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Question for South Koreans here: Is this real or is this report just the usual exaggeration by western media? Asking because Reuter’s has a biased reporting for anything related to India, and I’m wondering if they have a similar lens / filter for South Korea. (I’m from India in US)
Question for South Koreans here: Is this real or is this report just the usual exaggeration by western media? Asking because Reuter’s has a biased reporting for anything related to India, and I’m wondering if they have a similar lens / filter for South Korea. (I’m from India in US)
[1]: https://www.theminimalists.com/
I believe many people in this forum fall under the: got plenty of money, spending plenty of money, started medidating to improve life and work performance, found value in decluttering.
I don't know how wide-spread this phenomenon is in Korea, or the integrity of the journalist/article, but even if 200 people do it in a year, it looks like they are trying to simplify their life.
Edit: thinking about this a bit better, this is more like Ascetisism [2] (fromt the Greek Ασκητισμός), than Minimalism, but it is to the same direction.
If I ever developed a chronic illness in old age and would be on the verge of bankruptcy because of it, I would seriously consider committing a white collar crime and get free treatment in prison over suffering through the financial strain it would otherwise cause me.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-03-16/japan-s-p...
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I'm not sure it would have the same effect. My parents have a vacation home near where I live. Sometimes I go there for the weekend and I still use the internet, but it's so much more relaxing because I'm physically separated from my home and normal life where I have a lot of responsibilities. To declutter your mind you have to remove yourself from all of your physical clutter, and I don't think you can do that at ho…
> To declutter your mind you have to remove yourself from all of your physical clutter Maybe you should try getting rid of your physical clutter first. It might improve your overall happiness instead of a day without it.
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Do people actually think they'll die if they sleep with the fan on? Thats pretty weird to me.
Yes, that used to be a common misconception in Korea until recently. It is completely false but such rumors can get viral very quickly. There are also many such misonceptions in the West. For instance, in the West, many people still believe that different areas of the tongues are used for different tastes (sweet, bitter,...). You can find more such things in this famous wikipedia article: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w…
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Monasteries are a Western tradition. Some Buddhist temples and Christian organizations offer a similar program in South Korea, but most people who aren't religious don't feel comfortable attending an overtly religious program. Edit: Most Koreans would think of monasteries as a Western/Christian thing. Culturally, modern South Korea is much closer to the West than to India or even China.
There's definitely a strong historic Buddhist monastic tradition in Korea. The Christianity that has taken hold in Korea is the American/evangelical sort and they don't do monasticism, so it seems strange to me that it would be associated with the West. Anyhow, when I made the comment, I was thinking of the last line of the parent post "even in the West as a modern alternative to a monastery". To me, an alternative t…
A majority (56%) of South Koreans have no religion. Among the remainder, there are more Christians (19% Protestant + 8% Catholic) than Buddhists (15%). Unlike in Japan, Buddhism hasn't been a dominant force in the Korean society for a long time -- not since neo-Confucianism replaced it as the state ideology in the early 15th century.
Some Buddhist ideas and habits remain in the culture, of course, but most people regard them as part of their national tradition, not Buddhist in particular. The younger generations think of Buddhism more as a subject of history books than as something that might be relevant to the 21st century.
So a Buddhist monastery is not exactly the first thing that the average person would think of when they want to get away from the stresses of life in Seoul. Some temples run "temple stay" programs for short-term visitors, and some people seem to like it, but that's about it. It's just another niche. Not every Asian country is deeply Buddhist!
Meanwhile, anything that is vaguely related to America or Europe is grouped as "Western" in Korean parlance ;)
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I have been living in Korea for many years. I have never heard about it. I asked my Korean colleagues about it. They have never heard about it and they think that it is weird.
The article isn't saying the "prison retreat" thing is common, it's a meta commentary on the stress of Korean corporate life. I have seen a question on HN about Japanese "Black Companies" before, and I believe patio11 said that they were an actual thing. So I'm not surprised a similar culture of overwork exists in South Korea. (My only direct experience of South Koreans is that they always kick my ass at online games…
[0] A company so abusive of workers that it literally disgusts Japanese salarymen. Common elements include withholding pay, withholding pay for large amounts of mandatory overtime, ordering overtime in quantities sufficient to cause death by exhaustion, physical violence against staff, harassment of staff by management in a fashion far surpassing social norms, etc.
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Can I know how you got that number? Presuming you work 37.5 hours per week which should be the minimum fulltime labor amount at 5 days times 7.5 hours per week. 2080 divided by 37.5 is about 55 weeks, while there is only 52 weeks in a year. If you count it as 40 hrs per week then it is 52 weeks but people usually don't count the extra half hour which is usually a break but that could be your number. This is probably…
> 7.5 hours per [day] How did you get that? When I was an hourly employee, my shifts were 8.5/9 hours clock-in to clock-out, to allow for a 30 minute or 1 hour lunch break.
Question for South Koreans here: Is this real or is this report just the usual exaggeration by western media? Asking because Reuter’s has a biased reporting for anything related to India, and I’m wondering if they have a similar lens / filter for South Korea. (I’m from India in US)