To say that Korea is leading in technology is perhaps not the accurate term. In terms of basic research Korea does not have a definitive lead and there are plenty of others out there who have capabilities close to Korea’s. Even Mexico and Malaysia have some real assets. Rather there is something just more human about technology and its use in Korean society which makes it more acceptable within the community and allows for innovation in Korea that is harder in other countries simply because innovation in technology has come to mean a more inhuman society for so many.
I am not implying at all that the dehumanizing aspects of technological society have been avoided in the Korean society—far from the case. Rather in Korea something akin to a fusion of the human and computer can be found that does not quite damage social fabric so profoundly. For example, Korea leads in e-government and is quickly digitalizing at all levels. And yet, if you call up a bank or government institution, you are likely to get a live human immediately, or quite soon. I hesitate to call up banks, or government agencies to try to resolve problems because my experiences as an American suggest there can be no happy ending, but in Korea, we find that much can be achieved in exactly that manner. I have called large bureaucracies in Korea and tracked down in a few minutes an individual in the proper division who then invites me to his or her office; hard to imagine experiencing such an outcome in the United States.
So also the writings of Korean “netizens” of cyberworld suggest something quite distinctive is happening here. Korea has extremely active cyber communities and we find often postings on news articles and other “cafes” that are written by articulate individuals deeply committed to exercising their free speech. Many Koreans say that the postings are more amusing than the articles themselves. Although there are such figures in the United States as well, most Americans will agree, I think, if I suggest that many postings to articles on the New York Times, or elsewhere, look like they were left there whose job it was to leave them there. In America we find much less of the spontaneity we find here.
And Korea’s embrace of technology is intimately linked to the concept of government, and by extension e-government. The American’s have such a fear of government that most efforts to link up local organizations are ineffective and many assume that government-sponsored initiatives will not work. If you tell many Americans about “e-government” they will assume you are talking about replacing people with recorded messages. This problem is related to the general weakening of government in the United States for a variety of factors over the last sixty years. Whereas in 1960 a large portion of Harvard Law School graduates went on directly to work in government, today, almost none do. United States government has hollowed out terribly, causing quite serious problems.
In the Korean case, however, government still has considerable appeal for the best and brightest, and most citizens have a greater degree of trust in government, more than I have witnessed in most countries. That situation means that technology can be part of innovative projects sponsored by government without much resistance.
My feeling is that the ethnic homogeneity – and overall homogeneity – in Korea has had much more of an influence than we think.
This concentration of “will” is able to focus all of society on a few paths or goals an to achieve results impossible in countries with less focused, less determined populations where opinion and interests are more divided.
There are no large accumulations of ethnic minorities here, with variant interests or who are suspicious of majorities; there are no far-flung and isolated communities like exist back home (in Canada) – no Wawas, no Port Arthurs, no Ganders or Sudburys, for that matter. The interests of elites in Toronto have virtually nothing to do with the interests of people in Thunder Bay or Winnipeg, to say nothing of Brandon or Hope, BC. And then you need to add in Quebec (for Canada): the same applies there, but it’s reduplicated in another language and culture setting.
Leading Korea is a tragically easy job. I say tragically, because the same things that give it that extra moving power also render it a species of prison for its inhabitants: Yes, while it’s possible for a particular technology to take off (windows XP and Internet Explorer, anyone?), and for everyone to be using it within a year, due to the faddishness of the social order and the homogeneity of experience, … it also limits things.
It may be that people in Montreal or Toronto are still using keys 25 years after electronic door codes have been available, as many Koreans there complain, at the same time, in the same block you can find a dozen door-opening solutions, none of which have anything to do with each other: 1955 7-number door codes, keys, card passes, FOBs, and even fingerprint biometrics. Some workplaces have security cards, others have biometric passes, others have nothing, some have physical keys, some just have codes. Some have round-the-clock security.
Internet technology is the same. I have 5 browsers I use on a regular basis for accessing English-language sites. Any given browser may or may not be appropriate for a given site; website developers are forced to be extremely clever. And each of these browsers will be available multiple versions.
By contrast, while Korean banks were online fast, until recently all of them could only be accessed by Internet Explorer in one version, leaving any putative Mac users – let alone Linux or others – out in the cold. What if users wanted to avoid the IE headaches and use Firefox or Chrome? Good luck.
The same problem pervades the E-publishing field. Samsung so utterly dominates the consumer technology field here that it effectively dictates technological social norms. New power plug? Everyone has to have it. Ditch your old equipment. Or get a little dangling adapter.
What’s missing in Korea is a bit of social chaos, to grease the wheels of innovation. Sure, it’s nice to get recycling and eco-sensible approaches from up top – but the homogeneity that allows a society to move from one standard to another in the blink of an eye also leaves it hopelessly vulnerable to failures in that technology, to changes, or to outside pressures.
In Canada, the banking system could lose its electronic systems and still survive – it did so before the 1970’s – because there are backup plans in case the electricity goes out. Same for everything else.
Koreans are so single-minded about virtually everything they do, so comfortable being led by social trends, governments or authority figures, that while this give the social order some tenacity, what it gains in focus it loses in ground-up adaptability.
The downside of too much “diversity” is social chaos. Thankfully, my own home country has evaded this to a great degree – as seen by the lack of rioting and chaos now going on in the UK and the US in these summers of discontent – but this is a result of near-eugenic immigration policies absent in other Western nations and that would have made Himmler proud (good or bad thing: practically good, ideologically unfortunate).
So Korea has some benefits a country like Canada can’t have. 10 provinces, 3 territories, a federal government, 7 time zones – with one province not even on Daylight Savings Time – thirteen Ministries of Health plus a Federal one, …
You can do things with an ethnically and ideologically monolithic society (which is what Korea is, relatively speaking) on a micro-scale (despite its population, it’s more like a city-state like Singapore than it is like a country, even like Canada or Australia, both with fewer people), that you just can’t do with other countries.
Japan and Korea both benefit this way. Another such comparable but utterly fractured country is the Philippines. Thousands of islands, a barely mutually intelligible official language, different religions and vastly different stages of economic development– etc.
China is another comparison. Within an Asian context, Korea is like a very small province of China. Naturally, this is a society much more easy to govern. If Fujian – or, say, 1/3 of Fujian – was independent, with its own unique culture unrelated to those around it, you could say lots about its ability to do this sort of thing. Unite it into some monolithic beast like China and then it’s an entirely different matter. Suddenly, what happens 2000 km away in northern Manchuria is crucial to who gets to run some local southern government in a province that can’t understand the official language.
So Korea’s ability is nothing unique to Korea, nor is it a product of a peculiarly Korean trait: It’s ne of these accidents of history with both a positive aspect and a negative one.
We whine about the negatives in other contexts, then praise the positives. On balance, this is just a different way of doing things. It has some severe weaknesses, but as a clever and forward-looking country, with smart people running it, Koreans can gloss over these weaknesses much of the time and make the advantages really count.
For example: I love my Hanguk pedal.
Try getting delivery in Toronto or NYC like that.