Hyperreal Korean love

Courtesy of Kelly Sikkema

By David A. Tizzard

One of the great ironies of modern life is seeing Korea be one of the most successful and effective cultures at packaging and selling love to people all over the world and yet, at the same time, possess some of the world's lowest birth rates (and most ludicrous plans to address it). We've heard all the statistics and read all the stories. What makes the Guardian, the NYT, and Instagram are these narratives of sad Koreans, lonely Koreans, single Koreans. This week, people outside of the country will have been greeted with further images of Seoul as a gray dystopian nightmare in which people live a desperate techno-orientalist nightmare, with images of despotic Fu Manchus not far behind. The country is frequently described as only being home to those giving up on love.

Every time I read one of these articles, I check: Does it contain the ideas of any people who are actually married with kids? The answer is almost always no.

Regular couples?

Stories of regular happy couples in Korea are few and far between. Of course there's frequent, and often nauseating, discussion about who the rich and famous are dating. But what about the accountants, students, bakers, convenience store workers and high school kids? What about all the married people I see around me? Those with kids in the shopping malls every weekend? All the mums we see waiting at the school gates every day in the sun, rain, wind, and snow? I see them but other journalists writing for the international press don't. These regular married people and the many kids traipsing to and from school are the invisible people. These are the people that don't make the media. They are not profitable in our gamified attention economy. They also don't really vibe with hyper individualism, bourgeoning spectrums of new sexualities, and a whole host of mental health labels. Who wants to hear a story about regular people that get married and have kids in Korea? Who wants reality? There is also a sense that seeing people in normal happy relationships can make others feel uncomfortable. Sad, jealous. Left out. It's low key weird to be content and want kids in a straight relationship these days. Netflix won't make money from that. Cynicism is far cooler.

Nevertheless, if the statistics are to be believed, we should actually be listening to those who still chose to get married and have kids. Either because we can learn something from them, or we can raise the voices of what now might be considered a social minority. But that doesn't happen. And because they don't make the news, they no longer exist in many people's consciousness.

Hyperreal: everywhere but nowhere

And so love is everywhere but nowhere. We watch endless dramas, movies, and YouTube shorts about romantic, sexual and emotional meetings. Love is commodified. Turned into a product of consumption for our capitalist communities. Providing cash and comfort.

These dramas and social media content create what Jean Baudrillard called the "hyperreal." Content that was originally devised as a mere imitation of reality ends up, in a twisted way, becoming more real to us than reality itself. Thus if you ask someone about the massacre in Gwangju, they might immediately think of the film "A Taxi Driver" with Song Kang-ho. To think of Admiral Lee Sun-shin is to picture Choi Min-sik. "Crash Landing on You" is how some will understand Pyongyang. K-pop is Korea. These are the hyperreal versions of reality. And in today's age, with screens in front of our face all the time, we interact with these depictions of history more than the actual history.

And the same is true of love. Rather than the love that exists in all its mundane and unmemorable moments in the world around us, with the married co-worker, with the next door neighbor with two kids, with the divorced mother in the playground, we think of love as it is presented in the hyperreal. In the dramas. In the movies. And in social media. Love is seen through a passive lens. Somewhere out there, waiting for us to stumble upon it. Perhaps in a chance encounter in a coffee shop, a furtive glance in a library. Love will find us when the time is right, people will cheerfully exclaim. We wait rather than pursue. With heightened anxiety and decreased acceptance of risk, this is becoming an ever more common approach.

But that is not the end of the chain of events. These depictions of reality, history, and love were once actually based on reality. But, as new media and content is created, it then becomes derived from the created media rather than the reality. Copies of copies of copies. A loop of lives becoming further and further distanced from reality until we get those we see today in the dramas. People we kind of recognize but have never seen in our waking hours. They are hyperreal characters. Copies of characters. Turtles all the way down.

And then we expect our love, our life and our experiences to match up with these wonderful, emotion laden, perfect narratives we see presented to us. We believe that our love will feature a partner with perfect skin, flawless teeth, no bad habits and a willingness to spend 16 episodes courting us and only require a somewhat platonic kiss and the holding of hands at the end. We live expecting the stereotypes and tropes played out in high definition. The imaginary dictates the reality. But it is a mere copy. And the reality has wonky teeth. Its hair is thinning. The love handles evident despite the exercise. The drinking turns the face red. The unwashed make-up looks more like a horror movie in the morning than a cosmetics advert.

Real love is counterculture

In a capitalist society, we operate on the basis of mutually beneficial exchange. I'll work for you if you give me money. I'll swipe my card if you give me a phone. The economy controls and dictates our behavior. In the dating world, it's not too dissimilar. To be loved is to receive stuff from someone: Cards on Valentine's Day, flowers in the office, watches at Christmas, and so on.

Real love today is counterculture. Or at least according to the dictates of modern capitalism, social media and grand Korean narratives. We are obsessed with ourselves rather than the other. We are so focused on increasing our social value (looking good, being educated, having hobbies, earning money and so on) that we forget to increase our spiritual depth. We forget to give. We lose sight of the idea that the love we take is equal to the love we make. We ask ourselves, "How do I become loved?" The more pertinent question, however, would surely be, "How do I love?"

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. The views expressed in the article are the author's own and do not reflect the editorial direction of The Korea Times.