Korean culture as the solution

Courtesy of zerotake

By David A. Tizzard

Many people know about Korea's low birthrate. It's one of the lowest in the world, and it's falling. Basically, Korean people these days aren't getting married and they aren't having children at anywhere near the rate that they used to. This has even prompted some to predict the extinction of the Korean people by a certain date in the future should the phenomenon not be reversed. Different political parties, regional bodies, and government ministries have spent billions trying to rectify the situation to no avail. Everyone sees it as a problem.

But what it they're wrong? What if the low birthrate in Korea is not a problem but instead a solution? Is it possible that everyone looking at this has their perspective twisted?

To make this claim, we first have to understand what culture is. This is not easy. It's one of the most difficult terms to define in academia because every time you think you've got it, a different aspect or interpretation arises. Ultimately, however, we are trying to explain human behavior. Why do people bow, use chopsticks, live in apartments, drink ice Americanos in winter, follow certain religions, wear headscarves and so on?

What is culture?

Every person is, in certain respects, like all others, like some others, and like no others. The same is true of people in Korea. There are some things that all Korean people do, some things that some Korean people do, and some things that only particular individuals do. Thus, there are often three sources of our behavior: human nature (which we all do), culture (which some of us do), and personality (which we alone do). The low birthrate, like the ice Americanos, is a culture. It's something that some people in Korea do and it is borne out by repeated behavior over time by large groups of people.

But that still doesn't explain why people do it.

Different environments introduce different problems that humans must deal with in order to survive. Living in the jungle provides certain challenges that living in the desert doesn't and vice-versa. The weather will encourage the adoption of certain clothes and living arrangements. The natural world will encourage the consumption of certain foods. Likewise, living in modern Seoul provides a host of different problems that were not presented by traditional Korean society. So because humans want to survive, they come up with specific solutions to problems. These solutions, when adopted and maintained over time, are what we know as culture. Thus, culture is a solution to a problem given the tools available to us.

Ice Americanos

Let's take the ice Americano example first. Twenty years ago, people in Korea didn't really drink coffee. It was all green tea and some weird hazelnut tinged beverage passing as caffeine. Yet today, coffee culture is rampant. Every office, lecture hall, and desk will have rows of plastic cups, bottles, and cans of coffee. Moreover, it's a specific type of coffee culture here in Korea. It's not about slowly sipping a high-end espresso in a sophisticated way while discussing existentialism. It's about having a large, iced, plastic coffee that can be purchased quickly and for a relatively low price and then consumed on the move. And there's a reason for this. The coffee culture is a specific solution to a specific problem. Korean people are busy, they are tired and over-worked, they are on the move, and they want value for money. Thus, we have the emergence of the current coffee culture.

In the same way, culture emerged in the past. Traditional Korean houses, hanok, were designed to best survive the country's hot summers and cold winters. Confucianism emerged as a conservative unifying ideology in China to bring order to a part of the world experiencing disintegration and chaos; Christianity arose in the Middle East as a way of getting people to stop killing each other, stop sleeping with family members, have only one wife, and be careful of eating certain foods. Whether it's food, religion, clothes, or behavior, a lot of human behavior and culture can be described by seeing humans as trying to solve specific problems created by their environment.

It is well-documented that in the past Korean families were much larger. So much so, in fact, that the government even launched public campaigns telling people to stop having so many children: "Two is enough" the posters cried out as the nation tried to preserve rice and certain standards of living. But those large families of 5-6 children were also a solution to a problem. That culture existed because many children didn't live long enough to reach adulthood and for those that did, they were required to contribute to hard farm work. The more children you had, the more chance you had of having more workers and thus more to eat. The large family was a solution to a problem.

Culture as the solution

Today, however, there are different problems. Korea is an incredibly competitive society. To survive, university students and young adults have to work long hours, study, obtain various qualifications and certificates, save up an often unobtainable amount of money for a house, stay beautiful, and manage their social relationships. Survival is not easy. Thus, in order to help them do this, they have found certain solutions: one of which is to abstain from dating, marriage, or having children. Because this brings with it a lot of financial and emotional burdens as well as the impacts on the women's physical health.

The low birthrate is a solution to a problem created by the current environment. It is only when it is seen in that way can governments or analysts really begin to understand or address it. Of course, in true Hegelian-Marxist fashion however, the newly created solution which emerges contains inside it inherent contradictions. The solution becomes a new problem and thus the dialectical process repeats and culture moves forward. New solutions are required and new cultures are created. The solution young people in Korea have found to the challenges of modern life will soon become a problem and a new culture will be required.

Humans are good at solving problems and we are good at surviving. None more so than the people of Korea who lived through a 20th century marked by imperialism, colonialism, civil war, and dictatorship and yet still emerged as a cultural and economic powerhouse today. They will continue to find solutions to problems and create new cultures as they do so. It is up to us to see their behavior as solutions not problems.

Dr. David A. Tizzard (datizzard@swu.ac.kr) has a Ph.D. in Korean Studies and lectures at Seoul Women's University and Hanyang University. He is a social/cultural commentator and musician who has lived in Korea for nearly two decades. He is also the host of the Korea Deconstructed podcast, which can be found online. The views expressed in the article are the author's own and do not reflect the editorial direction of The Korea Times.