Unless I'm missing something "turning the tables" means an abuse hotline existing, with a few people having their reputation tarnished because of their appalling behavior. There don't seem to be any major changes implemented, and I imagine it's only a matter of time before the powerful start labeling it "cancel culture" and generating a backlash.
..sprawling, family-run conglomerates. Known as chaebol, these long-time pillars of the nation’s “miracle economy” include the likes of LG, Hyundai, SK, Lotte and — largest of them all — Samsung.
There's a local bent here, in that the large capitalists may rule everywhere, but the level of acceptance of that rule varies drastically between societies. In a society that was essentially feudal with a sanctioned slavery for thousands of years, that transitioned to a military junta dictatorship and only relatively recently started transitioning to liberal democracy, the ruled largely accepted having absolutely no recourse against the ruling. That there's a hotline now is actually a real, and substantial, progress.
That's one way of looking at it but I'm not too sure about that. After all, the reason South Korea now enjoys a (mostly) functional democracy is that its people were not okay with the ruling class, and fought against the power for decades.
Also, Korea went through a lot of social upheaval in the 20th century, which acted as a huge social mixer. The capitalist rulers of 2022 are not necessarily the descendants of old aristocrats of 1890s. Hyundai's founder was famously born to a dirt-poor farmer.
For any country, ask yourself whose interest the government/military/media/etc exists to serve. I'll give you a hint. It's never 'the people'. In capitalist countries, it's to serve the interest of capital. In monarchies, it's to serve the interest of the monarch. In communist countries, it's the serve the interest of the party. God knows what north korea is. A communist monarchy?
If we go by the Marxist definition of communist then the people would be serving the people, democratically. But I don't think we've ever seen a small "c" communist country yet. Even the Chinese CCP acknowledges that China isn't communist yet.
I just don't understand what I'm supposed to do with these "capitalism is the ruling class" drive-by comments. Like.. so what? I like my iPhone and getting bread from the grocery store. I like that in America as flawed as it is I can post funny pictures of the most powerful person we elect. Many people hold up capitalist countries like Sweden or Norway as examples of good governance, yet they also serve their "capitalist masters". What am I supposed to do here? Not vote? Demand that we dissolve the government?
Why would you need to do anything? I mean, unless you're a hardliner anarchist, you accept that there always will be a class of people in power. Whether they buy the power with money, seize the power with violence, get it handed to them due to being born in a certain family matters little, in my opinion. The important part is setting up a system where the powerful cannot abuse their power to the detriment of society and where the lower classes have some basic rights guaranteed. Before you do set up a system like that, you unfortunately need to first educate the lower classes enough for them to realize that they want and need such a system in place. And that's the hard part, a main issue when talking about some Asian democracies, and a thing you're missing, I think.
I agree with what you wrote, but I'm not sure why you would think that I'm missing anything.
I think many who post comments alluding to this nebulous capitalist ruling elite would say that education of lower classes is tainted by capitalist dogma and therefore would be invalid. Who writes the textbooks? Capitalist businesses seeking to make a profit. Who approves the textbooks? Oh the capitalist ruling elite. Etc.
The reason I am asking these questions is because I keep seeing drive-by comments about "capitalism" and "ruling elites", and I'm trying to understand what other countries out there have different ruling elites (or none) and what the call to action is. Some complain that the "people" aren't in charge and instead it is these capitalist masters/elites. Are there any countries where the people are actually in charge? What does that mean for the people to be in charge?
Or are people just trolling and trying to aggravate others with these types of comments?
Because your other comments were rather light in content, you know? It's hard to piece together a full picture of what you mean without you taking the time to actually write it down... :)
To be perfectly honest, I can't help you here - I have no idea what does it matter whether the ruling class is capitalist, aristocratic, teocratic, military, or whatever other ways of getting power there are. Maybe people think that some ways of getting power are... I don't know, inherently better in the moral sense? Is that really important?
I think what matters is how the ruling elite behaves. The drive-by comments about how it's capitalism that makes workers in SK miserable are severely misguided, in my opinion. Reading - as a hobby - about history of East Asia, I would say it's the opposite: the ruling class became capitalist, without really changing their behavior, or (the most important part) the reasons underlying their behavior and acceptance of it by society at large.
I thought you're missing that bit, because you focused heavily on the ruling elite being this or that, while I think the topic here is not about what it is, but what it does, and how the other people view and react to what the elites do. You mentioned America/USA, so I wanted to point out the huge difference between the thinking of the majority in the "land of the free" on their minority elites vs. in South Korea and some other Asian countries.
Because I don't see a huge difference between capitalists or other kinds of elites, I missed the reason why you focused on that part of the argument. At best, I thought the comments about evil capitalists were a kind of virtue signalling (look, that's what capitalism wants for all of us! we need to do something! or something like that). I don't think anyone did that to aggravate anyone or you personally, it's just that people often don't have the 2 cents to add to the discussion, but still want to do it, so they borrow a talking point (a dime a dozen) and throw that in.
I guess you can cry about apple removing the flag icon? I don't know what you want. I'm just answering a question you asked.
You asked this: "Who is the ruling class in non-capitalist countries? "
I answered this: "For any country, ask yourself whose interest the government/military/media/etc exists to serve. I'll give you a hint. It's never 'the people'. In capitalist countries, it's to serve the interest of capital. In monarchies, it's to serve the interest of the monarch. In communist countries, it's the serve the interest of the party. God knows what north korea is. A communist monarchy?"
My response wasn't about capitalists or capitalism. My response was about the ruling class for any country. You are so agenda driven you only see what you want. You asked a question, I answered and you are crying about what other people wrote. Not what I wrote.
Have you considered exercising the right to found a new nation? Or exercising the right to peacefully revoke consent to be governed? Or perhaps abandoning preferences so that your likes/dislikes aren't so determined by capitalism?
> Have you considered exercising the right to found a new nation? Or exercising the right to peacefully revoke consent to be governed?
Like as in have I considered actually doing it? No not really. As far as I know there's no new land in the world where anyone can lay a claim to. All of the world's governments have claimed all land in the world, so to found a new nation you have to create a new monopoly on violence for a given geographic area, and that's hard to do.
> Or perhaps abandoning preferences so that your likes/dislikes aren't so determined by capitalism?
So I don't see how this is connected to your other sentence. If you replaced capitalism with government then I think that would make sense. Bringing capitalism into this doesn't make any sense to me.
This is a problem in many places, but it is absolutely not a problem in Korea which adds housing units in every one of its metro areas at a rate that would make community approval boards in the United States pass out.
Seoul has a population of eight million. In the five years between 2015 and 2020, it added two hundred thousand housing units, and that rate is only going up.
These "upper middle class" people pull the levers the government has put in place. If you want less regulation/zoning and more housing the problem is not "homeowners" it is the underlying structure that imbues them with veto power.
Well, it is a problem with homeowners because they're choosing to exercise a right that's patently unequitable. You are right that getting them to do the right thing is impossible, and that disenfranchising them is the only path forward.
Patently unequitable is an opinion, I'm not sure you can fault someone for voting if you give them a vote. But why anyone other than the property owner has a say over the property in question's management is still a mystery to me.
There's something deep inside the South Korean's psyche where social hierarchy is revered and absolute, yet it's also the same country where they could prosecute people with power (see the example of President Park's impeachment in the article, and to a lesser extent Samsung heir Lee Jae-yong).
No. Barring some type of mass social destabilization (I provide a very real scenario at the end), it won't change.
One concern I have with gapjil highlighted in the article is that what if somebody falsely accuses their bosses? There seems to be something like The People's Court happening. I do not doubt there is abusive relationships but I fear that this could quickly devolve into a cultural revolution of sorts.
While I can't generalize every rich people in Korea, met nice people but also I've met those who openly deride/mock/ridicule people poorer (regionalism where if you don't live in a particular neighborhood in Seoul, you are automatically beneath them), which actually isn't limited to Korea but elitism can be found in any society.
From anecdotal experience, what I found particularly obnoxious and tiring is this hyper obsession with status and how they are perceived which in neo-confucian cultures is the pinnacle driving force towards self-regulation and civilization in this region have become very stable and non-violent as a result relatively compared to other regions.
There is this constant never ending competition of how they are being outdone materialistically which now replaces the traditional neo-confucian values. Being rich means your offsprings have a very good chance at achieving confucius approved career paths and access to elite education. Because the education system is not only corrupt, it has created a secondary market where students are discriminated on their financial capacity of their parents. Those without access to cram schools, the best tutors, are largely left on their own. The university exam will determine your place in society and I've looked at some of the questions say English exam. They were not about learning English for daily use but were designed to mislead, trick, and produce failures. A native speaker would not be able to do well on those exams because the questions make LSAT questions seem walk in teh park (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNTwRSKVJLc). One upside is that Koreans speak far better English than their regional peers but has it translated into any economic benefit for the country? The economy is still a third of Japan's and its reliant on just a handful of family run conglomerates.
Contrary to belief that South Korea is this ultra-nationalist collective, there's been a huge surge in individualism since the 90s, and each financial crisis have furthered the wealth gap and people's faith. There used to be lineups to melt personal gold heirloom to pay back IMF in '99 which all it did was bailing out the chaebol groups which caused the problem. It won't happen again this time.
It's become significantly worse after the '98 and '08 financial crisis and there is another looming household credit bubble implosion (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8cbwbTqmCw) which I can see destabilizing the country and the dwindling birth rate only compounds to the problem (think 1/3rd of Japan's economy with 2~3x the rate of population decline and extrapolate). They've been slowly dabbling with immigration but many end up leaving because the society is too complex and insular (jus sanguinis like Japan)
One common theme throughout human history, and most recently Syria, whenever you have half the country's population living in a dense capital with growing number of young single NEET men, paired with household debt (often 2nd, 3rd tier like loan sharks), dwindling birth rate, it can quickly become volatile.
The more I read about South Korea, the more I am convinced it's one of these countries where societal development did not follow economic development - along with e.g. United States.
Lack of respect, empathy, trust, etc. can be expected in poor countries where each is on their own, labor is not as valuable, and some resort to unethical means to survive. But in countries which there's enough money floating around - absence of these values is a moral failure of the society.
> they are obsessed with how they are being outdone materialistically
In terms of consumer electronics, they're still leading the way. Are you referring to China since they're emerging in this market along with automotive?
This, I would also argue, is the worldwide phenomenon of "the great resignation". Naturally, the name itself means to quit. However in proceeding months, it also represents unionization, representation, work slowdowns, walkoffs, pickets, and much more.
South Korea's response here seems more about focusing legal and societal pressure against these mega-owners. Which, again, is laudable.
Very much off topic from the article, but I've always found modern South Korean culture to be very interesting. Is there a resource or book that lends more insight into today's mentality/zeitgeist of South Korea?
