Cultures in contrast

Clearly, Japan and South Korea have found something in their own culture and language that makes it easy for them to compete with the rest of the world and to pull their people out of poverty

I returned last week after a long time spent in South Korea and Japan. I thought it would be interesting to share my observations about one particular aspect of those countries compared to ours. The aspect I’m referring to is their own cultures and how they have used them to tap into modernity. Let’s look at South Korea first.

The thing to note here is that South Korea has had a not dissimilar history in the 20th century to ours. It was a colony (occupied by Japan), and received its independence around the same time as we did. After they