David Tizzard is a professor at Seoul Women’s University, holds a PhD in Korean Studies, and hosts the Korea Deconstructed podcast. He has lived and worked in Seoul for more than two decades. Reach him at datizzard@swu.ac.kr.
Your eyes suck!
By David Tizzard
By David A. Tizzard
Charles Cooley has a marvelous quote about the sociological nature of how our identities are formed: “I am not who I think I am. I am not who you think I am. I am who I think you think I am.”
Read it again if you need to make sure you understand it because it's the main idea of this piece. I am talking about how the way in which we perceive the people around us can actually affect them as well as their behaviors and personalities.
In a hippy-ish kinda way, it's saying that our eyes don't take reality inwards. Rather they project reality outwards. We don't see the world through our eyes; we create it.
I mention the topic because a few days ago I posted the questions set for my Politics students at Hanyang University on Facebook.
There were eight very open-ended questions about global and domestic politics and my students had 3 hours to complete four of them. It was an open-book exam so they could use laptops, smartphones, and all the other trappings of the modern world.
However, some of my more aged friends suggested that such a test was not really worth it because it required critical thinking and the Korean education system does not, generally, or at least traditionally, provide for such modes of thought and lateral thinking.
Certainly this was true for much of the 70s, 80s, 90s, and even the 00s. But how true is it now?
The current generation are raised on Netflix.
Seriously.
That seems to be the number one hobby among the majority of my undergrads across two different universities.
And while there are those that will obviously scoff at the idea and mumble under their breath how kids are becoming zombies, I fear they are not really understanding what's going on.
Before, we were subject to what was provided on mainstream television. We couldn't watch what “we” wanted to. We watched what “they” wanted “us” to watch.
That's why a decade or so ago, if you asked Koreans what tv shows they were into, they would most likely say Friends.
There's nothing particularly wrong with Friends. Had some great storylines and it was the sitcom of a generation for some. But it wasn't particularly challenging. It was bubble-gum pop presented by beautiful white-teethed people.
And thus society looked up to and craved that image.
Netflix is far weirder though.
Some of the programs students are now watching would either make your brain melt or your grandparents blush. Everything is there.
As part of the comparative politics discussion we briefly discussed the creators' of South Park's hilarious refusal to back down to Chinese economic imperialism. And all the students got it.
I was speaking their language.
I have also received emails from students applauding me for my use of Big Shaq's famous maxim: Two plus two is four, minus one that's three, quick maths.”
Imagine that. They actually took time to send out an email saying that they'd never had a university lecture before (let alone a politics one) in which Big Shaq is held up as a reference.
To be clear, while there is an element of a humble-brag in the above, I'm not trying to show how cool and down with the kids I am ― I'm clearly missing a great many things. And I've got a few too many white hairs.
I'm just trying to say you have to speak their language sometimes. You have to know how their world works. How “they” see the world. What their world actually is.
It's very easy to cast them as uncritical and semi-autonomous, blinded by technology and the glitz and glamour of dollified, glitter strewn K-pop idols.
But that, I think, would be more a projection of how “you” see them rather than how “they” see the world.
That's what needs to change. The old stereotypes ― perhaps partly true at the time ― have to give way to a new reality.
Not just because it's new and progressive. That would be silly.
It has to give way, and this is important, only if and when the actual reality changes.
In that sense, materialism has, by and large, given way to post-materialism in South Korea.
When I first arrived, people would often ask me, “Have you eaten?”
Shocked, I would often reply by saying I had eaten some “donkkas” or something ― for as a new arrival that was the one thing I could really get behind on a regular basis.
However, it was only later that I discovered the people weren't really enquiring about what I had eaten. They were seeing if I was okay. That was just how you used to ask people in the past because food used to be so scare.
The disappearance of that expression says a lot about the development of this society. It has been replaced by neologisms such as “sa-ba-sa” ― meaning, “It differs from person to person”.
Now, there is no right answer all the time. Age or rank is not the determining factor.
People have their own opinions. They watch their own tv shows. They eat what they want for lunch ― often by themselves ― rather than being duped into nodding in acquiescence to their elder “brother” or “sister”.
While the economy is far from perfect, they have their iPads, nice clothes, a warm bed. And more importantly, they don't fear the double-denimed police knocking on their doors and taking away their relatives.
This shift to a post-material world has them more interested in values: A contributing factor in the rise in focus on justice, feminism, gapjil, and the environment.
Michael Breen wrote of the “New Koreans” in 2017 that they were now fed-up of being kicked. Fed up of being no-one. Fed-up of being gapjilled. And he was right.
But now they are not simply resisting. They are creating. And they are doing it individually ― as far as that is possible in such a world.
Perhaps when we learn to see them like that, as they see themselves, we will be helping to open more and more doors for this once impossible country.
Perhaps.
I guess it depends how you see it.
David Tizzard (datizzard@swu.ac.kr) is an assistant professor at Seoul Women's University. He also presents economic and cultural issues on Business Now on TBS eFM (101.3FM) live every Wednesday evening from 6:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. His band Tampas Dusk are playing tonight at Pet Sounds in Kyungnidan from 8pm."