complex, it would bolster Korea’s tourism industry. Moreover, Yeongjong Island is a good place for the construction of a resort complex as it is near the huge Chinese market, not to mention Incheon International Airport and Seoul. The construction of a resort complex needs support from the central government if it is to create many jobs and help boost service industries.
[CON] Foreign-owned Casinos to Spur Outflow of National Wealth
Gambling at a casino is highly addictive. It is not an easy job to enumerate all the harms done by casinos. Once a person has started gambling at a casino, it is difficult to wean him from it. When he is deeply drawn into it, his humanity can easily be damaged and his social relations may crumble.
When a person is addicted to gambling, throwing his wealth away at the gambling table, he distances himself from his family and puts himself into complete isolation. And his family tends to collapse. After all, casinos, which earn money by making human soul and society sick, are an industry that should not exist.
The Paradise Group says it will open a large resort complex centered on foreigners-only casinos at a place 1.1 km away from the passenger terminal of Incheon International Airport on Yeongjong Island in January 2017. The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism says it will determine whether or not Lippo and Caesars Entertainment and Universal Entertainment are qualified for casino business if they reapply for permission to build casinos. Is it saying that it is impossible to develop Yeongjong Island without building casinos? There are 16 foreigners-only casinos in Korea ― three in Seoul, two in Busan, one each in Incheon, Gangwon Province and Daegu, and the rest on Jeju Island. The Paradise Group operates four of these facilities ― Paradise Walkerhill Casino in Seoul, Paradise Casino Busan in Busan, Incheon Casino in Incheon and Paradise Grand Casino in Jeju. In particular, it is not necessary for this group to build another casino on Yeongjong Island because Paradise Global is already managing one in Incheon.
It is claimed that foreigners-only casinos do not harm Korea because Koreans are not allowed to enter them and earnings from them serve the nation’s interests. The combined turnover of the 16 casinos was 1,125.6 billion won in 2013. Did all the money come out of the pockets of foreign tourists? The answer is no. It included the wealth squandered by Koreans permanently residing in foreign countries and ethnic Koreans holding foreign citizenships. It also included the hard-earned money of migrant workers, who had come from Southeast Asia in pursuit of a Korean dream, and ethnic Koreans from
China.
All these people, regardless of their nationality and ethnicity, deserve respect and protection from the Korean society and government. Suppose your children, parents, brothers or sisters were addicted to gambling at casinos. What would you do? Considering how casinos can hurt public sentiment, damage the nation’s image and make individuals, society and the state sick, I would like to make suggestions to the Paradise Group, the Incheon metropolitan government and the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism.
The Paradise Group has profited from exposing their customers to the risk of losing their assets and their families’ well-being. Now it is time for the group to make a contribution to society. It should boldly scrap its new casino resort plan and instead build a human-centered resort complex featuring Korean cultural characteristics ― one that would attract foreign tourists as well as provide Koreans with a place where they can relax and enjoy themselves with their children. I hope the group will thus be born again as a proud business concern.
As host to the secretariat of the Green Climate Fund, a U.N. agency that is opening in Songdo, the Incheon metropolitan government should deny a casino business permit as it conflicts with the international organization’s spirit.
The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism should prepare itself against the advance of foreign casino behemoths into the nation. Few casinos in the world have foreigners only as their clients. The outflow of national wealth will be inevitable. Moreover, the 16 casinos now doing business in the nation may also have to be allowed to take in Koreans as clients. Eventually, the nation may be turned into a land of gambling. Should the ministry remain idle and take no preventive action under these circumstances?
Now the central government, local governments and business concerns should give up the idea of inducing foreign capital into casino business. The nation cannot be turned into a republic of gambling. It should raise its prestige not only as an economic powerhouse but as an attractive tourist destination. The nation should strive to free itself of gambling and ensure no one suffers from gambling.
[ Kyunghyang Shinmun, November 1, 2013 ]
www.koreafocus.or.kr
Market Failure is Government Failure
Kim Young-han Professor, Department of Economics Sungkyunkwan University
The first year of the new administration is drawing to a close. The parliamentary and presidential elections in 2012 created high expectations that they would lead to correction of a market that had failed. Therefore, if the government ends up deepening market troubles, it will be an even bigger failure than the market itself.
It is time for the government, looking back over the year, to review its policy goals and the policy tools used to attain them with cool-headedness so that any missteps can be minimized.
When it was inaugurated, the administration promised to create jobs and stabilize the economy for households in middle- and lower-income brackets. Now it will have to carefully review whether its policies helped provide quality jobs or jobs that are good for nothing. It also needs to determine whether it stabilized households or whether its regulations introduced in the name of economic democracy ended up weakening the income foundation of many households.
Among the policies that need to be placed under a strict review is balanced national development, under which Seoul-based government agencies and other public institutions have been forcibly relocated to provinces. Is it contributing to balanced development among different regions? Or is it causing disorderly land development in the provinces, raising land prices throughout the nation and
swelling property incomes for landowners?
Policies for trade and external relations also need to be reassessed. Are they designed to serve shortterm political purposes, rather than to upgrade our industries and boost their global competitiveness, undermining the Korean economy’s external competitiveness? The outcome of the policy experiment of creating jobs and stabilizing the economy for mid- and low-income households shows that policies need to be implemented, squarely based on the principle of the market economy, not in consideration of short-term political gain only.
For instance, the regulations imposed on supermarket chains and large discount stores in the name of support for mid- and lower-income households and economic democracy have failed to attain the intended goal of boosting the competitiveness of traditional back-alley markets. Instead, various statistical figures show that the regulations have reduced the incomes of small and medium-sized business enterprises and farmers supplying goods to large discount stores.
To help back-alley markets gain a competitive edge, the government should have provided them with technical and financial support so that they gain a comparative advantage.
If it is to help middle- and lower-income families live stable lives and increase their incomes, it is necessary for the government to build a strong social safety net, which should include various types of job training. It has to increase taxes, especially on wealthy people, to finance such a project. A policy for genuine social integration will help build a national consensus on a tax increase for the purpose. The government should keep the policy of upgrading the nation’s economy and industry and boosting its competitiveness in mind when it negotiates a Korean-Chinese free trade agreement and a free trade agreement among Korea, China and Japan. But does it have a sophisticated strategy that is needed for such negotiations?
A Korean-Chinese-Japanese free trade agreement would hardly provide Korea with additional access to the Japanese market. Korean corporations would have to share access to the Chinese market with Japanese corporations. As such, they would not gain much from the tripartite accord if they had no comparative advantage over their Japanese counterparts. Therefore, the three trading partners would have to coordinate their policies under the accord.
On the other hand, a Korean-Chinese free trade agreement would possibly provide the Korean economy with an occasion to make a new leap forward if Korea, before concluding negotiations on the accord, should successfully implement an industrial policy designed to steer manufacturers from low-end products toward high-end ones and upgrade the agricultural sector. That is the reason why industrial restructuring and agricultural upgrading should be made before negotiations on the bilateral accord are concluded.
[ Seoul Economic Daily, December 13, 2013 ]
www.koreafocus.or.kr
National Assembly Idles Away Despite Snowballing Household Debt
Lee Sang-bin Professor of Finance, School of Business Hanyang University
Net household assets are shrinking, according to a recent nationwide survey of 20,000 households jointly conducted by the Statistics Korea, the Financial Supervisory Service and the Bank of Korea.
Assets per household increased 0.7 percent year-on-year in 2013, but liabilities grew almost 10 times as fast, or at the pace of 6.8 percent. A closer look into the increase in liabilities showed that loans on credit and credit card borrowing grew faster than loans secured by collateral. In other words, households that could not offer security borrowed at high interest rates on credit to meet their urgent needs.
Moreover, the debt increase rate was 12.3 percent for households whose heads were aged 60 or older, almost twice the average increase rate. Even more alarming, the debt increase rate for households headed by temporary workers was at 16.9 percent. In other words, debt increases were most notable among those who were not so capable of paying back. Kim Choong-soo, governor of the Bank of Korea, said household debt won’t trigger a financial crisis because most of the debt was held by the top 60 percentile in household income. But the survey showed that the portion of the debt held by the lower 40 percentile in household income rose by 1.5 percentage points in a year, from 14.2 percent in 2012 to 15.7 percent in 2013. Moreover, the ratio of
the household debt to real national income or disposable income in Korea is well ahead of the OECD average. As such, it cannot be said with conviction that there will be no crisis.
There is nothing but one fundamental solution to the household debt problem. It is to create quality jobs and, by doing so, increase incomes. Cutting interest payments by lowering interest rates is only a temporary treatment, not a solution. The manufacturing industry alone cannot create all jobs that the Korean economy needs. It is necessary to boost the service industry for jobs by promoting deregulation.
Even during the high-growth period in which the annual growth rate hovered around the 10 percent level, the employment rate never reached 70 percent, a level President Park Geun-hye promised. Now that the manufacturing industry’s capacity for job creation is on the decline, it is not possible to create as many jobs as needed without invigorating the service industries. When a proper level of employment is not attained, it will not be possible to solve the debt problem.
The National Assembly is the branch of government that can best address this problem at the moment. The administration can do nothing much unless the legislature revises relevant laws and writes new ones. The legislature has a pivotal role to play for economic recovery. But our parliament remains impotent, instead of exercising its authority to change or remove regulations.
The opposition party has been seeking to engage in political strife in pursuit of its partisan interests and the ruling party has been merely watching. The opposition party, which does not have to worry too much about elections because it has diehard supporters, behaves in the way it pleases and runs like a vehicle without a braking system. On the other hand, the governing party finds its hands tied by restrictions on using its majority to ram through approval of measures. It is ordinary people that are trapped in a deadlock.
In a recent annual Wall Street Journal event for top managers, Lawrence Summers, a former U.S. treasury secretary, warned of a protracted slump. Paul Krugman, a Nobel laureate and Princeton University professor, said the United States has entered a lost decade as Japan did. Korea could follow the footsteps of Japan if its population continues to gray fast.
Though the nation is in such a dire situation, the National Assembly is idling. It turned a deaf ear on an appeal for legislation from the prime minister and the deputy prime minister for economic affairs. It did so when the president stressed economic recovery in her address on the state of affairs.
In their fight for democracy, people put the National Assembly, once dubbed a “maid� to the executive branch of government, on the pedestal of power. Now it is used as a venue of political strife. The parliament needs to separate political tug-of-war from the work it is obliged to do to better the lives of people. Writing laws to that end is no less important than criticizing the National Intelligence Service of meddling in elections.
Political parties are urged not to hold people hostage in pushing for their own agenda. They must do what they are required to do even in the midst of fighting for their own interests.
[ Maekyung Economy, December 3, 2013 ]
www.koreafocus.or.kr
- Country with No Personal Data - Korea, Too Far Away from Global Talent - Soaring Suicide Rate is the Result of Failed Social Policy - Is 35 Years Too Old for Childbirth? - Dealing with the Republic of Korea’s Third ‘Surplus’
Country with No Personal Data
Kwon Suk-chun Editorial Writer The JoongAng Ilbo
I have two credit cards that I rarely use. One was made to help a younger acquaintance with his sales. The other was obtained to get a discount at family restaurants. Hearing news of personal data leakage, I visit a card company’s website. “We bow our heads to extend our apologies,” a banner pops up. My annoyance is somewhat mollified. How long has it been since we received an apology from a financial firm? I press the “individual check” button and the message appears: “Agreement is needed on the collection and use of your personal data and personally identified information.” As I click on the “Not Agree” button, another message shows: “You can’t make an individual check if you don’t agree.” Left with no other choice, I click “Agree” and then select the authorization by cell phone. When I input my resident registration number, name and telephone number, the website demands more agreements.
Agree on the use and provision of personal data. / Agree on the processing of personally identifiable information. / Agree on the telecommunications company’s terms of service. If you don’t agree, you can’t move on to the next step. As I click “Agree,” a list of my leaked personal data appears: name, e-mail address, cell phone number, work phone number, home phone number,
resident registration number, home address, workplace information, housing status, transaction record, and payment account number… I visit another card company’s website. Even my credit card number, expiration date and payment information were leaked. A notice offers assurances, “No need for serious concern. Changwon District Prosecutors’ Office announced that all the original files of illegally leaked personal data have been confiscated and they have been neither sold nor additionally distributed….”
All right, I could understand that this was an incident that happened as Korea strives to be a financial powerhouse by using my meager personal data. Moreover, the card companies offered to provide a year of free text-messaging service on my transactions, which costs as much as 300 won a month, and full compensation in the case of any damage. The managements of the hacked card companies and banks have even expressed their intention to resign, haven’t they?
Like this, I try to ease my concern. Yet a few questions linger. Why do they demand an agreement on the use of my personal data when I try to check whether my private information has been leaked or not, let alone at the time of the card’s issuance? The agreement process is based on the legal principle: “Agreement does not constitute an illegality.” It means, as long as you have agreed on it, they can use your personal data as much as they wish. Is that really a justifiable agreement? Choi Seung-pil, a professor of law at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, points out, “The principle of agreement is applied only when you can make another choice. In a world, where you can’t survive without a credit card, the agreement is only a forced one.”
Here is another question. Why do they need as many as 20 items of personal data to issue a credit card? It is to distribute my and your personal data to about 100 institutions, including finance-related associations, credit information companies, banks, capital management firms and life insurance companies, so that they can be used for marketing or developing financial techniques. At this rate, I fear, they might also attempt to analyze and classify our private lives in detail. However, the biggest question of all is why personal data leaks keep occurring. An executive of a foreign enterprise says, “Whenever this happens, my foreign colleagues are astonished and say, ‘Again?’” Whenever an incident of personal data leakage occurred, financial authorities have done nothing but lightly punish those responsible. About the possible reason, a lawyer specialized in finance explains, “I can’t get rid of the impression that financial authorities have neglected the issue. I just can’t help but suspect that they have sacrificed people’s personal data to
strengthen the financial industry’s competitiveness and efficiency.”
Probably, we also have become desensitized. A baby is given a resident registration number immediately after birth. The number, which shows the date of birth, gender and the place of birth, is the alpha and omega of one’s personal data. But with such personal data being managed under the state control, they have become “public information” that can be provided to enterprises and banks at any time. We have not hesitated ourselves to exchange our personal data for some cheap free gifts.
Today, a cabinet meeting presided by the prime minister is scheduled to devise measures to prevent further information leaks. How much self-reflection and determination is possible in measures that are hurriedly drawn up in a couple of days? As a consumer, I just feel like calling the card company and cancel the card itself. “Now all our lines are busy. Please call again later….” I am getting tired of the mechanical tone.
[ January 22, 2014 ]
www.koreafocus.or.kr
Korea, Too Far Away from Global Talent
Shin Gi-wook Director, Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center Stanford University
INSEAD, France’s world-renowned graduate business school, has released the first edition of its Global Talent Competitiveness Index. Korea ranked 28th among 103 surveyed countries. This was quite disappointing for Korea, whose standing in economic and military strength hovers around the world’s top 10 level.
The 21st century is an era of war for global talent, so the competition to attract highly skilled manpower is getting fiercer and fiercer among countries as well as among enterprises. Along with the trend of globalization, the movement of human resources is also accelerating and the demand for foreign talent is growing high in most advanced countries, due to their low birth rates and aging populations. Korea can’t be an exception in this warfare. Korea, so far, has focused on importing unskilled laborers from China and Southeast Asia. Now, it is time to devote its energy to attracting highly-skilled manpower, that is, global talent, to join the ranks of advanced countries. In hi-tech industries such as smart phones, enterprises and countries have waged a cutthroat competition to attract engineers of Indian descent.
Many enterprises in Silicon Valley as well as Korean companies have no other choice but to hire
foreign personnel to resolve their shortage of engineers. For example, Samsung Electronics has 36,000 software engineers, of whom 44 percent or 16,000 are foreigners and more than half of them, or 9,000, are of Indian descent. However, Korea lags behind in preference among highly skilled technical foreign manpower, compared with countries such as the United States and Australia, which are open to immigrants. INSEAD’s Global Talent Competitiveness Index also ranked Korea 66th in “Attract,” the degree of openness to minorities and immigrants. This is evidence that Korea needs a government strategy and policy to attract high-quality human capital. Especially, for foreign engineers of Indian descent, support is urgent to help them create a community in which they can share their religion, food and culture.
The current approach is inadequate for winning the war for global talent. No matter how aggressively Korea has tried to attract talented manpower, there has been a roadblock to policy effectiveness. More attention should be paid to global talent’s role as “social capital,” especially as “international bridge.” The value of global talent lies in their international networks as well as in their skills and experiences. So, better ways should be sought to have talented foreign employees contribute to Korea even after they leave.
For instance, most Indian engineers intend to seek a better working environment such as Silicon Valley after working in Korea for three to five years. However, if they leave with an intimate sense of fellowship with Korean society, they could be of considerable help to Korean enterprises in technical cooperation or information sharing from their new host country.
The same is true with foreign students who are studying in Korea. Among students from developing countries such as Mongolia, Malaysia and Thailand, there are many who came to Korea to learn about Korea’s development model. If they have jobs in Korea after graduation, they will be valuable employees. But even if they return home, they can act as bridges between Korea and their home countries in a wide variety of fields such as economics and culture, and this will be a huge asset for Korea.
Among ethnic Koreans in America, not many high quality workers want jobs in Korea. However, they still could help Korean society or the economy if we use their international networks. In Israel, the government implemented a program called “Birthright Israel.” It offers steady support to young overseas Jewish adults to stay in Israel for a short time and experience Jewish traditions and culture,
thereby helping them establish their identity. They may not come back to work in Israel, and yet they can be expected to act as an intermediary between Israel and the countries they reside in.
To succeed in the global war for talent, it is urgent to set up a policy to make the best use of human and social capital that global talent possesses. Leading Korean enterprises are busy attracting talent from abroad, but government support falls far short. At the heart of the creative economy pursued by the Park Geun-hye government is talented manpower and for Korea to make a new take-off, strategic minds and efforts are required to expand the pool of global talent.
[ Dong-A Ilbo, December 10, 2013 ]
www.koreafocus.or.kr
Soaring Suicide Rate is the Result of Failed Social Policy
Kim Dong-hyun Professor, Department of Social and Preventive Medicine Hallym University
The number of suicides and suicide rate in 2012 dropped about 10 percent from the previous year. This is good news. It is considered to be the outcome of preventative measures. Yet, the suicide rate in Korea is still at its peak level. A few days ago, there was tragic news about a father who killed himself after killing his autistic son. He took care of the sick son for 20 years. This kind of tragic reality is being repeated in Korea today.
The suicide rate in Korea has nearly tripled over the past 20 years, with that of the elderly multiplying about six-fold. If more than 15,000 people lost their lives every year because of some kind of viral epidemic, it would be considered a national disaster requiring an all-out effort to identify its cause and to stop it. Is suicide different from an epidemic? No.
Society should not just blame individuals who attempt to commit suicide. As shown in the fact that the suicide rate soared in the year after the Asian financial crisis of 1997 and the global financial crisis of 2008, suicide is a common social malady largely influenced by external factors. Yet, Korea was not the only country that had to face these economic crises.
Most Asian countries also experienced financial turmoil but their suicide rates did not soar like that in Korea. Japan, for example, saw its suicide rate rise in the wake of the currency crisis but has
maintained the same level since. Only in Korea has the suicide rate increased steeply since 1997. In the case of the United States, the epicenter of the global financial crisis of 2008, the upheaval reportedly caused the nation’s suicide rate to rise by about 0.5 per 100,000 people over the previous year.
However, Korea saw its suicide rate rise by five per 100,000 people from the previous year in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. The shock of the same socioeconomic factor was nearly 10 times stronger to Korea than to the United States. As we can see here, a sharp rise in suicides in a society is more influenced by the availability of a social safety net rather than the external shock.
Korea, unlike other countries, lacked a system to protect its people from external shocks. In this respect, the soaring suicide rate in Korea must have been derived from the failure of past governments to formulate an overall social policy. The failure of social policy is more clearly observed in the suicide rate of the elderly. The suicide rate of Korean men aged 65 or older is nearly 130 per 100,000 people, which is 5 to 10 times higher than the average elderly suicide rate of OECD member countries.
Does this suggest that every country has a higher suicide rate among its elderly population? Not entirely. For example, in Norway and New Zealand, the suicide rate drastically drops with age so that the elderly have the lowest suicide rate among all age groups. Also in Japan, the suicide rate is higher in the middle-aged group than the elderly. In Korea, there was almost no difference in suicide rates among age groups about 20 years ago. Elderly suicides began to sharply increase about 10 years ago. How can we explain this phenomenon?
As of 2011, the poverty rate of elderly people in Korea amounted to 45.1 percent, more than three times higher than the average 13.5 percent of OCED member countries. Considering that the elderly poverty rate stands at 1.5 percent in New Zealand, where the suicide rate and age are non-linear, we can explain Korea’s situation: Not all of the elderly suicides can be blamed on poverty, but it is undeniable that the soaring elderly suicides in Korea are mostly attributable to the extreme poverty in old age. What’s even more annoying is that our society lacks the political will to relieve the poverty and pain that the elderly suffer. It’s not that we didn’t foresee the problem. We just let it happen, predicting it would happen. Without political will, we cannot expect an elaborate social policy to be formulated. According to a recent report by the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs, the nation spends only 1.7 percent of its GDP on welfare for the aged. It is the second lowest among OECD member
countries, of which the average is 13.5 percent. People from all walks of life voluntarily joined hands to found the “Suicide Prevention Action Forum” (www.wooriga.org), which was launched on December 3, at the Kim Koo Museum and Library in Seoul. This was the day when Korea applied for an IMF bailout amid the Asian currency crisis 16 years ago. The founding declaration of the forum said: “Do not say a suicide is the choice of an individual; We can make a change when we talk in one voice to the government, society and the press; This is the time for us to start acting to prevent suicides.”
The brutality of Korean society that just throws an escape called suicide upon those in difficult situation should not be tolerated any more. We need to boldly reflect upon why we have been pursuing growth and development. If the high suicide rate in our society is due to a failed social policy, the solution should lie in a proper policy instead of blaming individuals for making the wrong choice. This requires the participation of all citizens. Like when we volunteered to donate our gold to overcome the foreign exchange crisis, we need a campaign to save lives.
[ The Hankyoreh, December 10, 2013 ]
www.koreafocus.or.kr
Is 35 Years Too Old for Childbirth?
Kim Dong-seop Health and Welfare Reporter The Chosun Ilbo
We are looking forward to the “year of the blue horse” according to the Chinese zodiac. There is a saying that a girl born in this year will be ill-fated. So obstetricians and gynecologists as well as the baby products industry are alert expecting the birth rate to drop in 2014. Though absurd in our enlightened world, marriage and childbirth fluctuate based on zodiac signs. The nation’s birth rate actually jumped in 2000, the year of the millennium baby; 2006, the year of two springs; 2007, the year of the golden pig; and 2012, the year of the black dragon. Other Asian countries such as Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore had the same phenomenon. Now the problem is that people are reluctant to have babies in the year of the blue horse.
The government happily announced in 2012 that the nation had escaped from the group of super low birth rate countries (with fertility rate of 1.3 or less), but the birth rate sharply fell in 2013 and is expected to further sink in 2014. With the birth rate plunging despite its fiscal spending amounting to trillions of won for free child care every year, the government is just heaving a sigh of despair. They may even need to declare a “war with the year of the blue horse.”
The zodiac signs change every year, though. There is a more hazardous, widespread belief that is suppressing the birth rate in Korea: the barrier of 35 years of age.
In 2012, while the number of babies born from women aged 25-29 was 77 per 1,000 people, babies born from women in their early 30s was 121 per 1,000 people. However, the number of babies dropped to 39 per 1,000 people for women past the age 35. The age of 35 has become a kind of psychological Maginot Line in childbirth. The World Health Organization defines the pregnancy after the age 35 as “pregnancy at advanced maternal age.” Accordingly, obstetricians and gynecologists recommend having babies before this age, saying that women’s childbirth and reproductive ability and physical power declines and the chance of fetal deformities increases after this age. Nevertheless, few other countries have such a sudden fall in birth rate at a specific age like Korea.
In the U.K., France, Germany and Japan, the average age of women giving birth to their first child is similar to that in Korea. In those countries, there is not much difference in birth rate between women in their late 20s and women in their early 30s. And many women older than 35 also have babies, with their fertility rate at nearly the half level of those in their early 30s. This is because they don’t consider 35 as an age limit of childbirth as we do in Korea.
As long as we define a certain age of women as a limit in childbirth, it will grow increasingly difficult to raise our birth rate. According to Park Yong-won, a professor at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Yonsei University, childbirth after the age 35 is never risky as long as the expectant mother has thorough prenatal diagnosis. Our parents continued to give birth after the age 40 and we grew up healthy.
Nowadays, Korean women marry and have babies at an increasingly later age; they marry at 29.4 and have the first child at 31.6 on average. Not many women dare to have the second baby because of the psychological age barrier. As the average age of women having their first childbirth goes up every year, it is feared that our society might become sterile.
[ December 20, 2013 ]
www.koreafocus.or.kr
Dealing with the Republic of Korea’s Third ‘Surplus’
Noh Jae-hyun Editorial Writer The JoongAng Ilbo
While reading “Those Names More Beautiful than Flowers,” a recent book by Han Su-san on the blood-stained early history of the Korean Catholic Church, I happened to think about the meaning of age.
Among the key religious historical figures in the book, the author writes about Father Choi Yang-eop (1821-1861). In December 1836, he was selected as one of three seminary students sent to Macau to prepare for priesthood. The first-ever group also included St. Andrew Kim Tae-gon, who would become the first Korean Catholic priest and later a martyr, and Choi Yang-je. They reached Macau after walking for six months. Called “the martyr of sweat,” Father Choi Yang-eop, the nation’s second ordained Roman Catholic priest, died from exhaustion at age 40 in Mungyeong, North Gyeongsang Province.
The author Han traveled from Seoul to Macau by flying between Seoul and Hong Kong and then by ferry from Hong Kong to Macau. Comparing with his pleasant speedy journey, he marvels at the students’ painstaking travel on foot more than 170 years ago. “I can hardly believe that the 15-year-olds crossed the mainland China on foot to reach here,” he says. “Back then, the scale of your youthful dreams, and the length of your horizons were starkly different
from those of our times … If it were now, tired middle-school boys at 15 would only bustle on the streets crowded with private educational institutes, and lose money to bullies in the school alley. How could you walk that far to Macau at such a young age?” A 15-year-old boy is considered an “adolescent” in our days. But the notion of adolescence was nonexistent in the Joseon era. Without the in-between period, a child suddenly became an adult and started to be treated as such with marriage or a coming-of-age ceremony. In a way it was a natural proceeding given the short average life span.
According to a study based on statistics between 1906 and 1910, the average life expectancy of Koreans was only 24 during the Joseon Dynasty. In current times, a 24-year-old man would barely be finished with his mandatory military service and back to school, and a woman of that age would be still attending a graduate school or just beginning her first fulltime job. In the Joseon era, however, General Nam Yi became the minister of war at age 27, and Seo Jae-pil organized the Gapsin Coup of 1884 at 20.
Some readers of this column may question why I am expounding on age. By reflecting on the meaning of aging between the olden times and ours, I am drawn to the idea of “surplus,” an emerging cultural phenomenon among the young Koreans. “Surplus” in this context means “excess life” or “wasted youth.” The conception of this jargon follows similar buzzwords such as the “880,000-won generation” (young people who can only take low-paying non-regular jobs) or “sampo generation” (young people who give up on three things ― employment, marriage and having children). Films, books and magazines are talking about the “surplus” phenomenon, and newly coined slang is in vogue, such as “playing surplus” and “being surplus-ly.” To me, the dominant images of “surplus” are defeatism, resignation, self-deprecation, over-protection, childishness and dependency. Yet in another way I also feel postmodern symptoms, perhaps a vibrant creativity that seeks a breakthrough in the darkness. Nobody knows where it would eventually lead to. The Republic Korea has so far encountered three different types of “surplus” along its path. The first was the U.S. food aid of the 1950s. With the signing of a Korea-U.S. agreement on surplus agricultural products in 1955, massive amounts of wheat, raw cotton, barley and rice arrived. Even though some warned that the agricultural aid would destroy the nation’s foundation for food production, such concerns were of little consequence to a starving nation. I also have the memory of benefitting from flour packets that had a cover design of the two countries shaking hands.
The second “surplus” surged at Korean universities in the 1980s. It was introduced with the spread of the “surplus value theory” in Marxian economics. In those years, “social science” meant nothing other than left-wing theories in the context of fierce national aspiration for democratization by overthrowing military dictatorship. The current “surplus” experienced by the young generations in Korea cannot be adequately explained by relying on the modern conceptual frames of industrialization and democratization. This raises questions about the overall system and can be interpreted as a desire for a new regime suitable for a postmodern low-growth society. The biggest concern of Korean young people is not that they cannot land a job, but that nothing would change much even if they do get a job.
The surplus of the 1950s meant a lifeline for the newly established Republic of Korea, and the surplus of the 1980s led to democracy. But the surplus of the 2010s seems to represent a struggle that demands the older generation create a path beyond industrialization and democratization. It seems to me that the future generation is withering while the older ones, divided into pro-industrialization and prodemocratization camps, are grappling to win a petty battle.
The virtues such as lofty spirit, flood-like energy and ambition, once seen in the 15-year-olds crossing the Chinese continent on foot to realize their dreams, have been relegated into forgotten sad vocabularies that perhaps only remain in some high school songs. Irresponsible older generations have turned the young adults in their 20s and 30s, as well as teenagers, into “permanent adolescents.” That is why we see around us so many “old children.”
[ December, 14 2013 ]
www.koreafocus.or.kr
- Secret behind the Smile of Gilt-bronze Pensive Bodhisattva - A Word on Soju-based Mixed Drinks - Any Other Space in Danger of Being Tossed Aside? - Trap in the Era of 200 Million Movie Admissions - Former President Chun Doo-hwan a Savior of Art Market?
Secret behind the Smile of Gilt-bronze Pensive Bodhisattva
Baek Seong-ho Staff Reporter The JoongAng Ilbo
Robert Thurman, father of Uma Thurman who starred in the movie “Kill Bill,” is a world-renowned Buddhist academic and serves as the Jey Tsong Khapa professor of Indo-Tibetan studies at Columbia University. Every time he visits Korea, he makes it a priority to see the Gilt-bronze Pensive Bodhisattva at the National Museum of Korea. In comparing the ancient Buddhist sculpture to The Thinker by Rodin, Professor Thurman says, “Both are in contemplation, but they look exactly the opposite. The Thinker looks tired and unhappy and reminds me of ‘a fool who thinks too much.’ Pensive Bodhisattva is different. He looks happy and at ease.” The last time he was in Korea, he purchased a miniature statue of this Maitreya in meditation. He was the first Westerner to be ordained a Tibetan Buddhist, and he is close friends with the Dalai Lama. I have a colleague who visits the museum from time to time to see the statue, saying, “It clears my head standing in front of this Maitreya image for 10 minutes. The world becomes quiet.” Why the headache watching The Thinker and the clear head in front of the Pensive Bodhisattva?
There is a reason. It snows in our lives; we are sorry about the past, discontent with the present, and afraid of the future. Worries come in snow pellets or heavy snow flakes. The Thinker is sitting in the
middle of such snow. Our thoughts resemble snow. Remember how you scoop up snow and compress it to make the snowball harder? Our thoughts are like that, too. The harder you compress and concentrate, your thoughts become denser. That is why you feel this heavy lump in your chest in front of The Thinker. He only seems to know how to make your concerns denser, not melt them.
What about the Maitreya? He is also sitting in the snow because he, too, is meditating. But he does not gather snow in his hands or compress it. He only thinks and does not cling to his thoughts. That is why everything feels light. From the fingers slightly touching the cheek or the right leg slightly lifted in the lalita pose we barely feel a sense of weight. The sense of weight we feel from the two sculptures corresponds to the burden of everyday life weighing down on us.
Jeongmok, a Buddhist nun who teaches about ways of the heart on Buddhist TV and radio programs, once gave tips on anger management. “When anger rises within you, take a deep breath. Do you know the paper shredder? Imagine it is in your heart. Breathe in and let the anger through. It goes through the shredder and is automatically shredded. Exhale and release the shredded anger. Inhale the anger that you just released, shred it even more finely, and exhale.” I know someone who posted this on his desk saying, “If you inhale and exhale several times, anger goes away. It really works.”
Why do you think this works? If The Thinker knew the reason, he could turn into the Maitreya anytime. When we are annoyed and angry, we compress snow. The more we think about the reason why we are angry, the snowball becomes harder. At that moment, we switch the channel in our head to think about the shredder method. The snow begins to melt from that point. Why? Because we have to concentrate on something else (the shredder), and we release the previous thought (anger) without realizing it.
When we visit the museum to see the Maitreya we have to concentrate. We automatically forget what we were thinking about. Snow melts on its own. Thoughts, too, can melt on their own if only we switch the channel. Both The Thinker and the Pensive Bodhisattva are sitting in snow, lost in meditation. Why is there a faint smile only on the Maitreya’s lips? Because he knows that all the snow that is falling down will melt. This is the secret behind the subtle smile of the Maitreya.
[ December 14, 2013 ]
www.koreafocus.or.kr
A Word on Soju-based Mixed Drinks
Park Jung-hyeon Assistant Editor, Consumer Economy Desk The Dong-A Ilbo
“Fill a glass with your chosen proportion, cover with a tissue, slap your palm over it then twist sharply to create a swirl inside ― a mini hurricane. Don’t worry if the tissue gets soaked. This is not only normal, but allows you to indulge the Korean habit of then throwing it vertically to try to stick to the ceiling.” This is the preparation method of somaek known as the “Hurricane” recently introduced by the freelance writer Norman Miller in the Guardian Online UK, under the title “Soju: the most popular booze in the world.” A few days earlier, CNN International listed “10 things South Korea does best.” It included business drinking, which included rounds of soju/beer/whiskey “bombs.”
Mixed drinks, or boilermakers (poktanju in Korean), with their great taste and fun experience, account for an interesting drinking culture and are covered as such in foreign media. Any Korean who has stayed abroad is well aware that “manufacturing bombs” is an effective communication tool as good as any at a party when you run out of things to say in the local language.
This Korean drinking culture is fast becoming global with the spread of the hallyu wave. The world star Psy with hit songs “Gangnam Style” and “Gentleman” signed up as the Hite-Jinro brewery’s spokesman at the beginning of the year and appeared in funny videos demonstrating how to make the
soju-based bombs. The videos are now spreading worldwide via YouTube.
Los Angeles Dodger pitcher Ryu Hyun-jin also displayed his taste for somaek by taking a picture of soju and beer on the table when having a galbi party with his fellow players in Korea town, LA. Lee Byung-hun who rose to stardom in Hollywood through action movies such as “G.I. Joe” also boasted the fact that he initiated the movie director and actors into the joy of drinking bombs.
It looks as if the next hallyu candidate following Korean TV dramas and idol groups will be the bomb drinking culture. Contrary to the whiskey bomb which is a mix of whiskey and beer, both coming from the outside, somaek makes a perfect candidate in this age of globalization because it is a Westmeets-East thing. Some people go so far as to say that somaek is the quintessential element of creative economy because two popular liquors ― soju and beer ― are mixed together to create a high valueadded drink.
Somaek dates back to 1997 right after the Asian financial crisis erupted. As a source in the liquor industry says, “After the currency crisis, salaried workers could not afford expensive drinks and began to make somaek instead.” It became very popular in the middle of the 2000s when the Roh Moo-hyun administration into its second year introduced a rule to make entertainment expenses more transparent. When a corporation’s hospitality bill exceeded 500,000 won, it was required to disclose an exact breakdown of the expenses. This made people too uncomfortable to drink expensive imported whiskeys and they chose soju bombs as an alternative to whiskey bombs. The trend continued with the next administration.
President Lee Myung-bak always drank a soju bomb when he drank in public with politicians and high-ranking officials at Cheong Wa Dae. This became the norm in political circles. Thus, more than a decade has passed since the birth of somaek and it has become the standard alcoholic drink among Koreans regardless of their social status and wealth. I have seen many well-to-do people visit luxury whiskey bars and drink expensive soju bombs, saying anything else gives them a bad hangover the next morning. There probably is no other liquor that is so widely loved across all walks of life.
Two consecutive governments in Korea solidified the somaek culture, but their successors have not been able to iron out their differences even a year after the presidential election. Will it not be possible to see members of the ruling and opposite parties drink rounds of somaek, forgetting about their conflicts for even a short while? It is just a thought that occurred to me as our politicians are at loggerheads with each other when the external environment looks quite threatening with all the
political purges in North Korea and conflicts over air defense identification zones among neighboring countries.
[ December 11, 2013 ]
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Any Other Space in Danger of Being Tossed Aside?
Kim Han-su Popular Culture Editor The Chosun Ilbo
Will the mecca of modern Korean architecture be left to be sold?; Architectural community should help to safeguard Kim Swoo-geun’s Space Group building; Kim Swoo-geun’s Space Group building should be registered as cultural heritage; Space Group building’s auction fails; Space Group building going public with social funding; Kim Swoo-geun’s Space Group building sold to a deep-pocketed art dealer.
These are headlines that appeared in this newspaper in late November. No other piece of architecture and the sale thereof have yet drawn so much attention. The Space Group building, constructed in 1971, was selected as Korea’s favorite architecture along with the French Embassy designed by Kim Joong-up in a survey by this newspaper on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Republic of Korea, asking architects and other cultural figures which was their favorite building in the country.
Saemteo building in Daehangno, Art Center of the Arts Council Korea, Kyung-dong Presbyterian Church and the Bulgwang-dong Catholic Church are also among the works of Kim Swoo-geun (19311986), who loved to use traditional red and black bricks in the 1970s.
Last week, I visited the Space Group building in Wonseo-dong, west of Changdeok Palace, in central Seoul. There I could read the soul and sense of adventure of Kim Swoo-geun, who planted the seed
of architecture in an era of construction. I entered the black brick building with its colors exposed where the ivy leaves had fallen. The first impression I got inside was that it was cozy.
The building is about five floors high, but it defies all general rules about buildings. Inside the building there is a regular staircase on the west side, where two or three adults can walk abreast. On the east side, there is a spiral stairway which is narrow enough to let only one person pass and it connects the building’s interior from bottom to top in an intriguing fashion. When you walk up or down the stairs, sometimes your head touches the ceiling and other times the space above you is so vast that you can feel the sunlight entering the window ceiling.
The floor height also varies, and open spaces give way to one another like mazes, for there are no doors. However, walls and stairs are used to hide and cover some of the spaces so as to add fun to the office space. Instead of the typical left-right symmetry, holes have been drilled between stairs and walls, and little arches have been built so that you have no time to be bored whatsoever when looking around. The underground Space Theatre, which used to be a famous cultural venue, may look small in today’s standards, but I could vividly picture famous artists like Gong Ok-jin and Kim Duk-soo performing and many more. I felt like someone slammed the back of my head with a hammer when I entered the boiler room across the theater. Even in the boiler room with all the machines, Kim had divided the space vertically into top and bottom. I felt as if I were a witness to jagalism, a self-coined term by Kim to describe the coziness created from little details.
How could anyone pay so much attention to details to a space that is not even open to the public? I wished that more citizens and younger generation could see the beautiful interior of this building so that they could have a better understanding of modern architecture. It almost stopped my heart to think that this building could have disappeared. It is fortunate that Arario Gallery which bought the building is going to preserve the old office building as had been designed by Kim.
The Cultural Heritage Committee inspected the building last week and will soon decide whether to place it on the roster of modern cultural heritage. Regardless of the decision, it is regrettable that our community of artists and architects did not have enough capability or the will to make this building a public asset. We should look around to make sure that there is no other “space” that is endangered due to our lack of interest before it is too late.
[ December 5, 2013 ]
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Trap in the Era of 200 Million Movie Admissions
Lee Hu-nam Deputy Sports and Culture Editor The JoongAng Ilbo
If movies are classified as an art, few people would doubt that they are an extremely popular art. Movie ticket sales in Korea surpassed 200 million for the first time in 2013, double the number in the early 2000s. In that time, the number of screens also increased by more than twofold, from fewer than 1,000 to more than 2,000 today, despite the moderate increase in the number of potential movie-goers.
The stellar box office sales are the result of improved content and distribution. In particular, a series of domestic blockbusters have boosted attendance. Local productions actually claimed 60 percent of the market share in 2013. Leveraging the increase in screens nationwide, the industry schedules mass release of movies to saturate the market. As a result, ticket sales reached 195 million in 2012 and continued to climb in 2013, finally exceeding 200 million.
The screenings are subject to a lot of strategizing. The release date for a movie is not disclosed until a couple of months to release. Public holidays, semester breaks in the school calendar and the situation of rivals are among the considerations in deciding the proper time. Traditionally, movies are released on Thursdays but distributors nowadays are trying to get a jump on audience attention. Some new movies are therefore launched on Wednesdays and even on a Tuesday if it precedes a holiday.
The urge to maximize initial viewership is understandable. The collapse of additional copyright
markets, including videos, and the feeble performance of new media like online broadcasting, makes the box offices the sole source of revenue for movie studios.
The question is whether it is possible to maintain the present size of audience. Movie lovers, the buzz surrounding new hits and convenient neighborhood theaters will not allow theater seats to go empty overnight. But there evidently is a limit in expanding the audience through theaters alone. This is the reason that the dual meaning of the stunning number of cinema admissions draws our attention.
[ December 20, 2013 ]
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Former President Chun Doo-hwan a Savior of Art Market?
Lee Hyang-hwi Assistant Culture Editor The Maeil Business Newspaper
“Chun Doo-hwan killed it and then revived it.” There couldn’t be a more apt expression than this in summing up the 2013 Korean art market which had so many twists and turns. When all the art pieces confiscated from former President Chun Doo-hwan and his family, which had been put on sale by Seoul Auction on December 18, were sold out, an art community observer said, “This year the local art market cried and laughed because of former President Chun Doo-hwan.”
Indeed, until the end of November, the art community was full of bad news. A transfer tax was imposed on artworks for the first time, and a lobbying scandal at CJ, a leading entertainment company, erupted on the heels of the savings bank scandal which hit the nation in 2012. Around the time the art community was relieved that the worst had passed, expensive artworks poured out in droves from the house and storages of former President Chun. Since the prosecution’s investigation was focused on paintings, the large galleries with which Chun Jae-guk, the former president’s eldest son, had transactions, held their breaths. Rumors that “purchasing artworks might cause trouble” had spread among the banks’ private wealth managers. The art alley in Insa-dong shivered with rumors of tax audits being done on art buyers. Then, the “Chun Doo-hwan collection” brought unexpected results, lifting the mood. Before the
auction opened, there was speculation that few people would dare to buy the artworks confiscated by the prosecution to recover unpaid penalties. However, the authenticity of the works combined with their connection to the former president’s family to create compelling synergy.
All of the 201 pieces put up for sale at two auction houses in Seoul, K Auction and Seoul Auction, were sold, most of them at prices higher than their real value. The political history of the pieces added a premium to the bidding. For example, “Farm,” an oil painting by Lee Dai-won, which had been in the former president’s living room, fetched 660 million won (US$600,000), the highest price at the auction as well as among all works by the deceased painter.
Another notable factor was the presence of new buyers. Seoul Auction hinted that around 30 percent of the purchasers were newcomers. The enthusiasm created by the Chun collection spilled over into another auction afterward. The bidding was more heated than usual and the selling prices were 10 percent higher than expected. An art market insider said the auctions triggered positive sentiment in the market, which had been suppressed for a few years.
The art community is cautiously forecasting that the auctions will provide a fresh impetus for the market. Lee Sang-kyu, chief executive officer of K Auction, argued that the local art market would inevitably rebound as international art markets are enjoying a boom. It is indeed an irony that slush fund scandals that had cast a cloud over the art market are now being talked about as momentum for recovery.
It may be too hasty to predict that a one-off event of society-wide concern will lead to the recovery of the art market. However, the auctions have injected a positive energy that paintings are not the means of stashing slush funds but objects of enjoyment for everyone. I am keeping my fingers crossed that the excitement will not be spoiled.
[ December 20, 2013 ]
www.koreafocus.or.kr
- Politicization of Online Neo-nationalism in Korea, China and Japan - Korean Economy Follows the Path of Japanese Economy - Korea’s Trade: The 50-year Journey and Current Status - Religious Exclusivity of South Koreans in Interpersonal Relationships and Politics
Politicization of Online Neo-nationalism in Korea, China and Japan Lew Seok-jin Professor, Department of Political Science, Sogang University
Cho Hee-jung Senior Researcher, Institute of Social Sciences, Sogang University
Park Seol-ah Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Political Science, Sogang University
I. Introduction
Modern nationalism typically involved the recovery of sovereignty, restoration of the original form of a nation and state building. But the new type of nationalism pursues stronger national prestige in terms of resources, ideologies and other areas. It emerged as the Cold War dissipated and globalization started to expand rapidly on the back of the Internet.
By the early 2000s, with the world population interconnected, the Internet became a forum for nationalistic debates. This 21st century neo-nationalism has become increasingly complex and has significantly influenced the foreign policies of every nation in the offline world. To be sure, the online nationalistic disputes have emerged as a new fissure in Northeast Asia, where distinct national characters and interpretations of territorial rights, sovereignty and history between Korea, China and Japan frequently inflame conflicts.
Since 2002, the online nationalistic conflicts have produced extremism and chauvinism among Internet users in the three Northeast Asian countries. Individual extremists who are unable to provide constructive agenda mount ideological convulsions that exacerbate neo-nationalistic friction. Disputes are often repeated and expanded over major issues with little rational effort to settle conflicts or offer alternatives for the future. In this regard, the effects of the online statements may be fleeting.
There have been few micro-analytic approaches to these online conflicts to understand the changing expression of nationalism behind the phenomenon. Moreover, there are few studies on the populist Internet debates between Korea, China and Japan. In this paper we examined the trilateral online conflicts as a politicization process of neo-nationalism involving politics of memory (history and
territory), extremism and chauvinism, and transformation of statehood from regional to independent existence. To define the protagonists of neo-nationalism and their agenda we analyzed their stances in the repetitive diffusion of conflicting opinions.
II. Politicization Process of Korea-China-Japan Online Nationalistic Conflicts
The first characteristic of the trilateral online conflicts over the past 13 years is that they have occurred between Korea and Japan more frequently than between Korea and China or between China and Japan. There were a total of 36 major flare-ups between Korea and Japan, compared to 14 between Korea and China and 8 between China and Japan. This means that, excluding the diplomatic strife between governments, an average of three major cases of online rancor occurred annually, oftentimes on the anniversaries of the March 1 Independence Movement of 1919 and Korea’s liberation from Japanese rule on August 15, 1945.
Second, the online nationalistic conflicts tended to be intensified due to network effects. Debates on nationalistic issues are faster both in cohesion and diffusion than debates on other public issues.
Third, the online nationalistic conflicts visibly exposed absurdities on cultural and economic issues, modern and post-modern values and generational differences.
Fourth, conflicts arose most frequently over territorial, historical, social and cultural issues as well as sports events. Discord over territorial and historical issues repeated periodically, constituting politicization of memory.
Fifth, territorial issues weighed most heavily in the trilateral conflicts with Dokdo and the East Sea dominating conflicts between Korea and Japan, Mt. Paektu between Korea and China, and Senkaku Islands (Diaoyudao) between Japan and China. The arguments mostly concerned sovereign territorial rights, calls for arbitration by the international community and government attitudes.
Sixth, historical issues often overlapped with territorial disputes. Cyberspace attacks emerged around the March 1 and August 15 anniversaries in Korea with regard to Japanese history textbooks and cultural properties shipped out of the country during the Japanese occupation period, among other subjects. Korea’s “dcinside.com” and Japan’s “2ch.net” are the top battlegrounds. Korea’s major Internet portal sites initiate signature campaigns and distribute various patriotic contents on important anniversaries. Internet debaters have demanded Japan correct descriptions in history textbooks and
criticized China for its alleged distortion of the history of the Goguryeo Kingdom.
Seventh, in the social and cultural fields, anti-Korean, anti-Japanese and anti-Chinese sentiments often surfaced in online comments about popular entertainers and sports players,
Eighth, when international competitions involved any of the three countries, emotional comments resounded in the cyberspace against the opposing teams. The Olympic Games, the World Baseball Classic and the FIFA World Cup matches prompted caustic postings about outcomes. Recordings of victory ceremonies were spread online and accompanied by claims of territorial rights and criticisms on historical issues.
III. Politics in Korea-China-Japan Online Conflicts
1. Development of Online Conflicts
The types of online conflicts include public campaigns, petitions, community formations and cyberspace attacks. Drawing particular attention from the cultural standpoint is the growing intensity of chauvinistic attacks that take advantage of language differences. Without viable translation needed for communication, online contestants resort to fragmentary arguments with incoherent translations,
disregarding the audience.
The online debates have developed and diversified with the emergence of message boards, communities, blogs and social network service channels, such as Facebook and Twitter, but the process of public discussion has taken different forms in the three countries due to the language barriers as well as different government regulations on online communications. The major spaces for international debates are dcinside.com and Twitter in Korea, weibo.com and the Strong Nation Forum in China, and 2ch.net in Japan. They increase the influence of private players in the tri-national conflicts.
Provocative appeals to emotions are spread rapidly, igniting hard-line onslaughts based on unilateral claims. Linguistic division and different political cultures drive the hostile rhetoric toward stronger and stronger nationalism. As we surveyed the frequencies of Google searches in the three countries by their own languages, we found that, first, the Chinese showed less activity compared to Koreans and Japanese with regard to major international issues ― due primarily to their generally lower dependence on the search engine. However, the number of searches has increased since 2010 with the rise of territorial disputes.
Second, Koreans and Japanese expressed greater concern about Dokdo Island (Takeshima in Japanese name) compared to the level of concern exhibited by the Japanese and Chinese on the Senkaku Island (Diaoyudao) question. Third, Koreans conduct more Google searches in Chinese or Japanese than the Chinese do in Japanese or Korean and the Japanese do in Chinese or Korean.
2. Diffusion of Online Conflicts Baik Ji-woon (2005) characterizes the main trend of online debates in China as “Internet nationalism,” noting the strong influence that nationalistic claims in the cyberspace have on public sentiments, as shown in the recent anti-Japanese demonstrations. He studied whether the Internet as a public forum in China will help develop democracy or function as a space for inciting nationalism. He observed that the advancement of the Internet in China was accompanied by political activation via chat rooms, the BBS and other online forums. The website of the People’s Daily hosts such online forums as the Strong Nation Forum, sina.com, sohu.com and the politically specialized China 918, which were established around or before 2004 amid nationwide debate on diplomatic issues. Internet users mainly exchanged arguments denouncing
the perceived U.S. and Japanese hegemony, and criticized their government’s weak diplomatic approaches to the United States. Baik concluded that the Internet in China by 2005 had become “the space for the whirlwind of mass nationalism.”
According to Jack Linchuan Qiu (2009), the online nationalism in China has developed in stages, starting with the formation of the open web and then on- and off-line demonstrations leading to cyberspace violence, including website breakdowns, virus contamination and “patriotic hacking.” Qiu observes that the online grassroots nationalism in China is nothing but short-term political outbursts rather than organized civic participation or a sustainable social movement. But he is concerned that these nationalist arguments have seeped into the Chinese political arena and become a key element of individual cultural identity. Unlike the left-right ideological debates, the nationalist arguments are the only “state-recommended stories” that have strong appeal to individual Internet users.
3. Features of Neo-nationalism
Unlike in Europe, where nationalism is redefined on a regional basis, nationalism in the three Northeast Asian nations is redefined individually, which increases its variety. The nationalism in this part of Asia has showed the following features:
First, nationalism here is narrowly focused on historical and territorial issues that remain unresolved in this region, where nations have achieved independence and self-determination. The latent problems in the “politics of memory” keep alive the sense of purpose for their ultimate resolution. This awareness of latent problems is expressed in various ways, creating many disparate nationalistic elements. Neo-nationalism is promoted during domestic outbursts of nationalistic ideologies.
Second, various material and personal means are utilized in order to portray these questions in the global forum with emotional outbursts in diverse ways. Such activities have mainly showed exclusiveness and extremist trends, generating hate and fear instead of providing constructive debate to arrive at solutions or alternatives. If old nationalism had demanded the recognition of “I,” neonationalism calls for the recognition of my “supremacy” with relative advantage. As Kang Sang-jung noted (2004), nationalism has stronger cohesion of emotions and theories than any other ideologies.
Nationalism arouses longing and encouragement but it also effuses disgust and denunciation. Worse still, when one is electrocuted by the current of nationalism, that current is permanently hardwired in
that person’s emotional sentiments or memory system. The stored energy of nationalism comes flooding out when certain stimulus is activated. The nationalism trends in the three Northeast Asian nations are now forming a populist type of neo-nationalism with the concentration of patriotic passion and exclusivity of the general populace. Third, the exclusive and extreme nature of such nationalism, dubbed “Net-rightism” in Japan, can cause the transformation of statehood traditionally perceived in the Northeast Asian nations. Past the age of old nationalism when these nations pursued the establishment of sovereignty and then were branded as the Cold War frontier (Korea), a totalitarian state (China) or a pacifist country (Japan), each state has transformed into a strong, aggressive and competitive entity. As a result, Korea’s liberal ideology, China’s Sino-centrism and Japan’s neo-statism emerged to reactivate their latent nationalism. (Cho Seong-hwan 2005)
In Korea, nationalism surged in the 1960s through the 1970s, with defensive, unification- and economic development-oriented and anti-American characters, during the era of President Park Chung-hee. This past Korean nationalism believed in self-righteousness and ignored the role of civil society. It is still detected in today’s nationalism in Korea. Still, the rise of individual voices may be a notable change from the past.
IV. Online Nationalistic Conflicts and Politicization of Neo-nationalism
A surge of nationalism with excessive public debate and its utilization for statism is detrimental to social development and there even are calls for an end to such a trend. On the other hand, nationalism minus exclusive, self-righteous tendencies is useful and needs to be publicly promoted. (Kim Soo-ja 2004) Nationalism evolves constantly, and its process of change and diffusion through the Internet and social network services should be closely monitored to grasp the formation of new ideologies in the changing society.
This study tried to define the characteristics of neo-nationalism though the analysis of nationalistic conflicts in the cyberspace. We made a microscopic and realistic analysis on the behavioral trends of online conflicts to determine who are engineering the neo-nationalism in the three Northeast Asian nations and how it is applied to nationalistic disputes in the region. It may still be too early to recognize the online nationalistic conflicts as expressions of certain established “-ism,” but, considering the fluid character of constitutive nationalism and the contemporary type of neonationalism, the online conflicts have produced a lot of empirical examples of its being a social force
capable of providing and diffusing nationalistic agendas.
In an effort to analyze the nationalistic character of online conflicts among the three nations, we made a chronological review of the trilateral disputes. As a result, we have determined how the three characteristics of neo-nationalism ― politics of memory, exclusivism and transformation of statehood ― appear in the online space. At the same time, we have stressed that nationalism in the online space is not something to be denied or rejected but a factor that can help identify and resolve international conflicts through microscopic analysis of them.
In the 13-year history of online nationalistic conflicts, disputes between Korea and Japan arose constantly and almost regularly in greater frequency and intensity than Korea-China and Japan-China clashes. When a contentious agenda was created between nations through public campaigns or petition networks, cyberspace attacks were launched by members of the opposing Internet communities. In most cases, historical issues were intertwined with territorial ones, accompanied by socio-cultural friction with emotional outbursts.
It truly is a big problem that historical and territorial issues are politicized in the Internet world, riding on the politics of memory, and that chauvinism grows as a result of patriotic agitation and emotional criticism. The fact that the cyberspace of Koreans shows more cohesive and agitated online behaviors compared to those of other Northeast Asian nations calls for greater efforts here to increase cultural communication with other players in the region.
It also means that greater efforts are needed for the three nations to deter the aggravation of splitting and fragmentation. Steps to improve the situation should start from joint moves to provide concrete vision of mutual understanding beyond the oft-emphasized, region-wide common education or collaboration in historical programs.
This study on what influence social communication has on national identity, particularly on the trilateral relations between Korea, Japan and China, has noted that the concept of national identity is faced with constant challenges of new contentious issues and reemerging international agenda. Given the visualization of thoughts in the online space, the microscopic analysis of the types and diffusion process of nationalistic conflicts may at least help look into how national antipathy is formed among the peoples of the region. However, such an approach merely amounts to irresponsible abandoning of the tri-national conflicts with continued reproduction of chauvinistic prejudices, which can never improve the situation.
Politicization of neo-nationalism is developing delicately in the region on the cultural level, beyond simple patriotic appeals, and is creating a new trend of nationalism through the linkage of the regional players, diversifying online content and expanding networks. Now is the time for the conscientious actors of the three nations to launch practical steps to seek cooperation and co-prosperity instead of simple assessment of the problems of exclusive nationalism.
[ Korean Political Studies Vol. 22, No. 13, 2013, published by the Institute of Korean Political Studies, Seoul National University ]
www.koreafocus.or.kr
Korean Economy Follows the Path of Japanese Economy Lee Bu-hyoung Senior Research Fellow Hyundai Research Institute
Chung Min Senior Researcher Hyundai Research Institute
I. Entry into Mid-level Growth Era
The Korean economy, in a slow-growth trough since the global financial crisis of 2008, is now expected to enter a period of mid-growth. But it is not certain whether it can recover its dynamism for high growth and leap into the ranks of advanced economies. Insufficient domestic consumption and corporate investment, higher taxes due to expanded welfare services and other headwinds may block the next step.
In 1987, Japan became one of the top economic powerhouses as it overtook the United States in per capita GDP. Although Korea has not experienced any major crisis like the implosion of Japan’s property bubble, its growth potential has plummeted and its per capita GDP gap with Japan and the United States still remains wide.
II. Korean Economy Resembles Japanese Economy
1. Chasing Japan in Economic Scale and Science and Technology
1) Economic Scale Korea is chasing Japan in global GDP and per capita GDP. Korea’s (estimated) GDP in 2012 stood at about $1.6 trillion, about one-third of Japan’s $4.6 trillion. In global GDP, Korea ranked 12th, compared with Japan’s fourth place. Korea’s per capita GDP remains at around half of Japan’s. Korea’s nominal per capita GDP was $11,779 in 1995 and forecast to reach $23,021 in 2012. Japan’s nominal per capita GDP increased from $10,218 in 1981 to $20,367 in 1987, $30,973 in 1992, $42,516 in 1995, and was forecast to climb to $46,896 in 2012. In terms of per capita GDP, Korea in 2012 was on par with Japan in the late 1980s. Considering that Korea’s per capita GDP in the 1980s was at 20-percent level of Japan’s, however, it can be said the nation is rapidly narrowing the gap.
2) Competitiveness in Science and Technology
Korea is rapidly chasing Japan in science. According to the International Institute for Management Development’s assessment, Korea has been sharply narrowing the gap with Japan in science. Korea’s scientific competitiveness ranking jumped 19 notches, from 26th place in 1999 to seventh in 2013, narrowing the gap with Japan from 24 to five places. In technological competitiveness, Korea
overtook Japan in 2004 by taking eighth place against Japan’s ninth place. In 2013, the gap widened with Korea ranked 11th and Japan 21st
According to sectoral analysis of science competitiveness, Korea has long been at a disadvantage against Japan in absolute indicators. In terms of relative indicators, too, Korea is at a disadvantage in process and performance indices.
To make a sectoral assessment of the science and technological competitiveness of Korea and Japan, this study classified indicators into input, process and performance indices and also divided them into absolute and relative indicators. As a result, Korea’s composite index of absolute indicators stood at 44.4 in 2011, only one-third of Japan’s 124.6, but the gap has narrowed since 2001. In relative indicators, Korea was at an advantage against Japan in input index, but behind Japan in process and performance indices.
2. Korean Economy’s Similarities to Japanese Economy
1) Weakening Growth Potential The economic growth rates of Korea and Japan have fallen behind their potential growth rates, putting their GDP gap ratios in negative territory. The GDP gap ratio is the value produced by subtracting real GDP from potential GDP, and when the value is in positive territory, the economy grows above the potential growth rate. If it is in negative territory, the actual economic growth rate is below its potential growth rate. Both Korea and Japan have recorded consecutive minus levels of GDP gap ratio since 2009. Japan’s real GDP growth rate fell from 1.5 percent in the 1990s to 0.9 percent in the 2000s, and Korea’s real GDP growth rate fell from 6.7 percent in the 1990s to 4.3 percent in the 2000s. Japan’s potential growth rate remains at a very low level, and that of Korea is also falling sharply. Japan’s potential growth rate remained at 0.3 percent in the 1990s and 1.9 percent in the 2000s. Korea’s potential growth rate also has fallen rapidly, from about 7 percent in the 1990s to the 4-percent range in the 2000s and further to the late 3-percent range recently.
2) Deepening Concerns about Industrial Hollowing-Out Domestic corporate investments have been sluggish in both Korea and Japan while the two nation’s direct overseas investments have sharply increased. Since 2000, the growth rate of corporate spending on plant and equipment in Japan has remained at 0.9 percent on average. In the case of Korea, the businesses’ capital spending recorded negative growth rates in three out of the past five years. Korea’s facility investment growth rate between 1995 and 2011 stood at a mere 5.0 percent on average. On the other hand, between 1995 and 2011, Japan’s direct overseas investment climbed by 10.7 percent on annual average, and that of Korea jumped by an average of 11.5 percent.
3) Low Birth Rate and Fast Population Aging Korea and Japan both have a low birth rate coupled with rapid population aging, but the low birth rate is a more serious problem in Korea than in Japan. Japan’s total fertility rate, or the number of infants a woman in reproductive age (15-49) is expected to give birth to, bottomed out in 2005 with 1.3 infants per woman, and is expected to rise to 1.42 by 2015. Korea’s total fertility rate fell to 1.22
infants per woman in 2005 and is expected to reach 1.39 by 2015.
Population aging is accelerating in both countries. In Japan, the aging index, which is the ratio of people 65 years or older against those aged between 0 and 14, soared from 65.2 in 1990 to 169.8 in 2010, and is expected to climb further to 202.0 in 2015. In Korea, too, the aged-child ratio, which stood at 20.0 in 1990, is expected to surge to 94.1 by 2015.
4) Intensifying Economic Polarization In both countries, economic polarization has been widening steadily. The Genie coefficient, which indicates how equally income distribution is made, is higher in Japan than in Korea, but the latter also saw its figure rise recently compared with the mid-2000s. The Genie coefficient in Japan rebounded from 0.321 in the mid-2000s to 0.329 in the late-2000s. The comparable figure also rose in Korea, from 0.306 in the mid-2000s to 0.314 in the late-2000s.
5) Prolonged Domestic Demand Slump Both Korea and Japan are in a domestic consumption trough. Lackluster spending is especially conspicuous in Japan. Since 1995, the growth rate of Japan’s private consumption has stood at 1 percent on the average. Korea’s private consumption increase rate was 3.8 percent on the average in 1995-2012, but has plunged to an average of 2 percent since the 2008 global financial crisis. Investments are sluggish in both countries. Japan’s investment growth rate has been weak, averaging -0.2 percent between 2001 and 2012. Korea’s investment growth rate hovered above Japan’s with 1.9 percent on average in the same period, but the average increase rate in the past five years remained at -0.1 percent.
6) Aggravating Employment Situation Both Korea and Japan have hit a ceiling in boosting full-time employment. This is due to employers’ growing preference to hire on a temporary basis.
In Japan, except for 2012, employment of non-regular workers has increased amid declines in the total number of employed, but even the hiring of part-timers fell in 2010 and 2011. The total number of employed stood at 61.04 million in 2012, down 1.59 million from the 62.63 million in 2007 before the global financial crisis erupted. Analysis results show that in 2004-2007, during which the total number of employed increased, the number of regular workers began to drop in 2007. Meanwhile, that of non-regular workers grew in a relatively higher rate than regular workers except for 2004 and 2006, pushing up the portion of non-regular workers to 20.6 percent in 2011, compared with 17.7 percent in 2002. However, even the employment of non-regular workers has turned downward since 2010.
In Korea, too, except for 2012, the number of non-regular workers sharply rose in contrast to a slight increase of regular workers to push up the total number of employed. In 2003-2011, the total number of employed showed an increase except for 2003 and 2009. By 2011, it was 8.6 percent higher than in 2003. The increase in the total number of employed is attributable to the redoubling of non-regular workers, from 1.66 million in 2002 to 3.21 million in 2011, more than offsetting the decline in the number of regular workers, which topped at 21.07 million in 2008 and fell to 20.61 million in 2011. Accordingly, the share of non-regular workers soared from 7.6 percent in 2002 to 13.5 percent in 2011.
7) Slump in Real Estate Market and Construction Investment Japan’s property market and construction investment have remained in doldrums since the nation’s real estate bubble burst in the early 1990s. Korea’s property market has also been sluggish recently, with construction investment remaining weak. In 1995, Japan’s commercial land price index peaked at 199.5 and its residential land price index reached 126.1. A downturn has since continued to pull down the average urban land price index to 54.2, similar to the level of the early 1970s. Construction investment peaked at 84 trillion yen in 1992 and shrank to about 45.3 trillion yen in 2012, the level of the late 1970s.
Korea’s property market has been in a long slump, dampening construction investment. The composite housing transaction price index rose to the peak of 103.1 in May 2012, and has since turned downward. In the Seoul and Gyeonggi Province area, in particular, housing prices have been on a decline since mid-2011. Construction investment peaked at 159.2 trillion won in 2009, but has since declined to about 143 trillion won in 2012, similar to the level of 2002.
3. Korea Lags behind Japan in Social Capital
1) Comparison in Various Types of Social Capital According to the Legatum Institute’s Prosperity Index, Korea is trailing Japan by a wide margin in all of its eight categories except for two ― education and entrepreneurship and opportunity. Particularly, Korea was below as many as 31 steps than Japan in social capital, revealing the nation’s
extreme weakness in this area.
Korea also is far behind Japan in the Corruption Perception Index of Transparency International. In 2012, Korea’s CPI stood at 5.6, far lower than Japan’s 7.4. The nation’s corruption index showed a wide gap with the OECD’s average of 6.9 in the same year, while the comparable index of Japan has hovered above the OECD average since 2005.
Social instability in Korea is also higher than in Japan, as shown by the nation’s suicide rate that has
surpassed Japan’s since the early 2000s and still continues to rise. The crime rate also has been consistently higher than that of Japan.
The number of suicides in Korea was 14.1 per 100,000 people in 2000 and 33.3 in 2011, marking an increase of 2.4 times. Korea’s suicide rate has been the highest among OECD members for eight consecutive years, starting in 2003. The number of suicides in Japan stood at 20.3 per 100,000 people in 2003 and peaked at 22.2 in the wake of the global financial crisis, but fell back to 20.9 recently. Korea’s crime rate has declined recently, but still remains three times higher than Japan’s. The number of crimes peaked at 4,246 per 100,000 people in 2008 but has since dropped to 3,586 in 2012. Japan’s crime rate was 1,084 in 2011.
2) Comparison in the Number of Nobel Laureates Korea is in an entirely different class compared to Japan in the number of Nobel Prize winners. Korea has one Nobel Prize recipient ― former President Kim Dae-jung who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000. Japan has 18 Nobel laureates, starting with Hideki Yukawa, who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1949. The total breaks down into six in physics, seven in chemistry, two in medicine, two in literature, and one in peace.
3) Comparison in National Wealth Korea’s national wealth was reduced in the wake of the global financial crisis but has been rebounding. The state assets totaled $5.782 trillion in 2011, down from the $6.185 in 2007. Nevertheless, it is higher than in 2009. Japan’s national wealth has been on a continuous rise since 2007. Its state assets fell in 2005 and 2006, but restored growth momentum in 2007 to total $37.536 trillion in 2011. Korea’s total state asset accounted for only 15.4 percent of Japan’s in 2011, and the rate has been on a steady decline since 2006. Korea’s national wealth against GDP remains at a lower level than that of Japan, and has been continuously falling. Its national wealth stood at 5.2 times of GDP, far below Japan’s 6.4 times. Moreover, Korea’s national wealth against GDP has been on a steady decline since 2005, when it was 6.3 times.
III. Policy Suggestions To avoid replicating Japan’s decline, Korea must boost its growth potential. Above all else, the nation needs to improve its fiscal health as well as create jobs and raise income levels based on sustainable growth. Particularly, considering that most of the industries that have led the Korean economy were developed in the 1960s and 1970s and have lost much of their growth momentum and capability to create jobs, it is most urgent to identify and develop new growth engines. Accordingly, the government should try to attain its key policy goal of “invigorating the creative economy� not only from a microeconomic approach but from a macroeconomic perspective that can help identify and develop new income sources.
The nation will need to actively push for the qualitative and quantitative improvement of its workforce from the viewpoint of factor input and create an investor-friendly environment to encourage investments, while making continuous efforts to enhance total factor productivity. From the viewpoint of the quantitative input of labor, the nation should improve the social utilization of women, youth and seniors to resolve the mismatch between labor supply and demand and minimize social costs, including welfare spending. From the viewpoint of the qualitative input of labor, it is
absolutely necessary to reform education and expand related investment to replenish human capital.
To expand the input of capital in the overall economy, the nation will have to improve its investment environment by providing better housing for foreign investors, drastically easing investment-related regulations and remodeling free economic zones. It will also have to implement a strategy to encourage the inflow of foreign direct investment.
To enhance total factor productivity, the nation ought to improve the efficiency of R&D investments by upgrading the investment paradigm to a first-class model and preventing the concentration of investment on specific fields. At the same time, it will have to improve the economic system by, for instance, replenishing social capital and beefing up the industrial structure.
Second, as for employment, elevating the potential growth rate and continuing efforts to improve employment conditions will help increase nominal job figures but the quality of job creation needs attention as well. Economic growth is the primary source of jobs. Policymakers should realize that “jobs without growth” is more dangerous than “growth without jobs,” and that the key lies in the creation of quality jobs by expanding the foundation for growth. A creative economy means a paradigm shift to a “job-creating, high value-added economic structure.” In other words, it calls for the conversion from a “factor input economy” based on the input of labor and capital toward a “creation- and innovation-oriented economy” focused on creative human capital and technological innovation. This means the simultaneous corporate growth and job creation through higher labor productivity.
It is necessary to raise the employment rate of disadvantaged groups, including women, youth and middle-aged workers, by expanding quality jobs with flexible work hours. The government will need to create flextime, work-family compatible jobs to keep women from leaving job markets and induce economically inactive women into the labor market. It also will have to create work-study compatible jobs to facilitate young people’s entry into the labor market, and establish the dual system that supports “work-first and study-later” employment pattern.
Also necessary is the creation of bridge jobs that will help the baby-boomer generation to retire gradually. In addition, the government will need to consistently push to curtail the nation’s notoriously long work hours, expand flexible work arrangements and link employment to welfare.
Third, the nation should promote the upgrading of its economic system by boosting domestic demand through the development of high value-added service industries in such areas as medical tourism and welfare, developing parts and material industries into new strategic export sectors, and enhancing the competitiveness of the domestic financial industry. The government should build the foundation for invigorating service industries through across-the-board deregulations. It also has to create quality jobs that fit the value added created by the upgraded service industries by improving the reward structure.
The nation should develop the social services sector as the next-generation core service industry. The annual growth rate of employees in the social services sector stood at about 8.1 percent on the average in 1992-2012, hovering above the comparable figures of 1.3 percent for all industries, -1.0 percent for manufacturing industries, and 3.0 percent for service industries.
The value added inducement coefficients of social services-related industries, such as social welfare business and medical/health business, also stood at 0.90 and 0.83, respectively, higher than the comparable figures of 0.56 for manufacturing industries and 0.67 for all industries. The demand for social services is expected to rise sharply, as low birth rate and population aging is rapidly progressing in Korean society and women are participating in economic activities more actively. The more advanced a country is, the greater the contribution of social services to its economy.
The nation should promote medical tourism as a new growth engine. The year-to-year growth rate of foreign patients reached 35.9 percent in 2010 and 49.5 percent in 2011, and the total number of foreign patients exceeded 120,000 in 2011. Accordingly, the total medical expenditures by foreign patients surged from 54.7 billion won in 2009 to 180.9 billion won in 2010, and exports by healthrelated tourism services increased by 17.2 percent on the average between 2006 and 2011.
In 2011, the trade balance of health-related tourism services, which had long suffered deficits, turned around to a surplus of $52.2 million. Their production inducement effect also increased from 119 billion won in 2009 to 359 billion won in 2011, while creating 1,800 jobs, including medical translators.
The nation needs to enhance the trickle-down effect, in which the boom of leading industries, such as IT manufacturing and automobiles, can lead to the prosperity of domestic suppliers and subcontractors. The inter-industry effects should be enhanced by improving the technology of parts and material industries and fostering “hidden champions,� meaning midsize companies with global
recognition of their technological edge, if the nation is to connect export growth by large businesses to a booming domestic economy.
The nation should also concentrate its capacity on enhancing technology in high value-added new materials needed for new growth engine industries, such as secondary battery and renewable energy. Midsize companies should be provided extensive support for overseas marketing and R&D activities.
Now that the global financial crisis is almost over, Korea needs to reshape its strategy to grow into a regional financial hub by restoring the financial industry’s function to support other industries, enhancing the stability of foreign currency markets, sharpening the competitiveness of domestic financial industry in keeping with the introduction of new regulatory reforms, and fostering financial experts.
It is important to create an environment conducive to the growth of financial service companies and establish a system in which the financial firms can provide comprehensive services for businesses and households. To enhance the stability of foreign currency markets, the government should introduce asymmetrical regulations to induce foreign investors in the domestic stock market to make long-term investments as well as prevent an abrupt outflow of foreign funds. At the same time, although it is necessary to introduce enhanced global financial regulations to prevent the recurrence of crises, the government should resort to selective approaches for the time being, considering the weak competitiveness of the domestic financial markets.
Fourth, the government should step up efforts to revive the real estate market and induce the sector’s soft landing. It is urgent to swiftly move forward the various pending legislative bills for revitalizing the real estate market. The National Assembly is required to quickly pass the real estate-related bills, including those on exempting and reducing the acquisition tax, abolishing imposition of the heavy capital gains tax on multiple homeowners, and removing the ceiling on the purchasing prices of newly-built apartments.
It is necessary to protect the residential rights of working-class families by improving the lease and rental systems. The government will need to consider extending the housing lease protection period from the current two years to three years, and guaranteeing lessees the right to ask for one contract renewal. As the household debt is becoming a serious economic and social issue, as shown by the term “house poor,” it is necessary to enhance the legal effects of fixed dates other than those for
national taxes, to protect tenants.
The government ought to increase the predictability of housing costs for tenants, who are the weak economic class, by providing guidelines on rent prices available for fair transactions, including the conversion costs from jeonse (lease on a deposit basis) to monthly rent.
It is necessary to work out measures to resolve the problems due to excess supply of large homes. The government needs to improve laws and systems to help people buy large-sized, unsold apartments at adjusted prices. Particularly, it is important to convert large apartments into several small- and medium-sized units. Also needed are efforts to prevent large homes in other areas from following the examples of those in Seoul-Gyeonggi Province area.
The government should come up with measures to cope with the possible recurrence of housing market instability resulting from the shortage of small and midsize homes. In implementing the policy to reduce housing supply, which has been pushed forth since 2013, it should reexamine the measures concerning small and midsize homes through a careful analysis of the demand-supply situation. The government also ought to consider introducing incentives for private home builders to encourage them to supply a greater number of small to midsize homes.
It is equally urgent for the government to devise mid-to-long term plans to improve the real estate market environment so it will better suit the Korean situation, considering that the basis for real estate demand and supply in the nation is different from other advanced countries.
Fifth, the nation should replenish its social capital by raising the trust level among various sectors of society and the capacity for social integration, strengthening the corruption prevention framework, and enhancing the social responsibility of the public as a whole. The replenishment of social capital, such as social integration, transparency, trust and predictability of policymaking, helps to save invisible social costs and contributes to raising the economy’s potential growth rate.
To help ease polarization in various sectors of society and enhance social integration, it is necessary to supplement the social safety net for working-class people, prohibit unreasonable discrimination against non-regular workers, establish fair transaction practices between large corporations and small and medium-sized enterprises, foster regionally-based universities, and seek specialized regional development. The government also can contribute to upgrading trust levels in society as a whole by disclosing information and encouraging the public’s participation, as proven by North European
countries.
The government also has to make efforts to enhance the social responsibility of all organizations, including not just large businesses but also government offices, labor unions, civic groups and mass media, by referring to the international guidelines on social responsibility (ISO-26000).
Sixth, the nation should secure fiscal health so as to cope with increased welfare burdens by expanding investment-type fiscal spending. Concerns are growing about the vicious cycle in which chronic fiscal deficits lead to accumulation of deficit and surge in national debt, aggravate interest payment burdens, and widen the fiscal deficit further. The government has aimed at attaining fiscal balance but recorded persistent deficits regardless of the business cycle, as shown by shortfalls in 22 out of the 26 years since 1988.
National debt increased by an annual average of 14.2 percent in the 1997-2012 period (from 60.3 trillion won to 443.1 trillion won), hovering far above 6.3 percent of the nominal growth rate of GDP (from 506.3 trillion won to 1,272.5 trillion won). Accordingly, the interest burden also increased from 9 trillion won in 2004 to 19.1 trillion won in 2012, up 9.9 percent on the annual average. A small open economy like Korea is vulnerable to external shocks, and cannot help but be gravely concerned about the possibility of a vicious circle of “accumulated deficits leading to the surge of national debt.”
In this regard, it is necessary to try to secure fiscal soundness through carefully-planned budget formation in keeping with economic cycles. Korea’s economic growth rate is expected to rebound from 2.0 percent in 2012 to 2.6 percent in 2013 and to 3.8 percent in 2014 (the government’s growth estimate for 2014 is 3.9 percent). The government formulated the deficit financing of -17.4 trillion won in 2012 (-1.4 percent of nominal GDP), -23.4 trillion won (-1.8 percent) in 2013, and -25.9 trillion won (-1.8 percent) in 2014, despite the upward economic cycle. The government’s welfare expenditure, which is highly consumptive by nature, has increased at an annual average of 8.6 percent in the 2007-2012 period, and is again expected to grow 6.4 percent year-on-year in 2013-2017. The expenditure on social infrastructure, which has the characteristics of investment, turned around from a 4.7-percent increase to a 6.4-percent decrease over the same time period, and the spending on small and medium-sized businesses also shifted from a 3.7-percent increase to a 5.7-percent decrease, while the growth rate of R&D expenditure fell from 10.3 percent to 3.9 percent.
Finally, the government should dissolve geopolitical risks by improving inter-Korean relations and continue to prepare for unification. By minimizing conflicts and risks between the two Koreas, the government can enhance the systemic stability of the economy and contribute to raising its potential growth rate.
The improvement of inter-Korean relations and invigoration of exchange and cooperation will not only help to reduce geopolitical risks but will produce long-term effects as the “blue ocean of the 21st century,� by developing North Korean markets and yielding peace dividends. Considering that 70 percent of dispersed family members are aged 77 or older, it is necessary to create a new turning point in the inter-Korean relationship by resuming the reunions of dispersed families and provision of humanitarian aid.
[ Issues and Tasks 13-58, December 28, 2013, published by Hyundai Research Institute ]
www.koreafocus.or.kr
Korea’s Trade: The 50-year Journey and Current Status Hong Ji-sang Senior Researcher, Institute for International Trade Korea International Trade Association
Je Hyun-jung Research Fellow Korea International Trade Association
I. Quantum Leap over Five Decades Since 1964 when the nation created “Trade Day” to celebrate its exports reaching $100 million the first time ever to 2012, Korea’s exports grew at an annual average of 19.2 percent. These figures far exceeded the 10.2 percent world average annual growth rate of exports during the corresponding period. From right after the designation of Trade Day to 1974 when the nation’s external trade reached the $10 billion mark, its exports expanded at an annual average of more than 40 percent.
Among nations that have topped $100 billion in exports, Korea had the fastest export growth rate over the past five decades. Between 1964 and 2012, the average annual export growth rate of Vietnam was 18.9 percent, the UAE 18 percent, China 15.3 percent, Qatar 15.2 percent, Taiwan 14.6 percent, Hong Kong 13.8 percent, and Singapore 13.6 percent. Korea, which was ranked 90th in exports among 159 countries in 1964, has been seventh from 2010 to 2013. Korea’s share in the global exports market stood at a mere 0.07 percent a half century ago, but has now soared to some 3 percent.
As of 2011, Korea’s market share exceeded 3 percent in 26 out of 149 countries. Korean products took up the biggest market share in Vietnam at 12.34 percent, and in China they accounted for 9.33 percent of total imported goods. Korea’s export goods occupied 2-3 percent in 19 countries, including the UAE, Egypt, India, Norway, and the United States.
2. The Saving Grace in Hard Times
Exports have been the life raft whenever the Korean economy is capsized. It led quick rebounds from the currency crisis in 1997, the collapse of the dot-com bubble in 2001, and the global financial crisis in 2008.
Before the 1997 crisis, Korea’s foreign exchange reserves stood at a mere $20.4 billion. By the end of November 1997, Korea’s external debt reached an all-time high of $116.1 billion and its foreign exchange reserves sank to $8.87 billion. The nation’s exports have since expanded and achieved a
trade surplus, contributing significantly to its rapid economic recovery.
When the IT bubble, which formed around Internet-based companies, burst in 2001, the sudden collapse of techstocks led to massive bankruptcies. And yet, considerable increases in exports enabled Korea to overcome the crisis.
Notwithstanding the global financial crisis in 2008, Korea had the fastest economic recovery among OECD members due to the solid performance of increased exports to developing economies.
External trade has been a major engine for the nation’s economic growth and also a major source of job creation, foreign exchange holdings, and the increase of gross national income.
3. Triple Three Achievements
Korea topped $1 trillion in trade for the first time in 2011, and exceeded the threshold the next two years as well.
Among countries that have topped the $1 trillion mark in external trade, Korea is one of the global
export powerhouses that posted trade surpluses for three consecutive years from 2011 to 2013. Only four countries, including Germany, China, the Netherlands and South Korea, recorded trade surpluses throughout the period. Furthermore, among these, only three countries ― Germany, China and South Korea ― ran surpluses by relying on domestic manufacturing-based trade, not intermediate trade.
Reaching a solid trade surplus significantly contributed to the securing of foreign exchange reserves worth more than $300 billion. Korea’s foreign exchange reserves, which were almost depleted during the 1997 Asian financial crisis, reached $343.2 billion as of the end of October 2013, the world’s eighth largest reserves. The drastic increase in Korea’s foreign exchange reserves was directly influenced by the $356.1 billion trade surpluses that accumulated during 1998-2013.
4. Supplier of Ubiquitous Daily Items around the World
Korea is exporting a wide range of quality products, including IT products, automobiles, ships, machines, and materials and parts. In particular, Korea has been playing a leading role in facilitating the exchange of information and communication, an essential part of modern life, by providing IT
products to consumers around the world.
As of the third quarter of 2013, smartphone makers’ shares in the highly competitive global market showed that Samsung accounted for 31.4 percent, Apple 13.1 percent, Huawei 4.8 percent, Lenovo 4.7 percent, LG 4.6 percent, and others 41.3 percent, respectively. (Source: IDC) In memory semiconductors (DRAM), Korea accounted for 64 percent of the global market, followed by Japan (15 percent) and the United States (13 percent). (Source: IDC) In LCDs, Korea accounted for 45.9 percent of the global market, followed by Taiwan (34.9 percent) and China (7 percent) (Source: Display search).
Today, Korean-made cars are hitting roads all around the world. Although a latecomer in the auto market, Korea has steadily expanded its global presence through technological development, quality improvement, and enhancement of brand recognition. As a major supplier of parts and materials and machinery, Korea has also propped up the world’s construction and industrial sites.
With the worldwide popularity of the Korean Wave, or hallyu, Korea’s cultural contents have been entertaining and moving people around the world.
5. FTAs, Tickets to the Global Market
With a population of 50 million and a market value of $1.1 trillion, which is relatively small in size, Korea has widened its footprint through free trade agreements worth $72 trillion. Since the 2000s Korea has actively engaged in FTA negotiations and, as of 2013, it has concluded and implemented FTAs involving 47 countries. These trade partners have a combined (nominal) GDP of $39.9 trillion, which accounts for 55.2 percent of the world’s GDP, and a combined population of 2.85 billion, which constitutes 41 percent of the world’s total population. Although the number of cars registered in Korea today is no more than 18.87 million, the conclusion of potential FTAs will provide it with better access to many international auto markets with projected sales of over 600.4 million cars.
If all of the FTAs that are currently under negotiation with 12 countries are concluded, Korea will be able to easily make inroads into fresh markets with a combined GDP of $20.5 trillion and a combined population of 1.71 billion.
6. Smart Trade Built upon IT Infrastructure
By global standards, Korea has one of the highest levels of IT infrastructure relative to its population and land area.
With rapid changes in the trade environment, which have been driven by the development of information and communication technology, Korea’s trade transaction processes have become smarter. For example, with the advent of e-marketplace and Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), the time and space required for trade procedures have been drastically reduced, and an around-the-clock business environment has been created.
The value of Korea’s e-commerce market in 2012 reached 1,147 trillion won, a 545 percent increase from 2002; as part of efforts to facilitate e-commerce, major trade documents such as certificates of origin and approval of purchase have been digitized at a faster pace.
Changes in the trade environment have provided Korean firms with more opportunities to develop markets and build new business models. Today, Korean trading companies, with the help of online media, are enjoying higher levels of information access to markets and customers and by making a quick response to market demands, they are expanding their portfolios into new areas.
7. General Assessment
Korea’s external trade has served as a prime contributor to economic growth over the past five decades by adapting to changing global market trends, implementing open trade policies, and enhancing trade infrastructure. The remarkable achievements have been the result of concerted efforts between the government and the private sector.
However, Korea’s rapid economic growth that has been led by manufacturing has also brought about some problems: a widening gap between large companies and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), excessive concentration of exports on a few products manufactured by largesized companies, and lower competitiveness in the services export industry. Large businesses account for about two-thirds of total exports and more than 50 percent of total exports are generated by six top products and the world’s four largest markets. In 2012, Korea was ranked seventh in global goods exports, whereas it was ranked 13th in international services exports.
It is now up to Korea to make multi-faceted efforts to ensure its trade growth is sustainable. Large corporations and SMEs should work together with a win-win approach, and the government should strive to foster SMEs and venture enterprises equipped with global competitiveness and seek ways to promote balanced development between the manufacturing and services industries.
[ Trade Focus Vol. 12, No. 65, December 2013, published by the Institute for International Trade, Korea International Trade Association ]
www.koreafocus.or.kr
Religious Exclusivity of South Koreans in Interpersonal Relationships and Politics Yoon In-jin Professor, Department of Sociology Korea University
Yang Dae-young Researcher Millward Brown Media Research
I. Introduction
In the past, religious disputes typically involved followers of different religions displaying exclusivity against each other in marriage, employment and other personal matters. But now, politics is at stake. Protestants have attempted to strengthen their political influence and that has prompted Buddhists’ accusations of government favoritism toward Protestantism and support for pro-Buddhist political candidates. A Buddhist researcher said that only 58 Buddhist candidates won seats in the 18th general elections in 2008 and blamed it on the lack of unified support by Buddhists. A lack of such unity, he said, is constraining political empowerment of Buddhists.
The 19th general elections in April 2012 saw full-throated involvement of religious groups. One newspaper reported that pastors at large Protestant churches openly criticized particular candidates during their sermons, which, as the newspaper commented, obviously constituted direct intervention in politics. Another incident was reported, where followers of a particular religion allegedly prayed, “Father, who sent us the President who is an elder of our church last time, please allow us to possess our own bank this time.” This gathering was held at a big gymnasium in downtown Seoul.
Previous studies related to religious exclusivity have mainly dealt with racial prejudice, social solidarity, social backing, degrees of tolerance towards different religious groups, trust in government, and spouse selection. Those studies assumed that variables of religious belief and behavior would influence the perceptions of members of a certain group.
This study regards religious exclusivity as a major cause for religious discord in Korea. It examines the effects of religion in the private and public domains, namely, in choosing a spouse and in
supporting a political candidate. It is based on a statistical analysis of a national survey. To enhance the accuracy of the statistical analysis, this study also conducted in-depth interviews with members from three main religions in Korea ― Buddhism, Protestantism and Catholicism. They were asked why they chose a person of the same religion to marry, befriend, or support politically.
II. Data and Analysis Method
1. Statistical Analysis
The data is from the 2008 Korea General Social Survey (KGSS). It was conducted by the Survey Research Center at Sungkyunkwan University between June 29 and August 31. The respondents, males and females over 18, were selected in a multi-stage area probability sampling process. A total of 1,508 cases were selected for the final analysis.
The dependent variable of this study is religious exclusivity, which was measured by using questions about whether a person from a different religious group could be considered a potential spouse or a political candidate to support. The question pertaining to the choice of spouse was: “Would you approve of your relative getting married to a person from a different religion?” The question on political support was: “Would you approve of a candidate who has a different religion from yours becoming a candidate of a political party that you support?”
Initially, the ordinal variable answers were: 1) definitely permissible, 2) permissible, 3) impermissible, and 4) absolutely impermissible. Later, the variables were encoded as dummy variables: 1) permissible, and 2) impermissible. The respondents who expressed their disapproval of a spouse or a politician from a different religious group accounted for 23.1 percent and 15.1 percent, respectively. The results suggested that religious exclusivity is more strongly manifested in issues pertaining to the private domain (marriage) than the public domain (politics). The independent variables of this study were a respondent’s “religious belief,” “religious behavior” and “religious function.” Question items designed to measure religious belief included: “How religious do you think you are?”; “How much do you believe in the existence of an afterlife, heaven and hell, religious miracles, reincarnation, nirvana, and supernatural powers of the deceased?”; and “Do you think only one particular religion or belief system is true?” Religious behavior was measured by the frequency of attendance at religious services, membership of subgroups, the frequency of attendance at religious gatherings, and the frequency of prayers. Religious function was measured by
combining responses as to the effects joining religious gatherings have on achieving peace of mind and happiness, making friends, receiving comfort in sorrow, and chances of meeting persons of like mind.
Control variables in this study included gender, age, level of education, income level, stratum consciousness, and ideological tendency. These variables have been considered factors in religious prejudice, tolerance towards other religions, and religious exclusivity. According to previous studies, women were found to be more religious than men and tend to be more frequently engaged in religious activities. Levels of tolerance towards other religions tend to increase with age and level of education. In case of couples with a low income and the same religion, levels of marriage satisfaction are higher. People of higher social status tend to be more tolerant of other religions. In terms of ideological tendency, most religious devotees tend to be conservative and in favor of maintaining the political status quo. Protestantism, which claims to support fundamentalism, has an extremely strong conservative inclination and displays absolute exclusivity against other religions.
The frequency distributions of the above-mentioned control variables show: women (54 percent) were more distributed than men (46 percent); the average age was 45.7 years old (standard deviation: 34.8 years old); level of education, which was measured on a 7-point scale, were 3.48 points (standard deviation: 1.57); household income measured on an 8-point scale was 3.8 points (standard deviation: 1.79); stratum consciousness on a 10-point scale (1 point: lowest/10 points: highest) was 4.85 points (standard deviation: 4.59); and ideological tendency on a 5-point scale (1 point: conservative/5 points: liberal) was 3.23 points (standard deviation: 1.22).
2. Interviews
To a certain degree, the statistical analysis helped identify factors that influence religious exclusivity. However, since only the choice of spouse and support for politicians were considered dependent variables, it was difficult to detect the presence of religious exclusivity in various types of interpersonal relationships. It was possible to verify correlations among the variables that were used to measure religiosity and religious exclusivity. However, there were limitations to pinpointing the causes of such correlations.
To overcome these limitations, in-depth interviews were conducted with religious followers. The interviewees were selected by probability sampling. Therefore, it cannot be assumed that they were totally accurate representatives. Nevertheless, the interviews provided supplementary evidence that
helped offset the shortcomings of the statistical analysis.
The interviews were conducted from January to April 2012. The selection criteria of interviewees attempted to achieve a balance in gender, age and other socioeconomic conditions. A snowball sampling was used without an established frame, a technique whereby survey subjects were chosen from among acquaintances of earlier interviewees. There were 15 interviewees, five each from Buddhism, Protestantism and Catholicism.
A semi-structured questionnaire was used and the interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Analysis of the transcripts revealed causes of exclusive attitudes and behaviors between followers of different religions.
The interviewees included nine females (60 percent) and six males (40 percent), with the average age at 41 (the youngest was 24 and the eldest 65). The average years of schooling were 14 years (the shortest was 12 years and the longest 16 years). The average monthly household income was 4.11 million won (the lowest was 1.5 million won and the highest 10 million won). As for political inclination, six were liberals (40 percent), six were moderates (40 percent), and three were conservatives (20 percent).
III. Results of Statistical Analysis
1. Selection of Spouse
At 83.7 percent, the Catholics were the most willing to marry a person from a different religion, followed by the Buddhists (74.4 percent) and the Protestants (62.4 percent). It was verified by a Chisquare test that there is a statistical significance in the correlation between the approval rates and religious groups. Like previous studies, this study also found that Protestants are the most intolerant of other religions in marital selection.
It can be assumed that the deviation in approval rates among religious groups was caused by varying degrees of religiosity. To verify this assumption, the difference in religious devoutness based on religious group was compared. According to the respondents’ self-evaluation on their degree of piousness, Protestants scored 5.26 points on a 7-point scale, Catholics 4.91 points, and Buddhists 4.51 points. Mean differences between religious groups were found to be statistically significant. In terms of the degrees of faith in religious doctrines, the gap between the Buddhists and Protestants was found
to be statistically significant. On the other hand, no statistical significance was found in the difference between Buddhists and Catholics.
In terms of religious function, the Protestants placed the greatest emphasis on the instrumental function of their religion, followed by the Catholics and the Buddhists. According to a post hoc test, the difference between Protestants and Buddhists was found to be statistically significant, whereas no statistical significance was found between Protestants and Catholics. As for the percentage of those who said they believe only one specific religion is true, Buddhists were 4.5 percent, Catholics 7.5 percent, and Protestants 30.1 percent, with Protestants showing a considerably higher rate compared to their counterparts in other religions. These findings can be interpreted that Protestants are more devout than people of other religious groups in all three categories of religious belief, religious behavior and religious function.
A binary logistic regression analysis was used to determine whether the variables of religiosity will still be factors affecting the choice of spouse after socio-demographic characteristics of individuals were taken into account. According to the results of the analysis, when socio-demographic variables and religious affiliation variables were controlled, the variables related to religious belief and religious function among the religiosity variables had a statistically significant effect on spouse selection. On the other hand, it was found that neither of the two variables of religious affiliation and religious function had an independent effect.
A close look at the analysis revealed that degrees of faith in Buddhist doctrines among the religious belief variables, and the frequency of attendance in church worships or temple prayers among the religious behavior variables, were found to have a significant effect. Interestingly, when faith in Buddhist doctrines increased by one degree, the odds ratio of study subjects being intolerant of someone from a different religion as a potential spouse fell by 29.8 percent. In sharp contrast, higher degrees of faith in Protestant doctrines led to increases in the odds ratio of disapproval of marriage to someone of a different religion. However, when the frequency of attendance in church worships or temple prayers increased by one degree, the odds ratio of being intolerant of marrying someone from a different religion rose by 22.9 percent.
2. Endorsement of Political Candidates
In regard to supporting a political candidate outside of their religion, there was no significant statistical difference among the interviewees. The approval rate of the Catholics was 88.5 percent,
followed by the Buddhists at 87.8 percent and the Protestants with 83.5 percent.
As in the spouse selection survey, a binary logistic regression analysis was conducted, in which approval or disapproval of a political candidate with a different religion was considered a dependent variable. As a result, with socio-demographic and religious affiliation variables controlled, only the frequency of prayers was found to have an independent effect. Whenever the frequency of prayers rose a degree higher, the odds ratio of being intolerant of a political candidate from another religion increased 23.3 percent. On the other hand, both religious belief and religious function variables were found to have no independent effect on the endorsement of political candidates.
IV. Results of Interviews
To avoid contaminating the interview findings, questions were divided into private and public domains, and replies were analyzed to determine the effect of religiosity on issues in each domain.
1. Private Domain
1) Selection of Spouse The statistical analysis conducted before the interviews had revealed that religious belief and religious behavior influence the selection of a spouse. The subsequent interviews also showed that 13 (86.6 percent) of the 15 study subjects would seriously consider religious affiliation when choosing their spouse. The reasons why the majority of participants wanted their spouses to have the same religion were: prevention of family discord, sharing of religious feelings, and prejudice and dislike toward different religious groups, in that order.
Avoidance of family discord pertained to ancestral rites, tithes, religious values, etc. Among the study subjects, there was a devout Buddhist male in his 30s who regularly attends prayers at a temple and practices asceticism. He also is a religious pluralist who approves of doctrines of other religions, but he wants to marry a Buddhist woman who can help him bear his responsibilities as the eldest son in a Buddhist family.
Tithing, a monetary contribution paid to the church, was cited as a potential source of friction between interfaith couples. Among the interviewees, there was a Catholic man in his 20s. He has participated in religious volunteer activities and strives to follow the teachings of Jesus. He said, “Unexpectedly, I can get along with Buddhists pretty well, but not with Protestants,� adding that he is willing to marry
a Buddhist woman, not a Protestant. The reason he did not want to marry a Protestant woman was tithing. He said he cannot understand why every Protestant is forced to pay tithes; he had a negative view of poor Protestant couples who consider church gatherings a higher priority than economic activities.
Differences in religious values are regarded as one of the potential sources of conflict to undermine marriage. A woman in her 40s is a deeply devout Protestant and has a strong faith, regarding it as a pathway to peace of mind and comfort. Conflicts with her husband arose at the beginning of their marriage. “There seem to be serious spiritual hindrances taking place,” she explained. “Let’s see, there are a lot of evil dark forces in a non-religious family. So if you want to lead a pious life in such a family, you will have serious problems. I mean the evil dark forces such as the spirit of a shaman and the likes will disrupt your religious life to a great extent.” The woman recalled that when she tried to retain her faith, she suffered tremendous distress caused by different religious values of her husband and in-laws.
The belief that it is difficult for an interfaith couple to share religious communion often leads to intolerance toward other religions. The notion of conflict prevention in a family partially overlaps with sharing of religious communion. However, prevention of family discord focuses primarily on the practical aspects of maintaining a tranquil domestic life, whereas the sharing of religious communion is more about the internal aspects of pursuing religious fulfillment.
When a Buddhist woman in her 20s was asked whether she would marry a man of a different religion, she replied, “It’s completely out of the question! That’s impossible … A husband is a person who I have to spend the rest of my life with. So my would-be husband should be a person whom I can share religious communion with, which is a quality more important than being rich. He is also a person with whom I have to raise our children … In this sense, I should get married to a man of the same religious affiliation.” Believers who emphasize sharing religious communion with their spouse want to become more religiously mature. The interviewees’ prejudice and antipathy toward specific religions is the main cause of intolerance toward marrying outside their religion. Protestants were found to have prejudice and ill feelings toward believers of shamanism and Buddhism, and Catholics toward Protestants. There was a Protestant woman in her 30s, who regards her faith as a medium for gaining peace of mind and comfort. However, she was raised by parents who believed in shamanism and forced her to accept it. This woman said her childhood experience made her intolerant of shamanism and Buddhism.
Meanwhile, Catholics were found to have much stronger ill feelings toward Protestants compared to devotees of other religions. Among the five Catholic interviewees, four displayed an aversion toward Protestants. Due to the small size of the sample, it is difficult to generalize the findings. Nonetheless, the interviews suggested that Catholics’ antipathy toward Protestants can be linked to the religious exclusivity and fanaticism displayed by Protestants in Korea. More specifically, the practices of banning drinking and smoking, mandatory tithing and aggressive missionary activities are viewed by Catholics as excessively restrictive and pressured.
A Catholic woman in her 30s, recalling a former close friend who was a devout Protestant, said: “Well, I have a prejudice toward Protestantism … It’s not to my liking … One of my classmates in my undergraduate years was a Protestant. I often clashed with her due to different religious views. She argued that Protestantism is the only belief system that tells the truth. Her exclusive attitude to other religions caused me to have bad feelings toward Protestants.”
2) Friendship It was found that unlike choosing a spouse, friendship is hardly affected by religion. Only two out of the 15 interviewees reported that they did not want to be friends with someone from a different religion. In many cases people become friends without knowing each other’s religious affiliation and even when it is known, religion is a rare topic of discussion or quarrelsome subject. This means that the relationship between spouses is of such intimacy that they cannot avoid discussing religious topics; on the other hand, friendship can remain firm without touching on them.
However, it was found that the importance of religion in making friends was differently perceived according to religion. The findings of the in-depth interviews show that Buddhists and Catholics displayed lesser degrees of intolerance toward friends of different religions, whereas this was not the case for Protestants. Coincidently, the two people who replied they would not make friends with people of different religions were Protestants.
A Catholic woman in her 20s, who was a Sunday school teacher, had a deep understanding of Catholic doctrines and developed a pluralistic attitude toward religion. She reported that she had many Protestant friends and often discussed religious topics with them. Another woman in her 50s, who is a Protestant, said she has become acquainted with people of other religions in order to spread her faith. When asked whether the same religious affiliation is a key factor in making friends, she responded: “Frankly speaking, it’s very important for me to propagate my faith, so I’m now trying to
meet as many people of different religions as possible to do this. Leading them to the evangelical Protestant faith is my calling from God. So I have to make sincere efforts to get close to non-believers to become friends.”
This middle-aged Protestant woman obviously has a different approach from that of the aforementioned young Catholic woman, who is a religious pluralist and has made friends with many non-Catholics in order to better understand other religions. As shown in the case of the middle-aged woman, Protestants do not seem to view religious heterogeneity as a hindrance to making friends. However, making friends with non-Protestants as an evangelical effort is a typical example of manifesting the Protestants’ monistic view on religion.
2. Public Domain
1) Interpersonal Relationships in the Workplace It was found that the importance of religion was more stressed in building interpersonal relations in the workplace than in making friends, if not such an influential factor as in choosing a spouse. When asked, “If you were an employer, would you consider religion as a key factor in hiring employees?” eight out of the 15 study subjects answered that they would.
Regarding their responses to this question, there was a considerable difference between religious groups. Only two Buddhists and one Catholic replied that they would, whereas all five Protestants gave the same answer. Among the 15 interviewees, five people reported that they would not only consider religion as a key factor in hiring employees but that they are also intolerant of colleagues of different religions. The reasons cited are in the following order: 1) antipathy toward colleagues who display excessive religious behavior; 2) positive views on colleagues of the same religious affiliation; and 3) conflict prevention and feeling of solidarity with workplace colleagues of the same religion.
Display of religious fanaticism by Protestants is the biggest reason for inciting ill feelings among non-Protestants. A Buddhist woman in her 40s disclosed resentment toward a Protestant co-worker who often expressed her religious commitment without considering her colleagues’ feelings. “Well, among the colleagues I have ever worked with, there was a Protestant. She was always insisting that she should be able to leave work early on Wednesdays to attend a worship service … If there was a church event, she used to refuse to work overtime. As a co-worker, I couldn’t put up with her attitude,” she said.
A male interviewee in his 30s, who was a Buddhist, expressed a similar reaction in the workplace but said he would not consider religion as a decisive factor in hiring. He felt that display of one’s religious faith in the workplace was not appropriate. He said: “It’s OK for anyone to lead a religious life. However, openly expressing one’s religious belief and passion can cause conflicts in the workplace … If there is somebody who drives the situation to that point, I would avoid that person even if we had the same religious affiliation.”
A greater possibility of positive views developing towards co-workers of the same religions is another reason why religion has a significant impact on interpersonal relations in the workplace. A Buddhist interviewee in her 60s said that Buddhists in general are less greedy than people of other religions and thus would favor Buddhists when hiring new employees. Another example was a Catholic woman in her 40s. Although tolerant enough to say that she would follow the religion of her in-laws, she took a different position in regard to hiring. She said that if it is a domestic issue, she would give up her own religion to avoid family conflict. However, if she were in a position to select employees, she would favor Catholics.
The belief that the same religious affiliation can prevent workplace discord and strengthen solidarity among co-workers leads to intolerance toward other religions. The interviews showed that the strongest believers in such an idea are the Protestants. A Protestant interviewee in his 50s, who runs a factory, said that he has hired Protestant applicants to avoid clashes with non-Protestant employees when he holds worship services at his factory. “When interviewing job applicants, other things being equal I tend to choose applicants of the same religion over others. Maybe employees are very cooperative in the workplace if they have the same religion. I believe they are. We hold worship services here. So if employees have different religions, worshipping in the workplace can be a major source of discord. That’s why I emphasize the same religious affiliation of my employees.”
A Protestant interviewee in her 50s had a different view about religion in the workplace. For her, the workplace is where the spirit and values of Christianity are practiced. “I hope my husband’s company will become a community of people sharing the same faith. My wish is that we can pray for each other and become one here,” she said.
2) Endorsement of Political Candidates The impact of religion on political endorsement was found to be much less significant than on interpersonal relationships. Among the 15 interviewees, only three said they would disapprove of political candidates of different religions. All three were Protestants. The other 12 interviewees said
that one’s ideological tendency, social circumstances and a candidate’s competence, not the candidate’s religion, are the primary factors in deciding whether to support a candidate. Some even expressed a dim view of candidates who deliberately display their religious beliefs to appeal to voters.
A Buddhist interviewee in her 60s, who has attended services at a temple located in the Gangnam district in Seoul, disapproved of a monk’s frequent expressions of political opinions. She argued that religious activity should remain within the boundaries of personal cultivation, adding: “I don’t want to mention it. Sermons given by the monk were too political, which made me uncomfortable. So when the monk gave a sermon, I didn’t want to listen.”
Buddhists revealed a much stronger aversion to political candidates who stress their religious beliefs. Their antipathy seems to be attributable to the idea that the Lee Myung-bak government had a favorable attitude towards Protestants. A Buddhist interviewee in his 50s felt that the influence of Buddhism is insignificant in Korean politics. The perception has been driven by the fact that politicians who run for public office have primarily been non-Buddhists, and also by the assumption that even if Buddhist candidates stand for elections, their fellow Buddhists would not be willing to lend collective support to them against non-Buddhist candidates. “I don’t feel that Korean Buddhists set a premium on the same religious affiliation when selecting political candidates to support,” he said. “Well, I mean we haven’t quite gelled, compared to other religious groups. I don’t know why. Is it because the teachings of the Buddha emphasize unbiased attitude and thought? I don’t really have any idea about it.” He believes that Buddhists tend to be much more affected by other factors than religious factors when voting.
Unlike the Buddhists, Protestants showed a much stronger tendency to vote for candidates of the same religion. The three Protestants who said religion is an important factor in election believe that candidates of the same religion are more likely to have the same values as their own and thus inspire trust in them. Although two of the three Protestant interviewees said they do not care much about politics, they cast their votes for Lee Myung-bak in the 2008 presidential election because he shared the same religious affiliation. A Protestant woman in her 40s said, “I usually take religion into account at the polls. After seeing Lee Myung-bak give his testimony at a church, I decided to vote for him. Because I thought he is a more devout elder, compared to former President Kim Young-sam, who also served as an elder of a Protestant church. Lee’s campaign pledges were not important. I voted for him because he is a
Protestant.� Her statement clearly demonstrated the reason why the Protestants supported Lee Myung-bak so strongly.
V. Conclusion
In this study, religiosity was divided into three dimensions: religious belief, religious behavior and religious function. To measure each dimension empirically, new variables were added to the variables used in previous studies to accurately diagnose Korea’s religious environment. In particular, intrinsic religiosity variables were replaced with self-rating religiosity variables, considering that intrinsic religiosity, which premises the existence of god, has a limit to examining the religiousness of Buddhists. To measure the degrees of belief in religious doctrines, the questionnaire included items designed to measure belief in Buddhist doctrines as well as in Protestant doctrines. As a result, measures for religiosity were established, which encompassed Protestantism, Catholicism and Buddhism.
Before starting this study, it was hypothesized that stronger religious faith, frequent involvement in religious activities and more dependence on instrumental functions of religion would more likely be a deterrent in choosing a spouse than in voting for political candidates. But the results were expected to vary according to religion because faith is expressed differently depending on the religious group. According to the findings of this study, religious belief and religious behavior had an impact on the selection of a spouse, but religious function did not. In particular, among religious belief variables, the degrees of belief in Buddhist doctrines, and among the religious behavior variables, the frequencies of attendance in worship services at a church or a temple had a statistically significant impact.
As for supporting political candidates, religious belief and religious function did not have an impact. Only religious behavior was found to affect a voter’s decision. Particularly, among the religious behavior variables, the frequency of offering prayers alone had an independent effect. Another notable finding is that Buddhists were more tolerant of having a spouse or voting for a candidate of a different religion than Protestants and Catholics. These findings suggest that Buddhists have relatively more pluralistic attitudes and greater flexibility in their religious behavior. Accordingly, Buddhists tend to be less exclusive towards other religions.
The statistical analysis was restricted to spouse selection in the private domain. Although the relationship between the variables was identified, it was difficult to determine the causes for mutual
relationship among those variables. Therefore, the interviews helped to examine the degrees and the causes of religious exclusivity displayed in four realms: making friends, building interpersonal relationships in the workplace and voting for candidates, as well as choosing a spouse.
The results of this study show that religious exclusivity was the least expressed in friendship, followed by the selection of political candidates to support and interpersonal relationships in the workplace. As shown in the statistical analysis, the differences in religious exclusivity by religious group were conspicuous. Protestants were the least tolerant of people from different religions in both private and public spheres. Meanwhile, the disparity between Buddhists and Catholics was found to be insignificant. Protestants manifested a strong tendency to spread their religious doctrines, practices and values to their acquaintances, in their workplaces, and even on the political scene. Such aggressive evangelical activities by Protestants were found to offend Buddhists and Catholics.
The statistical analysis and the interviews commonly discovered that Protestants are less tolerant to other religions than Buddhists and Catholics. The strong religious exclusivity of Korean Protestants can be attributed to their conviction that Protestantism is the only belief system that tells the truth and their tendency to divide people into two groups, in-group and out-group, according to religious faith; as a result, they tend to be favorable to people of in-group and to exclude those of out-group.
In conclusion, making policy suggestions with regard to religion must be done prudently in Korea, where people tend have low levels of religious tolerance; it does not seem likely for proposed polices to be implemented. Notwithstanding the current conditions, there is a noteworthy message the findings of this study seem to convey: religious discord occurs when people singularly believe that only their religion tells the truth and try to persuade people of different religions both in the private and public domains into following their religious doctrines and values.
Korean society has recently witnessed the de-privatization of religion and the political empowerment of religious groups coming to the fore. There are chances that conflicts driven by religious monism and exclusivity, which were negligible in the past, will become a major source of social conflicts. A sensible way of achieving harmonious coexistence in a multicultural society is encouraging mutual acceptance of and respect for different cultures. In this sense, it can be said that religious pluralism is a prerequisite that will enable religion to become a means of solidarity and healing rather than a source of social conflict and division in Korea.
[ Journal of Asiatic Studies, No. 152, 2013,
published by Asiatic Research Institute, Korea University ]
www.koreafocus.or.kr
- Kang Sue-jin to Lead the Korean National Ballet
Kang Sue-jin to Lead the Korean National Ballet
Park In-young Staff Reporter Yonhap News Agency
“My wish as artistic director of the Korean National Ballet is to help it establish a style of its own,” says prima ballerina Kang Sue-jin, 46, who has been appointed the new artistic director of the Korean National Ballet to succeed Choi Tae-ji, who completes her tenure on December 31, 2013. At a press conference on December 18, Kang expressed her hopes, saying, “Korean ballet and the Korean National Ballet have developed to achieve a surprisingly high standard. I want to provide assistance and moral support for every single dancer. The Korean National Ballet is made by harmonious cooperation of staff members in the backstage as well as dancers. I want to gather all those small elements from the inside to grow them into a brilliant ballet company.”
When asked about her reasons for accepting the job, she confessed that she had a strong feeling toward the idea. “I have been offered the position since several years ago, but I felt that the time had not come yet for me to take up the directorship. This time, I felt that it was now or never.” “Feelings like this come only a few times in a lifetime, just like when a man and woman marry because they feel, ‘this is the right person, and nobody else can do,’ even though they can’t explain exactly why. I felt the same way when I received the proposal for artistic directorship.”
Kang will continue to dance for Germany’s Stuttgart Ballet as its principal ballerina until her retirement in July 2016, while carrying out her responsibilities as the artistic director for the Korean National Ballet. “The best way to communicate with dancers is to demonstrate the choreography yourself. It will be a plus, not a disadvantage (to serve as artistic director as an active dancer).”
Still, to dedicate more of her time to her new role, she has decided to cancel most of her stage appearances except for Madame Butterfly” at the Seoul Arts Center in July 2014, “Onegin” with the Stuttgart Ballet in November 2015, and her retirement performance in 2016. Korea’s dancing circles welcomed Kang’s appointment to head the Korean National Ballet, considering her distinguished dancing career in Europe. But some have expressed concerns that she lacks experience in administration. Responding to such apprehension, she said, “I was briefed on the company’s operations for the first time yesterday, and I became confident that I could handle my job” “I also felt that my future colleagues are so willing to help me conduct my job,” she added. “Witnessing how eager they are to support me, I came to believe in myself more deeply. I ask for your patience and trust that results will come with time.”
Her three-year tenure begins on January 1, but she is expected to work at her Seoul office starting in early February after completing her previously scheduled commitments overseas. She refrained from discussing her ideas about the Korean National Ballet’s performance schedule for 2014. Instead, she asked its fans to have patience and give her time. “Upon hearing that I would be serving for the Korean National Ballet, renowned artistic directors abroad invariably advised me not to hasten,” Kang said. “You cannot, and should not, expect me to turn the company into a dazzling group in a day, because it’s not possible. I am not going to be overambitious.” “Just as you have loved the ballerina Kang Sue-jin so far,” she said, “please love and keep watching with warm hearts every dancer and staff member of the Korean National Ballet from now.”
[ December 13, 2013 ]
www.koreafocus.or.kr
- Donghak Peasant Revolution and Hangeul Spurred the Birth of Modern Koreans - Danjae’s Nationalist Movement Pursued People’s Liberation and Anarchism
Donghak Peasant Revolution and Hangeul Spurred the Birth of Modern Koreans
Yu Seok-jae Staff Reporter The Chosun Ilbo
“Birth of the Citizens” By Song Ho-geun, Mineumsa, 521 pages, 30,000 won “There is a street stretching from Jeong-dong to Dongdaemun (East Gate), and this street is for commerce and cooperatives. Every floor of the buildings has unique displays of different trade and companies. Jongno is also where discontented groups stage demonstrations.”
This is the description of Jongno in 1904 provided by Emile Bourdaret, a French train engineer. This may be a typical description of a city, but the author of this book who teaches sociology at Seoul National University identifies the beginning of a citizen archetype from here. The merchants, who were on the frontlines of modernism, were already active and forming exclusive cooperatives, and words like “discontent” and “demonstration” show that the society was bidding farewell to medieval ways of life. This book, the sequel to “Birth of the People,” attempts to analyze how modern Korean emerged. To do that, the author appropriates Habermas’s theory of the public sphere, which is where public opinion, mediating between the state and the civil society, is created and collected. The public sphere
is a comprehensive network used by a specific class for self-interest, encompassing information and product distribution, print media, meetings, forums, and transportation network. After ports were opened to the outside world, the yangban, or the noble class, who had monopolized the public sphere, lost power. As the intellectuals’ public sphere and common people’s public sphere joined in solidarity, they harmonized and in due course citizenship sprouted. Then who was the agent in the common people’s public sphere? It was the literate people. They stepped into the limelight with the usage of Hangeul, which had evolved to enlighten the general population. In the transition to the modern era during Joseon, they replaced the yangban public sphere in politics, religion and literary art. Choe Je-u’s Donghak (Eastern Learning) philosophy that “everyone can learn and practice the way of the heaven” taught them about their new role, and during the 1894 Gabo Reform, when Hangeul became the official script, the nation’s written and spoken languages became unified and common people could become more active.
The modern society that was thus born and the individual became the starting point of a civil society, but everything halted in mid-track when Japan forcibly annexed Korea in 1910. The citizens could only entertain themselves with literature, the world of imagination. It is regrettable that analysis is weak on the economic infrastructure that serves as a sufficient condition of modern transition in history.
[ November 30, 2013 ]
www.koreafocus.or.kr
Danjae’s Nationalist Movement Pursued People’s Liberation and Anarchism
Hwang Gyeong-sang Staff Reporter The Kyunghyang Shinmun
“Re-reading Shin Chae-ho” By Lee Ho-ryong, Dolbegae, 332 pages, 18,000 won “Among the most misunderstood figures in contemporary Korean history is Shin Chae-ho,” declares the first sentence of the book. Shin Chae-ho (1880-1936, pen name Danjae), is known to most Koreans as a nationalist historian. The introduction of “History of Korea” (Joseonsa) published in 1931, contains a very famous line: History is a struggle between I and non-I. Many researchers explain Danjae positioned the Korean people as I and narrated the contradictions and conflicts with other people, the non-I. This is the reason why Shin is considered a nationalist.
The author of this book casts doubt on this assumption. It is true that Danjae at one point immersed himself in nationalist historical studies. But the introduction of “History of Korea” reveals new perspectives of socialism and class struggle that were not seen in his earlier works from the 1910s. In the book he writes, “The proletariat call themselves I and they call bourgeoisie non-I; however, the bourgeoisie call themselves I and they call the proletariat non-I.” Danjae could not entirely eliminate a nationalistic tone, but he tried to edit the manuscript and he had wanted to postpone the publication until he was done.
What was the world that Shin Chae-ho ultimately dreamed of? He died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1936 at the Lushun Prison in China, and a book about Kropotkin was found in his cell. Peter Kropotkin is a Russian thinker who established the foundation for anarchism. According to the author, Danjae was studying anarchism right before his death, and he died an anarchist. Danjae was not a scholar who confined himself to one single school of thought.
As a child Danjae was educated in a traditional Korean way by his grandfather and he entered the prestigious Seonggyungwan Academy. After he came across modern studies of the West, he broke free from the Confucian frame and accepted social evolutionism. Based on Darwinian evolution, the theory of social evolution takes it for granted that in human society the strong dominates the weak. In order for Korea to become an independent nation, it must hone its ability and become a strong nation. Danjae participated in the Independence Club, and he joined the movement to develop the necessary capabilities to modernize Korea. He served as editor-in-chief for the Hwangseong Sinmun (Capital Gazette) and the Daehan Maeil Sinbo (Korea Daily News), and he supported the Patriotic Enlightenment Movement. Toward the late 1900s, when the Japanese stepped up their level of aggression and oppressed Koreans’ attempt to cultivate national strength, the Korean camp was divided in two. One maintained that in order to build an independent state, skills need to be acquired first and it was an option to receive help from Japan. However, Danjae thought that independence should come first. He was critical of the complacent idea that “If Korea becomes rich and powerful, Japan will withdraw on its own accord.”
As a nationalist, Danjae initially espoused publication of biographies of ancient Korean heroes like General Eulji Mundeok and he looked forward to the emergence of a hero who would lead the people. However, he changed his mind as he realized that the fate of a nation lies in the hands of the people, not in a couple of heroes. Liberation required the arming of each constituent with national consciousness and a sense of pride. The reason why Danjae concentrated on historical research, especially in the restoration of ancient history, was because he wanted to instill in the people a sense of independence.
After the First World War and the Russian Revolution, Danjae slowly began to absorb anarchism. The tragedies of the war taught the world to rethink social evolution, which was about the survival of the fittest and the law of the jungle. Putting it behind him, Danjae leaned favorably toward the idea of social reconstruction and world reconstruction, in which all people should participate in building
equal social order along with Kropotkin’s anarchism which idealizes a mutual aid society. Danjae, who had experienced the Peasant Revolution of the Gabo Year (1894) at the age of 15, witnessed the people’s explosive power at the March 1 Independence Movement of 1919 and presented as a method of people’s liberation movement an anarchism-based, direct revolution by the people. The idea of revolution by the people is well described in the “Manifesto for Korean Revolution,” which was in the possession of every Korean anarchist at the time. This claims that Japanese imperialism should be overthrown, but not to gain independence and set up a new government in Korea. Rather, the sole purpose of resistance was to survive. Danjae never used the word “state.” He believed that the state is an exploitative vehicle that takes advantage of the people and politics is where the ruling class shares the bounties gotten at the expense of blood and sweat of the working class. Political revolution only replaces the old ruling class with a new one, so even if the revolution succeeds the people will simply be at the mercy of a new ruling class. Those who advocate growing people’s wealth and regaining sovereignty through diplomatic efforts are only working for their vested interests. It was Danjae’s ultimate viewpoint that only when social revolution succeeds, the people would be liberated. The people must take it upon themselves to complete the revolution for their own good. This is where his idea parts with communism, which is predicated on the avant-garde group leading the people to bring about a revolution. According to Danjae, a direct violent revolt such as terrorism and uprising would be a wake-up call to the people and once all the people join in the front line of the revolution, the Japanese imperialist powers and capitalists would be driven out. To Danjae, a national liberation movement meant a movement for people’s liberation and anarchism. We would not be doing him justice if we simply labeled him as a nationalist only. He was in total agreement with Mikhail Bakunin in that the urge to destroy is also a creative urge. He wanted to scrap all of the institutions created by the ruling class such as religion, ethics, laws, military, royal court and corporation, and build a society in which all wealth is shared and no one is exploited. He never stooped even when washing his face and such an uncompromising posture on life may mirror his philosophy of eternal liberalism based on anarchism.
[ December 7, 2013 ]
www.koreafocus.or.kr
- Lie Sang-bong: ‘It’s time to show Asia’s energy and power in fashion.’
Lie Sang-bong: ‘It’s time to show Asia’s energy and power in fashion.’
Park Byeong-gwon Editorial Writer The Kookmin Ilbo
Considering the importance of creativity, the world of design is unchartered sacred territory, as much so as music or literature or fine arts. Fashion design in particular is a difficult field to succeed in. This is inevitable considering that fashion design must fulfill artistic and commercial demands at the same time.
Lie Sang-bong, a major Korean fashion designer of this era, has managed to achieve this combination, a task as difficult as a camel passing through the eye of a needle. He may be seen as lucky, but this is because the story behind his success is not very well known.
As a young man in his 20s, Lie fell in love with the theater and wondered what to do with his life. At some point after turning to fashion design, he found it so tough that he decided he would not grow any older. So when you ask him his age, he always gives the same answer: 37.
Q. Why do you conceal your age?
A. The year I turned 37, after becoming a fashion designer, was incredibly tough. No inspiration came to me and my work was not going well. I wanted to give everything up. That’s when I made a decision: to start loving myself and to hold no resentment against others. At the time I hated myself. I still don’t
know why. I decided to forget about my age. From that time, I have no idea of how old I am. It may sound like a lie but even now I don’t know my real age. Of course, I know when I was born. But living that way, I really have come to forget. Just last night I spent with friends in their 30s. When I decided to love myself, my hatred and resentment of other people disappeared. Q. You’ve attracted attention by using distinctive themes in your work such as the Korean script, the national flower (Rose of Sharon), etc. What is your source of inspiration?
A. In the past I put in a lot of footwork, going from this place to that, trying to create something out of nothing. I travelled a lot. But I’ve changed a bit now. I try to find inspiration in things that already exist. So I go to see a lot of exhibitions, movies and musical performances. Creation comes from taking a real interest in something, doesn’t it? I also think it means breaking out of the mold. Breaking away from and turning over the established order stimulates the imagination.
Q. I hear that you acted on stage in your 20s?
A. Originally I wanted to be a playwright. But when I entered university I was attracted to acting. To tell the truth, I have no friends from primary school, junior high or senior high. I was so introverted that I had no close friends. But on stage you can yell at the other person, be idle together … Anyway, I wanted to be a part of it all, even by sticking up theater posters. Finally, I was preparing to appear in a play by a famous writer, but a week before the curtain was due to go up, I pulled out. I wasn’t prepared to deal with the aftermath.
As Lie had to support his family, the theater would have been a romantic dream, a luxury. He says that the memory of running away from the stage was so strong that it made him grit his teeth and endure everything that came to him in the fashion world, for fashion is a field that is as changeable and challenging as the theater.
Q. Where did you study fashion design?
A. People are surprised at my answer, but back in those difficult days the place I sought out after seeing an ad in the newspaper was the Kukje Fashion Design Institute at Namsan. I studied there for two years. The faculty was very strong at the time. I studied all night. When I decided to study fashion, my original plan was to open a shop after graduation and do alterations. Q. You’re famous now for your designs incorporating the Korean script, Hangeul. Any stories to tell?
A. It was because of Hangeul that I met Christine Lagarde, managing director of the IMF. She is a big fan of Hangeul. After designing traditional Korean hanbok featuring Hangeul motifs, I applied Hangeul to furniture, then produced a series of designs combining Hangeul with autumn leaves, Hangeul with butterflies, and Hangeul with the national flower. One unforgettable incident was the great popularity of a cigarette pack that I designed using Hangeul. But when an acquaintance advised me that it was not a good idea for a person called the “national designer” to be working on packaging for cigarettes, which are so bad for your health, I gave up any thought of renewing the contract. The design was not for domestic use but for exported cigarettes. The launching event was held in Russia. Because the Hangeul design on the export packs was so popular, it was used on domestic cigarette packs as well.
Q. Do you produce your own Hangeul lettering? A. The most recent “Arirang calligraphy” is my own work, but I am mostly inspired by the writing
of singer Jang Sa-ik and the artist Lim Ok-sang. Jang’s writing flows softly like water, while Lim’s is fiery and passionate. I apply a combination of their writing to my work. Both send me handwritten letters. I am grateful to both of them.
Interestingly, Lie emphasizes the importance of storytelling in design. This comes across as expression of his belief that fashion must have a story to tell. When Lie first showed his “Hangeul fashion” in Paris at an exhibition commemorating the 120th anniversary of Korea-France diplomatic relations, he had a huge hit with T-shirts bearing Yun Dong-ju’s poem “Counting the Stars at Night” (Byeol heneun bam) written in Hangeul. “I found great joy in taking a brush and writing down the poems of Yun Dong-ju, Kim Sowol and Kim Nam-ju to create a pattern for fabric,” Lie says. Though it was not easy to arrange the characters into a fabric pattern, he worked through the night and created a masterpiece. His work was even described in one of the French morning newspapers. Here was the fruition of the efforts of a fashion designer who had once dreamed of writing plays. Q. Is there any point of connection between fashion design and the “creative economy,” being touted these days?
A. The two are similar in that they are both about innovation. With both the creative economy and fashion design, you cannot stand still. Though fashion is art in one respect, it must also succeed as a business. In this sense, fashion can contribute to the creative economy. These days, hallyu (Korean Wave) is a hot topic around the world and I dream of seeing Korean fashion gain the same kind of international popularity. When I went overseas recently, I realized that people overseas have high expectations for Seoul. We should stop following Paris and New York; it’s time to show the energy and power of Asia. That is to say, it is up to us to open the era of K-fashion. We should raise our goals to match our international status. My designs are popular in the Middle East and Russia. The time has come for us [designers] to bridge the generation gap and work together.
Q. What were your thoughts upon being named the first president of the Council of Fashion Designers of Korea (CFDK) last year? A. The position was almost foisted on me last year by several other designers. I’m working hard. Designers are so strongly individual that it is hard for us to group together and do something. Over the years the government has continued to urge us to form an association but we found it hard to gather. Now, however, nearly all designers in their 20s to their 80s have put aside their competitiveness for a moment and made a forum to communicate, the younger designers realizing
the lonely battle of the older designers and the older designers coming to identify with the younger designers. In step with movements in society, we will address any government requests that need to be taken up and try to do something for multicultural families and isolated members of our society. I firmly believe that the K-fashion era is around the corner. Naturally there will be difficulties, but since being appointed president of the CFDK, I have seen that there is potential and hope. We designers will not forget our mission to be cultural envoys.
Q. What are your plans for the future?
A. I will not be going overseas as often so I can concentrate on my work with the CFDK. I have been asked to stay on as president and I am thinking about it. As fashion is a field where commercial success is important I want to put all my effort into ensuring conditions where all designers can work with pride. Now seems a good time to do this. With consideration for others, we will be active in finding ways we as designers can contribute to progress in all fields of society.
When we met for this interview at his workroom in Yeoksam-dong, Lie Sang-bong was very upbeat. With his trademark bald head, black-rimmed glasses, and bushy beard, and wearing long boots, he looked like a young man in his 30s. When I asked why he looked so happy, he told me about his meeting with IMF chief Lagarde, who was currently visiting Korea. “She is an old fan of mine,” said Lie. “When I held a show in Paris, Lagarde was minister of trade and industry. She waited for two hours to see my show.” He told me about how they had met the night before for a chat at her hotel, and that she had been wearing one of his creations at the time. Moreover, when Lagarde met President Park Geun-hye, she told the president that the outfit she was wearing was the work of Lie Sang-bong. No wonder he was in a good mood.
In the middle of the room was an eye-catching modernized hanbok featuring a Rose of Sharon design against the background of the music score for the folk song “Arirang.” It seemed to speak for the designer’s efforts to seek beauty in Korean tradition.
[ December 11, 2013 ]
www.koreafocus.or.kr
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