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In a recent survey, university students chose firefighters and street sweepers as the people they respect most.
Teachers and others were included, but not one of the 600 people polled said they respected politicians.
The cynic in me wonders how honest the respondents were being, not about the politicians but about the street-sweepers. I wonder if, like the crafty candidate trying to convince his rivals that the job they're all waiting to be interviewed for doesn't pay much, they weren't trying to hold up other jobs as more desirable. ("I'm trying for this position but I don't really want it. Who wants to work for Samsung anyway?" he's saying. "I always wanted to be the guy on security in the lobby.")
But let's take the survey, conducted by Albamon, a site for part-time job-seekers, and reported in this newspaper last week, at face value.
The result is quite remarkable. Note that the poll was not asking what jobs the respondent would like to do, but whose jobs they thought were undervalued and who deserved their respect.
It's hard to imagine the parents of today's students even sparing a thought for the street-sweeper or the firefighter, unless it's to cross themselves and mutter, "There but for the grace of God and my own obsessive dedication goes my son."
But young people have grown up watching different movies and they think differently. They may have qualifications from posh schools, but it seems they can empathize with people who don't.
If this is true and students truly respect people in jobs that require lower educational qualifications than theirs, it means they have upended that status pole, its rungs vertically ordered by profession, that has existed in the Korean psyche since Adam and Eve (the "v" is silent).
That's no small thing. It's a sign that we have become a post-industrial society, that the democratic environment is leveling us out.
But this isn't a total good. Disrespect for politicians is quite normal in a democracy, but it is unfortunate. Not just because politicians need popular backing to lead well. But also because dislike and mistrust of democracy's typically cautious and PR-conscious lawmakers makes us vulnerable to the rule-breaking type of leader who is popular, as we are now seeing in the American presidential election, for the shallow reason that he is entertainingly different.
What is it about politicians that makes us want to throw our ramyeon at the TV screen?
For the vast majority, this is a gut thing. It begins with the would-be politician's motives. The very reason that human beings love democracy and the reason that eventually the whole world will be democratic is that we are wired to flourish and cannot do so if we are over-controlled.
But people who head for careers in politics, on the other hand, often do so out of a psychological need to control people.
Such people discover, early on in life, I'm guessing somewhere between middle school and university, a skill that allows them to do this, be it physical strength, oratory or personality. Given this mental make-up, it is healthy to treat anyone who would be a politician with suspicion.
Once they're elected, we dislike them even more because, out of their need to keep getting re-elected, they act as if they're not really getting off on controlling us. But we know better.
The politician should learn from the firefighter. Why do students respect them? For the politician, firefighters may just be those annoying lower-status people who think they can switch on the siren and go through red lights like politicians could in the good old days.
But displays of power do not engender respect. The reason they are admired is because they risk their lives to protect ours.
This is what we need from politicians. They should be trained, like firemen. And tested. Every so often, someone should role a fake grenade into the sub-committee meeting room of the National Assembly and see which lawmaker dives on it to save everyone else, and who pushes someone else on it to save himself.
When they see the CCTV images on TV, they'll soon learn what they have to do to gain respect.
Michael Breen is the CEO of Insight Communications Consultants, a public relations company, and author of "The Koreans" and "Kim Jong-il: North Korea's Dear Leader."
