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A Korean War veteran I interviewed told me a grim but compelling tale.
In the darkest days of the struggle ― that pitiless winter of 1950/51when U.N. forces were routed in the North, and vengeful communist troops were storming South ― he was manning a checkpoint sited in the middle of a blasted warscape. Winter winds howled. Thousands of desperate refugees waited to pass through.
Among them was a boy in his early teens. Alone, he had no parent, guardian or companion; he was one of the countless war orphans tossed together in that tragic human flotsam. And he had had only one arm; the other was a stump, roughly bandaged with a bloody rag. But despite his agony and despair, he neither cried nor moaned.
Half a century later, the veteran recalled how deeply impressed he was by that nameless boy's courage.
A few years ago, a U.S. newspaper ran an editorial by a Korean-American regarding the execution of a South Korean by Islamic militants. Before his murder, in front of the terrorists' video cameras, the man screamed and begged for his life. The editorialist was appalled, asserting that "we" ― by which she meant "Koreans" ― "are stoic people."
I think she was wrong. If she was talking about the Koreans of the 1950s-70s, she would have been right; but times, and the national character, have changed. The inner core of the Korean people is not as steely as it once was.
A nation once noted for its stoic acceptance of adversity has become a land of hand wringers. This was evident in the hysterical over-reaction to MERS.
It was plainly obvious from early on in the "crisis" that the only endangered persons were those who had visited affected hospitals; almost exclusively the old and (already) sick. Among Korea's 50 million people, just 33 have died.
Such data did nothing to dampen the public's fear. The consumer, tourism and leisure economies, already shaky, were sledge-hammered. The government has been forced to flood the economy with $10 billion ― $10 billion, dammit! ― of taxpayers' money.
What lies behind the national trouser-wetting?
Many blame the media for fear-mongering. I don't. A key media trope is ''No news is good news" hence its opposite corollary, "Only bad news is news." Educated people are aware of this when they open their newspapers or switch on their TVs and Koreans are sophisticated enough to filter mainstream media through their own perspectives. They can also dilute it with a multiplicity of non-traditional media outlets; the problem is that the amateur, online media is even more hysterical.
And there is a bigger issue: The massive emphasis in Korean society on emoting.
Two generations ago, most Koreans were peasants. In that harsh, rural culture, it was a given that geographical/seasonal realities would cause hardships. Infant mortality, disease, poverty and associated grief were normal events, not exceptions. Stoic acceptance of fate, rather than emotional reaction to it, was the norm.
Today's Korea is a rich, middle-class nation of consumers and nuclear families with longer lifespans and low mortalities. This has impacted their outlook on life, death, health and hardship.
Moreover, I have written previously on the transformation of the Korean male from 1980s macho to millennial metrosexual. Could this be partly behind the current dearth of manliness? Perhaps, though I know of no data that correlates fashion with courage.
What is clearer is the encouragement of Koreans in various forms of public discourse to indulge in their emotions. The biggest compliment that can paid be is not 'He/she is expert" or ''He/she is dedicated" but ''He/she is passionate."
And in popular culture, melodrama is all ― from comedy to soap opera to K-pop. Roaring laughter! Shock horror! Shrieks and tears!
One side effect has been the creation of ''powerful victims:" Anyone wronged claims an emotional moral high ground that cannot be debated, be they a colonial-era martyr, a laid-off unionist or the relative of a victim who drowned during the sinking of the ferry Sewol.
End result: The stoic is not an admired figure in popular culture, nor is the calculating rationalist prominent among opinion leaders. Meanwhile, compelled by emotion, the public overreacts to disasters, be they the sinking of a ferry or an outbreak of flu.
Henceforth, I would like to see opinion leaders take a more rational approach toward calibrating and communicating national risks. Inevitably, that would require dousing the searing native temperature with an icy dash of rationality. Unfortunately, in Korea's volcanic emotive climate, I doubt that would be effective.
Andrew Salmon is a Seoul-based reporter and author. Reach him at andrewcsalmon@yahoo.co.uk.
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