Recently, I came across a 2021 Pew Research Center report, “What Makes Life Meaningful? Views From 17 Advanced Economies.” The poll surveyed citizens from 17 different countries across the world and asked them what category they value the most in making life meaningful. While most of the countries responded with “family,” only South Korea put “material well-being” as the primary source of meaningful life. As a Korean, I could not comprehend this. Although I’ve seen a sense of materialism growing in Korea, I also knew that Korean societies are often family-centered and driven by the romance of camaraderie and reaching out to others. There is even something called “jeong,” which is the concept of an affection and care that people automatically possess for others. This is the type of love that compels a restaurant owner to give students a complementary extra bowl of rice so that they can “grow better” or a passerby to take time out of their day to comfort a dejected person sitting on a bench. The poll conflicted with my perception of Korea and made me wonder why these affectionate people would have prioritized material well-being over other categories such as family, friends, or health.
My curiosity to explain the results of the poll led me to look back on Korea’s history. The main population of Korea currently consists of my grandparents’ and my parents’ generations, both of which have lived through a major tragedy in modern Korean history: my grandparents’ generation witnessed the horrors of the Korean War through their own eyes, and my parents’ generation bore the severe aftermath of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) crisis. During the Korean War, most Korean citizens suffered from hunger as villages were destroyed and lives were threatened. In the IMF financial crisis of the 1990s, many Korean companies went bankrupt, leaving companies no choice but to fire the majority of the employees overnight. As a result, countless Korean families struggled to afford their living costs and had to be separated to live in the houses of distant relatives who could only take a couple family members each. During both of these tragedies, families couldn’t feed themselves or even live together due to the lack of resources and money. These traumas persist in the form of materialism in Korea. It’s not that Koreans prefer money over everything. It’s that their own lived experiences and the worries passed down through generations subconsciously compel them to idealize security and practicality.
Despite the negative labels attributed to materialism, its prevalence among Koreans may speak to a common protective instinct to ensure happiness, safety, and monetary freedom for those they care about. Not only does money promise food, clothing, and shelter for families, but it also allows families to support their children’s education in hopes that the children will lead more successful lives than their parents. Since Korea has long been exposed to the system of meritocracy from the civil service exam policies, Korean parents often feel the responsibility to provide as much help as they can muster for their children’s education, which statistically could lead to higher-paying jobs and more affluent lives in Korea. As awkward as this may seem to American culture, the zealous dedication of Korean parents is their practical approach to expressing love to their families, an attempt to guarantee that their children will suffer less in their lives and be required to make fewer sacrifices because of financial difficulties.
Once I understood the historical background of South Korea, their prioritization of “material well-being” didn’t seem so acquisitive anymore. Patterns among certain populations have many causes behind their formation, and the environment or circumstance often forces people to behave in a certain way. At the end of the day, we aren’t that different: we all just want to love and protect our families.
