Dispatch from South Korea (1)

South Korea is a very neat and clean country, but in public spaces, trash cans are few and far between. Soon after our arrival in 2023, when I noticed this, I was told why: it’s a holdover from the pro-democracy riots of the 1980s, when students would hurl trash cans at the police.

There is an undercurrent of toughness, even confrontation, in the politics of the Republic of Korea. Our introduction to this came by way of the Korean medical system when, in February last year, the government announced it would increase the number of slots for admission to medical schools. The medical profession erupted in outrage, residents and interns walked out, and even as professors had to scramble to fill in the gap, the profession as a whole supported the strike. The government reacted with increasing fury, at one point threatening to draft the striking residents and interns into the army to force them to go back to their posts. Public opinion was vehemently opposed to the strike, which was perceived to be merely in support of maintaining the wealth and status of doctors, in a society that has one of the lowest doctor-per-capita ratios in the developed world.

The strike continues to this day; in the hospital, our family visits, oncology has ceased admitting new patients, and waiting times for many services are long. What this suggested to me was that public opinion can be ignored, even flouted, by a committed, even selfish, minority, when the stakes are high enough—and the institutions, even when supported by public opinion, can be thwarted as a result.

Read more: https://opinion.inquirer.net/179050/dispatch-from-south-korea-1