The Koreans and the Korean-Koreans

Yes, I know it’s been a while folks... Times have been tremendously turbulent for me lately. For those who missed the latest development – I’m not based in Korea any longer. An opportunity in Hong Kong opened up, yes folks, HONG KONG! The place where East meets West, a fusion of Chinese and Western culture, which both reside within my very own personality, world-class food, unlimited entertainment, excitement and fun. The place I always wanted to be sometimes in my life – and now I’m there!

But it doesn’t mean I lost track on the Korea Challenge. Turned into a frequent traveler with my new responsibility, I actually hardly ever spent a lot of time in Hong Kong so far, jetting all around to Mainland China, Singapore, Taiwan and Korea for business. But I do still spend a lot of time in the Land of the Morning Calm. My special relationship I built with this country – at times loving it, at times hating it – and the connections I made will never disappear. Probably owing to the ability to speak at least basic Korean and knowing my way around in Seoul perfectly, and having made so many good friends during the two plus years I spent here, Seoul has become kind of a home. It still feels more home than Hong Kong, although I should feel more at home there as I’m basically Chinese and not Korean.

As I have the chance to travel to Korea on a regular basis, I still have loads of interesting, at times peculiar stories to share. Today I’d like to share my observations about two different kinds of Koreans: Those who have studied and lived abroad, and those who haven’t. Let’s call them Koreans and Korean-Koreans.

The first observation about this difference is that I don’t have any Korean-Korean friends at all. Apart from the language barrier, it seems this group is hardly accessible to foreigners because they just don’t want to deal with foreigners. Even if they speak English decently, I never managed to establish a meaningful friendship with any of them. My friends in Korea are either foreigners themselves, or Koreans who studied or lived abroad.

The second observation is that Korean-Koreans tend to live in a culture that I allow myself to call a culture of envy. There is no appropriate word in English that describes the German word “Neidkultur” accurately. What I mean with it is that among Korean-Koreans, standing out and performing too well will be openly penalized by the envy of others. One thing that freaked me out is the fact that individuals in the local company I worked for who spoke almost perfect English were very reluctant to speak English to me when others were present. I never got the point until someone told me in confidence that I shouldn’t be offended by it, they were not trying to exclude me from the conversation, but it was because the other persons who don’t speak English well would resent that individual for speaking English too well in their presence, basically making them lose their face. If someone does this too frequently, the others will punish her or him by excluding the individual from their society, in Korea a serious penalty, as networks and relationships are of utmost importance.

The sad side of this story is, if the Korean society works in this way, they are hindering the outperformers from advancing and succeeding. It is commensurate with the stiff hierarchy which is not based on performance or meritocracy, but on mere age and seniority. What happens is that outperformers will choose to work for foreign companies, leaving the incapable workers behind, who advance within the organization as long as they keep being loyal to the company. This will put the Korean companies at a disadvantage to foreign companies in the long run. I’m not concerned about the world-class companies like Samsung or LG, where Korea already has world leadership, I’m more concerned about the sectors that are not as developed yet, such as the financial sector which I work in.

Having moved back to a global company after my very interesting local company experience, the change couldn’t have been more striking. Those Koreans who work for my current company couldn’t be more different from the Korean-Koreans in my former one. Naturally, as they are based in Hong Kong, they of course have exposure to a foreign country, all of them perfectly fluent in English and a majority of them studied abroad. Ask any of those individuals if they could ever go back to Korea and try to re-integrate into the Korean-Korean society, and you won’t find one who will say they wouldn’t have difficulty with it. In fact, my Korean friends in Korea who tried all without exception find it very hard, most of them preferring to hang out with foreigners rather than Korean-Koreans. This might be the reason why it was so easy to make friends with those individuals as a foreigner – because they feel like being foreigners themselves in their own country.

When one of my Korean colleagues asked me if I would give Korea or China a higher chance of succeeding economically, even with the danger of offending her – I couldn’t help saying that I definitely would bet on China. She then asked me if I thought this is because the Chinese were cleverer in doing business, I said of course not – on average, I don’t believe one or another nation is cleverer than another, but the Chinese just tend to be so much more pragmatic. When they see an opportunity, they seize it and don’t bother about social issues. Probably they are just more reckless, but what puts them at a huge advantage is that they do not foster that culture of envy. Outperformers are given the chance to thrive within companies and within the society, in fact, being successful, becoming rich and standing out is one of the highest Chinese virtues.

If the Koreans want to stay competitive next to their big brother with hundred millions of hungry individuals waiting for their chance to stand out and excel, they will have to change fundamentally – and fast.