These children are being raised for success in 1825. In 2025, this slavish mentality of an identical cog in a vast machine doesn’t pay. The flat subjectivity this upbringing creates puts you at a big disadvantage.
The existing economy needs individuals, deep layered personalities, a quirky, complex character, and a very deep subjectivity.
I have no knowledge of South Korea to explain what drives this incapacity to understand that the world has changed but these poor people are doing their own children a great damage.
Clarissa's Blog 
Sudden, fast-paced development. South Korea went from being less developed than Ghana (in 1950) to Western European levels of development in 1990.
That’s moving from the 1700s to the twentieth century in under two generations. Not enough time for people to adjust their mentality.
You see the same in certain parts of Southern Italy, Greece, Portugal or Spain, which saw vast improvements in the economy in the space of two generations but cognitively they’re not there yet.
They’re living twenty-first century lives while mentally they’re still in the nineteenth century.
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Exactly. There is such a thing as developing too fast.
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“I have no knowledge of South Korea to explain “
These private cram schools are endemic in East Asia. Korea (like Japan, Vietnam, some others) inherited a heavy culture of testing that’s unlike anything in any part of Europe.
I’m sure Korea has some local wrinkles but the problem is much broader.
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“incapacity to understand that the world has changed”
It is worth noting that South Korea is a popular cultural superpower in East Asia. I have no idea about the literature but they’ve obviously got lots of things about the modern world worked out pretty well…
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I read a bestselling Korean novel recently. It’s about test scores. Lots of drama with test scores.
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I live in Korea. From what I understand, the country’s economy is literally in the hands of 5 companies (Samsung, SK, etc.) called “chaebols” that were initially created by the government and received monopolistic advantages in their respective sectors in exchange for fast industrial growth. That did work and Korea transformed from a low-income, war-ravaged economy into a first world economy. Korea is Samsung and Samsung is Korea. Samsung sells you flat screen TVs and also apartments.
But the bulk of the economy consists of precarious, low-productivity SMEs that offer zero career prospects, literally mom-and-pop businesses who’ll pay you badly. Because Samsung cannot absorb every bright, hardworking graduate produced by Korea’s sprawling education industry, so young people are effectively pushed into a zero-sum fight for a limited pool of high-quality jobs. It’s either a job at a chaebol company or a lifetime of toil. This intense competition for good jobs is probably the single largest reason why they brutalize their youth in high school with extreme studying.
I joke that there’s something special about koreans. The north got communism and they made the most dystopian version of it and the south got capitalism and they made the most dystopian version of it.
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The idea of a short medical leave (like for a day) here barely exists and even when it does, workers are too scared to actually use it. It is standard for people who feel sick to go to their neighborhood clinic to get an IV “energy” drip early in the morning, so they can have the strength to go to their office at 9 and work the full day.
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These are fascinating glimpses into a different way of life.
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That’s really insightful. Thank you, it makes things a lot clearer.
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“chaebols”
Had heard of them before, it sounds like a good idea in the short term but they probably should have been broken up a long time ago.
Probably difficult to impossible to do now…
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Chaebols are family/clan businesses much like the old Japanese zaibatsus. Countries doing catch up growth typically build on their existing social structure, which works for a while until reform is needed.
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I’ll echo what others have said in the comments.
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It’s a horrible model, also called 9-9-6. Work from 9am to 9pm, 6 days a week.
It’s great for the oligarch class because you have millions killing themselves to make you more money.
It’s a model that is also being brought to America and the world, where everything revolves around competition, endless productivity increases, and ultimately making more money for the oligarch class. It’s not healthy.
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That’s just child abuse.
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