Neophilia
For every statement about South Korea, there will always be one major caveat. The usual disclaimers for generalizations hold true, of course: everyone is different, and not every South Korean thinks in one particular way or another. But beyond that, a fundamental fact about this country is that it has an immense capacity for change. Because of this, a statement about life in Korea that is true at a particular moment may become completely false far sooner than can be predicted.
This capacity for change can be positive, especially when it enables people to overcome horrific misfortune and build a country they can be proud of. That Seoul is absolutely unrecognizable from the city shown in photographs taken fifty years ago is testament to the benefits of openness to change, and a reminder of how much has happened so quickly in Korean society.
The rapid pace of development seems to have created a desire in the Korean people to always seek out the next thing—and no doubt issues of face and the spirit of competitiveness that has grown acute during the boom years contribute to this. The latest gadget, idea, or trend is much more compelling than what came before, often simply because it is newer than what preceded it. In a society driven by the perceived need for economic and technological progress and impatient to move forward—one of the first phrases visitors learn is “bballi bballi,” which means “quickly, quickly”—nobody wants to be considered old-fashioned or slow to catch on.
Your Phone Is Old in Korea
The rate at which things become obsolete in Korea is remarkable. Songs are “old” that were hits the year before, as if they were from the 1970s or ’80s. The same is true of celebrities who reach the age of around thirty. For the celebrity whom the public now finds boring, the best recourse is to disappear for a time before making a comeback with a revamped image. A mobile phone that was top of the line just two or three years earlier will almost certainly be considered backward, especially by young people. According to SK Telecom, Korean consumers replace their phones every 26.9 months on average. By contrast, the Japanese take 46.3 months.
While considered very quality-conscious and unaccepting of defects, Korean consumers are also consummate early adopters. This makes South Korea the ideal test market for any new device. Local and foreign manufacturers who have recognized this imperative to always own the next thing introduce their newest gadgets or latest models in the Korean market before anywhere else. Japanese camera manufacturers such as Olympus are known for doing this. They will monitor the Korean consumer reaction, make adaptations to the product if necessary, and then roll out sales to the rest of the world. The purpose-built city of Songdo near Incheon Airport is being used as a test bed by Cisco Systems of the United States for a whole range of new wireless Internet technologies.
The introduction of the smartphone in 2009 was greeted with near-hysteria in South Korea. In the eighteen months that followed, Koreans bought more than seven million of the devices, discarding their old cell phones, which, in being able only to make calls, send text messages, and take photographs, suddenly seemed old-fashioned. Millions of people will know the exact release date of the next version of the Apple iPhone. If the launch is delayed, millions will share the disappointment. Apple’s biggest competitor in the smartphone market is Korea’s own Samsung Electronics, which has sold around 100 million of its own Galaxy S and Nexus smartphones worldwide, and over five million in Korea in 2011 alone. In typical fashion for Korean business, the Galaxy S is a classic “follower” product, but it was brought out with amazing speed, allowing Samsung to overtake Apple and become the world’s number one seller of smartphones in terms of units sold.
It is common to see people in their fifties and sixties making use of smartphone apps that Westerners young enough to be their children have never heard of. Koreans are positively addicted to these gadgets. A joint report from the Korea Communications Commission and the Korea Information Security Agency notes that, among consumers overall, the average owner uses his or her smartphone for 1.9 hours per day.
In the context of certain foreign places, such as China or Europe, old is acceptable: Korean tourists enjoy visiting the Forbidden City or Venice as much as anyone else. But old within a Korean context usually carries negative connotations. Old reminds people of the past, when times were not as good as they are now. It is probably not overstepping the mark too much to say that old things can bring about a sense of shame.
Korean has a word, chonseureopda (“country style”), to denote something considered old-fashioned or tacky. A hairstyle, a jacket, a particular singer, or even a person’s name may be deemed “country style” and subject to scorn or mockery. During the period of rapid economic development, anything that belonged to the countryside was seen as backward or out of fashion and in need of replacement, while Seoul was its opposite. That the countryside is so completely equated with “old” is a testament to the overwhelming influence that urbanization and the glamour of city life have had over people.
One rarely sees truly old cars on the streets of Seoul. Indeed, if one comes across a twenty-year-old car and peers through the windshield, often one will see a foreign face behind the wheel. Thirty-year-old blocks of apartments are considered due for thorough renovation or outright demolition, though this may also have to do with the poor quality of construction in days gone by. Because of where South Korea came from—and where it was until recently—society prefers to remove the traces of the past.
There are slight signs of change, though: even neophilia may not last forever. From the 2000s onwards, some wealthy and artistically inclined Koreans have begun to rediscover traditional Korean houses (hanok), and are now prepared to pay handsomely for beautifully renovated ones. And from around 2010, bars that play genuinely old Korean music from the 1960s and ‘70s, such as Gopchang Jeongol in the Hongdae art school area of Seoul, have become popular. Ironically, this trend for nostalgia is still a cutting-edge pursuit, enjoyed by the cultural elite.
A Nation of Gadget-lovers
Korean neophilia manifests itself most obviously in the realm of technology, as we have touched on, but mobile phones are merely a small part of the phenomenon. Virtually any new type of device will reach mass-market status here much earlier than in other wealthy countries, with the possible exception of Japan. In-car navigation, DSLR cameras, and MP3 players were all taken up here long before Europeans or Americans converted to them.
People are selective, however. Popular adoption of a product can be all or nothing, which is why Samsung Electronics’ Galaxy S was such a huge hit and LG Electronics’ rival Optimus One a complete disaster that plunged the firm into losses and resulted in CEO Nam Yong losing his job. When a new product vaults the hurdle of acceptance, the face-driven, consumerist reality of South Korea takes over, and millions are ready to pull out their wallets.
Of course, it helps that the largest Korean firms are among the chief manufacturers of such products. With their big marketing budgets and influence within the domestic market, the likes of Samsung Electronics have a strong likelihood of convincing people that without their very latest gadget, life would be meaningless. Long before anyone else felt them necessary, flat-screen TVs were a standard in South Korean homes. 3D TV was similarly available in Korea before anywhere else.
Contrary to received notion that the country’s business culture lacks of creativity—a perception encouraged by the “fast follower” strategy of Samsung and LG Electronics—high-tech leadership is now a hallmark of South Korean business. There are TV-phones that work on the Seoul Metro, since one can find a signal even down there; millions of people own such devices. The Seoul Metro also offers WiFi access. Broadband speed in Korea is the fastest in the world. Long before Facebook or even Myspace existed, Korea had Cyworld, a social networking site that virtually everyone under the age of forty made use of. And in 1998, five years before the launch of Skype, a Korean company named Saerom was running a huge VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) phone service named DialPad.
Koreans were also pioneers of citizen journalism, in which non-professionals write articles for websites such as Ohmynews.com, which mushroomed in popularity in the early 2000s. This left-leaning website, which acts as a counterbalance to the mostly right-leaning mainstream press, is one of a number of Internet-based news outlets that blur the distinction between journalist and reader. Far more people now access news online than through traditional print media: in 2009, 53 percent of South Koreans used Internet media on a daily basis, while only 32 percent picked up a paper, according to Korea Broadcast Advertising Corp.
Online media has even influenced the outcome of elections. Roh Moo-hyun won the 2002 presidential election against all expectations after a last-minute Internet campaign won him support among young voters. Furthermore, the 2010 regional elections saw the ruling Hannara-dang (Grand National Party) receive a shocking defeat that analysts credit in part to the combined impact of Twitter and smartphone use, since young people were receiving messages on election morning reminding them to go out and punish the government for its various failings.
As mentioned in chapter five, the only way to achieve serious business success in South Korea is to work with a chaebol partner, or discover a rare “blue ocean.” Generally, blue oceans in Korea are found in high tech. This is virtually the only area in which a small businessperson can sufficiently narrow the capital and influence gap. Thus, former startups like NHN—owner of search engine Naver.com (one of the only search portals to succeed in resisting Google in its home territory)—and NCSoft, a developer of online games, have become successes, unlike e-Hyundai or the equivalent thereof. The top fifty companies by market value on the Korean stock exchange are dominated by formerly government-supported chaebols and privatized utilities, and NHN and NCSoft are the only two truly independent, entrepreneurial firms to rank among them.
Inspired by the likes of NHN, a second wave of high tech entrepreneurs is now emerging. Many of these produce apps for smartphones, owing to the popularity of iPhones and Android devices in South Korea. There is also a large community of indie video game developers. The growth of the venture capital industry in Korea is making it increasingly possible for young people with good ideas to pitch to potential investors and attract capital. Many founders and investors are Korean-American ex-Silicon Valley workers, but increasingly, more and more young Koreans are opting out of the chaebol track and trying their luck with start-ups.
Faddishness
The negative side of South Korea’s neophilia is the extent to which fads influence people. Koreans who leave the country for a couple of years are always disappointed to find that half of the restaurants, bars, or cafés they used to go to have disappeared. Everything has a shelf life and will inevitably be replaced by something newer and more fashionable in relatively short order. A smart businessperson will ride the trends, for example by closing down his or her restaurant, rebranding it, and selling a different type of food—then repeating this process with every change in the public mood.
In the mid-2000s, an immensely popular (and immensely spicy) dish called buldak—“fire chicken”—became known as a “yuhaeng,” or “mania,” food. Restaurants dedicated to serving it sprang up everywhere. Not long after, though, the mania subsided and the restaurants almost completely disappeared. Nowadays, anyone seeking a buldak eatery has to search in advance, as the dish has returned to the realm of specialty.
Slang vocabulary changes with dizzying rapidity. In 2007 and 2008, the popular TV show Muhan Dojeon (“Infinite Challenge”) caused an explosion in young people’s use of the word “jimotmi,” which is an abbreviation for the Korean words that mean “I’m sorry I couldn’t save you.” If one lost a drinking game or suffered some other mild misfortune, “jimotmi” would chorus from the mouths of one’s friends. However, jimotmi’s popularity died quickly, and one never hears the word now.
Much of slang comes from advertising, as it does in other countries. The difference in South Korea is the extent to which such memes almost immediately capture the whole country’s attention. Talented marketers are constantly working to come up with the next hit concept. Some of the most successful in recent years have utilized the English word “well-being,” which was applied to a vast array of products. The mere use of the word denoted that the item in question was healthy—even when it was served up by the manufacturer of Choco-pie. Another catchphrase was the “S-line,” a description of the shape of a curvy woman’s body—which a woman could obtain ostensibly via the purchase of certain foods or exercise equipment. The media joined in, looking for the celebrity with the best S-line, and soon, “S-line mania” took hold, until a newer concept came along.
A similar fickleness occurs in politics, with perhaps more worrisome overtones. A politician caught up in scandal will be held in disgrace for a while, but chances are good that the public will soon forget his misbehavior, allowing him to resurface later. There is an expression that can be applied to such phenomena. “Naembi geunseong,” or “boiling-pot disposition,” means that people are quick to boil over into anger but equally quick to simmer down and forget that anything happened.
Roh Moo-hyun won the 2002 presidential election through a last-minute Internet-led surge, but a great deal of support ebbed away early on in his term. Sensing an opportunity, opponents tried to impeach him for expressing support for his party in subsequent National Assembly elections, since the constitution states that the president must show impartiality. The impeachment effort brought a million people into the streets, leading to a dramatic resurgence in the president’s popularity. Subsequently, his ratings declined yet again. The point is not that Roh was a good or bad president but rather the public’s volatility: many people thought he was good, then bad, then good again, then bad again. And as of 2012, Roh Moo-hyun is the second most popular South Korean president ever, behind only Park Chung-hee.