When the absence of fear is scary

Korea’s youth must conjure up a “positive vision.”

By Michael Breen

In a recent discussion about young people who don’t care about relationships or careers, the only Korean in our group made a point that got everyone else, the women and the foreigners, thinking.

“The problem is they’re not afraid of anything,” he said.

His thesis was that this country’s rise was driven by a desperation that this new generation does not share. Lacking the fuel of fear, young adults stutter through life seemingly out of nowhere. Young Koreans no longer have the traditional drive to drive them forward.

This is an attractive idea, albeit a generalization. We can see what the parents of today’s teenagers may have been afraid of. They feared failure and social disapproval. They still do that. This is why, for example, in middle age, qualifications are more important than substance, access more important than skills. This is why political candidates always tell you the university they attended, as if it says something about them that should be considered before voting.

Her parents, in turn, were afraid of poverty. Even if they had assets, corrupt authority meant they could lose everything overnight. They were also afraid of North Korea, which makes them seem unfashionably right-wing extremist today. At that time, their ancestors feared starvation, which was no small feat. The Yangban among them feared that they would not be able to continue the bloodline. They feared the contempt of their descendants. It seems that there has always been something to be afraid of. But no longer in safe, democratic, sensitive, capitalist, individualistic Korea.

By turning away from these old fears and getting out, young people today are not hippies or welfare fraudsters. For example, you’re still going to college. In a sense, they are choosing to do this without getting in the way of a young person at a family gathering who is busy on their phone.

We call them “N-po” – shorthand for giving up a range of life activities, particularly dating, marriage, children, home ownership, etc. They are not unique. Other countries have their equivalent. But this life marathon of strolling instead of running is so important in Korea that the birth rate has fallen to the lowest level in the world.

Does the absence of fear work as an explanation? I can’t say for sure. But the fact is that concerns – fears, if you will – that worried previous generations have no influence on the N-Po people.

For example, when birth rate statistics first became an issue, politicians had an image that frightened their own generation – that Koreans would be gone in one year or another in the future. They seemed to believe that this would be enough to encourage young adults to fulfill their duty to keep the peninsula populated. But that wasn’t the case.

When correct, the anxiety diagnosis leads to two treatment options. One is to replace the old fears with a new one. Honestly, I can only think of frivolous, undemocratic examples that are so far to the left that they clash with the extreme right. For example, a voting and tax structure that penalizes singles. Or a law requiring parents to charge rent to adult children. Or North Korean-level military service (10 years for men, five for women) for single people.

No, that’s not enough. A democracy cannot mess with citizens like that.

We would have to think about alternative medicine. We should replace fear with a positive vision. In other words, instead of engaging in life and overcoming its challenges to stave off something terrible like poverty or invasion, how about we use our energies to achieve something meaningful and inspiring?

The most obvious candidate for a change in mood in this country is reunification.

You might think that young people don’t care and that I only thought of it because I belong to the old generation.

But I suspect that if we woke up tomorrow and Kim Jong-un had become an evangelical Christian and wanted to break bread with his brothers and sisters in the south, or – more likely – that a military dictator had taken power in Pyongyang and wanted reconciliation , all the unease about life and disinterest in the North would be swept away by a new passion of patriotic meaning.

But how long would it take? Positive changes in the collective do not necessarily lead to a better life for the individual. We can see this very clearly from the fact that the N-po phenomenon we are talking about is taking place in the most rapidly developed country in human history.

If reunification is to transform a generation, it must, in some way, remove the barriers to a new ethic that makes life worth taking on the challenges of work and relationships.

I put it this way because I assume that this change is apparent and not invented. Because zeal for life is the default response to the human condition. It is encoded deep within us. What numbs the N-Po people are ideas and practices that block and distract them from coming into contact with the natural. Surely something must come to wake her up.

Michael Breen ([email protected]) is the author of The New Koreans.