Korea as dystopia

"South Korea is a Cyberpunk Dystopia":

The video's creator admits, in his video's description, that he doesn't really think of South Korea as a cyberpunk dystopia; I guess he was just reaching for the clicks. Almost as interesting as the video itself are some of the comments beneath it, including a few comments by Koreans. Here's one Korean's comment (edited):

As a South Korean, I truly believe that this video has things very well put.

I've spent a part of my youth in the USA, and when I came back to my home country a few years after, I started noticing these things about our society.

Even as a student, I felt that it was immensely unfair and dystopian that students had to put this much effort and time into getting better grades all for them to get unfulfilling jobs and live unhappily under a corrupt government.

It's honestly impressive how South Korea is considered a "developed country" despite having normalized these horrid standards and expectations.

I am proud of my country for some parts of its culture; however, I cannot say the same for its economic dependency on big companies and traumatic educational system that has rooted itself into our country's educational values. Good grief.

I often feel I'm now part of that oppressive machine. Nothing I do is helping to "make the world a better place." As I've repeatedly argued on this blog, the Korean educational system is largely a joke, with too much focus on rote memorization and multiple-choice thinking (all discussed in my book). Our CEO preaches the gospel of innovation out of one side of his mouth, but out of the other side, he preaches old-school, stultifying pedagogy—lectures on English done in Korean, overfocus on grammar, etc. And here I am, earning a cushy income, cranking out material that does little more than feed the beast. It's a cycle I'm going to have to break out of, eventually, if I want to retain my sanity and dignity.

But being a foreigner and experiencing life here from that perspective, I see the dystopian aspects of Korean society at a bit of a remove. This is largely because I live in my introverted little bubble, as far away from the madding crowd as I can plausibly get. I'm still not really a big-city person at heart, but life in Seoul has been my best experience of big-city existence anywhere. I know enough about places like New York City, Paris, Los Angeles, and San Francisco to know I wouldn't want to live in those cities. Even Tokyo, with its similarities to Seoul, would be difficult thanks to the language barrier. For better or worse, Seoul is home. I sympathize with all the Koreans who feel that life here is dystopian. Back when the first "Frozen" movie came out, Koreans viewers cried when they heard the song "Let It Go," which resonated because the song was talking about a release from soul-crushing obligations. Many young Koreans today speak of "Hell Joseon," with Joseon being an old name for dynastic Korea. Grind your way through school, experience a brief reprieve* during university (which is also a joke unless you're at an elite university), then plug yourself into the Borg collective of corporate work—the hollow thing you've been striving for all these years instead of experiencing a proper childhood. I can see how Koreans might perceive this as a sad existence that dovetails with a longstanding peninsular narrative of oppression and victimhood. Only now, Korea is enslaving itself. No society or culture is perfect; none can bring perfect happiness (which is up to the individual to find, anyway), but South Korea, by objective standards, does have at least a whiff of the dystopian about it.

Obviously, socialism is the answer to that!

__________

*This reprieve is punctuated by obligatory military service if you're a man.