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| "Where did these cars come from?" |
I worked in Korea for 26 months. Our team worked to transform one of Korea’s
largest public companies. We used
innovation as a lever to engage employees and open the organization to new
possibilities. The more I understood what
was happening outside our office the more effective I became inside.
Gangnam Style lays open the schizophrenic culture of Korea.
I don’t claim to be an expert in interpreting Gangnam
Stlye. There are many others who have
done this. What I do see is that Psy is
bringing out the vast cultural under currents in Korea. For example, the video opens with him playing
on a beach, which turns out to be a children’s sand box. This is interpreted as a caricature of life
in Gangnam where material excess is nothing more than a hollow imitation of
hollow lives.
Psy has a point. I
have worked in most regions of the globe and I can’t think of a country with as
much internal turmoil as Korea; turmoil that could explode. Let’s take a brief look at modern Korea.
In 1960 the average per capita income of Koreans was
$100. Today (although I see lots of
different figures) that number is in the range of $30,000 – compare that to
something like $40,000 in the US. The
exact figures aren’t important. What is important
is the rocketing economic growth that took place in Korea over just a few
decades. The most accelerated time of
growth was 1960 to 1997 – this is known as the Miracle on the Han (the river
that runs through Seoul and much of the country). Since 2000 the Korean economy has had steady
annual growth - in the 2% to 4% range.
Korea is now the 15th largest economy in the world.
Just think of what this exceptional economic growth means to
this country of 48,000,000 people and the impact it is having on a country that is now experiencing aging at a pace that
is unprecedented in human history. The
percentage of Koreans 65 (born in 1947 or earlier) and above has sharply risen from 3.3% in 1955 to 10.7%
in 2009. Korea's population shape has
changed from a pyramid in the 1990’s to a diamond in 2010. The top of the diamond is an aging class that
knows starvation and poverty coming out of the Korean War; the young class
knows prosperity and the materialism of the west; people torn between these two
worlds populate the middle of the diamond.
Although the middle is torn, it is also the layer that keeps
the country politically stable and economically prosperous. Above them are their parents who rarely greet their peers with: “How are you?” It’s
more likely that they ask, “Did you eat today?”
The parents are steeped in the teachings of Confucius with its hierarchy of
respect and deference flowing from king to teacher to father.
Below the middle are the youth. This is a wholly brand conscious, hip layer
that is rejecting the past. They see
that their parents and other elders have sacrificed but now the young want to benefit
from the prosperity of the nation. Big
shifts are evident in the attitudes of women who are well educated, have good
jobs, and resist giving up Zara and Gucci for marriage and children. Oh yes, obesity is becoming an issue as
abundance and western food chains hit the streets.
The people in the middle recognize the strictness of the
past. They want to tone down the
education system where scholastic high school seniors study 18 hours a day 7
days a week. They also recognize that
deference to the ideas and traditions of their elders is not progressive. This is an anachronistic society. The middle has to tie together kimchi
(vegetables marinated underground for a year) and street carts with bullet
trains and 103% penetration of cell phones.
So, when I see Psy in his energetic gyrations I see someone
who is channeling the undercurrents in his country.
Where’s it going? I
don’t know. The top of the diamond is
stifling; the bottom of the diamond is unstable; the middle is getting tired of
the straddle. Soon Korea will need
another Miracle on the Han.
Oh well, don’t worry; be happy; watch Gagnam Style.
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