World News

15 years in Korea, I saw before, and I see it now.

When I first got there, Korea was still a bit like the past in North America. It was still completely viable to have a 1 income household, and in fact most working women would say, at the time, they couldn't wait to get married and have a kid so that they could retire and take care of their kid full time. The husband made more than enough money to support them, and how many people actually really want to work right?

Now, it's a requirement that both work full time at very good paying jobs or you're going to struggle significantly. The government thinks this is solely a money issue but it isn't. It's an everything issue.

1. Housing - Housing prices shot up 3-4x in a span of 10 years. Wages did not. It's still a money issue, but it's a pretty extreme one. Korea has a house 'ladder' type system with their jeonse deposit. It's not as common now that interest rates are gone, but in the past, if you put down a big enough deposit you lived without any month to month rent. The landlord would invest the money you paid as deposit for 2 years and give you back the whole thing, you could turn around and save your money over those 2 years to then have an even bigger deposit and either keep moving to bigger and better houses or eventually saving up enough to buy your own house. This is now broken, but they didn't exactly switch to a more worldly system. Many houses still require a massive deposit (maybe not quite as high) but also a high monthly rent. Be prepared to put down $100-$200k and still spend $1,500-3,000 a month for a good place. This is very bad in a place where wages have stagnated. The government has done nothing to really alleviate this situation.

2. Working hours - Working hours are still very long there, despite some shifts. Your standard work day is typically 9-6 or 7. And then you need to get home. Most people wouldn't get home until close to 8 pm depending on what they do and how far away they live. The government has done nothing to address this. The most they've done is actually make a couple statutory holidays in lieu. In the past most holidays that fell on a weekend you just lost. Now about half of them you will actually get the Monday or Friday off.

3. Vacation time - most companies do not give extensive vacation time as you see in western countries. You might get a couple of days here and there, but for the most part a lot of companies all take some set time off during the summer and good luck booking any kind of reasonably priced recreation with you and 20 million of your closest friends all within the same few week period. The government has done nothing of note to address this.

4. Recreation and leisure - Spend a little time on google checking out things like water parks, beaches, fireworks, parks, science museums for kids, the cherry blossoms in the spring. What's the first thing you'll notice? The fact that you'd have to put western fire marshals on suicide watch over the amount of people at each of these events. The itaewon crush disaster could probably happen at several different activities each year in many different places. I went to Ikea once and it was a mess. Shoulder to shoulder through the entire store. An hour long lineup to get into the restaurant. It is very difficult to enjoy your life outside of the house there because everyone else in the country is trying to do that at the same time in the same limited venues. The government has done nothing to address this.

5. day to day cost of living - in the mid 2000s this was dirt cheap compared to western countries. This was the trade off. You went there, made less money, but the cost of living was so cheap you could still save quite a bit. Now it's on par with western countries but wages haven't kept up. Quality of life has taken a nosedive. Fewer leisure activities, fewer enjoyable things like ordering out, less money to spend on what little hobby and free time you have. The government has done nothing of note that has alleviated any of this.

The government simply refuses to address the core issues that make people unhappy in their day to day life. Even if you immediately tripled everyone's salary, it wouldn't change the fact that they spend too long at work and in what free time they have it's impossible to go out and enjoy themselves.

Meanwhile soju is $1-2/bottle and you can still get $20-30 day rates in motels so getting day hammered and having an affair is still the most affordable fun you can have.