My country is better than yours (II)

By Deauwand Myers

"The fire makes it precious, / The same fire / Melting the tallow heretics, / Ousting the Jews. .../ The ovens glowed like heavens, incandescent. / It is a heart, / This holocaust I walk in, / O golden child the world will kill and eat." From "Mary's Song," by Sylvia Plath

The human heart is full of evil. Let us start with this sad, irreducible truth.

The world over, how we drove whole cultures to extinction; how we sent children first to the gas chambers in Poland; how we bombed millions of civilians in the Vietnam War.

As with many nations, my native country was built off of empire. It meant the genocide of millions, through war and plague and the nuts and bolts of imperialism; plowing the good earth; tilling the soil with the sweat and tears and blood of the oppressed.

Many Koreans, like some people from other countries, look at America with envy and awe: our towering cities, our vast and shiny military, our wealth and decadent cuisine. We are tall and big and strong and loud and free.

There is much to be proud of, if one is American. Our culture: literature, television, movies, and Constitution (extricated from its racist inception) shines brightly, and will so for centuries. And with the Russians, we helped save Europe, and much of the world, from the red and black, crooked cross of fascism.

America contributes more to humanitarian efforts than any other nation on the planet. South Korea exists because of American and other countries' endeavors.

And yet. America's infrastructure is a joke. Our healthcare system is for profit, expensive, inadequate, and out of reach for too many of our citizens. We are racially segregated, and the economic bifurcation of our body politic makes our society increasingly oligarchic. Moreover, many other metrics: education, lifespan, infant mortality, gender pay equity, wealth distribution/disparities, are sadly lacking, compared with other advanced, democratic societies.

American foreign policy is disastrous, and has been so for decades. We support and/or have helped install monarchical theocracies (Saudi Arabia)and dictatorships (the Congo, Iran, Iraq, Chile, Cuba, Kazakhstan, Peru, Chile, Turkmenistan, Syria, Egypt, Chad, South Korea,and Azerbaijan, among others).

The recent impeachment of President Park Geun-hye has elicited a bit of soul-searching in the hearts and minds of some Koreans. They find their democracy, young as it is, to be a bit of a sham. The chaebol (large, family-run conglomerates) elite, in collusion with politicians and government officials, have created a kind of plutocracy.

Yet, the American republic is a plutocracy so grand in scale it should make Koreans blush. Indeed, more than half of Congress has an average net worth of $1 million or higher. Having wealthy members of the federal legislature in and of itself is not problematic, if it were not for the fact that many of these members have financial interests in the private entities they regulate.

Further, legislation is co-written and approved by business lobbyists who help fund legislators' political campaigns. This is one reason why America is the only advanced country on the planet lacking universal healthcare, or even the ability for the federal government to bargain with pharmaceutical companies for drug pricing.

The Korean government's expenditures on social welfare programs is lower than the average OECD country, but still far better than America in terms of public transit, basic healthcare, and infrastructure, for example.

Korea should take notes on how to move forward in re-stabilizing its social contract with its citizenry: in short, if one works hard and studies well, she or he will succeed.

As in America (and to a lesser extent, Japan), many young adults in Korea feel this socioeconomic pact has failed to materialize for them; and there is plenty of empirical evidence supporting their dismay at this burgeoning reality. For those achieving tertiary education, positions of gainful employment with benefits has decreased, while part-time, contract work without stability has increased.

Meanwhile, institutions long looked to for support and solutions, mainly the government and the private sector, seem stymied by corruption, ineffectual and incompetent in creating policies or a national climate conducive to sustained economic growth, particularly economic growth enjoyed by the middle and working classes.

Koreans shouldn't feel ashamed to face these challenges, nor the fact their government isn't functioning at optimum levels. Other nations, far wealthier and aged (in terms of democratic institutions) aren't doing any better, or far worse.

After a new election, the next Korean president, his or her administration, and the National Assembly should seriously engage the underlying, systemic problems plaguing the Korean economy. Transparent corporate governance, a more progressive tax code, more spending on education at all levels, and marked increase in expenditures of the social safety net would be good places to start.

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.com.