Korea's Problem is Modernity

I recently finished reading Daniel Tudor's Korea: the Impossible Country. (My review of the book is available at Reading Korea.) My reaction was mostly positive:  it was an excellent overview of contemporary Korea, providing a clear-eyed look at achievements and flaws of today's Korean society. As I wrote in my review, the book is highly recommended.

This, however, does not mean that I agree with the book entirely. I felt that in his book, Tudor relied a bit too often on Confucianism as a crutch, to provide explanations about Korean society that are too just-so. Tudor correctly identifies the full slate of the issues that contemporary Korea has, including high suicide rate, low satisfaction with life, low birthrate, excessive emphasis on education, grueling jobs with very long hours, etc. Tudor also correctly identifies that ultimately, competition--which drove Korea achieving prosperity and freedom at a rate unprecedented in human history--is what causes these social ills in Korea. 

Gangnam is not just for Gangnam Style--it is also the Mecca of plastic surgery in Korea.
It is not a coincidence that glassy skyscrapers, symbols of Korea's prosperity,
house so many plastic surgery clinics.
(source)

Where Tudor and I part company is the reason for such competition. Often, Tudor points to Confucianism as the motivating factor for the excessive competition in today's Korean society. For example, Tudor begins the chapter about competition in Korea with following: "Because Confucianism places a special value on success through education and stable family, Koreans focus on the minimal standard of living at which they will be comparable to others."* Although Tudor then goes into the exposition of how Korea's desperate poverty shaped Korea's national culture (a point with which I am inclined to agree,) starting the chapter with a reference to Confucianism colors the subsequent discussion the chapter.

(*Because I am working off of a translated version of the book, this quote may not be exactly the same as Tudor wrote it. You can blame Mr. Tudor, who sent me a translated version rather than the English original.)

If Tudor's point is that Confucianism contributes to the problems that today's Korean society has, I wonder how Tudor may respond to the following historical tidbit. Pre-modern Korea--through Goryeo and Joseon Dynasties--enjoyed extremely long periods of peace and stability. For nearly a thousand years prior to early 20th century, Korea experienced only one major war that meaningfully threatened its survival. At all other times, Korea had a strong, unitary central government that was able to implement its vision for improving Korean society. Needless to say, such vision was informed by Confucianism.

And by Joseon Dynasty, such effort was wildly successful. One can argue that Korea has reached the pinnacle of an agricultural society by that point. Organized by village units with centuries of farming experience, Koreans have perfected the delicate balance of producing the most amount of harvest without overtaxing the soil. Koreans also diversified their crop, allowing the soil to heal and providing more variety to their table. (Recall that traditional Korean cuisine features more than 1,000 types of edible plants.) The village unit also made effective use of the labor, setting precise schedules of who works when, for what task.**

(**From 김건태, "19세기 집약적 농법의 확산과 작물의 다각화", 역사비평 2012년 겨울호 [Kim Geon-tae, Intensive Agronomy, Diversification of Crops in the 19th Century])

The result was a society that produced everything it needed without too much effort. Thanks to efficient farming, Koreans always had plenty to eat. Indeed, the amount of food that Koreans traditionally consumed nearly defies belief. A diary from the 17th century describes that Koreans ate 7 hob [홉] of rice per meal, or approximately 420 grams. This is around triple of the amount of rice Koreans eat per meal today. Yet Koreans never had to work very hard to eat. Studies show that Koreans did not work all that much except in periods such as planting and harvesting rice, because labor was distributed efficiently. Contrary to the stereotype of hard-working Asians, foreign travelers' account of Korea invariably describe Koreans as "lazy." In truth, Koreans were not lazy. They simply produced everything they needed without spending all that much time.

(More after the jump.)

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.

Happy Chuseok!

The Korean wishes everyone happy chuseok. Hopefully, nobody is being stuck in a traffic like this one:

Chuseok traffic, circa 1993
(source)

Enjoy your time with friends and family, and enjoy the full moon.

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.

Get Down, Get Down to the Floor

Dear Korean,

Why do Koreans sometimes sleep on the floor? I mean they just put a mattress on the floor and that's it. But sometimes, they sleep in a regular bed. Why is that?

Gabriela

What's "regular" to you may not be "regular" everywhere in the world.

Until recently--that is, until approximately 30 years ago--the "regular" way to sleep in Korea was to sleep on the floor. Koreans would usually have a very large wardrobe, in which they kept their bedding. The bedding would be comprised of a thick blanket/mattress (about as thick as a thin futon,) which was placed on the floor. One would sleep on that blanket (called 요 [yo],) with a lighter blanket on top for warmth. Every morning, Koreans would wake up, fold the two blankets and put them into the wardrobe; every night, they would take them out again and make the bed.

Modernity and convenience eventually phased out this habit. The Korean is actually old enough to remember the time when few Koreans slept on a bed. He himself never slept on a bed until he was in the third grade, i.e. 1991, when the Korean Mother decided to sign onto the ongoing fad--and the Korean Family was somewhat ahead of the curve. (It took him nearly two weeks before he did not fall out of the bed every night.) Hotels used to give the guests an option to choose between a "bed" room, or a "floor" room. Yet like everything in Korea, lifestyle habits change very fast. It appears that sleeping on a bed became the mainstream in Korea by mid- to late 1990s. Today, most Koreans sleep on a bed, although sleeping on the floor is not difficult to find in Korea today.

Interestingly, some Koreans found a way to compromise the prevailing trend and the bodily habits. Especially among older Koreans, a "rock bed" has proven popular--literally, a bed that has a sheet of rock instead of a mattress, like this:

(source)

The rock bed often has a heat blanket function for additional comfort. For older Koreans who are accustomed to sleeping on the floor, the rock surface with a blanket on top ends up being just right.

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.

Introducing Reading Korea

Dear readers,

Here is an exciting bit of announcement: the Korean is beginning a new blog, called Reading Korea.

In the seven years that the Korean has run Ask a Korean!, a constant issue has been that readers ask a question that asks for too much, such as: "What should I know about Korean culture?" The Korean's standard answer has been: "I can't write a book for you." While that answer is true, it is not a particularly satisfying answer for either the questioner or the Korean. Fortunately, there are increasingly more books in English about Korea, and more books in English that deal with a particular aspect about Korea in depth. In addition, if one can read Korean, there is a full universe of books regarding every aspect of Korea imaginable. And the Korean reads a lot of books about Korea.

This inspired the Korean to start Reading Korea. Essentially, it is a book review blog about books about Korea. Each review will be kept short, and will also be posted on Amazon.com review if the book is available through Amazon.com. By introducing those books in a single space, the Korean hopes to build toward the ultimate reading list of books about Korea for those who want to learn more about the country in depth. The Korean expects to be a slow process, but that's ok--this blog's modest success came not because there was a great deal of publicity, but because the Korean simply kept writing day by day until more and more people came. Down the line, the Korean is certain that Reading Korea will find its own share of readership.

Reading Korea's first review is already up: Kim Chang-nam's K-POP: Roots and Blossoming of Korean Popular Music. There will be several more book reviews coming down the pipeline in the next few days. Please feel free to visit and poke around Reading Korea, and give any suggestion you may think of.

As always, thank you very much for all your support.

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.

Ask a Korean! Wiki: Language Courses for Children?

Dear Korean,

I would love to go to Korea with my kids and spend about a month in the summer with them occasionally seeing relatives, but mostly I would like them to learn about the culture and language. They are half Korean and sadly speak no Korean but I'm hoping I could change that. Their ages range from 7-12 so a hefty program at Yonsei (which I did as a high schooler many years ago) would not be appropriate, but I'm sure there must be something they can do in Korea to learn the language in a more formal way. Do you have any suggestions?

Tina

The Korean is certain that this type of courses would be in demand, but unfortunately he is not aware of one. (Remember, the Korean never had to learn any Korean.) Readers, got any suggestion? Please share in the comment section.

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.

Women Judges and Prosecutors?

Dear Korean,

How many women judges are there in Korea? And how many female prosecutors are there? Have there been more females since the new president?

Cindy H.

According to Korea Women's Development Institute, 24.4% of the judges and 20.5% of the prosecutors are women as of 2010. There has been a constant increase of women judges and prosecutors in Korea that long pre-dates the new (woman) president. In 2008, for example, more than 70% of the newly appointed judges were women.

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.

Do North Koreans Look Different from South Koreans?

Dear Korean,

Do North Koreans look different from South Koreans?

Ms. Trophy Wife

Short answer: not really.

One thing to remember about North and South Koreas is that they were the same country for a couple of millennia before having split into two countries for the last 60-odd years. So whatever differences that North and South Korea have in terms of language, customs, etc., tend to be minor. For example, the difference in the languages used in both North Korea and South Korea do not amount to more than differences in accent and certain diction, somewhat like the American and Australian English.

Likewise, there is no fundamental difference between the way in which North and South Koreans look. Having said that, however, 60-plus years is not a short amount of time, and the two Koreas did live through two very different worlds. South Koreans now live in one of the world's wealthiest countries, North Koreans one of the poorest. In particular, the crushing famine that North Korea suffered in the mid-1990s has left a visible impact on North Korean people's physique. While the average height of adult South Korean men is 171.5 cm (~5' 7.5"), the average height of adult North Korean men is 165.4 cm (~5' 5"). Because North Korean youths have become so malnourished, North Korea had to lower the minimum height requirement for its soldiers from 140 cm (~4' 7") to 137 cm (~4' 6") in 2010. (In contrast, South Korea recently had to extend the maximum height requirement from 196 cm (~6' 5") to 204 cm (~6' 8") for its conscripts.)

Aside from the difference in physique, the difference in the looks between North and South Koreans is essentially the difference in the wealth available to decorate oneself with fashionable clothing, cosmetics, hair care and (sometimes) plastic surgery. When given the chance to catch up to those additional "boosts," North Koreans--such as these defector ladies from a popular South Korean TV show about North Korean life--look like they will fit right in the streets of Seoul.

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.

Here are Some Korean Slang Terms

Dear Korean,

Does the Korean have a list of colorful Korean language slang?

Cactus McHarris

This is actually a pretty tough task, because the number of slang terms is huge and the types of slang are ever-changing. For a comprehensive overview, the Korean would recommend As Much As a Rat's Tail: Korean Slang, a solid look of old and new slang expressions in Korean. In addition, KoreaBANG's glossary is a decent collection of the latest Internet-slang in Korea.

But the Korean will not simply abdicate this post to book and website recommendations. Although he could not possibly tally all the slang used in Korean language, he can try listing at least a few of them in this space. To that end, allow the Korean to re-introduce his all-Korean language Twitter account:  https://twitter.com/askakorean. The Korean decided long ago that his Facebook account will be for English language content, while his Twitter account will be for communicating with Korean folks--an arrangement that has worked out fairly well so far. And much like the Internet everywhere else, Korea's Twitterverse is full of hilarious slang and memes.

So here are some Korean slang terms ans expressions that went through the Korean's Timeline in the last several days. Keep in mind that this list is far, far from comprehensive, and may become outdated rather quickly. It only contains random samples of some of the slang that the Korean could see in the last several days before he wrote this post. But for curious people, it could be an interesting sampler of Korean slang terms.

The list of slang terms, after the jump.

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.

The Good History Deniers

Dear Korean,

A question on Quora reads: How do the Japanese think about World War II? I was wondering if this answer to the question is something that you would agree with. How would you respond?

Joel B.

Before reading this post, the Korean will highly recommending reading the answer provided by Ms. Makiko Itoh, which is linked above. August 15 is the V-J Day, when World War II ended in 1945 with Imperial Japan's unconditional surrender. On this important date, the Korean found it appropriate to address this question.

But first, a quick detour. Ta-nehisi Coates, likely the best contemporary American writer when it comes to discussing race relations, recently wrote a terrific New York Times op-ed entitled The Good, Racist People. The message that Coates delivered through the op-ed is simple and devastating: even good people with sincerely good intentions contribute to, and perpetuate, racism in America. When it comes to dealing with large-scale, historical evil, it is not enough for one simply live with good intentions--because road to hell is paved with such good intentions.

The same is true with the way the Japanese approach World War II. I have said this before, and I will say it again: Japan, as a whole, think that it did nothing wrong during World War II. The steady stream of outrageous statements made by prominent Japanese politicians and intellectuals can only continue in an environment in which such worldview is tolerated. (Just two of the latest hits: (1) Japan's Deputy Prime Minister said Japan should amend its Peace Constitution like the way Nazis amended the Weimar Constitution; (2) Japanese navy built the largest ship since WWII and named it "Izumo", one of the ships that were used to invade China.)

When news of such outrageous statements hit the wire, a common response is to attribute it simply to a small faction of right-wing, nationalist Japanese people, implying that the vast majority of the Japanese ought to be spared from the responsibility of such historical amnesia. This is incorrect on several levels. First, the Japanese right-wing is anything but small. The Japanese nationalists are currently dominating the political scene, winning the last two parliamentary elections in a landslide. Their leader, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, proclaimed that he would withdraw Japan's apology to former Comfort Women and denied that Imperial Japan forcibly recruited the Comfort Women to serve as sex slaves. Right-wing thugs roam the streets freely in broad daylight, waving the "Rising Sun" flag, blaring propaganda from their infamous "black vans" and engage in harassment campaigns against Koreans living in Japan.

Nationalist black van, commonly seen
in the streets of Japan
(source)

For those who will predictably chime in about how Abe's election was more about the sagging Japanese economy: so was Hitler's election. In a normal country, a candidate's penchant for denying war atrocities would be met with swift termination of the candidate's political career, regardless of his views on economic policies. That did not happen with Abe, which speaks volumes. The mindset of the good, moral Japanese people that elected a man like Shinzo Abe is equally responsible for Japan's collective denial of history.

(More after the jump.)

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.

"Good Writer, Bad Writer" on AAK!

The Korean frequently receives questions along the lines of: "I think your writing is great? How do I become a good writer?" For a few times, he has tried writing a post in response to such questions, and felt too embarrassed to continue. To be sure, the Korean does have a number of principles and guideposts in his mind when he writes. He does strive to be a better writer each time. But the truth is that his writing is still much lower quality than he would prefer. Because this blog is a hobby, he never does put in the amount of effort that he feels sufficient. Consequently, a reader with sharp eyes can usually find persistent errors and rooms for improvement in the Korean's writing. So it felt a bit silly to talk about how to write well, when he was not even living up to his own standards.

Luckily, Mr. Shawn Doyle, who is a writing teacher, has been generous enough to use my recent post, Culturalism, Gladwell and Airplane Crashes as an example of effective writing. At his blog, Good Writer, Bad Writer, Mr. Doyle has reproduced the post, and kindly provided a play-by-play on the rhetorical strategy that the Korean has employed as he wrote the post. If you happened to be one of the folks who thought the Korean's writing was worth emulating, the post at Good Writer, Bad Writer would be helpful.

One tip that the Korean would give about writing is: have an arsenal of several esteemed writers whose style you can emulate depending on the purpose of your writing. For the purpose of the Culturalism post, the Korean was consciously trying to write like Chief Justice John Roberts, who is considered one of the greatest writers that the Supreme Court has seen since Robert Jackson. I think Justice Roberts writes  like a freight train coming down a hill. At first, the train would be stationary, sitting on top of the hill with no freight on it. Justice Roberts would begin his writing by adding freight piece by piece onto that train. After a certain point, the train would start slowly rolling downward, unable to bear its own weight any longer. By the time the train reaches the bottom of the hill--i.e. the conclusion of his writing--it moves with such momentum and speed that makes the conclusion undeniable. 

The Korean knows this style is effective because he usually disagrees with the legal points that Justice Roberts makes. So it feels amazing (and a bit infuriating) when he finishes reading an opinion by Justice Roberts, and feels halfway convinced of the Justice's arguments before snapping out of it. Accordingly, the Korean attempts to deploy this style when he tries to write a strongly opinionated piece. Based on the reception the post had, it appears that the strategy worked this time.

Thank you very much, Mr. Doyle, and thank you everyone for reading.

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.

The Weather Channel Explains Fan Death

So there is this:

Hot room + fan directly on the body = heat exhaustion and/or heat stroke. Gee, that sounds awfully like how Fan Death works.

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.

Your Culture is Bigger than You

Dear Korean,

I was hoping that you might respond to this review I did of Gish Jen's book on Asian and Western subjectivity. The review is 90 percent summary and expresses a few reservations about the cross-cultural psychologists that Jen relies on to make her generalizations about culture.

I'd be curious to see whether you find this research to be credible. There's no questions that it conforms almost exactly to the "thin and monochromatic" views of the differences between East and West adopted by Westerners, including Malcolm Gladwell, with the (perhaps?) meaningful difference that most of the cross-cultural researchers are Asians from Asia, and that Gish Jen is herself an avowedly Asian American novelist fixated on the question of East and West. While many Asian Americans and other politicized types take strong exception to the generalizations about Asians contained in this body of research, most regular Asians and Asian Americans I ask about seem to more or less agree that the overall schema fits into the pattern of their own experience.

Wesley Yang

If you are wondering because the name of the questioner sounds familiar--yes, it's that Wesley Yang, who wrote the article titled Paper Tigers for the New York Magazine, which elicited a strongly critical response from me. Let me first say this: it takes a remarkable strength of character to have been blasted in a way that Mr. Yang did, and come back for seconds. I am flattered that he is asking for my take; I can only hope I don't disappoint.

Mr. Yang's question is how I feel about the cross-cultural research involving Asian culture. But I see a second, underlying question: in trying to understand Asian culture, how are we to treat our own experience as Asian Americans? The second question, in particular, is important and timely. I just got done blasting non-Asians for trying to essentialize Asia through "cultural explanations." Then what about Asian Americans? How are we to approach our own culture? What do we make of the fact that Gish Jen attempts to explain her father's life through these studies? What are we supposed to think if those studies seems to explain our lives as well?

First question first: how do I feel about research regarding culture? Contrary to what Mr. Yang may think, I am open to them. I will accept the conclusion of the research (with the residual amount of skepticism consistent with the scientific method) if the research is conducted rigorously. The reason for this is simple: clearly, culture affects behavior. As a blogger who writes about Korean culture, it would be strange if I did not recognize this. Accordingly, a rigorously conducted study may well reveal the nexus at which culture translates to behavior. (Of course, normal caveats apply--after all, many studies end up being quite wrong.)

This proposition is so self-evident that it is almost not worth saying out loud. The real question, whose answer is not as self-evident, is: how much do these studies explain? How much do those studies explain the national culture? How much do those studies explain the reality that unfolds before our eyes? And how much do those studies inform our own experience as Asian Americans?

These questions are part and parcel of a larger and more fundamental question: how are we supposed to understand and explain culture? Once we have a solid grasp on this fundamental issue, the rest falls into place.

(More after the jump.)

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.

50 Most Influential K-pop Artists: 13. Nah Hun-Ah

[Series Index]

13. Nah Hun-ah [나훈아]

Years of Activity: 1966-present (last album in 2006)

Discography:
(Because Nah Hun-ah's discography so extensive and not organized by albums, but by prominent individual songs, the discography is not presented here.)

Representative Song:  Hometown Station [고향역] from 1972.

고향역
Hometown Station

코스모스 피어있는 정든 고향역
My dear hometown station where cosmos flowers bloom
이뿐이 곱뿐이 모두 나와 반겨주겠지
 All the pretty girls will come out to welcome me
달려라 고향열차 설레는 가슴 안고
Run, the homeward train, clutching the expectant heart
눈감아도 떠오르는 그리운 나의 고향역
I see it even when my eyes are closed, my hometown station that I long for

코스모스 반겨주는 정든 고향역
My dear hometown station where cosmos flowers greet me
다정히 손잡고 고개 마루 넘어서 갈 때
When we tenderly hold hands and walk over the hill
흰머리 날리면서 달려온 어머님을
My mother who came running, with her white hair in the wind
얼싸안고 바라보았네 멀어진 나의 고향역
I embraced her and gazed, my hometown station far away

Translation notes:  If you can somehow translate 이뿐이 곱뿐이 in a satisfactory manner, you are a better translated than the Korean.

In 15 words or less:  Founder of modern trot music.

Maybe he should be ranked higher because...  FIFTY years of top-of-the-line popularity. Only one K-pop artist can conceivably match this level of high performance and consistency.

Maybe he should be ranked lower because...  Did not compose his own music.

Why is this artist important?

Trot, as a genre, does not get a fair shake in the narrative surrounding Korean pop music. The screaming fanboys and fangirls shun the music for being old-fashioned. The too-serious purveyors of Korean rock and hip hop look down on it for being banal. Often, trot singers are treated more like a clown than an artist--entertainers without a consciously directed purpose. A typical discography for trot singers is an unnavigable mess, because they release an incredible number of songs (that are far too similar to one another) without organizing them into thematic albums. It does not help that the genre is an artifact of the terrible era of Imperial Japan's colonization of Korea, during which Korea was forced to take in Western culture--including Western-style music--through the filter called Japan.

But this attitude is mistaken, because trot is extremely important in the history of K-pop. Indeed, it is the first genre of music that may be properly called "popular music" in Korea--that is, the first K-pop. Having been introduced in the early 1920s, it is the longest surviving genre of pop music in Korea. With its history now approaching a century, trot is the genre that is the mostly fully localized to Korean aesthetics. Trot may have begun as a foreign genre (and which K-pop genre did not?), but today, it is the most Korean K-pop.

Nah Hun-ah is important because he was primarily responsible for the final stage of trot's localization to Korea. As hard as it is to imagine, trot as a genre began as music for the urban elite, appealing to the small group of city-bound bourgeoisie that formed during the Japanese occupation. Gradually, especially after the end of the occupation, trot began to spread into the rest of Korea, more closely reflecting the national aesthetics. Trot's lyrics, once urbane and sophisticated, slowly became more rustic and pastoral. Although it originated from elsewhere, over time, trot came to evoke hometown and old times in the minds of Korean people.

During his prime in the 1970s, Nah Hun-ah was often referred to his rival Nam Jin [남진], another trot superstar who did have a slight edge in popularity compared to Nah. But a generation later, there is no contest between the two artists as to who left a lasting impact in Korean pop culture: Nah Hun-ah remains relevant in Korean pop culture today, while Nam Jin has faded into history. As it turns out, Nam Jin and Nah Hun-ah were moving toward opposite trends within trot music. Nam Jin was the last wave of trot singers who treated the genre as if it was for the urban elites, and Nah Hun-ah was the flag-bearer of the new direction of trot music. 

Hometown Station is the pinnacle of such re-orientation. The song is about hometown, where the unassuming cosmos flowers and the old mother greet the singer. The song is the logical ending place for a genre that has become Korea's own, and Nah Hun-ah was one of the artists who brought the genre home.

Interesting trivia:  Nah Hun-ah is also a participant in one of the greatest Korean pop culture scandals of all time. In 1976, it was revealed that Nah was dating Kim Ji-mi, the most popular actress of the time. In addition to the fact that Nah and Kim were respectively the top superstars of their fields, Kim was seven years older than Nah, and both were married when they began dating. Nah and Kim eventually married, but divorced after seven years. Nah would later marry a singer who was 14 years younger than he was. After 23 years of marriage, Nah's third wife recently filed for divorce.

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.

Live Chat - 7/19/2013

Note: Apologies to those who could not make it into the chat room. The Korean will try and find an alternative next time--CoverItLive is not working out for the blog any more.

Live Chat Tonight at 8 p.m. EDT

We haven't done this in a while, so let's chat live! Please visit the blog at 8 p.m. tonight, Eastern Daylight Time, and the Korean will be here to shoot the breeze for an hour or two.

Note: the folks at Cover It Live! made it such that once the chat ends, the chat transcript is no longer accessible after 100 clicks to view, unless the Korean paid them. Considering the ridiculous amount of money that the Korean makes from the blog (= in the negative, since he pays for the domain name), he is not inclined to pay anyone just yet. Of course, there is one easy way of reading the transcript: join the chat!

Got a question or comment for the Korean? Visit the blog in just a couple of hours!

My Thoughts on Gladwell's Response

Before we begin this post, a note about the related posts.

- This is my initial post about culturalism, plane crashes, and Malcolm Gladwell's assessment of Korean culture and plane crashes.

- This is my follow-up post, reacting to the initial round of responses by various commenters, issuing a correction and discussing some leftover thoughts.

- This is the post in which Malcolm Gladwell responded to my initial post.

Please read these three posts before you read this one; otherwise, this post will not make sense.

*             *             *

Mr. Gladwell was kind enough to send me a response, which I posted in this space as I received it. Below, I present my thoughts on Gladwell's response.

1.  "The Most Puzzling Part of the Article"

Gladwell wrote about the most puzzling part of my post was to him:

I will point out, once again, that this particular question was at the heart of the report filed by the investigation team at the NTSB. It is the heart of Robert Helmreich’s analysis of the crash. In fact, every single pilot I spoke to about that crash (and I spoke to many) brought up this same point. Why didn’t the others speak up?

So why does your critique argue? That the other pilots did speak up!  To quote:

“The first officer spoke up directly, clearly, and unmistakably: "Captain, Guam condition is no good." It is difficult to imagine how a person could be more direct about the poor weather condition.”

I am confused by this reaction. If Gladwell's point is that nobody in the cockpit of KAL Flight 801 spoke up about the dangers of the landing approach, he is taking a long walk back from his own writing in Outliers. If Gladwell's entire point in Outliers is that nobody spoke up, for example, the portion from Outlier below is unnecessary and irrelevant:

"Captain, the weather radar has helped us a lot," he says.

The weather radar has helped us a lot? A second hint from the flight deck. What the engineer means is just what the first officer meant. This isn't a night where you can rely on just your eyes to land the plane. Look at what the weather radar is telling us: there's trouble ahead.

If Gladwell's entire point in Outliers is that nobody spoke up, why did Gladwell discuss what the flight engineer said, and what the flight engineer really meant? 

Because the point in Outliers was not that nobody spoke up; the point was that although the co-pilots did speak up, but they spoke up in a manner that was too indirect to be effective, because they were constrained by Korean culture. It is within this context where I said "[t]he first officer spoke up directly, clearly, and unmistakably" about the weather conditions.

I can agree that the co-pilots did not speak up forcefully enough; after all, their plane did crash. My point was that the co-pilots did speak up, albeit ineffectively. Importantly, that was Gladwell's initial point in Outliers as well. Our disagreement is more granular: in Outliers, Gladwell said that the co-pilots spoke up, but too indirectly; my point is that the co-pilots spoke up, and directly. In his response to my post, Gladwell is saying he was trying to figure out why nobody spoke up. These two positions espoused by Gladwell, before and after my criticism, are not consistent.

2.  Korean Air's Safety Record

Gladwell wrote in his response:

[I]t was not me who concluded that Korean Air had a problem. It was the international aviation community. . . .  Most important, Korean Air thought it had a problem. Once again, the article is in the strange position of arguing that Korean Air was wrong about what was wrong about Korean Air. (By the way, I’m a little puzzled as to why an incident where a Korean Air flight wandered into Russian airspace—at the height of the Cold War—doesn’t belong in a discussion of pilot competence.)

This reaction is also confusing to me, because I definitely did not argue that KAL's safety record was satisfactory. In fact, in the original post, I made it quite explicit that Korean Air's safety record was less than ideal, when I wrote:

Even without Gladwell's deck-stacking, it is true that Korean Air had a spotty safety record. Like Korea itself, the airline grew extremely fast between the 1970s and 1990s. Because of its very fast growth, even subpar pilots got a job, and training became spotty.

Here, again, Gladwell raises a supposed disagreement that I never had with him. I expressly stated that Korean Air's safety record was poor. The disagreement is over the cause of the poor safety record, and more precisely, the cause of Flight 801's crash. Why did Flight 801 crash in Guam? In Outliers, Gladwell said it was because of Korean culture. I am skeptical about that explanation, because of the way in which Gladwell proved it up. That's our core disagreement, not whether KAL had a spotless safety record.

3.  Too Many Remaining Questions

After I posted Gladwell's response yesterday, I received several queries over emails, comment section and Twitter asking the same question: is that all of Gladwell's response? Are you sure the response is not cut off somehow? No--I posted Mr. Gladwell's response exactly the way I received it, without any edit or change.

But I can see why people thought that way. There are just too many remaining questions that Gladwell simply did not address, even if simply I accepted all of Gladwell's counterpoints. To wit:

(a) Why did Gladwell fail to interview a Korean pilot?


Gladwell notes that I was incorrect about Korea's military hierarchy. For the record, I do not believe I was incorrect in my original post. Recall that virtually all Korean males serve in the military. What I wrote in my post is based on the military experience of numerous Korean men with whom I have conversed. Generally speaking, it is true that a bit more respect is accorded to a lower-ranking soldier who is older than the higher-ranking soldier, compared to a lower-ranking soldier who is younger than the higher-ranking soldier. It is also true, generally speaking, that military pedigree matters in the level of respect a soldier is accorded.

However, I will readily admit that none of the men I spoke with served in the Air Force, and none of them served as an officer on a career track. So when a commenter who said he served as a naval officer pointed out particular features of Korean military officers who serve as a pilot, I readily accepted his authority and posted a correction. I posted the correction because while my general knowledge may not have been incorrect, it was misleading. I wish I had the chance to speak with an actual Korean pilot who previously served as an Air Force officer, but as someone who blogs for hobby in his spare time, I just did not have the resource to find and interview such a person.

You know who did have the resource to do so? Malcolm Gladwell. He is a world-famous writer; he can speak with virtually anyone in the world. It is not as if Gladwell had to interview Vladimir Putin about Russia's nuclear launch code. He simply had to speak with a few Korean pilots to test his theory. But this apparently did not happen.

Gladwell says in his response that he spoke with many pilots about the KAL Flight 801. I do not doubt that he did. But that only makes Gladwell's failure to speak with a Korean pilot even more glaring. Why did Gladwell fail to interview even a single Korean pilot, when he was writing about Korean pilots? Why did Gladwell speak with so many pilots, except a Korean one?

(b) Why did Gladwell fail to note that three KAL flights crashed because of military/terrorist attack?

Gladwell questioned why I would not include the two KAL flights that were shot down in the category of pilot error. I would not, because I think there is a difference between a pilot error that puts an airplane in the wrong airspace and a pilot error that puts an airplane into the side of a mountain. But even if I concede the point, several questions remain. For example:

- Why did Gladwell describe the shoot-down of only one of the KAL flights in Outliers? Remember, there were two KAL flights that were shot down by Russian jets: Flight 902 and Flight 007. Gladwell notes that Flight 902 was shot down, but simply states that the Flight 007 just crashed. Why? If Gladwell thought the KAL flights that were shot down should be ascribed to pilot error, why would he skip over Flight 007, which would have bolstered his argument?

- It seems like everyone agrees that Flight 858's crash, which occurred because North Korean terrorists planted a bomb, should not be ascribed to a pilot error. That would be silly; it would be like ascribing the 9/11 terrorist attacks to pilot error. But why did Gladwell include this in KAL's safety record? And why did Gladwell did not discuss the cause of this crash at all?

(c) Why did Gladwell fail to note that the pilots were speaking in English?

Why did Gladwell fail to note that the pilots of the Flight 801 were speaking mostly in English? Gladwell explains in his response: "Language does not drive culture. It reflects it. A Korean or a Colombian or a Saudi Arabian who speaks English does not, at that moment, become a different person: they still carry with them the assumptions of their own culture."

First of all, the claim that "language does not drive culture" is up for debate, to say the least. But even if we completely accepted that premise for Gladwell's sake, isn't the fact that the pilots were speaking mostly in English still relevant? Doesn't that fact at least deserve a footnote and an explanation as to why Korean culture is still in operation, regardless of the language spoken? Isn't it misleading for Gladwell to focus so much about the features of Korean language, and fail to note that the pilots were speaking mostly in English?

(d) Why did Gladwell quote the transcript selectively?

Why did Gladwell quote the transcript that appear in pp. 185-187 of the NTSB report in a selective manner? The original transcript has 11 lines of conversation. The transcript that Gladwell presented has three. In the eight lines that Gladwell omitted, (1) the first officer raises the weather condition to the captain in a direct manner ("Captain, Guam condition is no good"), and; (2) the captain himself makes an observation about the poor weather ("Uh, it rains a lot"). Both of these lines are relevant to the assessment as to whether the pilots of Flight 801 properly assessed the danger resulting from the poor weather conditions. Yet these lines are missing in Gladwell's presentation of the transcript. Why?

(e) How was Gladwell able to interpret the co-pilots' inner monologue?

Gladwell presents a remarkably specific interpretation of what Flight 801's co-pilots intended to say, when they said seemingly meaningless phrases such as "Don't you think it rains more?" or "Captain, the weather radar has helped us a lot." According to Gladwell, when Flight 801's first officer said "Don't you think it rains more?", it really meant: "Captain. You have committed us to visual approach, with no backup plan, and the weather outside is terrible. You think we will break out of the clouds in time to see the runway. But what if we don't? It's pitch-black outside and pouring rain and the glide scope is down." Similarly, when the flight engineer said "Captain, the weather radar has helped us a lot", he really meant: "This isn't a night where you can rely on just your eyes to land the plane. Look at what the weather radar is telling us: there's trouble ahead"--according to Gladwell.

(Quick note from reader Michael A. who emailed me: apparently, the correct term for the malfunctioning equipment on Flight 801 is "glide slope," not "glide scope" as Gladwell wrote in Outliers.)



By Gladwell's own explanation, Korean language is highly context-specific, and "[i]t is up to the listener to make sense of what is being said." (Emphasis in original.) In this instance, Gladwell is the "listener" of what the co-pilots were saying. And there is still no indication that Gladwell can speak Korean or is somehow intimately familiar with Korean culture. Then how is Gladwell able to give such lengthy and specific interpretation about what these Korean co-pilots intended to say? How do we really know if these co-pilots were actually saying what Gladwell represented, or if they were simply engaged in an idle chatter? (And again, why didn't Gladwell just show the transcript to a Korean pilot and ask, which would have obviated this entire issue?)

*             *             *

In my email exchange with Mr. Gladwell, he expressed displeasure at my charge that he committed journalistic malpractice. I am sure no journalist is happy to hear that charge leveled against him. But even after giving the maximum possible amount of reasonable doubt, there are just too many remaining questions about Malcolm Gladwell's methodology, as he analyzed the connection between Korean culture and the Flight 801 crash. Until those questions are resolved, I am standing by what I wrote.

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.

Malcolm Gladwell's Reponse to the Culturalism Post

Malcolm Gladwell kindly sent a response to my post regarding his theory, and culturalism. Here is the entire response, presented as it was sent to me.

I will write a brief follow-up post addressing Mr. Gladwell points below. I would like to extend my gratitude to Mr. Gladwell for taking the time to read my post.

*              *              *

I read your post about the plane crash chapter of my book Outliers with some interest. First of all, let me say that I found your discussion of culturalism to be very good. In Outliers, I tried to make it clear that the reason it is important to understand the cultural roots of human behavior and performance is that culturally based characteristics are malleable: they can be changed and improved and adapted by learning from other practices and traditions. Too often, though, this point is lost. Cultural explanations are sometimes wielded with the same blunt force as genetic explanations—and that is a huge mistake. A number of those who rushed to judgment on the causes of the Asiana crash made this mistake. You are right to correct it. (And thank you for the kind words about my golf writing!).

That said, I part with you on a number of your conclusions about my work.

First, the “ethnic theory of plane crashes” is not my theory. It is not something that I cooked up in my apartment. The aviation community became concerned with the consequences of pilot deference in the 1980’s, and very shortly thereafter the question was raised—by a number of psychologists and human factors experts—about whether culture contributed to this tendency. The literature on this question is voluminous. I would refer you, for example, to any number of papers by Robert Helmreich—who was one of the most prominent human factors researchers in the world. The most important of the groups who believed that culture contributed to Korean Air’s troubles, of course, was Korean Air itself. They were the ones who brought in the team from Delta to re-train their pilots. Is the point of the article that Korean Air was wrong about what was wrong with Korean Air?

Second, the article claims that I stacked the deck against Korean Air and tried to pretend that “Korean Air was more accident prone than other airlines.” But it was not me who concluded that Korean Air had a problem. It was the international aviation community. In the late 1990’s, both Delta Air Lines and Air France ended their flying partnership with the carrier. The FAA downgraded Korean Air’s safety rating, and the Canadian government informed the airline that it was considering revoking the carrier’s permission to fly through Canadian airspace. The list of Korean Air crashes that the articles claims I “padded” was taken from an analysis of Korean Air’s safety record by the National Transportation Safety Board. Most important, Korean Air thought it had a problem. Once again, the article is in the strange position of arguing that Korean Air was wrong about what was wrong about Korean Air. (By the way, I’m a little puzzled as to why an incident where a Korean Air flight wandered into Russian airspace—at the height of the Cold War—doesn’t belong in a discussion of pilot competence.)

Third, the article says that the fact that the flight engineer was older than the captain means that the claims I made about cockpit hierarchy are wrong. To quote: “If you think that a Korean person in a professional setting would show any disrespect to a person who is 14 years older just because he slightly outranks the other, you know absolutely nothing about Korean culture.” It is important, however, to understand that both aviation culture and military culture (since many of the Korean Air pilots were ex-Air Force) would counteract this. I see, in the comments, that you have already conceded this point. So let’s move on.

Fourth, the article makes much of the fact that the pilots in the KAL cockpit were, largely, speaking English. If they were speaking English, the point seems to be, then the power distance embedded in the Korean language wouldn’t apply. But this is nonsense. Language does not drive culture. It reflects it. A Korean or a Colombian or a Saudi Arabian who speaks English does not, at that moment, become a different person: they still carry with them the assumptions of their own culture. I dwelt on the linguistic characteristics of the Korean language simply to point out how deeply embedded cultural ideas about power distance are.

The article claims: “Gladwell explains that the new COO of Korean Air, David Greenberg (a former Delta Air Lines executive,) solved all the difficulties caused by the ambiguous Korean language by requiring the pilots to speak only in English.” But that is not what I said. I said that Greenberg began his pilot retraining by making English-language skills a priority. At this point in the chapter I had made it abundantly clear that proper pilot communication involves a whole series of inter-personal, analytical and organizational skills. Greenberg’s point was simply that the range of low-hierarchy skills and practices that he was trying to teach would be easier to grasp in an entirely new language.

Now to the most puzzling part of the article: the re-interpretation of the Guam flight transcript. The central issue, as the chapter makes plain, was that the Captain committed to a visual approach to the Guam airport. That was the easiest and least taxing of options available to him, and he chose it (we think) because he was tired. But it was inappropriate for the circumstances because the weather was bad. The big question is why the other people in the cockpit didn’t bring this error to the attention of the captain. I will point out, once again, that this particular question was at the heart of the report filed by the investigation team at the NTSB. It is the heart of Robert Helmreich’s analysis of the crash. In fact, every single pilot I spoke to about that crash (and I spoke to many) brought up this same point. Why didn’t the others speak up?

So why does your critique argue? That the other pilots did speak up! To quote:

“The first officer spoke up directly, clearly, and unmistakably: "Captain, Guam condition is no good." It is difficult to imagine how a person could be more direct about the poor weather condition.”

Now let us put aside, for a moment, the fact that this interpretation differs from that of every single other considered opinion of the crash, including the trained experts who investigated its cause. Let’s just think about that interaction. The captain knows the weather is bad. He’s said so himself. He thinks it won’t matter. He’s wrong. He needs to switch to an entirely different landing procedure, and he needs to do it quickly. There are four separate steps in that logical sequence: the conditions outside, his error, the need for an alternate strategy, and the need to adopt that strategy quickly. The first officer mentioned only the first. That is not speaking up directly, clearly or unmistakably. It is the opposite.

Culturalism and Plane Crashes: Reactions and Leftover Thoughts

The Korean had thought the post about the Asiana crash and culturalism would get some readership, but hoo-wee. At over 24,000 pageviews today as of this writing, it is the most visitors that this blog has hosted on a single day. (The previous record was around 16,000, when the New York Times introduced this blog.) Although the Korean had said over and over again that this blog is strictly a hobby and he could care less about the number of readers, he is not so obtuse to make nothing of the time that so many people spent reading what he wrote. So everyone who read the post: thank you. Everyone who shared and commented on the post: thank you one more time.

The Korean attempted to make the previous post about culturalism and plane crash for focused and general reader-friendly, which meant that the post was lacking in many of the stylistic points and the inside jokes (including the Korean's constant reference to himself as a third person) which usually appear in this blog, as well as a lot of stray thoughts and asides. But no more of those shackles in this follow-up post! Here, the Korean will discuss his thoughts to the readers' reaction to the post, and also share some leftover thoughts.

(1) The Main Point of the Post.  The Korean found that a lot of people misunderstood the main point of the post. The main point is not to argue that culture plays absolutely no role in plane crashes. Some commenters went so far as to claim that my point was culture does not affect behaviors at all--which is completely nuts. The Korean writes a blog that talks about Korean culture! Of course culture affects behaviors!

The main point is that we may encounter problems when we start thinking about culture as an explanation. To quote Abraham Maslow fully: "To a man who only has a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail." In this context, the Korean is not advocating that we stop using the hammer; he is merely advocating that we stop swinging that hammer at everything we see. If we are going to use culture as an explanation for anything, at a minimum, we have to know a great deal about the culture itself and be hyper-aware in which the culture interacts with a given situation. Otherwise, all the harms that the Korean described about culturalism result: obfuscation of truth, other-ization of people, and elimination of individual agency.

It is true that the Korean is rather skeptical about the "cultural" explanation of plane crashes. He is particularly so because the fountainhead of this cultural explanation of plane crashes, Malcolm Gladwell, did such a poor job in proving up his thesis. Also, because he knows that the desire to explain everything with culture flows from the same source as racism, the Korean is skeptical of people who insist that culture must absolutely be a factor, and are always in a hunt for some type of cultural answer. This is even more so because--let's be honest--there have been plenty of racist comments about the Asiana crash.

But being skeptical is not the same as being dismissive. The Korean's sense is that even if culture played a role in airplane crashes, it would be so miniscule that it should only interest the professionals of the airline industry searching for one more bit toward perfection, instead of serving as a significant contributing cause to any plane crash. But he remains open to reviewing all available evidence before making a final conclusion.

(2) Golf.  Frankly, the Korean did not anticipate this. Many of the comments complained about how golf was not like flying a plane. Because golf is an individual sport, the argument went, it is not like a multi-person action like flying a plane. So the golf comparison was off-base.

This comment misses the point. The point was not to say that golf has the same level of cultural causation as flying a plane does. The point of using golf as an example was to illustrate how people never connect two far-flung data points (= poor shots) in golf just because of the golfer's nationality, but somehow people do the same with plane crashes that are also far-flung data points.

Any way you shake it, the comment does not make sense. Is the comment complaining that golf has no cultural causation, but flying a plane does? But culturalist explanations for golf are plenty. For example, many people ascribed Korean culture as a factor as to why there are so many dominant LPGA players who are either Korean or Korean-American. According to those folks, something about Korean culture might be in play when it comes to excellent female golfers. But does it mean that when Se-ri Pak missed a putt in the 13th hole of the Women's British Open in 1997, she missed it for the same reason that caused Inbee Park shanks a drive in the second hole of the 2013 Women's U.S. Open? Most people would say no. (By the way, that was a hypothetical. Don't go searching for what happened at Women's British Open in 1997.)

Or, is the comment complaining that, if a team sport was used as a comparison, a culturalist explanation would be more accurate? But there are so many examples of a culturalist explanation being embarrassingly wrong. Just one of them: in the 1950s, Jewish people excelled in basketball. Soon, a culturalist explanation developed--the Jews are good at basketball because Jewish culture encourages swiftness and cunning. Of course, we now know that such explanation is ridiculous. (Or alternatively, we moved onto a different culturalist explanation involving African Americans.) So, if so many of the culturalist theories about team sports are wrong, what makes the culturalist theories about plane crashes so correct?

(3) KAL Flights into Russia.  This one, the Korean did expect some resistance. Many comments said KAL flights venturing into Russia during the late 1970s and 80s were also a pilot error, and it was fair for Malcolm Gladwell to count them as he was tallying up Korean Air's accidents.

The Korean disagrees. He will take the point is a navigation error is a serious pilot error. But the usual consequence of poor navigation into the wrong airspace is not that a military jet will appear and shoot your plane down. There is an obvious difference between wandering into the wrong air space and ramming into a mountain: the former, in most cases, does not lead to a plane crash and deaths.

But if you must insist otherwise, that's fine. This is a small point in the overall assessment of Gladwell's argument, so it is strange to see so many commenters get so hung up on it. In the Korean's mind, the greater problem was that Gladwell never disclosed the fact that two of the crashes that he counted were results of military or paramilitary attacks. At the very least, Gladwell could have let the readers decide if it was fair for him to count the three crashes as a part of KAL's safety record.

(4) More about Gladwell.  One strand of thought that the Korean did not discuss about Malcolm Gladwell: the Korean cannot help but struck by the violent imperialism that is implied by Gladwell's argument. Technically, Gladwell's point is not that Koreans are forever chained to the destiny of crashing planes. His point is that Koreans can escape that destiny, as long as they stop speaking Korean.

This may not be a fair criticism, because Gladwell does not say that this should be applied to Korean people generally. After all, the chapter about the Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes discusses only Korean pilots, not Koreans as a whole. But it seems like a fair observation that Gladwell is presenting his theory with an implication that it has a broader application than airline pilots.

At this point, we are fairly deep into the realm of speculation, so the Korean will spare his words. He will only note that the idea of changing or replacing the native language to absorb a superior culture is nothing new. It has been around since the 19th century, when the Europeans and Americans began conquering the world with a sincere belief that they are better suited to run the various parts of the world than those who were already occupying those parts--which is why the Korean finds this implication unnerving.

(5) A Telling Incident.  Today, Oakland's KTVU station reported that Asiana Flight 214's pilot names were: "Sum Ting Wong, Wi Tu Lo, Ho Lee Fuk, Bang Ding Ow." These are obviously fake names that smack of racism. And it is striking that KTVU, based in one of the most Asian-heavy regions in the United States, let that one be aired on television. Several people at KTVU must have looked at these names, and okay'ed their release via broadcast. How could this happen?

KTVU's excuse:  the National Transportation Safety Board verified those pilot names. And the NTSB did! Apparently, a summer intern at the NTSB confirmed these names to the KTVU.

Now, my culturalist friends: what is it about American culture that contributed a local station with heavily Asian population to blindly buy the obviously false representation from the NTSB? Is there an inherent deference to authority in American culture that contributed to this gaffe? Let's hear it.

(6) Correction.  Commenter Chris Kahn left very helpful comment, which is worth reproducing in full:

I'm a Korean too - I actually commissioned as an OCS (like the pilot of Korean Air 801) officer, and served as a naval officer on a ship and later as a UDT/SEAL in the Korean navy. I agree with your basic thesis that Gladwell is inexcusably sloppy and that culturalism is over-emphasized in covering the recent crash.

However, I do think that language was a contributing factor to the KA 801 crash - though such problems are not necessarily limited to Korean culture as the Challenger and Discovery tragedies, and the development of Crew Resource Management by NASA show.

First of all, I disagree with your description of the hierarchy of Korean military officers. In every day interactions, "seniority of commissioning date" is the overwhelming factor in deciding how to interact other officers, with actual age coming in as a modifying factor. Commissioning source (Academy or non-academy) heavily affects an officer's career trajectory and chances for promotion, but does not factor into the language hierarchy. Rank also does not affect the language hierarchy, which causes much cognitive dissonance and discomfort should a higher ranking junior officer work in close quarters with a lower ranking senior officer.

The senior pilot was commissioned in '75 and left the Air Force as a major in '87 while the first officer was Air Force Academy class of 26 which would mean he was commissioned in '78 and left the military as a Lt. Col. Hence, the pilot is unambiguously superior to the first officer. This is supported by the language in the transcript where the senior pilot uses the lowest form of speech (반말) to the first officer. From my personal experience, I have never seen any junior Academy officer fail to defer to a senior (in commissioning date) OCS or ROTC officer.

Second, the flight engineer is clearly much older and senior to both the pilot and the first officer. But there is another factor in play here - engineering is a secondary rating to flying and in the Korean military at least, there is a strong sense that you don't interfere with another officer's turf. Each specialty is highly silo-ed. For example, on the first ship I was on, the Chief engineering officer (Cheng) was senior to the Executive Officer (XO). Hence, at no point did our XO fail to acknowledge the Cheng's seniority, but in return the Cheng was conscientious about not overstepping the bounds of his specialty and interfering with the management of the ship.

So there were clear linguistic barriers to open communication within the cockpit of the KA 801. The first officer was junior to the pilot, and the flight engineer was used to keeping his hands off the realm of pilots.

Second, my own experience running exercises as a SEAL has shown that conventional Korean language hinders cooperation in time sensitive situations. For Close Quarters Combat exercises, where team members must work with each other within a room to clear it of "bad guys" safely, and where the situation and command structures are fluid, my unit has mandated that everyone speaks to each other in the lowest form of speech (반말) regardless of rank or age. Not only does this reduce the time necessary to communicate (since sentence endings are shorter), but it makes the junior members of a team much more likely to speak up when they see a corner that hasn't been "held" yet or a potentially dangerous situation.

Deference to authority is not a unique problem to Koreans (again, see NASA and Crew Resource Management), but I would argue that the Korean language structurally exacerbates the problem.

[Link to comment]

In the original post, the Korean pointed out that KAL Flight 801's captain would not be disrespectful to the first officer and the flight engineer because of their age and military pedigree. This comment provides more color, and raises the possibility that the first officer and the flight engineer would be deferential to the captain regardless.

The Korean is hesitant to take just one person's word for it, but he is willing to acknowledge a superior source of information. So here is the official correction: the Korean's point about the relative social ranks of the captain, the first officer and the flight engineer of the KAL Flight 801 may not be accurate.

(6) Further reading.  The Korean hopes that he intrigued you about culturalism. He has previously written several posts about culturalism, and you can search for the word in the blog if you are interested in reading further. If he were to pick just one for recommended further reading, he would pick this one: Another Person's Room. Remember, there are always socks in a room. (You will get it after you read that post.)

Thank you, again, for reading and commenting.

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.

Culturalism, Gladwell, and Airplane Crashes

A few weeks ago, I attended a PGA golf tournament. You might think watching golf is boring, but I beg to differ: professional golf tournaments offer a chance to witness firsthand one of the amazing athletic feats in the world. 

If an ordinary weekend golfer made ten great shots in a row, that might be the best day of her golfing life. If I saw two ordinary weekend golfers making ten great shots in a row at the same time, I would start exclaiming out loud after each shot and buy a round of beer for both of them. Now, imagine watching a hundred fifty golfers playing, in a championship golf course that is designed to leave a very small margin of error. Imagine watching virtually every one of them knocking off ten great shots in a row. The good players may hit 20 or 30 great shots in a row; the best ones, 40, 50, 60 great shots. This is why a golf tournament is so exciting: it is a collective display of perfection, shown over and over and over again.

Against the backdrop of such perfection, errors become magnified. The mistakes end up drawing more attention than the shots well hit. If all three golfers in a group hit the perfect drive, such that their balls are a foot away from one another's in the middle of the fairway, the gallery would give a polite applause. But if one of the golfers shanks it into the woods, the gallery would exhale a downcast "ooh," and hurry toward the golf ball among the trees like buzzards toward a rotting carcass.

I am not an exception; watching a tournament, I also fixate on the golfers' mistakes. When I see a golfer hitting a poor shot, I take a moment trying to recreate the swing in my mind, trying to see if I could identify what went wrong. I picture the golfer making his approach to the ball; the stance; the back swing; the alignment of the club head when the back swing reaches the top; the down swing; location of the hip during the down swing; the follow-through. Then I think about the path of the ball flight, and try to identify which part of the swing contributed to the deviation from the intended path.

And then I do something peculiar. I look up which country the golfer is from. And if I happen to remember a poor shot from a different golfer of the same country, I try to see the bigger picture in addition to their respective swings. I start wondering if there is something about that country's culture that affects their golf swings. In the particular golf tournament attended, I saw two Canadian players hitting a poor shot. One golfer hit it short in the 10th hole, dropping the ball into the water. The other, in the narrow 16th hole, badly sliced the drive and ended up in the woods. Quickly, I mustered every scrap of knowledge I had about Canadian culture in my head, and I tried to connect the dots: is there something about Canadian culture that leads to poor golf shots by two different golfers at two different holes?

Just kidding--of course I am kidding. Obviously, I did not think about connecting Canadian culture and poor golf shots, nor do I ever try to connect any national culture with poor golf shots. Nobody in the right mind would do such a thing. We all know that.

But if we all know that, why do so many people do the same thing when it comes to airplane crashes?

*         *         *

(source)

This post is about the Asiana Airline's crash-landing in the San Francisco Airport last Saturday. It is also about culturalism. The term "culturalism" is my coinage, which I introduced the concept several years ago in this blog. Culturalism is the unwarranted impulse to explain people's behavior with a "cultural difference", whether real or imagined. Because the culturalist impulse always attempts to explain more with culture than warranted, the "cultural difference" used in a cultural explanation is more often imagined than real. To paraphrase Abraham Maslow, to a man with a culturalist impulse, every problem looks like a cultural problem.

Seen collectively, landing an aircraft is not unlike a golf tournament. It is not an easy task to land a giant, fast-moving tube of metal onto a small, defined target while keeping everyone inside the tube alive. Each landing of a jumbo jet may as well be a small miracle. Yet, like a golf tournament filled with the world's greatest players, air travel is a marvelous display of perfection: airplanes manage to land millions of times every year with very few accidents. (Let us be charitable to the much-maligned airline industry, and define an "accident" as something more significant than a delayed flight or lost luggage.) It is common knowledge that you are much more likely to die in the car that you drive to the airport, than in the airplane that you board at that airport. 

Perhaps we focus so much on a plane crash for the same reason that golf watchers focus more on a poor shot than a good one: it is a rare deviation from perfection. Like the golf gallery surrounding an errant ball landed among the trees, we surround and gawk at every minute detail of the latest airplane crash. We run through all kinds of scenarios about what went wrong, and talk about them. We explain, then we over-explain--which is when the culturalist impulse kicks in. Already, venerable news organizations like CNN, the Washington Post and NBC News are wondering aloud: did Korean culture contribute to this extremely rare event?

(More after the jump)

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.

Korea vs Japan, the Military Showdown

Dear Korean,

I was arguing with my friend about who had more military strength, Korea or Japan. My friend argued that Japan had a large navy and strong air force and volunteers for their ground forces. I know that Korea must have a larger land force than Japan since it drafts people, but are they trained well? How are they equipped? Also, what are some notable ships or airplanes that are in Korea's navy and air force?

John

This is an interesting question, but the Korean also knows that this post is bound to attract a certain breed of idiots commonly found on the Internet. So here is a warning before we get started:

This post is a disinterested analysis of the comparative military strengths of Korea and Japan.

It has nothing to do with the current or past relations between Korea and Japan.

Any comment on that topic is irrelevant to this post, and accordingly will be summarily deleted.

So, back to our interesting question. How do the military of Korea and Japan compare with each other? And what would happen in case of a war?

Although actual events would be difficult to predict, the Internet appears to be particularly good at generating meaningless war games that people take far too seriously. From what the Korean gathered, it seems like a war between Korea and Japan will be the proverbial battle between a whale and a wolf--an engagement in which each military's respective strengths do not match up.

Questioner John gets it basically correct: Korea has the stronger ground forces, while Japan has the edge in the navy and the air force. This is a natural result of the defense challenges that each country faces. South Korea's biggest military threat is North Korea, which may (theoretically) simply cross the Armistice Line with ground forces. Therefore, South Korea must beef up its ground forces to meet that challenge. Meanwhile, all of Japan's potential military threats are across the water, because Japan is made up of islands. Japan's defense game plan is to repel the enemy before it ever reaches the main islands, with her air force and navy. 

On the ground, Korea's advantage of overwhelming. Korea has more than double the number of ground troops compared to Japan (540,000 to 240,000), largely because Korea has military draft. Korea has more than three times as many tanks and armored vehicles as Japan does.

In contrast, Japan's naval strength--which was enough to start a world war at one point--far surpasses Korea's. Japan's navy has more three times the tonnage of Korea's, and has nearly double the number of naval aircraft. In addition, Japan has ten Aegis cruisers to Korea's three. The story is similar as to air force: Japan has 50% more jets than Korea. Although Korea's main fighter jet, the F-15K, is slightly newer and better equipped than Japan's F-15J, the difference is not large enough to erase the significant difference in the numbers. (Japan has four times the number of F-15 than Korea.) Japan's air force also has air-to-air refueling capabilities, which significantly extends the range of its jets--an advantage that Korea's air force lacks. Finally, Japan's air force has 13 AWACs and its own GPS satellite; Korea has one of the former, and none of the latter.

One game-changing possibility is that Korea has cruise missiles with a range of 1500 kilometers, while Japan does not. (The reason for this discrepancy? That is how much the United States allowed for each country.) This means that Korea can theoretically strike Tokyo with cruise missiles. But as of now, Korea does not have enough cruise missiles to make a significant dent on Japan's military or economy. Further, Japan can always convert one of its rockets, designed to launch a satellite, into an ICBM.

Given the nature of modern warfare, and given Korea's geographical situation, Japan will probably win in a head-to-head war if it attacked Korea. Although Korea does have the advantage on the ground, Japan's superior air force and navy can successfully embargo Korea's sea route, cutting off Korea from key resources. (Recall that Korea imports 100% of its petroleum.) Yet Korea's superior number of ground troops probably means that Japan will have a heck of time actually conquering Korea. The reverse scenario, in which Korea attacks Japan, is hard to fathom from military perspective--because Korea lacks the naval and aerial capability to take its ground advantage to Japan.

More likely, if Korea and Japan were approaching a war, the United States will tell both Korea and Japan to calm the fuck down. Or China will side with either Japan or Korea and project enough strength to stop any armed conflict from happening. Any way you slice it, an actual war between Japan and Korea is highly unlikely, which makes all of the above just fun and games.

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.