Time to unzip the compressed file of conflicts

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Time to unzip the compressed file of conflicts

Published: 04 Sep. 2024, 20:03

Kim Seung-hyun
The author is the director of social news at JoongAng Ilbo.

“If anyone has a straightforward answer, it would be worth 10 Nobel Prize awards. It is that mind-boggling,” President Yoon Suk Yeol said during a press briefing last week when asked if the government had a radical formula to fix the country’s pitifully low fertility rate. The two-hour-long insipid press conference and Q&A session — in which the president devoted much of the time to elaborating on the government’s achievements and devotion to reform — seemed to reflect the government’s sobering admission of the challenges to reforms.

His comment on reform challenges was lackadaisical and pedagogic. The low birthrate issue is pertinent to both the social and cultural structure. Medical, labor, education and pension reforms must consider the two sides of a coin, and regional balance should be aimed to ease unnecessary competition to offer more meaning to individual and family life, the president said. In short, the fundamental and yet taxing problems must be untangled one by one to prevent the country from disappearing off the map.

How has South Korea — once a poster child for achieving economic and democratic maturity at an unprecedented pace — ended up in such an abysmal rupture? Nine years ago when the phrase “Hell Joseon” appeared, some sociologists pointed to the superfast condensed development of the country.

Over the past 50 years of concentrating on achieving economic prosperity and democratization, the country failed to pay attention to the subtleties and complexities of life, sociologists argued. They published an “Anthropology on Compressed Development” to illustrate the shadows behind the staggering development between 1965 and 2015. They combed through dossiers and data to reconstruct the progression of the compressed path to modernity.

The dry and sober numerical data reflected the extreme social consequences from the rapid growth. Marriage and giving birth have become a choice rather than a duty. Family units thinned and aging deepened. A highly competitive environment bred inequality in education structures. The rich and highly educated kept to themselves. The lower the class, the greater the risks. An information gap widened. Seoul National University (SNU) Sociology Professor Chang Duk-jin who led the research noted that Korea was not ready for contemporary challenges as they were unthinkable during the compressed growth. The side effects of the Miracle on the Han were handed down to the younger generation. The government is meandering to find the remedies in the onerous reform journey.

The problem is that the governing power is worsening the ailments instead of treating them. It is struggling to unzip the compressed file of conflicts. As an anthropologist gently brushes dusts off discovered relics to study them, the history of hostility and conflict should be approached with rigor. An Se-young who gifted Korea’s first gold in Olympic badminton singles in 28 years at the recent Paris Olympics claimed that she had fought for the gold through the “force of rage” against the badminton association. Without elaborating, she said that every step in her badminton history had been tough. The badminton association also saved its words to avoid a further blowout.

Thanks to its relentless drive for medical reform through a bigger medical school quota, the government must dispatch military doctors to emergency rooms during the Chuseok holidays due to the continued walkout of doctors in general hospitals. The project has stoked conflict even in the ruling party. Junior doctors and medical students still refuse to return. The passage of the Nursing Act aimed at enabling physician assistants to conduct some surgeries has worsened the conflict, putting general hospitals and ERs in jeopardy. The Korea Medical Association nastily tells the sick to call the presidential office for help in case of emergency during the five-day holiday period. Why has Korea’s medical system which was the country’s pride reached this pitiful state?

Nine years ago, Prof. Chang and his research team concluded that the answer lies in politics. In an interview before the publication of the book, the professor said the solutions are generally in agreement among experts, but they are not being executed in policy forms due to political reasons. “What is urgent is a framework that ensures sustainability in government policies regardless of the changes in the ruling power,” he added. The solutions are still feasible and yet, they still gather dust. The rivaling party leaders have finally met. But instead of joining forces to unzip the compressed files, they are adding to the list of conflicts.