Farewell to Bad Habits

Farewell to Bad Habits
5 Bad Habits of Koreans

By Kim Seong-kon
Korea Herald
September 28, 2005

I have often thought that Korea would be a far more admirable country if only we Koreans managed to get rid of five conspicuous bad habits that may well be inherent in our very makeup.

First, we should learn not to be easily jealous and "belly-ache" but to applaud when others do well and succeed. For some reason, we do not readily tolerate those who are better than us and inevitably try to scuttle them. No wonder then that we are so pleased about the government's recent decision to strike at the rich with the real estate "tax bomb." And it is no surprise that we are so happy when our politicians, perhaps unwittingly, threaten to abolish first-rate universities.

Second, we should discard our deliberate tendency to be supercilious and also try to suppress our penchant to habitually disparage and dismiss others and, instead, be modest and endeavor to learn from them. We seem to be slow learners who are very reluctant to acknowledge the merits of others or embrace those that are different from us. This attitude eventually elicits the prejudiced "us" and "them" mentality and we know with historical hindsight that in part it led to the "closed door policy" in the last century that resulted in the tragic loss of our independence.

Third, we should not rush to blame others; instead, we should point the accusing finger at ourselves and, like an adult, assume full responsibility for our reactive knee-jerk behavior. Blaming others is far from being decent or acting brave or with maturity, and yet we constantly complain: "Because of America . . . ." or "Because of Japan . . . ." Instead, we should admit that it is primarily our fault. We also frequently find fault thus: "Because of the rich and the privileged, we are poor and deprived." But is this true? We must seriously ponder the validity of such false, even infantile, assumptions.

Fourth, we should learn to be more consistent at all times. Perceptive foreigners often point out that Koreans tend to lack consistency. In the 1970's my foreign friends in Seoul found it hard to understand why radical students who clashed with the police on campus everyday volunteered to join the riot police as the easy option to do their compulsory military service. For the comfort and convenience of being stationed in a city and spending weekends at home, they gladly paid the price; armed in full riot gear they crushed their former comrades with pepper gas and clubs.

Alas, little has changed today. Recently, I saw a notorious anti-American student activist unabashedly volunteered for the KATUSA (Korean Augmentation Troops to the U.S. Army)! Obviously he must have chosen a more comfortable military life and compromised with impunity his supposed radical political beliefs. With apparent insouciance he did not seem to suffer from his act of betrayal at all. Likewise, quite a few anti-American scholars in Korea still proudly flash their U.S. degrees on the jacket of their anti-American books. Even worse perhaps, those who blatantly insist that we stop learning English because we have been the slaves of the U.S. imperialism since 1945 are secretly sending their children to English-speaking countries including America.

Lastly, we should not rely too much on emotion or national sentiment and try to be more rational instead. Passion and self-interest are often threats to the very freedoms that have developed with our ultra-rapid modernization. Need it be stressed: We patently do not yet have - nor should we have - unfettered freedom in Korea, for are not most of us still seduced by the thundering roar of the passionate crowd indulging in blatant Korean ethnocentrism and unrestrained amor patriae?

Meanwhile, our insidious politicians are busily working on our soft spots for their political gains. They deliberately incite the rich and the poor, the young and the old, radicals and conservatives to antagonize each other. And they conjure up provocative policies to foment people to quarrel and even to clash violently. Their tactics seem to be working nicely as it taps into the collective unconscious circulating through our veins.

Of course, Koreans have numerous merits and striking abilities. In many ways we have every reason to be proud of ourselves. In particular, have we not amazed the world with our astonishing spectacular economic growth in such a short period of time? But if only we could eliminate the undesirable habits enumerated above Korea would surely be a much more appealing country that peoples all around the world would be more inclined to admire and esteem.

Dr. Kim is a professor of English at Seoul National University and president of the Korean Society of Modern English Fiction. - Ed.