What age means in South Korea

South Korea has a unique age culture. Person’s age implies many things in the social life. Age can be prestige, authority, and a rule. If you are older than me, I should talk to you with strict and polite expression all the time. There is no exception even for a year difference. 

For foreigners, it can just be shown as a cultural difference. It possibly looks like to have a good relationship each other. But in reality, it is more similar to the employer and employee relationship. It usually ends up with a one-sided politeness. The older people are easily abusing this culture for their own advantages. The younger person is expected to show their politeness to the older one almost compulsorily, but on the contrary, the older one is practically free from showing politeness to the younger one. Moreover, the worst case can happen when the order people group such as in colleges or workspaces abuses it forcefully to the younger people group and some cases end up with crime if money, violence or sex get involved in. Therefore, the younger one can easily be the short end of the stick. It is really happening all the time. This culture easily can be found in the every corner of the country. In school, small village, army, workspace, private social group, friend, family, the entertainment business and even in the professional area such as legal circles. No one dares to ignore this tricky rule. Otherwise, he/she will have a bad reputation in a group and then be scolded by the older people or be isolated from the whole group at worst. Fortunately, this culture is getting criticized by the young generation these days as more and more Koreans experience the western culture where everyone said to be treated in an equal manner. After then, they came to realize that their age culture had been causing many problems in this democratic state and they had been being oppressed by the older people under the name of the culture. I personally also realized that this culture is nothing but shackles when after I came back from living for two years in the two of the advanced and well-being countries. In addition, the more I live in foreign countries the more I am convinced that my feeling isn't wrong. I found that this culture could be an enormous obstacle to harmonize all citizens. It also makes difficult for Korean to be a true friend or companion each other when their age is not the same. Just ask any Korean around you. ‘How old are your best friends?’ Most of their response will be like this. ‘Oh, they are the same age to me’ Why not friends of different age? Because it is hard to be a best friend among different age’s people. They can just be good older or younger brothers/sisters but not likely to be friends due to the mental barrier. It is a bit awkward or rude to address literally older or younger brothers/sisters as a friend in the Korean language. Of course, we can be friends. But we don’t usually call them friends. We just call them close brother or sister. This strange rule makes the mental barrier for Korean to be a good friend regardless of the age difference. Then, what is the origin of this annoying culture? Who invented it? Who wants to keep it? What is the point of it? If I describe all above things in one sentence, I can say that this is like a rank system. You can see this kind of stuff in various forms almost every country. For example, the caste system in India, the white and the colored in the US, the rich and the poor all over the world, the class system in UK and Thailand and so on. I may say it is rather an instinct of human beings than a simple bad culture to discriminate people or to be exclusive. Anyway, the root of this age culture is Confucianism. It emphasized ‘elders first’, ’filial piety’, ‘classification of man and woman’ and so on. Those things are the most controversial things of Confucianism in the modern age. However, it is not all. It is just an old philosophy. This heritage is not that noticeable now in East Asian countries except Korea. There are more reasons for it. Korea was colonized by Japan for over 30 years in the early 20th centuries, and they ruled this country harshly. During this period, militarism was applied to Japan and the rest of colonized countries by the Japanese government. It was a starting point of the notorious military culture in Korea. After the Korean War, a compulsory military service was instituted by the Korean government. Finally, It became the strongest contributor to this culture. As you know, Korea is still technically at War and the top-down command is a core of a military system. Every soldier has a rank and we must respect a soldier of higher rank and follow his/her command. Even after they finished their compulsory military service, they could not throw off the soldier mindset in their daily life and eventually, it had spread the whole country including family, school, company, government, and public sector. Now, I don’t anticipate this phenomenon will be disappeared or weakened by itself. But, if the two Koreas are united some day, and so the compulsory military service is no more needed, hopefully, the lagacy will weaken little by little. I really hope the day will come. The older generation will not give up this culture because it makes their life easy and their status can be protected by the culture. So far, however, I only focus on disadvantages of it. Of course, there is an advantage as well. Everyone can be a beneficiary some day in their life. That is the only advantage I can think out. And for sure, it is better than the inequality based on race, skin color or class. I regard all these things as an evidence of a pre-modern mindset. The country where those things still remain has to educate their citizens and to conduct social campaigns to eradicate the backward culture.