Last week, a close friend of mine told me that he is constantly badgered by people around him.
This friend, a smart, well-educated and kind-hearted man in his early 40s with a respectable job was “bullied” by his colleagues for no other reason than that he was not yet married.
“Don’t you have a father? Your family must be ashamed of you,” was one of the remarks that he heard from his superior. “What is the use of decorating your place if you are not married?” was another.
The comments — to which the friend gracefully did not bother to retort — are the tip of some conversation commonly shared and tolerated in Korea, where people are collectively pressured to live in a certain way.
Here, the appropriate steps in life are all lined up. English must be mastered during the elementary school years while how you do in middle school is the prognosis for the success in the adult life.
Once you do successfully enter college, it is now time to prepare for your first job.
It is thus no surprise that half of job-seekers in their 20s are preparing to take state-certified exams to become public servants, according to the latest statistics by Korea Employment Information Service.
To the chagrin of the struggling Koreans, even after one manages to acquire a decent diploma and land a secure job, there are usually still things that must be accomplished.
Marriage at an appropriate age should come next, to be followed by child-bearing. You are to have at least two babies to shut down any room for public nagging.
Blue-collar jobs are considered inferior, while single parents, divorcees and people with different sexual orientations are viewed as failures in life.
Diversity is often frowned upon, as if it is a challenge to the established and the uniform goal of being a solid community.
Missing from the picture, however, is whether being “normal” would make one happy.
To question one’s happiness, in fact, almost seems like a vain indulgence.
It’s old news that Koreans show low happiness level, as was displayed in the latest U.N.’s World Happiness Report this year in which Koreans ranked 58th out of 157 countries in the level of happiness.
There, too, has been constant debate over happiness in Korea. Countless self-help books are published as those struggling in life ask themselves: Despite all that I have, why am I not satisfied?
In the search of correlation between economic growth and happiness, advocators of growth have argued that no distribution or welfare can be attained without economic growth. Opponents have counterclaimed that growth and a rise in income are not correlated with the level of happiness.
A number of research studies, such as that of Hyundai Research Institute earlier this year, has turned to the Easterlin paradox, which shows that being rich does not equal being happy — at least not at a national level — after one is able to financially afford one’s basic needs.
While South Korea has the 11th-largest gross domestic product, economists and happiness researchers have long questioned its value and link to one’s contentment. A quest to find an alternative for GDP has long been in place before Bank of Korea Gov. Lee Ju-yeol recently pointed to its uselessness.
In my own search, I recently came across a book called “Origins of Happiness” written by psychology professor Suh Eun-kook of Yonsei University.
He noted that as “pleasure” is an experience designed for survival, it tends to return to its base value in order to keep working. In other words, the satisfaction that follows an accomplishment is bound to fade as the level of happiness returns to normal in order to maintain the survival mechanism.
“Happiness comes in the frequency, not the intensity, of positive affect,” he said quoting another thesis.
The way Koreans are enamored by a sense of approval by others also derives from the culture of “groupism,” rampant in other newly developed Asian countries, in comparison to Western cultures where individualism is appreciated, he added.
“It is necessary for one to listen to and respect other’s evaluations and views as a member of a society. But problems would start to occur if they become the only navigator of one’s life. How others react to what I feel and think would take precedence. And that would lead to living the life to obtain positive evaluations from others, rather than to experience one’s own life,” Suh wrote.
Society, culture and happiness are no easy or straightforward agendas to decipher.
However, it might help, once in a while, to remind oneself to encourage others: to love not just to marry well, but to be adored, to learn not just to study but to grow from, and to work not just to survive but to feel fulfilled. And most of all, that it is all right to be yourself and breathe a little rewarding sigh of content.
By Lee Joo-hee
Lee Joo-hee is the national editor of The Korea Herald. She can be reached at
jhl@heraldcorp.com. — Ed.