The Grand Narrative

I’ve had to clear away lots of stuff on my desk to concentrate on my exam, including my 재수 student’s last practice English exam before the big one on November 15th. But like last time, one question in it reveals that someone who writes these exams clearly has a clearer understanding of the urgency of some of the problems facing Korean society than the Korean government seems to:

42) Owing to continous economic growth, an increased standard of living, and improvements to health care in Korea, the life expectancy of Koreans rose from 69.0 years in 1985 to 71.3 years in 1990. It continued to rise throughout the 1990s, and, in 2002, reached 76.5 years for the general population and 80.0 years for Korean females. Similarly, the percentage of the Korean population that is 65 years of age or older increased from 3.1% in 1970 to 7.1% in 2000, and is expected to reach approximately 14.0% in 2019. This, according to this estimate, Korea will have evolved from an “aging society” to an “aged society” in only 19 years. In the case of other countries, this same transformation has generally taken 2 to 5 times longer.

1. Why is Korea at Risk Now?
2. How Did Korea Achieve Its Miracle?
3. Who Are Classified as the Aged Population?
4. How Fast Is Korea Becoming an Aged Society?
5. What’s Helping Korea to Become an Aged Society?

As you can probably guess, the students have to choose the most appropriate subject for the paragraph, and it was me that added the italics.

If you’ve spent more than 5 minutes browsing the blog, you’ll know that I’m very interested in the reasons for and implications of Korea’s extremely low birthrate, and even more interested in the Korean women who aren’t having enough babies (the fiends). But the obvious corollary of that is that Korea is very rapidly turning into an aged society like the exam question says, and while as a human I instinctively prefer the subject of smelly, babbling but cute babies (or their absence) to smelly, babbling old people, especially the Korean variety, the subject is still interesting, and so long as Korea increasingly has a relatively dynamic labor market (my euphemism for most people having short-term contracts and being able to be fired quickly), but still no social welfare net to speak of, then how to provide for old people here is also going to become a major issue here soon. Unlike other developed countries with the first baby boomers applying for social security literally as I type this but where a pension system, albeit inadequate, already exists, Korea will be going from virtually no provision for retirees at all, welfare being based on an extended family, male-breadwinner reponsibility system before 1997, to somehow finding the funds for the provision pensions. Like their counterparts in other developed countries, young Koreans are not going to be too happy with the extra taxes that that will require, especially in a country with such low tax rates already.

So, again, on the surface Korean social problems appear to be very similar to those of other developed countries, but generally they will happen much earlier here, or be more dire, or both….no wonder I love studying this place!

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