there was a visiting prof from ucla (usc?) at ewha a couple of years ago who was involved in ethnographic studies related to immigrants, and specifically foreign students, in the united states. what he found was that koreans actually had the highest attrition rate of any foreign ethnic group studying at ivy league schools in the US. it seemed that the greatest challenge for these students was time management, as they had never had any experience with that growing up (most everything was scheduled and provided by their parents-most especially their mothers).

Contextual vs. linear might indeed be a mischaracterization. Maybe we could try out horizontal vs. vertical? Or perhaps causal vs. correlational? Your ulcer example illustrates the fact that corelations are not necessarily causal. I believe Westerner place more emphasis on investigating causality whereas we Koreans are more apt to settle for correlation.

Another example of disproven correlational Western thinking involves the common notion that vitamin C prevents colds, an assumption that physicians have accepted for years. This, too was recently disproven. How did this one ever start? It will be interesting to deconstruct the correlational line of reasoning that led from the knowledge that Vitamin C prevents scurvy to the notion that Vitamin C also prevents colds.

An regrettable example of causal fallacy in Korea today is that Korean schoolchildren are taught the Japanese occupation resulted from a secret agreement with Japan, which amounts to blaming Japanese agression on the US. In fact, the US, not a power at the time, was simply following the convention of imperialist European nations in mutual acknowledgment of one another’s “spheres of influence”. Real imperialist powers such as England had already made such agreements with Japan and Taft agreement certainly did not carry any real impact. The U.S. was dabbling in a me-too game, briefly trying it’s hand in a sphere in which it was inexperienced - imperialism. Because the age of imperialism was waning, the U.S. never did became an imperialist nation in the European tradition, but the Japanese didn’t play by the same rules. The radical populist notion of the U.S. “selling Korea out” in violation of a prior treaty with Korea is flawed becasue it is in fact difficult to conceive of any possibility of a substantial sense of commitment on the part of the U.S. to Korea given Korea’s passive and reluctant stance toward the outside world, an attitude that still prevails. The first peaceful attempts establish diplomatic and trade relations with Korea resulted in unprovoked attacks upon American ships, although the story is not told that way in Korean textbooks.

If ballpark logic is good enough for us Koreans it is because truth can rarely be separated from ideology here. While American culture encourages the development of independent thought, Korean thought reflects general opinion and owes allegience to the integrity of the group rather than dispassion and reason. For Koreans, the hypotesis exists to be proven at the expense of the process of reason, whereas for Westerners, the process of reason is itself more important, even more so than the conclusion. Another way of stating this is that in the West, the principle of fairness lies in the process of logic whereas in Korea, the principle of fairness lies in manipulating the process of logic to conform with the given hypothesis.

Again, I almost agree with everything from your last post. But, I just wanted to point out to you that there are a lot to be optimistic about rather than pessimistic given “context.”

Just few days ago 2 Aussie scientists won the Nobel prize for discovering that much of the common stomache ulcers and related problems are caused by bacteria rather than stress as commonly believed. I point this out to you, because at the time, many people believed that these 2 scientists were loons and everyone assumed and believed that the “conventional” and “traditional” mode of thought, namely that ulcers are caused by stress, is correct. In fact, this is usually the case with whatever people think. I think this example illustrate some points I want to make. First, pivotal to the research, one of the scientist made the extreme decision of actually ingesting the microbe in question to prove his hypothesis. I think this type of unconventional “out of the box” sort of thiking is actually what really defines modern western culture. It’s not so much so that the logic train is linear. I say this because Korean contextual logic as you would claim is also linear if you think about it like this, “I don’t know much about anything, everyone else says A is true. Generally speaking, what everyone takes onto be common knowledge is true, therefore A must be true.” And that’s what many people in the medical profession thought about ulcers prior to the pioneering Aussies. (and to carry on further humor in life, Korean medical profession which has a “generation lag” probably still retains a lot of this old American medical dogma)

So I think that in a more free-spirited western nations that people would go against the grain and is more willing to challenge authority. So we have guys who drop out of Harvard (something a Korean would NEVER do) and go on to engage in some very Koreanesque toxic competition and patent MS-DOS. Or just stay in a car garage all day and tinker around with electronic box and build a machine which the executives of IBM(and which Korean would go to challenge the business wisdom of a powerful chaebol leader?) claimed that the global market for them is less then 10—and then to go onto wear bowties for the rest of his life and sell nice portable music devices that fit into my coin pocket. Or in Australia, there is even a man who made a Do-it-Yourself Cruise missile from commercial parts. These are the sort of things that I don’t expect coming out of Korea. Because Koreans traditionally don’t challenge authrority. “I heard my grandpa says Japs all deserve to die, so he must be correct.” “I heard that blacks are sex fiends, everyone I know said this so it must be true.” etc ad nauseum.

I think that this factor, West’s more free nature and willingness to explore more avenues of thought is really what set it apart from other places. And I think this is more important than your view that Korea merely adheres to the conventional, because everyone everywhere does this–just a question of degrees. Even here in the United States, many many people still dispute the scientific theory of evolution. And you can say, “but VW they are perfectly well aware of the scientific theory, they just choose to adhere to the Creationism view.” And my reply would be the same thing can be said about Fan Death.

And I am very optimistic, because change in Korea is so rapid, (although not always in positive directions.) It wasnt’ so long ago taht Koreans rejected all the various tenets of Korean confucianism.

BTW, I don’t think your postings are inflammatory nor would have thought it would have illicited some sort of flame war. I thought it was very interesting and deserved some more interchange of comments.

Likewise, we have differing concepts of law since in the U.S., an accused is assumed to be innocent until proven guilty while in Korea, he is assumed to be guilty until proven innocent.

the ex-intelligence boss in charge of wiretapping during DJ’s term had his house searched by government officials in bundang yesterday. they decided to search first and get the search warrant later (as he might have been tipped off ahead of time) thus invalidating any need to follow proscribed law requiring a search warrant.

nice-euh.

Virtual Wanderer, I’m also from NY (as well as Taegu). But fortunately for me, my thought processes are more American than Korean so I’m I’m bi-conceptual without losing my reason. So let me digress from this digression to explain the key difference between Korean and Western logic.

Korean logic is contextual rather than linear. So, for instance, contextual elements such as historical context, anecdotal acccounts, and popular acceptance are sufficient grounds for belief in a theory. This is the reason we follow Eastern medicinal practices that according to Western science have no proven clinical value. From the Western perspective, contextual factors areconstitute insufficient evidence for belief unless there is also causal evidence.

In “fan death”, for instance, we tend to adopt the position that since it is so widely believed and since there are numerous reports of its occurance, there is little reason the veracity of the assumption that fans cause death. However, until causal evidence can be cited, Westerners remain skeptical.

Both sides may acknowlege the same set of facts but they would extrapolate differing conclusions from them. The facts are that:
A) most people have their fans on in the summer, and some of them have their windows closed as well;
B) a certain percentage of the unexplained deaths every summer occur to the group described above;
C) numerous people believe that there is a causal relationship between A and B.

Korean logic would then hold that since it is “common knowledge” (ie. generally believed) that there is a causal relationship between the fans and the deaths, and that since it is often safe to assume that there is some basis for common knowledge, there is no need to question the causality between fans and death. By contrast, Western logic would hold that without proof of causality in there is no need to assume it.

Likewise, we have differing concepts of law since in the U.S., an accused is assumed to be innocent until proven guilty while in Korea, he is assumed to be guilty until proven innocent.

One of the weightiest pieces of contextual evidence is tradition. Since it is “general practice” with “historical context”, there is no need to question its correctness. It therefore both unquestioned or beyond question. So it is with all Korean traditions. It is Korean, therefore it is superior. This is why we resort to using chopsticks to prove intellectual supremecy regardless of the lack of any evidence of causality.

Therefore, rather than question the soundness of our beliefs and practices, we need to assign blame to an individual for something that goes wrong. If hundreds of people act dangerously in public (have you gone out for a drive lately?) and this results in an accident, the fault lies not in “common practice”. The fault lies outside common practice and must be assigned to a particular individual or institution.

The reason that Korea is the least dynamic of nations lies in this tendency to rationalize our habits rather than examine and correct them.

Just to clarify, I am not “Caucasian” (a flawed term, originating from a pseudo-scientific theories of race from the 19th Century and beyond).

I was formerly a Korean. I chose to be an American. Now, I am a gun-toting, red meat-eating, 93 octane-burning, using-paper-on-one-side-only kind of American.

In my free time, I work as a foreign policy wonk and write op-eds.

I unfavorably contrasted the chivalric tradition of the West with “every man for himself” attitude prevalent in Korea in another thread, and was subjected to much ad hominem, including terms like “egg” and “sounding mighty white.”

I personally prefer the term “twinkie” though. Fun, eh?

James
aka Guns and Butter
aka The Asianist

mizar5, you’ve outdone yourself. you’re spot on, and speaking from experience, your take on chaebol employees plagiarizing, taking credit where credit ain’t due, stealing ideas and pandering to the whims of their bosses which may change as the breeze blows is exactly what i’ve experienced here as well.

All this seems to be the case since usually majority groups do hold powers, and it probably certainly helps that “the sins of a small minority back in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries,” helped to put them where they are now. This isn’t to say I think white people’s sins are greater than any other races sins–the difference is simply that the europeans were much more intelligent/organized/efficient with their sins then the non-whites who have not yet learned to apply the scientific method and rational reasoning on sinning. But that still doesn’t change who gets to inherit who’s musket/farm/trust accounts/presidential office(ha ha! I jab at thee republicans! And who can’t resist at pondering over the ironies of conservative Christian faith which states that a man inherits his father’s sins?).

And I think that it makes sense that europeans who have went through the age of reason before anyone else, discovering industrialization etc, would also be trail-blazers in questions of ethics and law. –Thus not having simply advanced technology, they also have advanced ethics–and so consequently being less racist.

Which leads me to conclude that the question of toxic competitiveness seems to be tied with the general level of educational and economic development in a society. Although, some people may say, correlation does not imply causation.

I don’t know if we can teach an “old dog” new tricks, but I do know that old dogs tends to die and new dogs can learn new tricks. What I’m trying to say is that if we step back a bit, the global trend is significantly optimistic. So the gospel of my message is that, the generational lag will sooner or later, work in your favour once it catches up with you. Maybe when your hairs are grey and you are writing memoirs, the new generation of people will stop whipping caucasions for fabricated sins and racisms. And on that day you can also take comfort as an added bonus that Kim Jong Il will also die. So you hang tough! Don’t let the, as Kurt Vonnegut would put it, ‘*’ out live you.

The other possibility is that your critic is a bigot taking refuge in the current politically correctness of anti-Caucasian racial bias -a phenomenon I characterize as “generational lag”. Although it is exceedingly rare to find a racially bigoted Caucasian anywhere in North America today (other than the Cro-Magnan exhibit at the Museum of Natural History that is) there are still slow ut mean-spirited people who take out their hostility on all Caucasians for the sins of a small minority back in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries.

Oh well, I suppose it is a testament to the fairmindedness and generosity of Caucasians that they are the last remaining safe targets for racial bigotry on the planet. SInce no one would dare sterotype, or slander non-Caucasians in this manner, it’s nice to know that there remains one last outlet for our irrational prejudices. The Caucasians will be our whipping boys. And we’ll manage to rationalize it somehow, making it a guilt-free decadent indulgence!