The Riddle of South Korea

In many ways, South Korea remains a riddle. What was a largely agrarian, war-ravaged nation only fifty years ago is now the world’s tenth largest economy, and one that relies heavily on trade with the rest of the world. Yet Korea has a decidedly isolationist history. South Koreans have embraced modern consumer culture. Their capital, Seoul, is an indisputably cosmopolitan city, a high-octane frenzy of technology, modernity and all that neon. Yet Koreans remain enthusiastically traditional and exhibit socially conservative tendencies.

A bad soju hangover had me staring into the toilet bowl in my hotel room as I wondered about all this.

Why would a fundamentally rural society migrate to huge and unforgiving urban centers? Why would a culture so committed to strict codes of social conduct use toilet paper on the dining table instead of napkins? Why would a deeply reclusive society suddenly engage with the outside world?

And that’s when I noticed something. The toilet looked like it had just walked off the set of a sci-fi movie. It boasted cushioned wings designed to enclose you snugly as you sat. It could do half flushes, full flushes, warm, hot and cold flushes. It had a radio. It was also adorned with so many lights and buttons that, with a little bit of imagination, you could almost conceive of the hotel bathroom being the cockpit of a commercial aircraft.

Curiously, it had a light that lit up when the toilet was occupied. Being affixed to the toilet itself, it was not actually in sight of anyone who might ordinarily benefit from seeing the occupied light of a toilet, say, someone waiting outside the bathroom. And if you were using the toilet, all the occupied light could do was tell you what you already knew – that the toilet was occupied. It was a genuine oddity.

It occurred to me that this occupied toilet light provided a key to understanding Korean culture. Koreans embraced the outside world despite a history of rejecting it. They adopted technology and consumerism with genuine enthusiasm despite theirs being a culture steeped in tradition. Notwithstanding their rural leanings, they built and migrated to overpopulated urban areas. And they designed an elaborate toilet with an occupied light attached to it. The instinct to create this uber-functional space age toilet is the same as that which inspired South Korea to spend its post war period pursuing a path almost entirely alien to it - Koreans are strongly dedicated to the notion of function. The fact that the occupied toilet light’s function is unlikely to be of practical use is irrelevant to Korean sensibilities. If you found yourself looking at that light, it indeed told you whether or not the toilet was occupied.

Korean culture, like all cultures, is a labyrinth of complex and dynamic moving parts. But understanding the importance of function to Koreans will get you off to a good start in understanding their fascinating culture.