Why South Korea is one of the unhappiest countries - Page 12

On April 03 2012 01:13 AxUU wrote:


Finnish student here, I don't bust my ass off studying and never really bothered with homework until just recently and I'm pretty much your average finnish student in terms of grades.

It's the parenting and teaching also, the teaching methods and testing methods make a big difference.

On April 03 2012 01:41 ecstatica wrote:


Good, youre on the right track. Now think of the lack of really bad students thanks to educated society. What happens with the mean? Good, what else could that imply? Everyone is around average (little to no deviation). Now look up math olympiad results. Okay good so SK and China has a ton of superachievers while Finland is barely on the map. Conclusion? Do it yourself ffs

Lol to me both are bad and this is such a horrible argument.
On one side you have SK who pushes too hard(over studying and working to the point of mental exhaustion and breakdown)
and Finland...which I don't know much about but from these posts and more recent posts on this whole argument, are proud of being tied with SK while being lazy(not studying/homework). In my eyes both are extremely bad. No matter what the country score, you should always excell for your very best while knowing your limits.

ecstatica's real point throughout this redicously math debate was that there is no way that a large group of people who don't study and who are, to put it bluntly, lazy will do as well as people who study and actually work. His example was a poorish one but it's true.

Another thing is not all schools are the same. Possibly SK schools have harder programs than Finland. Has anyone been to both a finnish school and a Korean school(same grade too since different grades tend to be easier/tougher).

Anyways, This debate on which system was better or worse didn't have much to do on the topic. Only thing from this that was on point with the topic is that Koreans normally push their limits in terms of work capabilities too hard. Which in turn results in lack of results because of mental/physical fatigue. Which ususally makes someone want to work harder. What follows that is depression since you don't receive the results that you expected and were expected from you from your family/peers. Even if you end up getting the results you wanted, fatigue does end up taking its toll on a person.

On April 03 2012 05:32 ecstatica wrote:
I'm sure you've taken everything into account citing Finland as top 3 country in terms of math education. The very fact that math olympiad is a government sponsored event and no one ever refuses to participate if he's good enough since it's a privilege - I don't even know wtf you mean by saying that people don't care. If you weren't asked to participate chances are you weren't good. Trust me, top math students do take part in math contests, I'm afraid you simply lack the information. I moved to the US from Europe and it was very much alike.

On April 03 2012 07:25 nakedsurfer wrote:


Lol to me both are bad and this is such a horrible argument.
On one side you have SK who pushes too hard(over studying and working to the point of mental exhaustion and breakdown)
and Finland...which I don't know much about but from these posts and more recent posts on this whole argument, are proud of being tied with SK while being lazy(not studying/homework). In my eyes both are extremely bad. No matter what the country score, you should always excell for your very best while knowing your limits.

ecstatica's real point throughout this redicously math debate was that there is no way that a large group of people who don't study and who are, to put it bluntly, lazy will do as well as people who study and actually work. His example was a poorish one but it's true.

Another thing is not all schools are the same. Possibly SK schools have harder programs than Finland. Has anyone been to both a finnish school and a Korean school(same grade too since different grades tend to be easier/tougher).

Anyways, This debate on which system was better or worse didn't have much to do on the topic. Only thing from this that was on point with the topic is that Koreans normally push their limits in terms of work capabilities too hard. Which in turn results in lack of results because of mental/physical fatigue. Which ususally makes someone want to work harder. What follows that is depression since you don't receive the results that you expected and were expected from you from your family/peers. Even if you end up getting the results you wanted, fatigue does end up taking its toll on a person.

On April 02 2012 18:41 Taf the Ghost wrote:
2 words: North Korea.

6 more words: Dictator with massive amounts of Artillery.

Any societal analysis of South Korea, without taking this into account, renders it completely mute.

Oh, and that regime just happened to recently acquire Nuclear Weapons. That's a true "fear factor".

The hours studied, per student, just means that Korean children are 1/2 as efficient as Finnish children at studying. That strikes me as a failure completely apart from economic.

The opening paragraph just happens to forgets Korean history from 1900 to 1960. Hard to build an economy when you aren't actually a country. Especially when compared to a former British Protectorate and a major world shipping hub (at the time).

Yeah, it's a pointless article that means nothing. But it fits well with the Guardian's political leanings. (I.e. if you think the reason this piece ran is really about South Korea, you're kidding yourself)

On April 03 2012 05:45 AnachronisticAnarchy wrote:


Fear? Slavery? What about the meritocratic benefits of a capitalistic system? The primary draw (and one of the main reasons of success) is that you can go to a capitalistic nation and succeed. You can start a business, get a dream job, climb the corporate ladder, start a family or whatever else floats your boat. People come to capitalistic nations and stay there because of the opportunity for success, not the opportunity for failure.
Also, there are real slaves in the world right now that make South Korea look like heaven on Earth. Please don't downgrade their level of suffering by insinuating capitalistic nations are "slave nations".

On April 03 2012 07:25 nakedsurfer wrote:


Lol to me both are bad and this is such a horrible argument.
On one side you have SK who pushes too hard(over studying and working to the point of mental exhaustion and breakdown)
and Finland...which I don't know much about but from these posts and more recent posts on this whole argument, are proud of being tied with SK while being lazy(not studying/homework). In my eyes both are extremely bad. No matter what the country score, you should always excell for your very best while knowing your limits.

ecstatica's real point throughout this redicously math debate was that there is no way that a large group of people who don't study and who are, to put it bluntly, lazy will do as well as people who study and actually work. His example was a poorish one but it's true.

Another thing is not all schools are the same. Possibly SK schools have harder programs than Finland. Has anyone been to both a finnish school and a Korean school(same grade too since different grades tend to be easier/tougher).

Anyways, This debate on which system was better or worse didn't have much to do on the topic. Only thing from this that was on point with the topic is that Koreans normally push their limits in terms of work capabilities too hard. Which in turn results in lack of results because of mental/physical fatigue. Which ususally makes someone want to work harder. What follows that is depression since you don't receive the results that you expected and were expected from you from your family/peers. Even if you end up getting the results you wanted, fatigue does end up taking its toll on a person.

On April 03 2012 08:12 azarat wrote:


A lot of the problem, I think, is that the supposed meritocracy of Western capitalist democracies is being eroded by powerful special interests and entrenched wealth. A meritocracy is all well and good in theory, but in recent decades much of the meritocratic nature of capitalism has shown to be a sham. When large investors and corporate interests can tilt the playing field in their direction, forcing out competition and making rules and laws that benefit only the status quo, the whole cultural ideal of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps suddenly seems to become less attainable.

Its also part of the reason why young people are increasingly disaffected with the current political system. Society, parents, and the previous generation has told them to work hard, sacrifice, and they'll have the opportunity to succeed. Well, a whole lot of young people jumped through the hoops only to find themselves without job prospects, saddled with debt from college fees their parents didn't have to pay, and staring down the barrel of a national financial crisis that their parents generation created and are unwilling to fix.

Its no surprise that people are deeply unhappy with the current situation.

On April 03 2012 02:50 ecstatica wrote:


Lithuania doing great compared to former soviet republics. That is absolutely the opposite of what you wrote. I would also like you to list "many issues" that Lithuania has derived directly from the downfall of USSR. Real curious here!

I called you out on posting bs previously, you also need to stop being a racist fuck and taking stabs at asians, or "orientals" as you call them. This is not the first time for you, you're always kind of slimy and elusive by not being direct but it is still pretty obvious.

On April 03 2012 08:51 mordk wrote:
Yep, this is true. In countries mostly ran under a highly capitalistic system, wealth and power tends to go to the little minorities while the rest suffer the oppression. The possibilities for a real meritocracy are destroyed by this simple fact.

In my country, for example, 1% of the population earns more than 5 times the amount the following 19% earn, and more than 20 times as much as the people in the lower 20%. This means that those people get every benefit on everything, including education, health, jobs, pretty much anything you can think of.

That lower 20% can never get out of there unless they get extremely lucky, because the best teachers are always hired by private, expensive schools, the best infrastructure is in those schools, they have the best transportation facilities, the better medicine, and overall the better conditions in which to develop their full potential. In the end, no matter how much effort that family makes, it would be impossible for their children to rise in the social scale unless they get some sort of help from the government, which is right now extremely lacking, because they focus all their efforts on the "free market and the free competition", which is actually not free at all, just regulated and managed by those who get the biggest benefit out of it.

Really a terrible situation.

On April 03 2012 09:57 Anytus wrote:


Do you honestly believe that today, political and economic power is MORE concentrated than it was 200 years ago? 100 years ago? 50 years ago? I think the unequivocal answer is that today, at least in democratic and growing nations (OECD countries, etc.), there is more opportunity for people to transition out of poverty than ever before. To go along with that, people have more influence over the political process. Decades ago, we didn't know that the political and economic systems were being manipulated but they WERE! Corporations have been around for hundreds of years (going back to groups like the Dutch east India Company which wielded substantial political power) and have always influenced politics with their money. The great thing about today is that we have more tools to find out about this BS and more tools to deal with it.

I want to point out that, while in the US the income gap is rising, median income has also been rising. It has stagnated over the past 10 years or so. How exactly this corresponds to the welfare state, overall economic development, and other factors is unclear.

Also, it is MUCH better to be poor in the US today than ever before. Something like half of Americans will live below the poverty line at some point in their life. A much smaller number than that are below at any given time though. This suggests that people often transition above/below the line based on their decisions/circumstances and this in generally true. A poor person in the US has about a 33% chance of joining the middle-class in any given calendar year. If you have been poor for less than a year, that number is above 50%. Some of those people return to poverty. In general, if you have been poor for a short time, you will probably escape poverty. The longer you are poor, the less likely it is that you will overcome it. This sounds about right to me. Sometimes, bad stuff happens but resourceful and determined people usually overcome it.

As per the OP statement, I am skeptical that this problem in Korea can be linked so easily to austerity, but the article makes a good case. Clearly, it is something to think about. Is the causal story really that convincing though? In economics, it rarely is, regardless of your ideology.

Also, I wonder if there is a market remedy for this type of problem (can you tell yet that I'm a biased libertarian?). If this happiness problem is really that bad for South Korea, it should start hitting the bottom lines of South Korean companies. It could come in 2 ways, decreased productivity and decreased ability for consumers to buy their products.