Put ‘Peak Korea’ behind in the new year

Oh Se-jung
The author is an emeritus professor of physics and former president of Seoul National University.

Year 2024 — the Year of the Blue Dragon — has begun. The blue dragon, a sacred creature in Asian mythology, symbolizes power and dynamics. Korea is in desperate need of a dynamic leap this year. There are two main reasons for this.

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The first is the epochal change in today’s world. Generative artificial intelligence (AI) technology — epitomized by ChatGPT, released at the end of 2022 — has started to change human life and culture. If human civilization has been determined by the interactions between humans and nature until now, they will be shaped by the three-way interaction involving machines in the future. This is a colossal shift of civilization.

Sensing this marvelous phenomenon, Big Tech companies such as Google and Microsoft are rushing to develop and apply generative AI technologies. Just like the internet and digital revolution changed the rank of countries in the past, countries and organizations that fail to adapt to the AI era will be left behind forever.

The second reason is the grim reality that Korea is already showing signs of descending shortly after barely ascending to the ranks of advanced countries. A Japanese economic daily attracted much attention by running an article titled “Peak Korea” last November, but this concern had been discussed among many intellectuals in Korea. They worried that Korea has perhaps reached its peak now because the country is experiencing the difficulties of advanced countries — such as low growth, extreme polarization and shrinking social mobility — even before Korea has settled in the advanced league. In particular, the loss of the can-do spirit nibbles away at the social dynamism and momentum for change. Moreover, the chronic factional politics in the legislature cannot unite the energy of the people. At this critical juncture, we have entered the new year.

What should we do now? The first thing we must do is to abandon the naïve perception that “everything will be alright in the future since we succeeded in the past.” After the industrialization era representing our uninterrupted achievement of high growth, followed by the information age, the world has entered the AI era, where the rules of the game have fundamentally changed. If we continue doing what we did before, we will fall behind in the global competition. Furthermore, we are facing a very serious situation triggered by the change in demographics due to the continuous decline in the birthrate. As this borders on a predetermined future, it will hardly change. To overcome this unprecedented crisis, we need to change our thinking and take extraordinary steps.

The first hurdle to overcome is the three major reforms on national pension, labor and education. As suggested earlier, the current pension system is not sustainable due to demographic changes. And yet, past governments, conservative or liberal, have cowardly put off the essential reform.

Labor reform is no different. We all know that we must change the labor-employer system centered on manufacturing workers of conglomerates and increase the flexibility of the labor market — while strengthening our social safety net to help the vulnerable class — in order to adapt to the global industrial structure changes. But labor reform has been neglected for shortsighted political gains. There is no time to delay this reform any longer. The wave of the fourth industrial revolution led by AI makes this task even more urgent.

All administrations have vowed to carry out education reform, but none have resolved any of the fundamental problems. In fact, it is time to start asking the crucial question: What should we teach our children in an era when machines have human intelligence? This is not a problem that can be solved by simply changing the college admissions system or cracking down on private tutoring cartels. Education is a highly ideological battleground in this country. It will take an enormous amount of effort and time to agree on the contents of education for our future generations. And yet, we have not even started this reform.

Fortunately, President Yoon Suk-yeol pledged to push forward the three reforms in his New Year’s address. The president did promise the three reforms last year too, but the results over the past year felt short of our expectations. Perhaps these reforms are too difficult for this administration to tackle on its own. I hope that the entire nation will unite this year and push for the reforms faster than before.

Translation by the Korea JoongAng Daily staff.