By Michael Breen

Koreans are a successful people whose G-20 economy is internationally recognized as advanced.

But are they happy? Not according to a satisfaction with life index produced by a British social psychologist. Koreans rank 102nd out of 178.

Nor according to the Happy Planet Index, which surveys for life satisfaction and life expectancy, as well as measuring green practices to gauge how satisfied the planet is with us. In this list, Koreans are in 68th place.

Why, it is reasonable to ask, if the purpose of life is happiness, do we in Korea not measure national success by this instead of in GDP terms?

Is it because advanced countries judge their performance by GDP, and we just follow? If so, why? Because they're a miserable bunch. Only one, Canada, is in the top 20 of the life satisfaction countries, and only five (Argentina, Brazil, China, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia) are in the index's top 20.

Or is it because political leaders are alpha males and GDP a more masculine pursuit than happiness?

No, there are other reasons national performance is not measured by the happiness of citizens. One is that countries, including Korea, have too many people. (With 33 million, Canada has the largest population of the top 10 in the life satisfaction index). As a consequence, leaders view the citizenry as a mass. They don't know many of us personally. Thus they focus on our vote, not our life.

They think we will be happy and vote for them if they work hard to create jobs and make the country increasingly respected in the world. But each election proves them wrong. They seek expert advice from pollsters and political scientists, but one party always gets it wrong. The Democratic Party in the last presidential election, for example, was so out of touch that it thought that North Korea policy was important to us.

Another consequence is that the goal-setters and achievers who become our leaders set themselves greater national goals and marshal us, like sheep into a pen, in the direction of their ambition. In other words, we serve to give leaders meaning, purpose and satisfaction in their lives.

Koreans have been lucky in modern history because leaders have worked for the country, not just for themselves, but because of this idea that people exist for the state, and not the other way round, progress has been marred by suffering and abuse.

The other reason we do not do well in the happiness lists is that we have the wrong idea of happiness. There is a tendency in Korea to believe that collective national identity is the virtuous alternative to the chaos of selfishness.

But human beings are individuals first. Nationalism and other forms of group thinking that deny individualism may create harmony. But they do not create happiness. A happy nation is a group of fulfilled individuals, not a group of individuals who have sacrificed their happiness by living according to the dictates of others.

The other wrong idea is the money makes us happy. Research shows that this is true to a point. If you are struggling to take care of your family on one million won a month, you will indeed be overjoyed if your salary increases to five million won. But after a certain point, wealth does not increase happiness.

That is because material goods have only a short-lived positive effect on happiness. When your salary increases, your material aspirations rapidly adjust upwards and you soon find new reasons to be unhappy.

That is because human beings seek meaning from material things, not the things themselves. As shallow as it sounds, many people find affirmation simply in being better off than others. (Thus, a businessman flying first class may walk off a flight with a skip in his step like a schoolboy who has made the football team. Until that is, he walks into the meeting with private equity fund managers who are chatting about their private jets.)

Given all this, we need to accept that as individuals we are responsible for our own happiness. The role of government is not to create happiness, but to provide an environment that allows residents to live satisfied lives.

Michael Breen is an author, former foreign correspondent and the chairman of Insight Communications, a public relations consulting company. He can be reached at mike.breen@insightcomms.com.