Watching smartphones and their children in Seoul

By Emanuel Pastreich

The young people walking in the streets in Seoul retain their vitality in the midst of an increasingly gloomy economy. I see them smiling as they talk excitedly at cafes, and I am impressed by the aesthetic sensibility they show in their dress. They have their unique expressions (many of which are incomprehensible to me) they employ when talking about recent films, or songs, or blog postings. They have created a vibrant culture via their smartphones, where they are exchanging postings with friends day and night.

Yet I occasionally catch a glimpse of a deep sadness in their faces, a frustration with how the images in the media that they have encountered since childhood push them to define their lives in terms of consumption of goods, or in terms of their appearance relative to others. This system for creating insecurity as a means of forcing youth to purchase set products has rendered Korean culture a desert at the same time that cultural production is increasingly animated.

For all the talk of K-pop, the situation getting worse. The art they are exposed to does not leave much room for personal expression and increasingly there is no room for reflection on the reality faced by youth.

Tragically, the frustrations that youth face they cannot articulate. They are force-fed a culture that makes the consumption of goods the highest value, and perhaps even the only topic considered worth discussing. They wander the streets projecting on to bubble tea and cell phone accessories a deep need for substance and for meaning in their lives.

But the collapse of education in Korea over the past two decades means that many have never been taught how to think for themselves. Conforming to the norms projected by for-profit corporations through television, music and the short videos by which they are bombarded from a young age, they have trouble identifying causes that are not immediately visible. Few conversations are about what is actually taking place in Korean society ― with a few notable exceptions.

The center of the crisis for youth is the rise of the smartphone, a device that encourages distraction, a deficit of concentration and a breakdown of social bonding. Now that smartphones are being introduced into our lives from infancy, they have ceased to be a convenience and are becoming something akin to a god, the Wizard of Oz.

The true crisis in Korea today is the decay of politics. That decay starts with the smartphone and ends with it. Young people could organize and create their own culture, offer up an alternative to the status quo presented by an aging elite, but they cannot do so easily because of the smartphone that distracts them.

That sets today's youth apart from those who arose to demand change against the corruption of Syngman Rhee or against Park Chung-hee in the 1970s or against Chun Duhwan in the 1980s. There is a lack of discussion about philosophy among youth, whereas once literature, history and philosophy were extremely popular majors for those in the student movements.

But politics without philosophy is like a hamburger without meat. It will always disappoint and will never satisfy.

But, you might object, there was the “candlelight revolution” in 2017 that showed how democratic Korea is and how active are its youth. There can be no doubt that the disgust with the corruption surrounding Park was real, and justified. I fully understand how it crystallized around the sinking of the Sewol Ferry. But much of the response was driven by images and emotions, and it was focused on Park. It was assumed that the opposition party was somehow an alternative and there was almost no discussion of the impact of global capital or of technology on the systematic corruption beneath the surface.

But that candlelight revolution is ancient history today.

We see an unprecedented breakdown in Korean society, whether the takeover of the economy by global finance, the closing down of family owned businesses that do not have access to that finance, the build-up for war with China by the United States military, the collapse of the birthrate, the rise of poverty, and of course the lack of a systematic response to climate change, which will have a catastrophic impact on Korea.

These problems do not stem from the smartphone, but the lack of a systematic response by youth to this crisis does. The first step is for youth to form small groups to talk about what they think the world should be and then to act on those ideas.

That does not guarantee the ideas or the approach is entirely correct, but it does assure action. The changes that took place in Korean society so far all started from such small groups. These days, we find that whether the candlelight revolution, or the #MeToo movement, or the recent boycott on Japanese goods, these ideas do not come up from thoughtful youth gathering in cafes, but are rather fed to citizens from above using prepackaged images, and carefully prepared posters that are distributed at protests.

It is time for young people to take back the initiative and create their own solutions, rather than being given movements packaged by third parties and fed to them through smartphone apps.