The EconomistJune 1st 2019 Asia 492
Banyan What makes you “kkondae”
D
o you feelthat nobody around you
shares your commitment to work?
Do you offer unsolicited advice on the
fashion choices or love lives of your
younger colleagues? Are you irked when
a junior office-mate fails to fetch you
coffee? Beware: you are well into kkondae
territory. South Korean youngsters sug-
gest that you engage in quiet reflection to
help you overcome your inflated sense of
self-importance. You have to earn their
respect. You cannot take it for granted
just because you are older.
Kkondaeis a modern word of un-
certain origin—perhaps an adaptation of
the English word “condescend”. It means
an older person, usually a man, who
expects unquestioning obedience from
people who are junior. A kkondaeis quick
to criticise but will never admit his own
mistakes. He retaliates against people
who challenge his authority. South Kore-
ans apply the word to everyone from
narcissistic bosses to overbearing uncles
and corrupt politicians. There are web-
sites offering tests of kkondae-ness and
tips on how to avoid the condition. A
television channel recently dedicated a
talk show to discussion of it.
South Korea is notorious for its suffo-
cating workplace hierarchies based on
age, sex and length of service. Many
South Koreans are outraged when youn-
ger colleagues or relatives fail to use the
correct honorific to address them. It is
difficult for office workers to decline
invitations to after-work drinking ses-
sions or weekend hiking expeditions
with the boss. During the lunar new year
and autumn harvest festivals, women
grudgingly spend days cooking and
cleaning at their husband’s parents’
homes, with no help from the men. “I
have to help my mother, and my brother
just sits there doing nothing,” says ParkJi-soo, a 24-year-old student. “Everyone
thinks this is completely normal.”
However, the popularity of kkondaeas
an insult is a sign of change. Open rebel-
lion against hierarchical strictures is still
rare and frowned upon. But young people
are beginning to question authority. Ms
Park says she stands up to her brother, if
not her older relatives. Women report that
they feel a bit less pressure than before to
defer to men. Mothers can even persuade
their husbands to hold their babies in
public and (less frequently) to help with
housework. Some youngsters, nudged
along by the recent introduction of a 52-
hour legal limit to the work week, are
starting to say “no” to boozing after work.
In private they are also paying more atten-
tion to their individual needs and less to
gaining society’s approval, says Cho Han
Hae-joang, an anthropologist at Yonsei
University in Seoul.
Education partly explains this shift.
Younger people tend to have more of it
than their elders. That gives them greater
power to challenge the kkondae, says Moon
Seung-sook of Vassar College in America.But like their peers elsewhere, young
South Koreans also feel insecure. Lee
Do-hoon, a sociologist also at Yonsei
University, thinks that those who have
come of age in the past two decades have
a sense of precariousness because of the
Asian financial crisis of 1997-98 and the
global one a decade later. They fear that
even a good education will not guarantee
them security or status. That makes them
chafe all the more at a social order which
some think is rigged against them.
South Korea’s evolving political cul-
ture has been making an impact, too.
Since democracy began to take hold in
the country in the late 1980s, belief in
universal rights, including people’s right
to be treated equally, has become stron-
ger. This has encouraged people to ques-
tion their deference to others. The death
of 304 people when a ferry sank five years
ago also caused soul-searching about the
dangers of blind obedience. Most of the
victims were high-school students who
drowned after following instructions to
stay put (most crew members abandoned
ship early on). The government’s botched
response to the disaster triggered mass
demonstrations which led to the im-
peachment and conviction for corrup-
tion of Park Geun-hye, who was then
South Korea’s president.
An ancient culture of authority is
unlikely to disappear overnight. Young
people are becoming more willing to
challenge hierarchy, but what will hap-
pen as they get older? Some of today’s
young upstarts will not achieve the
success they dream of. They may find
themselves yearning for the kind of
deference their elders once automatical-
ly enjoyed. Today’s kkondaecritics may
grow up to be kkondaethemselves. But
whether tomorrow’s young people will
let them get away with that is doubtful.A new word for “condescending geezer” reveals a lot about hierarchy in South Koreain the Rajya Sabha sometime towards the
end of 2021. At that point, Mr Modi will be
able to legislate at will.
Whether untrammelled power in the
hands of such a politician proves good for
Indian democracy remains to be seen.
Many Indians relish the idea of a muscular
leader with a proven record of pushing far-
reaching change. In the past five years,
however, many of the balancing institu-
tions that temper overzealous govern-
ments, such as the press, courts and regu-
latory bodies, have come under pressure to
bend to Mr Modi’s will. Despite the impres-sive scale and enthusiasm of elections, In-
dian politics remains less than honest or
efficient. Among incoming mps in the Lok
Sabha, some 29% have criminal cases
against them serious enough to merit five
years in prison, up from 21% in the outgo-
ing parliament and 14% in the one before.
This trend is not encouraging for India,
but it may be consoling for Congress. The
growing number of criminals in office
shows that the cost of entry into politics is
rising. This makes joining a party such as
Congress, with a long-established brand,
more attractive than starting a new one andcampaigning to establish its name. After
all, despite winning a mere 52 Lok Sabha
seats, Congress did win some 125m votes,
around 20% of the total. It is still a big fish
among the opposition minnows, and the
only likely rallying point for a serious chal-
lenge to the bjp. The party may also note
that in numerous constituencies across
the country, the bjpwon by pluralities sole-
ly because the opposition failed to stitch
together timely alliances to fight Mr Modi.
Perhaps Congress will learn such lessons
and play better next time. But just now
2024 looks an awfully long way away. 7