nothing to see here :)
Although in hindsight, I'd rather have them absolutely destroy my sleep schedule than ending up getting in to less favorable university than I got in
Seriously? If you're going to university you'll be fine regardless of where it ranks, how can that possibly be worth destroying your teenage years? Is this just social attitudes in Korea or does it actually make any difference?
So the American equivalent is pretty much going to the ivy League then going to work at FAANG or a law firm or finance firm that only hires from the ivies.
That stuff all exists in the US and it's certainly something many Americans aspire to as evidenced by the whole college admissions coaching industry.
What you're seeing out of Korea is presented as though ALL families are basically telling their kids that they'll be disowned if they fail to achieve these lofty heights.
The reality is that there are a ton of more accessible universities throughout the Korean peninsula that kids attend and they end up with reasonable jobs living reasonable lives, current situation of unaffordable housing and rampant debt notwithstanding.
I would agree that many if not most Korean students spend significantly more time studying than their American counterparts. I will not agree that it's universally effective to do so.
Source: Lived in Korea for four years in the nineties and eventually married into it. Though I will admit some of my experiences may be outdated as I haven't been keeping up with latest trends.
I'm so jealous of the street food there. Literally watched a video of someone making egg sandwiches or something and I think I died a little inside because there's basically nothing like that in Canada unless you count hotdogs; which I fucking don't.
A man chooses. A slave obeys.
BUT....
You can get wasted with $1 worth of soju.
$3 these days. Times are hard.
I still think living in North Korea would be worse.
Life controled by handful of rich familles
Does S Korea also have the problem of a rigid and corrupt 2 party system?
There are two big parties and four smaller parties represented in the (current) National Assembly, but the Democratic Party has a majority by itself. The current President belongs to the other big party (People's Power).
It’s not that, it’s the megacorps
Not sure. What I do know is that Korean parliament occasionally gets into actual mob-on-mob brawls. So there's that.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/03/asia/south-korea-lawmakers-indicted-intl-hnk/index.html
Yea but amazing cuisine and k-pop
Many people consider K-pop to be extremely shit.
My first exposure to it was in 1994. Crazy thing is that today's k-pop is virtually indistinguishable from that of thirty years ago for me. The music, clothes, hair, and choreography are all exactly the same.
I'm sure some k-popophile will come put me in my place, but I stand by what I perceive.
Fun story from back then: One of the big groups back then was Turbo. While spending many hours at the US Embassy getting my wife a spousal visa, she recognized Mikey from Turbo. We go over and say hi and end up spending the whole day with him. He spoke perfect English and pretty much lived in Los Angeles. He told us that a significant portion of Turbo concerts had some other guy wearing a surgical mask pretending to be him because he was busy studying in the US.
There's good Korean punk, rock, and metal as well. Nuclear Idiots, Harry Big Button, Dead Chant, Method, Duoxini, BADLAMB.
Yeah the mandatory service and shitty neighbors suck. Other stuff mentioned are simply not true.
Source: I am Korean
No, the chaebol are absolutely a thing. That's how South Korea rebuilt after the wars. That's how we have Samsung and LG. Those families make up a majority of the country's GDP, and lobby substantially.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/18/business/chaebol-south-korea.html
I'm Korean and I know what chaebols are 😂. They get many perks like not going to jail after committing crimes, but they don't control all aspects of people's lives here. That is overexaggeration and simply not true.
