Corsair the Rational Pirate points out this fodder for derision, brought to you by the Korea Herald:
Ecologist Stresses Korea’s Role to Protect Environment
Korea could serve an important role in the worldwide movement against globalization that is eating away our society and our happiness, according to Helena Norberg-Hodge, an ecologist and author of “Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh.”
“Many people in Europe and America realize the conventional development path is not only destroying the natural environment but our health, happiness and our society,” the Swedish ecologist said at a news conference in Seoul on Tuesday.
“The reason why Korea is so important is that you have a better memory of a traditional way of life - stronger family and community ties and a culture of living with nature,” she said.
You must be joking - the reason why Korea is so important is because it’s an outstanding example of how market economies and global trade can take a war-town, piss-poor former colony and turn it into an economic powerhouse where people get fat and live large. And look, I’m a big fan of Korea’s “traditional way of life” - when I retire, I want to retire to Andong. But I’m not so blinded by Andong’s quaint folk-ways not to notice that young people leave the town as soon as they can because they can’t stand living there, i.e. the results of the “conventional development path” - in full evidence in Seoul - are not so destructive to human happiness as Ladakh Girl would like us to think. Heck, I’ve lived in Africa, and if there is only one thing of which I’m certain, it’s that most in the developing world can only dream of having the problems associated with “the conventional development path” that are apparently causing so much distress in Europe and America.
Anyway, a little later in the same piece:
“The dominant development path is pushing people into slums and larger and larger cities but as the jobs are not there, this leads to massive poverty and consumption of natural recourses, even when (people) are going hungry,” said Norberg-Hodge, who is also a linguist and the first non-Ladakhi to become proficient in the language.
Did Norberg-Hodge even bother to look at the history of South Korean development before she gave this news conference? Now, I’m not saying that the Miracle on the Han was accomplished without pain and sacrifice. Nothing could be further from the truth. But one of the reasons why economic development in South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan was so exceptional was that it was accomplished with a remarkably wide distribution of wealth. South Korea isn’t Latin America, where import substitution policies wreaked havoc on national social structures. Some sections of Seoul are worse off than others, but you’ll find nothing like the slums found in many Third World cities. Sure, I’ve seen pictures of the p’anjach’on (shanty-towns) that existed in Seoul during the 70s, but you don’t see them anymore, and let’s face it - living in some countryside chogajip (thatched-roof house) eking out a marginal life was hardly a happier existence. The fact is, “traditional lifestyles” led to starvation - famines were a regular occurrence through out much of Korea’s history, and the only reason the southern half of the nation has managed to break that unhappy cycle is that it pursued precisely the kinds of policies Ladakh Girl decries.
And Jesus, Ladakhi? I thought learning Mongolian was a pointless exercise.
She emphasized that Korea should not continue to follow this path, but work toward decentralization of social and economic systems and lead the local food movement against corporate globalization by supporting small farmers.
“We need to turn away from specialized production for export, and must change to diversified production for home needs,” she said.
Support the small farmers against evil corporate globalization? No wonder why people starve. And I guess it never occurred to Norberg-Hodge that supporting the South Korean small farmer doesn’t hurt evil corporate types so much as it kills Third World peasants trying to export agricultural goods to the South Korean and Japanese markets? And while I would agree that South Korea should probably move away from its dependence on export-led growth, a nation the size of South Korea is NOT going to get rich producing solely for domestic consumption. Small nations depend on exports and open markets to make up for the low number of domestic consumers. What Norberg-Hodge suggests amounts to national suicide. Period.
“I hope Korea will lead the way to become a leading example that starts to choose a different direction from the current economic growth trend.”
I’ll tell you this - if South Korea were to follow her advice, she needn’t worry about the “current economic growth trend.” Wouldn’t it be grand to return to the Chosun Dynasty, when evil capitalists like Samsung and Hyundai weren’t tearing apart Korea’s traditional family and village structures? I’m sure the peasants were much happier despite their reliance on an economy based on subsistence agriculture that left them vulnerable to the regular famines resulting from cyclical droughts. The Corsair says it best:
Can’t live in the past. You can make the future better and cleaner and more environmentally friendly, but not by forcing people to drop the trappings of a modern civilization and live in the 19th century.
5 Comments
I have always found this type of character EXTREMELY patronising because they know NOTHING of what it is actually like to live in a third world country. My wife is filipina and let my tell you, 99.999% of Filipinos would absoultely stampede to Korea to live if they had the chance. Subsistance farming may sound romantic but I have actually SEE starving families wating for the rice to ripen. Same for the evil capitalists. If Nike, or any other multinational, were to build a plant in the Philippines and pay the workers $10 a day the line at the personnell office would be 50km long because that wages is at least FIVE TIMES what local companies pay.
Let’s talk about enviroment. Contrary to Do-Gooder belief, third world countries are cesspits of filth and pollution. It is when they evil development starts to reap it rewards that the environment actually cleaned up. I often what these types on their Luddite doom-junkets get paid for their “services.”
They won’t let you retire here Robert: as soon as you don’t have a job anymore, they’ll kick yer sorry ass back to wherever it belongs (or not). Unless within our lifetime the permanent residency exception is extended to all long-time visa-holders…
I thought this kind of hippy crap went out with the 70s. Oh yes, there’s nothing more romantic than 15 hours a day of back breaking labour, and praying that a drought doesn’t cause you and your family to starve. I agree that these types are totally patronising - they seem to want to keep developing countries in some kind of bizarre timewarp state so that us westerners can troop round their countries to see how happy the natives are living in their mud huts and bitch about how tough life is these days with our TVs, airplanes, plentiful food and clean drinking water. I agree that we do need to be more environmentally friendly, but going back to the dark ages is just not the way to achieve that goal.
The irony is that Korea has actually gotten cleaner as it’s moved up the economic ladder (same as New Jersey, but that’s another story). If you went to any mountain or other outdoor place in 1993 there’d be trash everywhere. Nowadays, you have an almost pristine beach at Haeundae. The fact is, a growing economy allows you to focus more resources on cleaning up the environment and keeping it clean. The U.S. has never had as many deer and the number of trees is greater than anytime since something like the 1700s (from memory as a quick google couldn’t nail this down).
These globophobes really get on my tits since what they really want, whether they conciously know it or not, is to keep the 3rd World in its place so they’ll have more cheap destinations to backpack to and be able to say, “Look at these quaint people and their timeless ways.” Given a choice, any peasant the world over will choose globalization.
Wouldn’t sharecropping be an acceptable synonym for traditional Korean agriculture of yesteryear? A friend of the proletariat but not the peasant?