Ein Artikel eines ausländischen Professors in Korea. Ich bin überrascht, dass die Verkaufsstellen überhaupt anfangen, sich zum Aufstieg von zu äußern "Korea ist eine Dystopie" Clickbait-Videos und Internet-Hygiene.
Wie er sagte, sei Korea in Wirklichkeit nur ein weiteres modernes Land, das sich anpasse und wachse, und viele dieser Videos und Internet-Botschaften seien in böser Absicht erstellt worden.
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/opinion/blogs/korea-deconstructed/20260704/the-korean-dystopia-is-a-western-coping-mechanism
28 Kommentare
# Thing: 🥱🤐😐 Thing, Korea: 🤬😱😳
https://preview.redd.it/rt9slhwdpcbh1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9f99d3be645cc81d7c58c35fd8af844d1a596651
Good article.
lol they’re just jealous, and it’s easier to hate what you don’t fully understand rather than taking the time to learn about what you don’t know
I can tell you that it’s not just limited to western nations when it comes to some of the bizarre claims of the country and people.
the way the light hits the water in this photo gives such peaceful vibes, almost makes me forget all the noise about korea being a dystopia
It’s funny when K-pop fans in India, Southeast Asia, South America, and Africa accuse Korea of being misogynistic and claim to be a dystopia. This is because most Korean women’s immigration destinations are the U.S., Canada, Australia, Japan, and some countries in Europe. I think some foreigners are mistaken because of the nonsense of some Korean influencers there..And even some European countries are not envy anymore. Even if Korean women date men there, they often break up because they don’t want to leave Korea. I think there are western countries that don’t want to acknowledge the growth of East Asian countries like Japan did. The birth rate there seems to be raised by immigrants.
To be fair, if there’s anything good about this trope, it does mean that Korea and its culture has become well known enough for content regarding it to be its own subgenre of YouTube essays and get milked heavily on social media.
However yeah. It’s super irritating to see how some foreigners seem to have an over-sensationalized view on Korea and its problems, and feel like it’s perfectly fine to spread it. They seem unable to accept that Korea is a real place that has positives and negatives.
Yeah, I agree. As an American living here, there are good and bad about both countries. The West in general can learn things from Korea (and Asia by extension) and Korea (and Asia) can learn things from Western cultures
The rare David Tizzard good article
>While the West needs East Asia to be structurally defective to validate its own Enlightenment-era exceptionalism, Southeast Asian online spaces are also using it because it is an incredibly effective stick with which to beat a regional heavyweight. It allows for a kind of reputational leveling: „You may have the global cultural exports and the towering GDP that we don’t have yet, but beneath the K-pop, you are broken in a way that we aren’t. We didn’t sell out yet. And therefore you are no better than us.“ This too feels like a defense mechanism masquerading as critique. A way to process the suffocating shadow cast by Korea’s cultural gravity by insisting that the shadow is cast by a monster.
It’s good that finally someone has mentioned the elephant in the room, and a non-Korean at that. I don’t want to punch down at all, but it’s so obvious to anyone these narratives are driven by a widespread national envy and inferiority complex to Korea’s meteoric rise in global popularity over the last decade, especially from countries which are obsessed with Korean entertainment.
Just my two cents here, but a lot of those videos seem to be from people that are either upset that Korea is not like how they saw it on the K-Dramas they like to watch, or they have toxic nostalgia for how Korea was at some arbitrary point in the past.
the framing really nails it. the „Korea as dystopia“ content is almost always made by people who’ve never been there, and the algorithm rewards the most extreme takes. it’s the same playbook used on Japan a decade ago. Korea’s problems are real but they’re not that different from what most developed countries deal with, just more visible because of the cultural export boom.
That is the wrong question. The wrong question leads to tropes and entangled debates where people do not share a common reference.
The right question is „are people happier in Korea?“. In the end that is what matters.
All the anti-Korea rhetoric from both the West and the Global South is copium. The former is afraid of ceding any hegemonic power—economic, social, cultural—and the latter is afraid of never obtaining any. The jealous obsession should be flattering, but I personally wish Korea had stayed under the radar.
Lots of paper tigers and straw targets in Tizzard’s article, which is ironic considering that’s what he is accusing his the western media of creating out of Korea. I have heard far too many Koreans complain about their own lives and their own country to have much patience for this kind of take. The South Korean government has spent decades subsidizing and promoting the Korean entertainment to become a major cultural export cultural export and to develop the nation’s soft power. however the government feels realize that once they’ve succeeded the government feels realize that once they’ve succeeded in courting vast amounts of International attention, they lose control of the narrative as foreigners start looking behind the slick and shiny facade they are trying to sell and start asking questions.
Korea is a popular cultural topic, so there is an incentive for people to create content about it. And, of course, algos love negative content, so if you’re Johnny Webstreamer you’re going to make “Korea is bad, mkay” videos.
Whether or not Korea is objectively worse or better than any other country is certainly impossible to say. Every country has problems. The best country, for you, is the one with the problems you are willing to deal/live with.
>“When you’ve made it, people will hate it.“
I remember seeing a tiktok claiming that korean society is divided into castes based on which apartment brand from the big 7 (Hillstate, Lotte, Xii etc.) you live in, and this dictated which schools you get to attend, your marriage prospects, which friends your children get to hang out with etc.
Lots of comments jumping on the hate train, saying that NK is a paradise compared to the South or how they couldn’t believe SK still had a caste system 🤦♂️
Like yeah, SK still has a lot of problems, but there’s definitely been a rise of blatant misinformation being spread on social media these days
I live across the way in Japan, we’re having the same conversations about the sudden rise of „dark side of Japan“ videos from English-speaking content creators over the last three years. The exact talking points are different from the…. what should we call the doomers? „Koreadoos“? … but the specific Orientalism energy involved is the same. Everyone’s trying to present themselves as being smarter and more plugged in about how Underneath The Surface Everything Is Horrible, but it’s all mostly just trope-y crap and inflated statistics. Ooooh, look at this litter in Shinjuku, JAPAN IS OVER.
On the internet, truth is optional. If people have their views of Korea shaped entirely by the internet and some youtubers who haven’t lived in Korea, don’t speak the language, or have a particular agenda to spread a completely distorted view of Korea for monetary reasons, then they are dumb as hell. Point blank, plain and simple.
YT algorithms reward sensationalism and outrage, which naturally distorts reality. Money is made through video views and clicks, often leading creators to exaggerate or fabricate stories about South Korea for profit. Many creators of those videos make sweeping generalizations about Korean culture without speaking Korean or understanding the historical and social context.
It was/is crazy to see in real-time the level of hate directed towards Korea. I don’t know what it is about korea but ppl really cannoy be normal about Korea. Its‘ either one extreme or the other. There could have been one video of a korean person literring and the entire comment section would just extrapolate the behavior of that one person to all Koreans everywhere. ATP its just so bizzare to see, I don’t know if any other country/group really gets this much scrutiny about every little thing that they do.
It’s kinda gotten insane now. Just yesterday I saw a tweet saying ‘NK And SK are equally as oppressive, SK just hides it better’ and I couldn’t stop laughing like what?
In India (on social circles) we found out about this anti-Korean crazy recently, after some Indian girl weighed in on the thousandth Korea-is-hell debate with a tweet saying ‘you cannot call Korean pop culture terrible all the time and then call Koreans racist if they said okay then don’t consume it’ and my god, the people who were anti Korea there (including other Asians) got so mad they started hurling abuse at India too. Almost every conversation about SK is just dramatic and unrealistic circlejerking about some ‘dystopia’ or acting like it is the only country with misogynistic men.
When if it’s too far from where I am, it’s hard to see it in detail.
Korea is great. In certain ways. America is great. in certain ways. These kind of profs are so up their own asses
Korea doesn’t seem all that bad to me, and I’ve been here over 15 years.
I think the biggest driver of this „Korea is hell“ narrative is Koreans themselves. They’re the ones who coined *Hell Joseon,* right?
Love reading from Tizzard. He’s take on a lot of Korean social norms has been spot on. For example the difference between Korean idols and Hollywood stars.
He also has a podcast on youtube if anyone is interested.
As he said, Korea is really just another modern country adapting and growing, and a lot of these videos and internet vitriol are being made in bad faith.
>the over-the-top K-pop, K-Drama, K-Beauty, and K-things driven videos and internet glazing are also being made in bad faith.
>And it has support. Because while the West needs East Asia to be structurally defective to validate its own Enlightenment-era exceptionalism, Southeast Asian online spaces are also using it because it is an incredibly effective stick with which to beat a regional heavyweight. It allows for a kind of reputational leveling: „You may have the global cultural exports and the towering GDP that we don’t have yet, but beneath the K-pop, you are broken in a way that we aren’t. We didn’t sell out yet. And therefore you are no better than us.“ This too feels like a defense mechanism masquerading as critique. A way to process the suffocating shadow cast by Korea’s cultural gravity by insisting that the shadow is cast by a monster.
Dude nailed it.