Korea is antifragile

Courtesy of Daniel Bernard

 

Modern society and the online world present us with many success stories. Yet we generally only see the aftermath of this success. We see the tree reaching to the sky, but the roots that made the growth possible remain invisible. Let me start with a story of personal failure.

During my Masters in Asian Studies, I was fascinated with the traditional philosophies and religions of the region. And while the various Buddhist sects and Confucian debates were all interesting, it was Taoism that gripped me. I quite simply couldn’t get enough of it. Reading everything I could, and then trying to apply concepts like “wu-wei” in my day-to-day life. When it came time to sit my comprehensive exams before writing my dissertation, I passed them all with ease and was left with only a 3-hour paper to write on Taoism. I needed 60 to pass, but failure never crossed my mind. Having finished the test, I had a sense that not only was the work likely to receive a phenomenal score, it should probably be published in a journal somewhere, such was my confidence. Imagine my surprise then when my Professor, Choi Chi-won, gave me a score of 59. I was angry. Adamant that corruption was at play. Determined to take this matter to the highest possible governing body. My progress was being delayed. I would have to spend another semester (6 months) just to take this one exam again.

I eventually calmed down, though it took a long time. Moreover, I did not make my anger or feelings public. I seethed internally until I was able to finally sit the exam again and pass it. It was only years later, doing my PhD, that I realized how important that failure was to me. How it made me try to be a better scholar, a humbler person, and make sure I was reading everything I could. My social media life was filled with successes and graduations, media appearances, and awards. Yet it was that one failure that shaped me more than anything. A failure that went largely unseen amidst the selfies. A year ago, Professor Choi said to me, “David, sometimes the medicine that is most useful to us tastes the most bitter.” Could he be any more Korean!

Antifragile

This idea that we are shaped by our failures, that they make us stronger, and play a pivotal role in our development was understood by me at a practical level. I didn’t learn it from a book. It was a life lesson. Since then, I’ve encouraged my students to fail. To embrace the possibility. To see it as a learning experience. And then I read about it in a book: Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s “Antifragile”. I came to realize that these ideas not only reflected my own journey but also some of Korea’s.

To try and explain Taleb’s concept, imagine you are sending a vase or a plate to someone. You wrap it up, put it in a box, and then write fragile on the top. You do this because pressure or extreme situations will cause the thing to break. This is what makes it fragile. But what is the opposite of that? If you think it is merely something able to survive or withstand pressure, you have not grasped it yet. To be antifragile is to actually get better when faced with pressure and extreme situations. To thrive when experiencing stress. You put the sword into the fire to make it stronger. While some people talk of post-traumatic stress, a different perspective is to think of post-traumatic growth. Necessity becomes the mother of invention and poverty makes experiences.

Korea experienced great calamity during the 20th century. Colonization, a devastating civil war, military dictatorships, uprisings and rebellions, poverty, and much more. And today? While certainly not perfect it has achieved things that people in their wildest dreams could never have imagined. It’s often my job to explain this success to people. Maybe I now need to consider that Korean people have thrived because they suffered so much. That the Korean people arguably do best when they are shaken. That is true antifragility. Maybe Korea didn’t succeed despite its suffering and trauma, it succeeded because of its suffering and trauma.

Of course, this will not be applicable to every country and every experience. Not everyone is antifragile. Some people and things are clearly fragile. They crack under pressure. They run from the fight. Korea, however, possesses a degree of durability that is remarkable. The author and creator Mark Manson recently uploaded a new documentary on YouTube exploring modern Korean life and the effects of Capitalism and Confucianism. It’s well worth a watch despite the title being rather clickbaity, (I Traveled to the Most Depressed Country in the World). Nevertheless, while highlighting the various weights under which Korean people suffer, Manson came to a similar conclusion: It’s not the incredible economic growth or the new-found pop culture dominance, but rather there’s a resilience here that is rare and special in the world. Koreans always find a way. Whether it’s surviving a century of occupation and war or willing themselves to economic and cultural excellence in the face of annihilation, they always find a way.

Inventing the Past

Geniuses invent their predecessors. For if the genius doesn’t become important, people don’t care about those who trained and raised them. When somebody or something shines bright, we trace their path backwards looking for influence and narrative. The same is true here. The Korean people could have been forgotten. Their history and culture relegated to a global backwater and ignored. Yet because of everything they have achieved, we now remember more fondly those that helped the country get here. Those that, despite the failures or hardships, endured. Because the tree grows so majestically, we discover the roots. Maybe this is the new narrative of Korea worth exploring. That it succeeded because of its hardships, not despite them?

And just think, I wrote all of this without mentioning the Le Sserrafim song once…ah damn!

Dr. David A. Tizzard (datizzard@swu.ac.kr) has a Ph.D. in Korean Studies and lectures at Seoul Women's University and Hanyang University. He is a social-cultural commentator and musician who has lived in Korea for nearly two decades. He is also the host of the "Korea Deconstructed" podcast, which can be found online.