Social mobility blocked
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By Park Yoon-bae
Deputy managing editor
Everyone knows that education was the driving force behind what Korea is today. However, it seems that education can no longer play a key role of promoting social mobility among young members of our society as it is failing to offer equal opportunities for them.
This becomes more evident as it is hard to find a success story of children from poor families who study hard, enter a prestigious college, get a well-paid job or become professionals earning a high income.
People now ask what is wrong with Korea, a model case of achieving brilliant industrialization and at the same time ushering in a functioning democracy during the second half of the 20th century. It is unprecedented for a recipient of international assistance to turn into an aid donor to help developing countries around the world.
Have we Koreans already betrayed our trademark “can do spirit” that enabled the nation to rise from the ashes of the Korean War and make the Miracle on the Han River? Or have we just become oblivious of the “rags to riches” myth?
The answer is simple: Such a myth in the industrial development stage cannot hold true anymore for Korean society as it is today. The reason is because success in life is determined by forces outside one’s control.
So more and more people, particularly from the younger generations, tend to believe that however hard they work, they cannot succeed without having rich parents and their influence on jobs and careers.
It is not surprising that young netizens have touched off a heated debate about a “spoon” class system which apparently derives from the idiomatic phrase: “Born with a silver spoon in one’s mouth.”
The netizens divide Korean society into four classes by the color of the spoons its members hold _ gold spoon, silver spoon, brass spoon and dirt spoon.
“Gold spoon” topped the list of newly coined phases college students used most frequently last year, followed by “Hell Joseon,” which was minted to describe the country as a hell-like place by using the name of the Korean kingdom toppled by Japanese colonialists.
Undoubtedly, the two phases rightly reflect the grim reality under which the rich get richer and the poor get poorer amid the widening income gap and social polarization.
The spoon class formula implies how frustrated and hopeless young Koreans have become because they believe that their destiny is determined not by their own competence and efforts but by their parents’ wealth and social status.
The country’s extremely competitive education system could be held accountable for blocking young adults from climbing the social ladder. It is a sad irony that education _ once a key element for economic growth and the development of democracy _ now stands in the way of social mobility.
Regrettably, education has contributed to transferring one’s wealth and social status to his or her children. If children are born with gold or silver spoons in their mouths, they can enjoy better educational opportunities as their parents spend huge sums of money on private tutoring to help them enter prestigious universities.
After graduation, children of wealthy families are in favorable positions to get better paying jobs at large companies or become professionals such as bankers, lawyers, doctors or professors.
On the other hand, children born with brass or dirt spoons have a little or no chance of having private lessons to prepare them for the college entrance exam. Thus few of them can enter top-notch universities, making it difficult for them to find decent jobs and forcing them to inherit their parents’ poverty.
In a nutshell, the younger generation has a gloomy future as social mobility is increasingly blocked amid deepening inequality in education, employment and income.
A report released by the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs last month said that Koreans in their 20s, 30s and 40s are finding it more difficult to move up the social ladder than those in their 50s and 60s.
In fact, the income gap and economic inequality have continued to widen since the nation was hit hard by the 1997 Asian financial crisis. If this trend continues, Korea cannot sustain its economic growth and move toward a better future.
Therefore the nation needs to initiate reforms to enhance public education and provide equal educational opportunities for all students regardless of their family backgrounds. It should also revamp the labor market to create more jobs for young people.
More than anything else, the government must push for “economic democratization” to ensure an equal share of the economic pie for all players, and promote social mobility.