Heaven Korea

By Bernard Rowan

Korea represents heaven on earth. I've believed that for nearly 20 years since I first traveled to your country. My study of Korea only deepened this first impression. Korea's miracle of advancement continues to make possible so much good throughout the world.

However, the voices of the coming generation warn us of a serious issue. I've read recently about the plight and views of Korea's young adult generation. Many young adults describe life as a "Hell Korea." They have "given up," and their lives have nothing special. Korean phrases such as "sampo," "opo" and "chilpo" describe doubts about jobs, marriages and children.

Mature adults most often must learn that delayed comfort correlates with success, but many young Koreans think they've no prospects, period. We can't dismiss fears about their tomorrows.

We must heed the opinions and experiences of young Korean adults as a threat to continued advancement, a threat to face for the greater good. This form of generational divide in Korea wants older generations to take action. The next presidential election needs to highlight this problem and possibility. Younger Koreans also must take democratic actions to advance their interests.

Too many Korean young adults run the gauntlet of high school and university to reach unemployment and underemployment. The price of adulthood is work, and it's often working through one to several temporary and less wanted positions first. That's not new, but many young adults have grown used to unrealistically short time horizons as the equivalent of "success." Their employment despair now dampens their future expectations. Will they have the capacity to marry and live at the standard they seek? Most will work harder to match the lifestyle their parents and they as children enjoyed.

Already, their older brothers and sisters delayed marriage and have fewer children. Korea's aging society sees many needy people at the end and at the beginning of adult life cycles. Younger Korean adults have higher expectations but more competition. Too many turn to downcast thinking and behaviors, including suicide.

Today's better educated young adults watch the ebb and flow of contemporaneous events. However, cell phones don't capture and necessarily highlight the hard issues of inequality in Korean society and the wider advanced world. It's not lessening, and for too many young Korean adults, it's ever more obvious. Income and class inequality in Korea have grown despite the prosperity of the last 30 years and the Korean miracle. No mainstream candidate wants to champion this cause! The Korean government divides along ideological lines.

Today's technologies, many created and perfected in Korea, have their negative effects. Cell phones, computers, online experiences, and social media can isolate and exaggerate images. The flood of similar "high click" news doesn't come with reality filters and social supports. Freedom is more than simple liberty.

Young adults crave and find thrilling the instantaneous messages of every world famous, flight-of-fantasy accomplishment. Accepting the mundane present of many lives on any given day pales with global and virtual realities. Many despair over those realities. Recent world events show the depths to which many sink in response.

Our compressed, always active world hasn't overcome relative expectations and scapegoating. Young adults want to do more, to do better, and to do as well as we older people have done. But it's becoming harder and harder. It can't and won't often occur quickly. So many messages teach delusions of heroism. Mega-success now or never!

Where is hope? What should Koreans do? Korean companies and governments must encourage hiring more young adults. Young adults need to hold political and economic leaders accountable for their actions.

It's likely that out-migration to other nations by qualified and educated young Korean adults will continue. The world benefits from this context, but Korea suffers brain drain. The trend won't lessen without concerted action.

Progressive economic policies must shift from reliance on heavy exports and traditional industries. The chaebol dominate Korean success stories, but their effect is disproportionately greater and more stifling to the mass of young adults and their children to come. Reforms of real estate markets, progressive taxation policies, and full employment policies need supporters.

The young and old of Korea need leaders for the next decades who know these policy gaps and start a wave to do something about them. That's got to be part of the legacy of Park Chung-hee unstated. It's in the line of Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun. Who will lead this next stage of Korea's advance? Heaven Korea calls, and it's a call Koreans of all ages should heed!

Bernard Rowan is associate provost for contract administration and professor of political science at Chicago State University, where he has served for 22 years. Reach him at browan10@yahoo.com.