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South Korea: The only middle power of its kind

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Re: South Korea: The only middle power of its kind

#331

Post by dTal »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #13
calmd wrote: post #7

SK is committing demographic suicide though, so whatever you think of its success, it has a pretty fatal disease. It has the lowest birthrate in the world. This is going to cause significant economic problems quite soon, or they will have to open up massive immigration which will completely change the country. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_birth_rate_in_South_Korea How does the developed world pull out of this ty…

> going to be one of the grand challenges of the 50 years I’m sceptical of this claim. Demand per capita grows unabated. Working lives are lengthening. A smaller population living well is economically indistinguishable, in the aggregate, from a large one living poorly. Maybe post-industrial civilisations settle into a lower-population steady state than ones requiring lots of unrefined labor. Yes, dependency ratios wi…

>...Working lives are lengthening. A smaller population living well...

Wait a sec - a population being economically forced to retire later (or not at all) is not one "living well". People are being squeezed.

Re: South Korea: The only middle power of its kind

#332

Post by CamTin »

entropicdrifter wrote: post #241
slothtrop wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's complete cognitive dissonance and confusion at the moment over popular notions of national prosperity. On one hand people readily agree that the GDP is an inaccurate measure of prosperity, that wealth gained mostly goes to the top and it ought not be a prime focus, while at the same time suggest that high rates of immigration are crucial to prop up said GDP. Many countries with stagnant birthrates are rather…

Well, in the cases of Japan and SK, there is the issue of elderly people beginning to commit crimes on a regular basis in recent years because prison is free and they can't afford a retirement home.

The American solution to this problem is just to charge people for the expense of being arrested and jailed: https://www.themarshallproject.org/records/2091-jail-fees

Re: South Korea: The only middle power of its kind

#333

Post by gniv »

contra-doubts wrote: post #264

This article is wildly off-base and totally misrepresents South Korea, both factually and in tone. There are many ways that South Korea is a great country but this article misses the mark. Source: I've been married to a South Korean for 10 years. > South Korea was able to make these achievements without a citywide nor a nationwide lockdown. A large part of the country is literally in Level 4 lockdowns now (no gatheri…

> South Koreans frequently believe in superstitions, fortune tellers, urban legends, etc., and generally struggle with critical thinking or questioning established ideas.

You provide references for the other points, but not this. I can see it being true for older people, but is it really true in general? (I actually had this question before since I'm seeing a lot of shamans in the kdramas and it puzzles me since there is little of this in the west.)

Re: South Korea: The only middle power of its kind

#334

Post by bialpio »

bialpio wrote: post #304
throw37388 wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please. We have 40% unemployment in Greece among young people. Housing is bloody expensive to build. It is not some goverment conspiracy! Did you actually try to immigrate into US? It is one of the worst countries at accepting immigration. Any normal country gives citizenship after 5 years of residency. In US it is like 30 years. And from far away it looks like your melting pot is broken. Too many groups fighting eac…

"30 years" is factually incorrect. The requirement is to be a permanent resident for 5 years (I can find links if needed). Source: I'm currently awaiting my naturalization appointment, if all goes well the total time from setting my foot in the US to becoming a citizen will be few months short of 9 years (~2.5 years on work visa & 5 years on green card + ~1.5 years wait for naturalization appointment).

With that said, it may be tricky to become a resident [1] in the first place. There are per-country-of-birth quotas, currently the wait times for people born in China / India can be significant (if taking the work visa route), up to 11 years. The longest wait that I see is for family-based immigration from Mexico - 24 years' wait for "married sons/daughters of US citizens". [2]

[1] resident to me means lawful permanent resident

[2] https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/v...

Re: South Korea: The only middle power of its kind

#335

Post by yongjik »

devchix wrote: post #305
yongjik wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is ... complicated. America defeated Japan in WW2, leading to the liberation of Korea, but it was immediately followed by the US and the Soviet dividing the country in half. To make matters more complicated, the US backed a right-wing former independence fighter, who turned out to be a corrupt asshole who rolled in the same bed with national traitors (those who had worked for Japan under occupation). Becaus…

The thing is super complicated! The US under SecDef William Howard Taft backed the Japanese annexation of Korea (tacitly, as it didn't do anything in protest) in return for Japan not raising a row over the US acquiring The Phillipines, during the Spanish-American war. Everybody is retconning history. Anyhow, the point is, it's a reach to say Korea's history has little historical baggage. Why is it not a poor, angry,…

Err... I don't think your second point necessarily follows the first point. For a country to become "angry an belligerent, with massive chip on shoulder," it needs (1) angry, desperate people, and (2) someone who would gain politically by fanning the hatred (often in a self-reinforcing cycle).

I think the anti-Japanese sentiment didn't really took off because, once you start looking into the matter, you'd rapidly realize that half of the country's ruling class was national traitors, at which point the question will become strictly verboten. By the time the country became democratic enough so that people could actually raise these questions, there was no point in becoming a "freedom fighter." Sure, everybody loves to hate Japan (especially when there's a soccer match), but nobody with half a brain would want to, say, visit Tokyo and blow up stuff ... it makes zero sense!

Re: South Korea: The only middle power of its kind

#336

Post by audunw »

eatonphil wrote: post #2

My wife is South Korean so I'm biased. But I've been to Japan and South Korea and if you're looking for one of the most modern nations in the world, I strongly recommend you go to Korea. The only comparable country I've been to is the Netherlands or maybe Denmark. In contrast, the US and Japan seem to be somewhat falling apart with a peak in infrastructure and buildings a few decades ago. It's not that bad of course…

> Also, in my experience Korea was way more ready to handle English speakers than Japan was.

In Seoul yes, but not necessarily other places, in my experience. I had really confusing experience trying to sleep over in a spa in Busan. The only English phrase we got out of them was "Robot steal your phone". Admittedly this is not a place tourists would generally go though. We got recommended doing it by Korean friends and our hostel host in Seoul helped us find the place.

In Japan I experienced a few times that a Japanese person that could speak english would come over to help me if I was staring at something (map, ATM machine) in confusion for a while. Didn't experience that in South Korea even though I stayed there longer.

I agree that South Korea feels extremely modern.. but not much less than Japan. I wonder if it has something to do with how recently the infrastructure was built. Maybe South Korea is just at that perfect stage now where nothing is too old, and yet they've managed to improve/refurbish almost everything. I've noticed Taiwan is a mixed bag. Some places feels insanely modern, while there's still big areas with a lot of old construction. But then those areas tends to be the ones with the most charm and the best night markets.

Re: South Korea: The only middle power of its kind

#337

Post by tuatoru »

tablespoon wrote: post #258
dragonwriter wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can you go into more detail on that? A typical example is a two-step argument equating race/biological heritage with culture and/or ethnic identity coupled with appeals to an imperative to preserve culture and/ot ethnic identity. Something like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28051854

> Something like this: Honestly that comment doesn't read "racist" to me. Maybe the disconnect is taking "culture" too literally, or using "culture" when one really means "people" (i.e. a combination of culture and ancestry/descent). Also even though an entire culture can technically be transmitted memetically, that's practically not the case except in cases of early childhood adoption. Immigrant populations may tend…

> even though an entire culture can technically be transmitted memetically, that's practically not the case except in cases of early childhood adoption.

The excellent blog ACOUP has just had a five-part series, "The Queen's Latin", in part describing mass cultural transmission from Rome to various ethnic groups in Europe. TLDR: it helps to have a culture that readily accommodates different religions and other regional variations.

Cultures are not fixed for all time; they change all the time.

Re: South Korea: The only middle power of its kind

#338

Post by dtech »

stevula wrote: post #269
jeffreyrogers wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those European countries also developed fast without much immigration (including Switzerland and the Nordics, which were not affected much by the war). It may have nothing to do with immigration, but you certainly haven't proved that. Edit: Currently the poorest parts of the US population are stagnating at best, at a time when rates of both legal and illegal immigration are quite high. It is hard to make the argument…

> Those European countries also developed fast without much immigration That doesn’t seem correct, at least not universally. Germany invited a large number of immigrant workers to deal with its labor shortage after WW2. https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastarbeiter

Similar for the Netherlands and Belgium

Re: South Korea: The only middle power of its kind

#339

Post by bingbingbong »

gniv wrote: post #333
contra-doubts wrote: post #264

This article is wildly off-base and totally misrepresents South Korea, both factually and in tone. There are many ways that South Korea is a great country but this article misses the mark. Source: I've been married to a South Korean for 10 years. > South Korea was able to make these achievements without a citywide nor a nationwide lockdown. A large part of the country is literally in Level 4 lockdowns now (no gatheri…

> South Koreans frequently believe in superstitions, fortune tellers, urban legends, etc., and generally struggle with critical thinking or questioning established ideas. You provide references for the other points, but not this. I can see it being true for older people, but is it really true in general? (I actually had this question before since I'm seeing a lot of shamans in the kdramas and it puzzles me since ther…

In my experience, there is a lot of little urban legends and superstitions that young people still take part in / talk about, but it's unclear how many do it for fun and how many partially believe it. Anecdotally, I've met plenty of young people (20s) who believe the whole bloodtype/personality thing.

Re: South Korea: The only middle power of its kind

#340

Post by citrusybread »

Clewza313 wrote: post #28
nwienert wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s no problem with low birth rates, this is a meme that is told by a few economists and yet a very slight depopulation is not only survivable but has upsides as well and so far both South Korea and Japan (for going on three decades) have maintained incredibly competitive across nearly all metrics, certainly far better off than the US in so many ways. I got in an extensive debate over this with statistics a few m…

There is no problem with low birth rates in the long term. There are, however, massive problems during the many decades when the population pyramid is inverted and there are 4 or 5 retirees for every child, a ratio which Japan is about to hit and where South Korea will be in a couple of decades as well. As for why this is a problem, Japan's pension system is already insolvent and the country is starting to experience…

I mean, you could almost make the same argument for Canada & the US.

It's mostly due to political gridlock here, but look at all the crumbling bridges and dams -- the transit that never got built, and the feeling that somehow we are wealthy yet we never have any money for important issues.

Japan's GDP per capita still keeps growing. And the average Japanese still has an excellent quality of life.

Japan also has so many pointless infrastructure projects; things like laying concrete into river beds to control their flows, or retention systems to stop mudslides that only started because they clear-cut forests and replaced them with sugi as a make-work project... The workers are there, if they got rid of the make-work projects.

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