Korea has made brilliant economic progress since 1945, when it was liberated from the yoke of Japanese occupation, and quickly advanced from a poor country to a rich country; from dictatorship to democracy; and from a class-society to people’s society. Its culture became diversified from a uniform one.
Despite such a huge economic success, many people are not happy with their lives. The nation has many problems, especially those hidden during its rapid economic growth, which began to emerge in diverse ways.
The situation is similar to that many advanced nations experienced as they grew and developed. We, too, have to face similar challenges. We have to take care of them well to be an advanced nation. If we fail, we will falter at the gate of advanced nation status, unable to join their ranks.
If we are able to pick the two most serious problems, they would be complaints and insecurity. The complaints have been rising as the gap between the haves and have nots has widened, with special social classes being born. They have different ways of thinking, different ways of living styles and understanding. Making the imbalance worse are the gaps in wealth, academic record, power, region and corporations.
The imbalance makes the gaps among the social class groups widen so that special classes are created with the differences in such key areas of their lives including standards, levels and gaps in perceiving social trends. At the moment, the imbalances that have grown big enough to shake the country can be said to be the gaps between and rich and poor, academic records, power and corporations. Rich and poor, those learned and those that have not, those with power and those without power, the Yongnam and Honam regions, large conglomerates and small business firms show imbalances, which are created through diverse stages and channels.
For example, when the rich class is formed, gaps between the rich and the poor will widen, and when the power is inherited from generation to generation, gaps in power is created, damaging politics, the economy, society and cultural stability, and furthermore endangering the national integration and its existence.
Insecurity is a psychological phenomena that is created when one feels his existence is threatened. It is a status of unpleasantness that occurs without specific causes. Insecurity develops when one feels his desire can no longer be achieved or a signal that one should look out for his own security when unpleasantness and danger encroaches upon him. Livelihood, old age, housing, environment and systems are major areas in our lives that can give insecure feelings to people.
Hard lives, fear of old ages, unstable housing and environment and ever present threats from North Korea represent the insecurities that we have been living with in our lives. Many of us can’t feel satisfied with our current living conditions and we can hardly expect our future will be better. The public is insecure now.
Insecurity and imbalances invite tenseness and conflict. The big differences in power, economic might and culture help such conflicts worsen. Insecurity helps such conflicts and tenseness expand further, and at the same time deepen with social conflicts being tagged as competition among social collectives for social positions and natural resources. As such, imbalance and insecurity breed huge conflicts to solve them.
The conflicts are a big problem alone, but a bigger problem is when existing powers use said conflicts to their political advantage to worsen the situation, rather than solving them as moderators.
The social conflicts in Korea have been born out of compressed economic growth, which delayed the mature development of a democratic society and deepened collectivism.
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