Psychology of Hell Joseon

By Jason Lim

"Hell Joseon," referring to how difficult it is for a young person to live in Korea today, has been getting a lot of media exposure lately. In quoting the big data analysis firm, Daumsoft, The Korea Times reported that "Hell Joseon" was cited 101,700 times this year on Twitter and in blog posts.

Marriage, employment and dating were three life-related keywords closely associated with "Hell Joseon," which fits right into the popular cynical belief that young people from an ordinary family have to give up marriage and even dating because they can't get regular, stable jobs (as opposed to temporary part-time jobs of a menial nature) or other opportunities needed to do the things that previous generations took for granted.

More worrisome, anger, crying, and hope (lack thereof) were the closely associated emotional keywords with Hell Joseon. I am not a psychologist, but, taken altogether, it almost feels like the young people in Korea seems to be in some type of a collective anxiety and depression.

Rise in anxiety and depression among young people is not a Korea-unique phenomena. Peter Gray in Psychology Today writes that in America, "five to eight times as many high school and college students meet the criteria for diagnosis of major depression and/or anxiety disorder as was true half a century or more ago. This increased psychopathology is not the result of changed diagnostic criteria; it holds even when the measures and criteria are constant."

But what really struck me from Gray's article was his hypothesis that the increase rate of anxiety and depression stems from a decline in young people's sense of personal control over their fate. "One thing we know about anxiety and depression is that they correlate significantly with people's sense of control or lack of control over their own lives. People who believe that they are in charge of their own fate are less likely to become anxious or depressed than those who believe that they are victims of circumstances beyond their control ― the data indicate that young people's belief that they have control over their own destinies has declined sharply over the decades."

Gray's hypothesis fits right in with what's happening in Korea. Writing in the Korea Expose, Se-Woong Koo references a "Hell Joseon" map that graphically makes the case that "being born in South Korea is tantamount to entering hell, where one is immediately enslaved by a highly regulated system that dictates an entire course of life. Onerous education and service in the abusive military are the norm, and the only goal for the young is to become servants of the mighty corporations that rule the realm from its heart."

Koo further writes, "The Hell Joseon discourse embodies despair and hopelessness of the most extreme variety, the idea that the South Korean state cannot be redeemed through effort. In fact, effort ― noryeok in Korean ― is one of the most hated words in the Hell Joseon lexicon, seen as part of an insidious tactic of the ruling class to trick the population into continuing to believe that work is meaningful, mobility possible, and justice alive."

In essence, "Hell Joseon" is a collective psychopathological phenomenon with the Korean culture as the leading cause. Young people are disengaging from a culture that holds people as interchangeable commodities to be treated as paycheck–hungry shirkers who only want to do the bare minimum or robots that can be ordered to produce high-performance.

The problem is to get them to reengage with their own future by providing them with the wherewithal to do so. Unfortunately, when all you know is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Korean leadership's first reaction would be to create another bureaucratic hierarchy (hammer) to solve this "problem," probably telling the young people to suck it up and try harder since they have it easy compared to what older generation had it before. It's passive aggression by public policy.

But what Korean young people need is not another top-down solution designed by the government, but a cultural ecosystem of empowerment that allows them to self-organize in various, creative ways to networks to share information, new initiatives or innovations. Korea must encourage the development of such networks and facilitate them through communication platforms or meeting spaces that her vaunted technologies and connectivity can perhaps facilitate. Give them back a sense of control over their future.

I agree that culture and engagement can be difficult topics to tackle because they can mean different things to different people. What we do know is that organizational culture powerfully influences the performance and engagement, which, in turn, drive innovation and forward evolution. This is key to staying ahead of the competition curve and becoming a highly efficient and effective organization. In this case, the organization is the Korea. What's at stake is her future.

Jason Lim is a Washington, D.C.-based expert on innovation, leadership and organizational culture. He has been writing for The Korea Times since 2006. He can be reached at jasonlim@msn.com, facebook.com/jasonlimkoreatimes and @jasonlim2012.

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