A Geek in Korea. Daniel Tudor
The North Face (see “Always In Stokke,” right) is a very popular brand in Korea. But have you heard of this cheaper imitator, The Red Face?
Samsung headquarters (on the right), Gangnam, Seoul. There are many who dream of the chance of working here.
THE COMPETITION NEVER ENDS
Congratulations! You’ve spent your life building up great spec, and finally, you have a job with XYZ Chaebol. But your life will still be stressful, as you will work extremely long hours (the longest in the OECD), and you will still be competing for promotions at the office. Unless you are a superstar, you will be pushed out for early retirement around the age of fifty, to face an uncertain future. So in order to prolong your career as much as possible, you must continue fighting all the way. And meanwhile, your children will be under great pressure to come top of their class.
Recently, the phrase “Scandi-Mom” has done the rounds in the Korean media. This refers to a mother who pursues an apparently “Scandinavian” style of parenting—reducing pressure on her kids, and encouraging them to play more. There are also young people who are deliberately dropping out of the success track. I have several highly intelligent friends who are completely uninterested in spec, getting a job at Samsung, or even in getting married. But both they and the Scandi-Mom are very much in the minority. Competition will remain the defining characteristic of modern Korea for the foreseeable future.
Always in Stokke
Particularly for those of high social status, it is important to always be seen to be doing well. This is a big part of the reason why Korea spends five percent of GDP on luxury brands, higher than any other country. One of the more interesting trends in luxury over the past few years has been the explosive growth in popularity of Stokke baby strollers. Stokke strollers are imported from Norway, and despite performing no better than other strollers in consumer tests, their US$700–1500 price tag makes them, paradoxically, a must-have item for Gangnam mothers. All of the guys at the investment firm I used to work at have become fathers, and most of them have had to cough up for a Stokke.
In 2013, a Korean firm went one step further and even bought Stokke itself! Among teenage boys, jackets by The North Face are beyond fashionable—even though they are more expensive in Korea than in other countries. It is common to see groups of youths walking along, all wearing the same type of North Face jacket. Costly threads are important—but in a group-oriented society, there is also a demand to not stand out too much.
Your Phone Disgusts Me!
I finally caved in and bought a smartphone in December 2011. For a long time, I was alone among my friends in resisting the trend. This often exposed me to mockery. One day, I was sitting in a cafe, with my stone-age phone out on the table in front of me. A mother and her son (of about seven or eight years old) walked past, and the boy blurted out, “Ahh, yetnal phone! Hahaha!” (yetnal means “old”). He was pointing at the thing, and had a look of total disgust on his face. Yet only two years previously, my phone had been the “latest” thing!
A CLASH OF OLD AND NEW
Korea was one of the “Asian Tiger” economies, experiencing extremely impressive economic growth throughout most of the late 20th century. The driving force behind this was authoritarian President Park Chung-hee, who saw industrial development as the country’s way out of poverty. It was also a way of overcoming the sense of shame and weakness felt because of Japanese colonialism, and a means of gaining security against the threat of North Korea.
Everything related to the past had to go. Old was bad, even shameful. Thatched roofs were out and corrugated sheet metal was in as part of President Park’s “New Village Movement” (Saemaeul Undong) in the 1970s; hanoks—traditional Korean houses—were torn down and replaced with gigantic gray apartment complexes. Then when the apartment complexes started to get old, they were torn down and replaced with newer apartment complexes.
The spirit of those times still exists. Koreans tend to like anything new and exciting. Slang vocabulary changes all the time. Restaurants last for two or three years, before their owners close them down and start serving something different. A hit from last year is an “old” song.
THE NEW NOSTALGIA
Neophilia has become a default cultural setting. But the pace of change is now slowing, and people have enough in the way of material comforts. This means that it is becoming easier to look back wistfully on the past. Normally I wouldn’t consider nostalgia an especially good thing, but in the case of Korea, I think it is. The fact that hanoks are making a comeback, along with other traditional elements of Korean heritage (see next chapter), means that Koreans are getting over the sense of embarrassment they had of their history, and re-learning their love for the best aspects of the past.
It is absolutely not contradictory to own a modernized hanok, fit it up with lightning-speed broadband, and hang old minhwa paintings on its walls. In fact, you would have to be quite wealthy to do so, and people would admire your taste. It is in fact the social elite who are leading the nostalgia boom. Where the traditional was once cheap, it is now expensive. Hanoks in the Seoul district of Bukchon could have been snapped up for the low tens of thousands of dollars a few years back; today, some go for millions. A haute couture traditional hanbok dress can cost thousands.
A hanok in Bukchon. Just a few years ago, people thought hanoks were old-fashioned. Today, modernized versions like these are highly sought after.
Musical Nostalgia
There is also nostalgia for music. Bars and clubs which exclusively play old Korean pop from the 60s and 70s are springing up. Shin Joong-hyun, the most legendary Korean rock star, told me that back in the 1980s, he was considered old news. Now, in his late 70s, he is playing again in big concert halls. Younger musicians, particularly in the Hongdae art school district of Seoul, speak of him with absolute reverence.
Those who are interested in old-school Korean rock should go to the funky Gopchang Jeongol bar in Hongdae, which has literally thousands of old vinyl records. At weekends, you’ll have to wait a while to get a table. But it is worth it—the crowd there is friendly, and you’ll invariably end up meeting artists, writers, and other interesting characters. And the age range goes from about 20 to 60.
At the moment, the mainstream is still driven forward by neophilia, whilst nostalgia is the preserve of the wealthy and the arty. But trends usually start with those latter two groups. In the next ten or twenty years, I think we’ll start seeing mass construction of hanoks again, and a boom in old Korean rock memorabilia. I’m definitely keeping hold of my signed Shin Joong-hyun CD.
LOVE AND COURTSHIP IN KOREA: DATING AND MARRIAGE, KOREAN-STYLE
Korean weddings tend to be big and expensive—the bigger and more expensive, the better. I have seen Korean wedding cakes as tall as myself, and heard of bills of ten thousand dollars just for flowers. I have been to weddings where five hundred people showed up, and guests arrived by the coachload.
Why is this? In Korea, a wedding is not just a union between two people. It is one of two families tying their fortunes together. The groom’s father’s co-workers, many of whom the groom himself will not really know, will likely show up. The bride’s aunt’s friends may come along to offer congratulations. And naturally, both families want to put on a good show. A big wedding is a matter of pride.
A MARRIAGE MONEY-GO-ROUND
A clever family