South Korea is interesting because its a window into what every capitalist government is currently trying to accomplish within their own country
The only thing connecting each tiny room at the Happiness Factory to the outside world is a feeding hole in the door.
If I wrote this in my novel I would be teased for being too corny, but to Occupied Korea this is just an average day.
I can’t imagine how horrible it must be to be a shut-in and instead of anyone helping you materially they sell your parents a ticket to experience a superficial facsimile of your depression.
"In Korea, parents often express their love and feelings through practical actions and roles rather than verbal expressions,” Prof Jeong says.
“Parents financing their children’s tuition fees through hard work is a typical example of a Confucian culture that emphasises responsibility."
Thank you sociology Prof Jeong Go-woon, see, this “loneliness” stuff is because Koreans are just a different race with a unique racial culture.
South Korea has some of the highest suicide rates in the world and last year, its government unveiled a five year plan aiming to address this.
Ministers announced there would be state-funded mental health check-ups for people aged 20-34 every two years.
Wow! 2.5 mental health checkups in 5 years! Why didn’t I think of that?
In Japan, the first wave of young people isolating themselves, in the 1990s, has led to a demographic of middle-aged people dependent on their elderly parents.
More orientalism that is used in place of actual materialist analysis to subdue people. “Those dang Japanese and Good Koreans work too hard, it’s in their blood”
The BBC should be beaten to death with a stick before it hurts more people.
At least south Koreans are choosing to be locked in a cell
Also it’s like the most inane solution to the problem at hand I can think of.
Problem statement: our society is so sick it has developed our offspring into socially withdrawn shut-ins.
Solution A: address the issues in our society to try affect the material conditions of our youth’s existence and their experiences of community/work/recreation, to try make things actually better for them and give them a society worth engaging with.
Solution B: pay money to a private corporation to have a fucking weekend’s themed getaway of a skin deep simulation of our children’s life experience, so we can develop a shred of empathy for our own children (!?!). With this new found empathy we will then do…. Nothing really.
uncritical support for the DPRK in its heroic struggle to liberate occupied Korea from the genocidal American empire
I genuinely feel like the DPRK could hasten reunification by trying to show folks in the South just how normal and well-adjusted folks in their society are. Like, hey, we work 8 hours a day and have enough to eat and a home, and we spend a lot of quality time with family and friends.
(Yes I know it’s illegal to access anything related to the DPRK in the south. And even when it’s not illegal, YouTube for example quickly shut down that one DPRK channel where it was just a little girl talking about her day).
I think a lot of NK media is just drowned out by the barrage of low-effort anti-communist propaganda. It has to do with the country’s lack of digital infrastructure compared to South Korea. You just can’t spend the same amount of resources like capitalist shitholes like Japan and South Korea on soft power if you’re under heavy sanctions so they choose carefully choreographed news pieces instead.
If technology can only be rationed to people who live in cities or on waiting lists then you can’t post harder than a society where everyone has a phone and has been conditioned by decades of dictatorship and corruption to accept capitalist rule without question and have been trained to glamorize capitalism in literally every facet of their lives. Even in their depression and horrible pain like this article.
The BBC can point at the gaping holes of South Korea and call it “Confucianism haha” while those similarly sized holes in North Korea become proof of the failure of communism. “nonfalsifiable anti-communist orthodoxy”
