Drugs and Korea

Courtesy of Matthew MacQuarrie

 

We’ve seen a great coming together of cultures over the last few decades. Western music has reached all over the globe and, more recently, we’ve seen huge parts of the world gripped by K-fever. There is now also a form of universality to our appearance. But while we might all wear hoodies, listen to pop music, be into Y2K vibes, and have coffee and bagels in our diet, while we might watch the same videos, laugh at the same memes, and contemplate the latest trends on TikTok and Insta, there are still certain things that divide us. Because no matter how close we might seem, particularly Korea and "West," there’s still one thing that separates us: attitudes towards drugs.

Drugs

Drug control is not science but history, culture, political interests, and public sentiment. That’s why each country and each case is different. There is no right answer but rather a series of right answers. Many Asian governments, for example, have typically viewed any drug use as a criminal issue. There is also the influence of history. While the Opium Wars are little more than a fading memory in Britain, China has not forgotten the humiliation that demonstrated the hollowness of its hold on Asia and subsequent "century of humiliation" that saw with the torching of Yuanmingyuan by British and French troops.

Starting in the 1970s, countries ranging from Singapore to Vietnam created criminal codes with low thresholds for executing traffickers, dealers, and users. In the Philippines, it has been reported that 12,000 suspected drug users and dealers, mostly from poor families, were killed in 2016 and 2017 during Rodrigo Duterte’s "drug war." Yet, evidence that executions serve to deter drug use or crimes in Asia (or anywhere else) is virtually nonexistent. Thus, Thailand has experimented with drug legalization and a shift to preventative rehabilitation. In April this year, Malaysia removed a 34-year-old mandatory requirement for death penalties in drug cases and began a long-term program to focus on rehabilitation.

K-mayak

Korea’s own big clampdown on drug use during the 1970s when President Park Chung-hee outlawed marijuana in his fight against communism. The plant (known locally as daemacho) grows naturally in the east coast of the country and had long been part of the traditional culture, used for making hanbok, as digestive medicine, and also because of its size, protecting houses against the annual influx of yellow dust coming from the Gobi Desert. Those here before me say that in the 1960s, if you were taking a bus out in the countryside, you could just reach out the window and grab a handful of the stuff and put it in your bag. The historian Max Hastings wrote in his book on the Korean War that North Korean soldiers simply couldn’t understand why their British and American prisoners of war spent each night laughing and singing together. They were meant to be scared, to be fearful. What the North Koreans hadn’t accounted for however, was that they were keeping the soldiers hostage in areas surrounded by hemp plants and the captives were smoking this. Obviously, it wasn’t the high-grade hydroponic stuff you will find in Amsterdam or Colorado today, but it was there nonetheless. Until it wasn’t.

South Korea has long faced an existential threat. It did not ask for there to be heavily armed people in a Stalinist state just across the border who believe that this land belongs to them. Frequent incursions, assassination attempts, and Pyongyang’s efforts to create a fifth column were part of the fuel for President Park to become increasingly paranoid and turn South Korea into a giant army base with daily curfews, morning exercise routines for civilians, rules on haircuts and dress lengths, and rules on what culture and art could be made. A lot of musicians thus found themselves in jail on drug charges, most notably one of the country’s biggest stars: Shin Joong-hyun. Beyond geopolitics, rumors abound that it wasn’t a fear of communism that made President Park so anti-drugs but rather the alleged revelation that his own son had partaken in it.

Drugs today

Where parts of the West now approach conversations around drugs through a framework of addiction and rehabilitation, drugs here are seen through the lens of law and punishment. Any association with drugs can spell the end of a person’s career. There is also little in the way of differentiation about drugs. Today, when stories about drugs appear on the news, they will mostly just use the word “mayak” (drug). So, when you ask someone what drug the celebrity supposedly used, the answer will not readily differentiate between heroin, LSD, or marijuana. It is all simply described with the same word. For many of us, there seems to be an instinctive difference between a person abusing heroin, taking ecstasy at a party, or smoking an occasional joint at home. Not in Korea, however. General conversation and official reports do not describe classifications between class A and class C drugs, for example. The news generally reports about them all in the same manner.

It's hard to imagine figures like Paul McCartney, Justin Bieber, Doja Cat, or Travis Scott facing the huge social backlash we see for Korean celebrities. While in the West, we often tend to romanticize the troubled artistic geniuses and their experiments with consciousness and states of mind, Korea has a completely different approach to such issues.

Celebrities here are held to different standards in terms of freedom. While in the West, the more fame one gets, the more freedom one often has in terms of behavior and values, in Korea there is a negative correlation between fame and freedom. The more fame one gets, the less freedom one has. Essentially, a celebrity becomes a daepyo – a representative of the nation. The unspoken agreement is that they can have money, fame, and prestige, but they must live a clean life to uphold the reputation of the country.

South Korea has historically been in a legitimacy battle with North Korea over who is the real Korea. Pyongyang has long dominated news and media around the world because of its eccentric leaders, seemingly closed-off and "exotic" state, and its bellicose rhetoric about destroying Seoul and using nuclear weapons. For a long time, therefore the most famous Korean was always the leader of North Korea. South Korea was sadly largely forgotten. But about ten years ago, South Korea's star began to shine with films, games, music, and football players. The narrative shifted. This is one of the reasons why hallyu is so important to the country. It’s also why the celebrities are held to such standards of purity. This is not necessarily about their personal wishes or individual desires. It’s about promoting the image and, therefore, the history and legitimacy of the country. Korean citizens believe that celebrities are not working for themselves but rather "uri nara" (our country).

Order and the future

There is also a desire to create a sense of order in the country. This is a place where everything generally works. The hospitals, the subway systems, the unmanned convenience stores, the free exercise equipment in the park. This is not San Francisco. Obviously the two examples are extreme but, by and large, the people of this country generally seem to know which side of that debate they prefer. It’s also interesting to note that even largely progressive Korean figures will take a very negative approach to any drug use. It’s not a political debate. It’s really not a debate at all, to be honest.

And no celebrities have done a Paul McCartney and come out and said, “Come on now. I smoked a joint in my bedroom and wrote a poem about peace while others were out there on cigarettes and alcohol getting into all sorts of trouble.” Anybody that faces such allegations or charges here will be completely repentant, offer apologies, bow profusely while dressed in black, and promise to reflect on their behavior and the shame they have brought to those around them. There is little in the way of possible redemption and the narrative does not focus on addiction and rehabilitation. The call is for crime and punishment.

While to some this will sound strange and to others it will sound appropriate, it’s important to reiterate a point made at the start of this piece: Drug control is not science but history, culture, political interests, and public sentiment. Korea has its own history, culture, and people. It therefore has its own approach to drug control that will be unlike other countries, particularly those in the West. Just as Korean language, music, economics, politics, and society have all changed, so too will its conversation around drugs and celebrities. But it should always be understood in a Korean framework cognizant of its own history and culture.

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.