How Koreans Look Through the Eyes of a Foreigner
The Korea Times, February 9, 1999
By Yang Sung-jin
Staff Reporter

Mike Breen's new book, The Koreans, has been published so far by Orion Business Books in UK, and, in Korean translation, by Hong Ik Publishing in Korea, where it's already on the top 10 lists.  Mike Breen says it will be published in the States this spring by St. Martin's Press.

   In many foreigners' eyes, Koreans are hard nuts to crack. The "expressive'' Koreans may shed tears when they hear a foreigner sing the folk song, "Arirang.'' In contrast, the "rude'' Koreans may practice their clumsy English on foreigners on the crowded subways of Seoul.

   Perhaps, it is a myth that Koreans know themselves best. After reading Michael Breen's The Koreans' (Hong Ik Publishing Co.; 364 pages; 9,000 won; translated by Kim Ki-man), it's hard to believe otherwise.

   The book is a Korean translation of the original English-language version that was published by U.K.-based Orion Business Books last year.

   As the original publisher's name hints, the English-language edition was targeted for foreign business readers. Interestingly, Koreans readers are reacting more enthusiastically to the book than the audience for whom it was intended, putting it on the bestseller list in major bookstores here. As ironic as it may seem, Korean newspaper columnists and pundits are quoting from the book to criticize today's Koreans.

   "I am very surprised,'' Michael Breen, 46, said in an interview with The Korea Times last Friday. He had arrived in Korea the previous day in order to promote the Korean version of his book during a week-long tour.

   "I didn't expect that it would be translated because I thought Koreans know their country already. Why would they read a book by somebody who doesn't know as well as they do? Now I think it's kind of interesting for Koreans to see an outsider's viewpoint,'' the British journalist said. 

   And, in terms of providing that outside perspective, nobody is better positioned than Breen, a writer and consultant who first came to Korea as a correspondent in 1982 and stayed here for a total of 15 years. He covered North and South Korea for several newspapers including The Guardian, The Times and The Washington Times and was the president of the Seoul Correspondents Club for three years. He is currently an international projects editor for The Washington Times.

   A publishing company first asked Breen to write a book at the end of 1996. That offer aside, he had a clearer reason to produce such a work: "When I went back in early 1997, I was amazed by the ignorance of British people about Korea. They knew so little. And the people who did know something about Korea had negative images of Korea.''

   So Breen wanted to write a book that would introduce Korea to the western readers in a bid to explain the nation more deeply and, at the same time, to deal with the negative images.

   The content of the book, therefore, is largely centered on the Korean character and the suffering it has endured throughout history and the turmoil it has been battling recently both in economics and politics.

   The major theme of the book may be conventional, but the author's sharp perspective is anything but. Breen manages to deftly analyze the discrepancy between the so-called "ugly'' Koreans and the warm-hearted ones.

   In a chapter titled "Breaking the Law,'' Breen points out the "lawless, selfish and rude'' drivers in Korea and offers them up as metaphors for the nation's backward political culture.

   Breen states in the book that politics is about the use of power and how people relate to each other in society, adding that "In modern age, adults are at their most powerful when they are behind the wheel of a car. Traffic behavior illustrates how society regulates itself.''

   And Korean traffic behavior is particularly notorious for its lawlessness. What struck Breen most is the fact that professional drivers in Korea, although they should set a positive example, are the worst drivers. The same is true of professionals in Korea's political circles: Politicians are the worst offenders as these selfish bullies seem to operate under a law all their own.

   Breen argued that there is a historical reason for the lawlessness: "The law was used in Korean experience to abuse people. The law was a kind of weapon in the hands of powerful people. For example, the Japanese occupied and used modern law to destroy Korean culture and cheat locals out of their land.''

   Former President Park Chung-hee's modernization through laws in the 1960s and 1970s was no exception. And those who followed Park were no better. "In politics, political leaders have been the worse in abusing the law.

   The reason why people haven't kept the law was that an example was not set. The law was not enforced fairly. So what you do is that you learn to go around a little, and that's what politicians do,'' Breen said.

   What makes matters worse, he added, is that the bad examples politicians set for the public lead to corruption.

   In addition to the backward political culture in Korea, another intractable problem that has long served to tarnish the nation's image is rudeness. In general, Koreans are very courteous and polite people, Breen assured. "But Korean travelers, who never say `thank you' or `please,' cause a lot of problems for the country's image whey they go traveling overseas because of their rudeness.''

   While some "ugly'' travelers affect foreigners in a negative way at an individual level, government officials are doing the same to the foreign media at a larger level.

   The most crucial issue is that government officials' comments lack credibility and transparency. "Government officials will tell you what they want to happen. For instance, I remember when the official government position was changed in favor of a gradual reunification and I could never find government officials or scholars who would even discuss the possibility of a collapse-and-absorption scenario, because they didn't want it to happen,'' Breen said.

   What's worse, foreigners easily notice that the Korean government often uses the media to "float a trial balloon,'' or to say something that's essentially full of hot air just to placate the people. "The government says it is forming a committee to investigate corruption in the chaebol and then the issue comes down. But actually there is no such committee,'' he said.

   Such smoke-and-mirrors schemes only serve to aggravate the difficulty foreigners have in understanding what is really happening in Korea. The government status quo goes against the concept of "internationalization,'' a change Korea has to achieve before stepping up to a higher global level. Ironically, the unprecedented economic downturn, dubbed the "IMF era,'' is forcing Korea to change, he said.

   Yet Koreans are still reluctant to open their hearts to foreigners and outsiders in general largely because Korea is one of the most homogeneous lands in the world. More importantly, narrow-minded "nationalism'' is slowing down the process of opening up the society to the outside world. 

   Breen shed some light on the reasons for Koreans' close-mindedness: "Korea suffered so much from foreign oppression and domination that it had to have a fierce sense of nationalism to survive. That's a positive characteristic, but now that the world is becoming more internationalized, it becomes a negative characteristic. It becomes an obstacle.''

   It is understandable why Koreans maintain a strong sense of nationalism. However, it is nothing short of a mystery why Koreans are their own biggest critics.

   "Koreans are too critical of themselves. They have a negative view of their history and culture. It comes from an educational system, but it also comes still from the Japanese occupation when the Japanese tried to mentally destroy Korea. As a result, they made Koreans ashamed of their own history,'' Breen said.

   That explains why Breen in his book describes Koreans as people who are very much in the here and now: "Although they (Koreans) have a very long and remarkably well-documented history, they take little genuine pride in it.

They prefer to take you to a Samsung Electronics plant than to an ancient temple.''

   Breen stressed that this attitude has changed since the early 1980s, but that there is still somewhat of a notion that the past is something to shun.

   Even though Koreans remain deeply pessimistic toward themselves, the preface of Breen's book offers a glimmer of hope for the future: "The Koreans seem to possess a vigor so strong that it will probably propel them even more to the global center stage in the next generation.''

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