-Hardwork-
“Koreans are simply workaholics,” Minji says when we get to this topic, “Koreans are hard working. Ok, I know working is supposed to be from 8am to 6pm but some will go up to 9pm and no one will complain.”
After the end of Korean war, the first President of South Korea Syngman Rhee, insisted that they had no option other than work hard and rebuild their destroyed country. The culture of hard work has continued to date even after the country was ranked 13th in the world by nominal GDP.
“At the moment our problem is to maintain that and compete to ensure we are first to start anything. We want to be the first to develop and sell to the World,” she says.
-Education-
It was very interesting that instead of building houses for the internally displaced Korean citizens the president focused on building schools.
“The crowds in classrooms were crazy,” Minji says as she points at an illustration explaining the same, during our tour at the National Museum of Korea. “After a few years we had a lot of educated Koreans some of whom would later go to work in other countries. Even now we still have those old schools and which are ranked the best.”
-Security-
“Why would someone pick what does not belong to them?” Minji responds with a question to me when I enquire if there are thieves in South Korea. She says one or zero out of ten is a thief. This is attributed to strong respect and societal values instilled by the leaders.
I remember at some point, one of my colleagues forgot her phone in a taxi, but the taxi driver traced our hotel and brought it back.
I think the only place I found a lot of policemen was around the American Embassy situated at the heart of Seoul City.
Despite the many achievements South Koreans have, there is a big challenge. Their relationship with what Minji calls, “our blood brothers and sisters”. South Koreans dream of the day the two Koreas come back together.
“We may be living highly like other developed countries, but this is one black area that never leaves our minds. We long for the day we will see our people liberated and live as one, like we used to. It really hurts us a lot.” She says.
Before complete separation of South Korea and North Korea after the end of the War in 1953, the two ‘countries’ were one for more than 5,000 years.