Greetings,
Firstly, I’d like to apologise that this post may be lacking in focus since it relates to a few different things I’ve been thinking about. Secondly, I’d like to say I am a foreigner, born and living in England (though soon moving to Wales) – I’ve not set foot in Asia, let alone Korea.
A lot of my travels have been within Western Europe as a whole, and I think that it is perhaps this lack of personal experience, that leads me to wonder about such things and to let my imagination wander a bit.
I’d like to hear from Koreans about what life is actually like, and how people cope (or if there is no need to cope because life is fine), since I will outline what I hear about from the outside perspective
My personal experience with ‘Korea’ really come down to eating Samyang Noodles, and my ownership of Samsung Galaxy phones (and buds & ring) and before that LG Phones.
Whereas a lot of my knowledge is just based on curiosity and Googling, and what I find out paints a bleak picture:
– S Korea seems built around its capital more than other countries I can compare it to. I read elsewhere on this subreddit that if you include the metro area of Seoul there is 26 million people living there of the 51 million population. I have read it is expensive to live there and that people live in very small flats/studios. For my foreign perspective we talk a lot about London dominating but that is 9 million of the 68 million, which it is’t really so much compared to Korea.
– Children and teenagers having seemingly no life outside of studying, people stuck in cram schools and having immense pressure put on them by their parents, which seems to positively correlate with the suicide rates. Whole life built around the study, then the university, then the big company, and anything less is seen as a failure.
– Low birth rates causing a lot of concerns around sustainability of the economy & burden of care for the older population.
– Brutal work culture with long hours leading to burnout and health issues, even death 과로사 (?), I’ve read in some threads here of people working 14 hour days, that combined with some companies effectively forcing social gatherings after work (회식?) must be crazy.
– Obsession with appearance, I have read that 1/3 women have got plastic surgery, and that beauty products / surgery is also popular with men. I read about eyelid surgery as well…
– Government effectively in the big companies pocket, meaning that it is difficult for things to change. I don’t want to make this a political post though, since I really am asking to understand how life could really be.
– Of course I hear about k-drama and k-pop, but to be honest this hasn’t really caught my personal interest but I know these are popular outside Korea.
So I take all this in and I come away with many questions and thoughts.
Is this true or am I getting a skewed perspective on things?
I think about my own life, and how it has been and my struggles, then I think of what life could be like over there and I wonder ‘how do people deal with this?’, ‘is it simply that you get used to it’?, ‘am I looking at things from a position of ignorance/privilege or whatever?’ ‘or is it a failing of my personal and/or national character?’
So in any case… I would invite Koreans to respond and share what life is like for them, how much leisure time there is, drinking culture, just anything really.
Give me a perspective on your life and experiences and perspectives, away from all my internet Googling and stuff, cus I think hearing only from documentaries, reports, news articles etc separates understanding from real actual people. It’s also made difficult when people are not wanting to be honest about things.
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