'Korean society crumbling under internal conflicts'

By Choi Sung-jin

“The source of most serious conflicts in our society is the gap between the rich and poor. The social disharmony and discontent resulting from the widening gap of wealth have reached a boiling point, driving Korea into a ‘society of pent-up rancor.’”

This is part of the shocking results of a recent study that concluded conflict aspects in Korea have reached so dangerous a level as to destroy the country’s social foundation.

The research team made the report based on in-depth interviews of 105 people, at the request of a presidential panel for national integration.

“Anxiety, competition and fatigue, which represent conflicts accumulated in the Korean society, are going to extremes in the form of severance, grudge and antipathy,” the report said. “Unless the nation manages to control conflicts among different income brackets, it could proceed toward the level that tears down the Korean society.”

Asked what they think of the “bbaek” – a modified pronunciation of back, the short for background, meaning personal connection or patron – most respondents, men and women, said “bbaek” gives off a strong halo effect to social accomplishment of individuals.

Particularly, male respondents said they witnessed the existence of “bbaek” from the moment they entered companies. “Most of us joined this company through open recruitment but a colleague with ‘bbaek’ entered it separately,” one interviewee said. “Small firms cannot supply their goods to large companies if they don’t have a ‘bbaek,’” another said.

They said the rich-poor gap has grown so wide as to eliminate the middle class, leaving only upper and lower classes. There were only negative replies, such as “The haves continue to prosper while the have-nots keep shrinking away.”

Through detailed interviews, the research team classified social conflicts in Korea into eight progressing aspects: from anxiety to obsession, from competition to struggle, from fatigue to exhaustion, from frustration to abandonment, from difference to severance, from discontent to grudge, from distrust to rancor, and from conflict to punishment. Academics and journalists here have used euphemistic expressions but the report said the reality is falling into an extreme trauma.

“Social anxiety is a universal phenomenon but nowhere else is its aspect more serious than in Korea, where all people compete in a single track,” it said.

“Young people, in particular, are faced with a situation in which they have no other choices but to continue their consumptive struggle just to survive, although they cannot expect much outcome from them,” said Kim Mun-jo, professor emeritus at the Korea University. “As the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and it gets more difficult for ordinary people to succeed however hard they may try, young people give up their dreams to succeed.”

As the foremost solution to dissolve dangerous social conflicts, the research team called for creating more jobs.

More specifically, the government needs to reduce work hours by half and help people improve their quality of life, the report said. “The government and businesses then start to hire new manpower to make up for the reduced work hours, by introducing a ‘semi or quasi-regular employee’ system,” it said.