Global Futures in East Asia: Youth, Nation, and the New Economy in Uncertain Times (Contemporary Issues in Asia and Pacific) (21 page)

Sori’s struggles, however, must be appreciated in the context of what she described as the “two things that matter to my father: patriarchy and money.” Sori was determined to “both marry well and become a classy woman by virtue of making lots of money” so that her father will approve of her—“give her an OK”—in spite of her having attended a lesser college, as he had. The family context of Sori’s situation illuminates how her burden of self-development was intricately stitched into the fabric of conservative family norms and patriarchy. In this case, middle-class advantage was withheld along gendered lines. This case is perhaps not broadly representative of trends today: With South Korea’s rapidly declining birth rate, there are many families with only girls, and many such girls are afforded the same privileges that would have been accorded a boy. But gender ideologies and their transformations work their way unevenly in all populations.

Although the task of unearthing Sori’s item was still a project for her future, she had been taking a year off so as to study further for the TOEIC as
well
as to travel and take up photography. Sori was frustrated by what struck her as an irony: Although nonelite, the university’s tendency to give constant small exams throughout the semester thwarted her desires for human development. She calculated that she was better off leaving the campus to realize her project. English, travel, and photography comprise an easy trio, for they are all highly valued human development assets, assets that are all the more important for students from Myŏngji University because this is where, according to Sori, the large firms don’t even interview.

In sum, Sori realized that her human development was in her own hands. Lacking both the college brand and the gendered inheritance of her father’s import/export item, Sori was indeed on her own in the project of developing herself for a transformed world. At times she called attention to matters beyond the boundary of the self (for example, personal exam proclivity, college reputations at the departmental level, and gendered inequalities in family support for exam preparation), but she nonetheless considered herself responsible for ending up at Myŏngji University and having to take on the development of her own human capital. Hardly unfettered by the burden, Sori nonetheless embraced it.

Bordering the Megalopolis

Each of us has to know exactly where we are headed and then make choices accordingly.

We turn now to two male seniors at Inch’ŏn City University, Min and Kŭn, both the children of small entrepreneurs. Min was also the son of a single mother. Although we foreground university stratification here, Min and Kŭn are also clearly from a lower-class background than that of the students already discussed. However, they, too, took on the burden of human development beyond the walls of their university. Min argued for the self-management of college in which each student decides where college fits in his or her own self-development strategy. Kŭn having recently decided to take the civil service exam, was resigned to a rather conventional occupational future while holding onto the possibility of personal development beyond the job. Inch’ŏn City University is a nonelite university attended by students from Seoul unable to gain admission to colleges in Seoul proper
and
also by Inch’ŏn locals and students from the provinces. Inch’ŏn a sprawling city neighboring Seoul, presents an interesting case. Although an independent city with its own history distinct from the Seoul megalopolis, it is close enough to Seoul so as not to be easily classified as “provincial”; it is nonetheless clearly not a part of the greater Seoul metropolitan area. Inch’ŏn City University, which began as a private university, was transformed into a public university in 1994 and is currently in the process of becoming a national university. We met Min and Kŭn in a larger group of students from the Communications Department in 2003 and in a smaller group again in 2004. In 2004, Min was off campus because of an internship that had turned into full-time employment, although he still needed to finish up some coursework. He made considerable effort to come and meet us because he had an urgent story to share. In 2003, Min who was stylishly dressed in offbeat clothes, spoke of his “fate to follow a different life course” and of his distinctive childhood without a father and with a “crazily” strong mother. He introduced himself as an “eclectic philosopher,” and it was clear that his classmates had heard much of this before. Min was a frequent performer of his own difference. In 2003, he spoke at great length about South Korea’s impoverished culture of conversation or debate. Speaking of English as “more comfortable,” Min seemed to be saying that his use of the English language was unfettered by South Korean schooling and perhaps the dictates of Korean social life. With his comments on English, Min referred both to his international travel, namely several low-budget trips in Asia, and his cosmopolitan affinities:

When I speak English, it doesn’t seem so hard. It is easy and systematic. . . . We have a real problem with our education system. We begin our schooling learning such strange things [textbook English]—and in high school and middle school, too. I don’t know why we learn those kinds of things. We could just go and talk when the situation arises, but instead we study English this way. Who knows why we can’t get out of our books?

Moments later, Min championed “survival English,” an English born in real-life interactions and through a more natural process of acquisition:

When I spoke English abroad, I didn’t think about it consciously—I just memorized the words and sentences that people used and said them that way. . . .
It’s
really easy to learn how to just change the ending of sentences and put that into action, but instead [people in South Korea] just sit in the library five hours a day studying. That’s meaningless. We really need to change [the education system] soon.

If the English that Min spoke and learned in his trek in India was somehow more “natural,” South Korean English was a disaster, held hostage in South Korean textbooks and classrooms. On hearing Min speak about English study, Kŭn did not negate what he said but offered his own take on Min’s position: “Our [that is, South Korean] criterion for English study is the TOEIC exam. He hasn’t studied for the TOEIC exam, but he went to India and tried out his English a lot there. In a word, he is talking about practical English (
silj
ŏ
n yŏ
ng’
ŏ).” Kŭn had traveled only domestically and thus had made different choices than Min, although their class backgrounds are not so different.

In keeping with his deep-seated criticisms of South Korean English education, Min was also an avid critic of South Korea’s chronic competition and of the connections (through school, region, and kin) that it takes to make it. In this litany, he included South Korea’s “Seoul National University sickness,” referring to the pathological obsession with this one school. Interestingly, in his excursus on English, Min also asserted that his English mastery exceeded that of Seoul National University students. Like Sori, Min also made structural critiques; however, he appeared to be more deeply empowered by them in the sense that he had not internalized his failure in having to settle on being an Inch’ŏn City University student. While it is hard to generalize from this case, we think that both class and gender are relevant here.

Min was not burdened by Sori’s sense of failure and lack of empowerment. Whereas Sori was burdened with the desire to please her patriarchal father, Min prided himself on his unique family background, on being unfettered by “Korean” familial convention. Min’s assertion of freedom from patriarchy can be considered ironically as a gendered privilege itself; a fatherless daughter would have been very differently positioned and would by no means have been free from patriarchal constraints. In describing the many ways in which he had styled his path, from a trek in India to side jobs in college, Min detailed an entrepreneurship of the self that had begun early in his life by virtue of his cultural marginality. His position was outside of the logic of patriarchy that had so burdened Sori. In imagining his future, Min described his inspiration from Buddhism (“following one’s heart”).

By
2004, via an internship, Min had landed a highly desirable job in Seoul as a TV producer in a broadcasting company. In explaining how he landed the job, he made clear his understanding that each person must take responsibility for the management of his or her own future, a management that is inherently risky and driven by many choices:

When I was taking classes, I got many calls asking, “Min, are you up for some part-time work?” And I would turn to my friends, “Hey, let’s do it together,” but most of the time they said, “No, I can’t, I have class.” But in my case, I cut class and did those jobs. Because I skipped many classes, my GPA [grade point average] was between a B and a C. . . . but I learned many skills in the field. And so I have been able to enter the work world so quickly. Those students who stuck to their classes can’t enter society and begin working as easily. It was a matter of my personal judgment; I did what I did because I chose to do it. Grades are also important, and I did fret about my grades. . . .
Each of us has to know exactly where we are headed and then make choices accordingly
. I chose my course a long time ago, andI have stayed on that path without wavering. [emphasis added]

Min’s thoughts here about learning “in the field” echoed his earlier pronouncements about language learning and signified his embrace of new modes of human development. However, Min had made considerable effort to meet us that evening, not to offer these reflections but to tell us a love story.

It was a very long story, spoken with almost no interruptions, other than sympathy pangs from the assembled listeners; for Kŭn and another student present, it was clear that the story was already very familiar. In brief, Min had fallen in love with an Indian woman he had come to know because she was featured in a TV program that he had spearheaded as part of the internship that had led to his present job. It was a fairy-tale story of true love and tragic parting:
17
The woman was not at liberty to marry a non-Indian. Although it was a serious and at moments melodramatic telling, there were humorous asides, mostly about the ways in which Min skimped on his work to follow his heart. We listened to the story intently. Min was skilled at keeping his auditors tuned in. As we listened, we were struck that Min seemed to be mobilizing the tale in almost the same way he had described making choices in college as an instance of living and experiencing intensely. Although at
first
glance the story was a very far cry from that of the credential-happy Heejin with her “events” or from “item”-seeking Sori, the intensity, the personal flair, and the interest in experience are consistent.

Min also told us a lovely story about an encounter with a Japanese traveler in India. The meeting had been serendipitous and fleeting but somehow very meaningful. It captured beautifully the allure of travel, the magic that it promises the adventuresome. The talk of travel, yet another instance of “experience,” had also featured largely in the meeting the year before, especially for Kŭn Born and raised in Inch’ŏn Kŭn had transferred from physics to communications, finding it better suited to his interests. After stating this, he said, “And I especially like to travel.” We asked about the relation between his love of travel and his new major in communications, which made everyone chuckle. Kŭn answer was telling: “Well, there’s no exact relationship between them, but . . . I think of travel as something that gives you time to contemplate. The way I think of travel is that, while passing through new environments, it allows us to think alone and to plunge into our own thoughts.” For Kŭn both his major and his love of travel were tailored to personal proclivity and to self-fashioning of the sort we have been describing. Kŭn described his lofty goals at the start of each journey, “setting out for the answers to ‘how I should live,’ ‘what life is,’ and so on.” But, he continued wistfully, “After all, it’s the same. Whether I travel or not, life is hard.” Kŭn would have liked to travel abroad, but limited resources precluded it. The “weight of reality,” which Kŭn had described in 2003, had been getting in the way of his travels.

Kŭn comments on his future one year later must be heard in the context of his listening to Min’s account. Kŭn conservatively and neatly dressed, smiled quietly throughout the telling. It was after this tale of adventuresome travel in India, television, and international romance that Kŭn shared his decision to take the civil service exam, a decision that would foreclose the possibility of employment better suited to his studies and passions. His future course appeared all the duller against the landscape of Min’s accounts. Kŭn spoke of the naked realities of contemporary circumstances for all college students but even more so for those in universities outside of Seoul: “People say that our economy is getting worse, and youth employment is becoming a serious issue. These days there are no college students who are relaxed. We hang out together, but the moment we are alone again we are overwhelmed with worry, worries about the future.” Kŭn thus described an anxiety that
we
observed across many of our college student interviews and particularly those with students at the lower-tier universities. Kŭn however, went so far as to note that these days even Seoul National University students struggle.

Traveler Kŭn however, made peace with his decision to take the civil service exam this way:

If I become a public servant, I will have enough spare time. I can’t imagine working more than ten hours a day, like Min. [As a public servant] I will go to work at 9 and finish by 5:30. The rest of the time is my own. And, in the near future, public servants will have every other Saturday off. And, somewhere down the line, all Saturdays will be off.
18
With that time, I can do something for self-development.

In this way, Kŭn registered or at least performed his peace with his decision of the need to become a public servant. The peace, as he described it, came from the self-development that he charted for after hours. It is interesting how Kŭn even spoke of his shorter work day, contrasting with Min’s, as liberating in its own way. Kŭn sketch accorded with widespread images of a changed salary man who does not forsake his personal life for the company. The typical salary man of the era of the South Korean developmentalist state was the one who gave his soul to the company for the economic development of the nation; family life, in turn, was relegated entirely to women; and leisure life was merely an extension of company life (see Janelli 1993; Kim 1998). Kŭn thus described self-development as a leisure-time project. Interesting here is Kŭn meditation on freedom, his charge that perhaps labor that one is passionate about and demands full devotion—such as Min’s—is not liberating at all!