Dumbfounded
The sanity of this South Korean professional's and mother's epiphany makes me dizzy. I've just never read or heard such clarity in all my years in Busan.
Parents' perception of and attitudes to their children's life skills must change. If you are satisfied with the short-term gain of your child winning the competition with the neighbor's, then by all means stake everything on college entrance. But in a country where changes two or three decades hence are impossible to foretell in the global era, perhaps it is better to think of making a long-term investment.
Our success formula may have been effective in achieving Korea's ascent to the level of a medium-developed country; at the threshold of becoming an advanced nation, they no longer serve us so well. Our labor productivity per hour, at US$20.4 as of 2006, is near the bottom of the OECD or 26th among the 29 countries surveyed. It accounts for only 40 percent of the $49.90 of France and the $50.40 of the U.S., but our working hours are the longest.
If we want to become an advanced country, we should either become more creative at work, producing more added value in the same number of hours, or become more productive in fewer hours. It's high time that we learned time management skill from countries that have conquered time effectively.
It's almost uplifting, if I didn't know her opinion was unique.
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2 comments
2 months and 17 days ago
@ gordsellar:
I would be interested in more info about this colony. But, most South Koreans should have the choice without having to change their entire lifestyles. Of course, not having to pay so much and worry so much about your child's future would be a lifestyle change. The effect on the housing market, as all those parents didn't buy apartments for their kids to use as private libraries might be catastrophic.
Really, and I mentioned this in Turnball's blog, Seoul should encourage emigration as a means to encourage remunerations. When Koreans, men and women, northern and southern, travel abroad, it just seems to work out well for all. More experience, more money (although there is the genre of failure stories), more empowerment through understanding. Bad policies are only bad when there are no alternatives. The conservatives can keep all the old stuff, but they shouldn't be able to force all the people to put up with them.
2 months and 17 days ago
I know a few people with similar opinions, though not quite as lucidly expressed as that. Actually, there's at least one village of people (urban, very educated types) who decided to just drop out of the rat race in Seoul and live in the countryside to get away from all that insanity.
Anyway, I'm going to link this, as I liked it so much.
(I've added you to my sidebar, as well, after forgetting to do so for a while...)
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