Hmm...I suppose I need to start this post with full disclosure. My opinion of this article is just that: my opinion. Even though I have done my best to look at this objectively, I understand that my perspective is shaped by my observations and experiences here. Even though I have not done complete and exhaustive scholarly research, I have thought long and hard about this and am not posting some knee-jerk reaction.
Also, after I started writing, I realized that this was going to be extremely long so I decided to break it into multiple parts.
Now that's out of the way, let's begin.
This week, this article came across my FB feed and has sprouted many, MANY discussions on both Asian Studies forums and ESL teacher's forums:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/young-south-koreans-call-their-country-hell-and-look-for-ways-out/2016/01/30/34737c06-b967-11e5-85cd-5ad59bc19432_story.html?postshare=4341454419983822&tid=ss_mail
Just in case you don't want to read the article, the long and short of it is young Koreans are upset with their country and feel their quality of life would improve in other places. They don't like working long hours for little pay, paying a high cost of living (in the cities), job insecurity, the rigid hierarchical structure of their society...among other things. Does any of this sound familiar?
To really understand, we need to break it down into its pieces and look at it in context.
First, mainly because it is the title of this post, What is "Hell Joseon":
The Joseon Dynasty is essentially Korea's "Golden Age", it's "Renaissance," if you will. Almost everything traditional here goes back to the Joseon Dynasty...with good reason, it lasted for nearly 500 years and ended (roughly) with the Japanese occupation of Korea. [In historical context, from the time of the Black Death and when England and France were almost finished fighting the Hundred Years War (and American wasn't even "discovered" yet) until the end of the Victorian Era.] That's a long time and a lot happened...including the "invention" (I would argue the proper term is "development") of Hangul. Because this was such a long period of time and ended roughly at the same time that one of the "worst" (in quotes because this is the subjective perspective of many Korean people...I am not making a judgement one way or the other, though I can understand why this leaves a chip on many Korean shoulders) times in Korean history, it is culturally their "good old days." This is a time when Confucian ideals were (and still are) prominent in Korean society. Korea was a strictly regulated hierarchy and many of those principles still hold, so much that many young Koreans refer to it as "Hell Joseon"...that is the hell of those principles that seems to keep them in lower places/positions.
Let's see if I can do better than that.
FYI, Confucianism is a philosophy, not a religion...there is a difference. At its core, Confucianism is a set of guidelines to help us "all just get along." East Asian karma, or the "golden rule," or mitzvah...call it what you want...the bottom line is: be "good people", ok?
There's a lot to Confucianism..it's complex. I won't cover it all here, but here's a link that does a good job on hitting the highlights:
http://www.ibiblio.org/chinesehistory/contents/02cul/c04s04.html#Introduction
So, what does this all mean for modern Korea?
As this is already an extremely long post, I will cover that in part 2.
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