The Korean Dream/Myth

By Deauwand Myers

China's President Xi will make a splash soon in his first state visit to America. Of course, as often is the case, some of journalists covering China and previewing Xi's visit are rather ethnocentric and Eurocentric in their views of Asia.

They think Xi's vision of the "Chinese Dream" is a reinterpretation of the American Dream. As with Korea, China has had a kind of national vision of a successful society thousands of years ago, long before there was a United States of America, long before the English language, in fact. Harmony, with the state as its center, is a good, albeit simplistic, encapsulation of Xi's view of the Chinese Dream.

Korean society often places the whole above the individual, though as with China, hyper-consumerism, the fetishizing of beauty, the naked pursuit of wealth, and other influences from Western cultures have definitely complicated this traditional narrative.

One could argue the "Korean Dream" is the American Dream: a nuclear family, gainful employment, a beautiful home, one or two children, and healthy bank accounts. The backbone of this dream is certainly similar to America's (as in much of the developed and developing world): a rigorous education and hard, hard work will inevitably mean success.

This dream has been a myth for some time. If hard work and honest living meant success, or at the very least, the dignity of living above the poverty level, much of the American South and all the cleaning women and female farmers in Korea would be wealthy or near about. Wealth, power, and the accoutrements of material success are increasingly connected to generational wealth, workplace connections, and the various levers of power and access afforded to the rich and powerful.

The ideal, and more frighteningly, the reality, of a vast middle class, where society is roughly egalitarian, and where plutocracies and oligarchies are rare and most people have a fair chance of success is vanishing in America and Korea (and was never the case in American society, certainly for entire communities of people).

Instead, democracies across the globe are tackling with a disheartening trend: the total bifurcation of the body politic, where a few people absorb vast amounts of wealth while the rest of the population struggles to make do with less and less income and less of an ability to accrue wealth.

It has long been believed (and empirical evidence bears this out) that education is the key to a better financial life. A good education is integral to unlocking the Korean Dream. And yes, those with tertiary education earn much more over their lifetimes than those who do not have it.

However, the expense of education, the debt, and the stress of educational competiveness is proving less and less tenable, especially considering that young Korean adults, having achieved education, too often find themselves with undesirable jobs, lower salaries, a lack of benefits or job security, and less of a chance for advancement in their place of work, particularly for young Korean women, who make less than seventy cents per every dollar their male counterparts earn.

These factors, coupled with Korea's notoriously brutal workplace environment and poor work/life balance, make the Korean Dream seem more like a fantasy, and the prerequisites to possibly achieving it nightmarishly daunting.

People are sometimes surprised when I say: "Yes, I worked hard in college and graduate school, and at most of my jobs, but hard work in itself isn't a virtue. I don't bemoan those who choose to work less."

The evidence is in. Many European countries (who work far less than Korea and America) have more generous social safety nets, and better-educated, healthier, longer-living, and more equitable societies. (The exception is Japan, whose equally-brutal workplace environment seems to be negated by their diets, as the Japanese are some of the longest-living people on earth).

Korean and American societies cannot boast any of these positive societal attributes their wealthy and industrialized European counterparts can. And so, "working hard" gains one what, exactly?

"Hard work" certainly teaches discipline, a good quality for anyone to possess. Yet it cannot be a virtue unto itself. Unlike altruism, hard work is supposed to be a transactional dynamic between individuals and the societies in which they live, where at some point, hard work is rewarded by increasing opportunity and access to success for those who partake in it.

In Korea and America, private sector employers have squeezed ever-higher levels of productivity and efficiency from their workers, whilst wages have barely risen for more than a generation, and working conditions stagnate.

Democracies cannot be sustained if economic inequality becomes so pronounced that the electorate rebels. Government policies championing equitable pay and taxation, fair and living wages, better working conditions, and access to gainful employment should be part of President Park's legislative agenda.

Deauwand Myers holds a master's degree in English literature and literary theory, and is an English professor outside Seoul. He can be reached at deauwand@hotmail.co m.