Home > Work > The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture
1 " If Korea were a person, it would be diagnosed as a neurotic, with both an inferiority and a superiority complex. "
― , The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture
2 " Irony is that special privilege of wealthy nations; "
3 " You may have an iPhone, for example, but its microchips are made by Apple’s biggest competitor—the Korean electronics company Samsung. "
4 " Basically, Koreans are the Marlboro Men of Asia. "
5 " K-pop export model: the star-making process is so unpleasant that there are not many countries whose aspiring stars would put up with it. Korean youth, meanwhile, are used to intense sadomasochistic academic pressure, extreme discipline, constant criticism, and zero sleep. Of "
6 " These kinds of mini-enterprises...prolonged the precious, Elysian period of childhood in a way I did not see in the US, where kids started hanging out at the mall and acted like teeny boppers from age 9 or 10. "
7 " First-worlders have the luxury of not having to think about waste elimination very much. But for a third-worlder, poop is a big preoccupation. "
8 " Please write your name on the envelope before you put your poop in, because you’ll find it difficult to write on it afterward. "
9 " The teachers never explained what this debt was all about, but we knew it was an embarrassment on the level of a national bedwetting. "
10 " When I asked why StarCraft 2 in particular was so popular in Korea, he said, “The game ends quickly, so you can start a new one,” echoing one of the traits for which Koreans are best known—impatience. “Koreans like games that are fast and they like to compete. "
11 " The Chosun Dynasty adopted Confucianism in all walks of civil and personal life at the beginning of the fifteenth century. The nation’s kings were worried about losing power and sought a drastic solution to obliterate the two biggest threats: chaotic class warfare and the increasingly influential Buddhist clerics. Since the system favored those already in power, it was a no-lose proposition for the monarchs. Several "
12 " In fact, the most common cause of death for Koreans under the age of forty is suicide; "
13 " Lee Kun-hee, the third son of Samsung founder Lee Byung-chull, took over as chairman of Samsung in 1987. In 1993, he held a conference for hundreds of Samsung executives at a hotel in Frankfurt, Germany, where he delivered a three-day speech, which became known as the Frankfurt Declaration of 1993. There he famously told his staff, “Change everything but your wife and kids. "
14 " Whenever kids asked me, “Are you Chinese?”—which was often—I would invariably respond yes. My mother heard me doing this once and gave me hell for it. “Why didn’t you say you were Korean?” she asked. I was not doing that again, not after an incident in first grade in which a boy told me: “You’re lying. There is no such place.” I remember briefly wondering whether my parents had been bullshitting me about where they came from. "
15 " Korea was my Zion. I had read too many British novels about wretched children finding out they were actually of noble birth and I was expecting to be salaamed upon arriving at the Seoul airport. "
16 " Korea has no natural resources and very little arable land. Compounding the problem is that labor costs have risen so dramatically in the last twenty years that the country cannot rely solely on manufacturing as a source of wealth. Korea "
17 " The Korean wave of popular culture is called “Hallyu.” You should learn the word, since you’ll be seeing a lot of it. U.S. President Barack Obama referred to it during a March 2012 visit to South Korea, in the context of discussing the nation’s technical and pop culture innovations. He said: “It’s no wonder so many people around the world have caught the Korean Wave—Hallyu. "
18 " Samsung digital TVs depended on countries making the switch from analog to digital television, which is why Samsung TVs did not take over world market share until this century. "
19 " The South Korean economy is a paradox: it is utterly capitalist, yet at the same time it is in some ways still a command economy. "
20 " Korea is the future. Welcome to the future. "
