Mark Manson, an American bestselling author and famous YouTuber, has made headlines by posting a video that he “traveled to the world’s most depressing country” after visiting Korea. Manson, a best-selling author who has written famous self-development books such as “The Art of Turning Off Nervousness,” is a YouTube creator with 1.44 million subscribers.
Manson recently released a 24-minute video on his YouTube channel under the theme of “Traveling to the World’s Depressing Country.” During his visit to Korea, Manson met with Americans, psychologists, and psychiatrists living in Korea to look into depression in Korean society.
Which Korea are we talking about here?
South Korea or Best Korea?
You are joking, but it took me about 15% of the article to figure out definitively he was talking about ROK not DPRK.
You are joking
You are now banned from /c/Pyongyang
deleted by creator
You are now a mod of c/Pyongyang
You would think a best selling author could express himself more clearly. But then again he‘s American. Perhaps he really doesn‘t know or care which one or if there is a difference.
Technically, Stephanie Meyer (Twilight), E.L. James (50 Shades of Grey) and Donald Trump (The Fart of the Eel) are all best selling authors, so…
That’s not even technically. They wrote immensely popular books, they’re just poorly written ones
Technically Trump didn’t write anything, his ghostwriter did.
That’s what I meant: you don’t necessarily have to be good at writing to write something popular.
In Korea, it’s common to refer to the place as “Korea”, and not “South Korea”.
I’ve heard that “North Korea”, when referred to in South Korea, is best translated as “Northern Korea”. It might not even be generally thought of as a different country at all.
From the article:
He also expressed regret, saying, “It is the result of Korea maximizing the bad points of Confucian culture and the shortcomings of capitalism.”
I don’t really understand what that means.
So to be safe, you are now banned from /c/Pyongyang
I like this whole schtick you have going 😁
You are now a moderator of /c/Pyongyang
Fun fact: Kim Jong Un is the fattest person in all of North Korea, a nation experiencing perpetual famine. This makes him the living embodiment of parasitic autocracy! Fun!
You are now banned from /c/Pyongyang and I have fired warheads into the Sea of Japan.
Dammit, I was going to go for a swim there!
When people say “Korea”, they probably mean the south one (unless they’re a fan of Kim Jong Un).
You are now banned from /c/Pyongyang
Oh no I’m so sad
Don’t make me fire rockets into the sea to put you in your place…
Yes we all remember that old joke from Reddit.
You are now banned from /c/Pyongyang
Korea is surprisingly dystopian and no other country is exactly like that tbh.
The internet (and many other areas) are completely captured by monopolies that control everything. There are so many inhumane, draconian laws too. This all contrasts with advance tech and pop production so starkly it kinda breaks people’s brains.
Well the country is pretty much run by Samsung to the point their entire economy and education system revolve around it. And the family that runs the company openly gets away with doing whatever the fuck they want.
Aw. Name more of the chaebols.
Samsung
KIA
Daewoo
Hyundai
SK
LG
Lotte
So the world of Cyberpunk 2077 basically
Yeah, the genre of cyberpunk in general can be loosely summarized as “it’s the libertarian wet dream future and it sucks”
“…but the aesthetic is dope”
Cyberpunk libertarian dystopia aesthetic: dope.
Actual libertarian dystopia aesthetic: same as now but more annoying. And more bears.
Actual libertarian dystopia aesthetic: Everything is an ad.
This comment sponsor: Raid Shadow Legend.
At least they didn’t have 500 million cameras deployed, The real Cyberpunk 2077 is China.
Behold the corporate state.
But Korea has their superior fried chicken and the corn dogs with potatoes on the outside. It can’t possibly be bad.
corn dogs with potatoes on the outside
Wouldn’t that be potato dogs?
The potatoes are cubed and attached to the outside of the dog, often with a mild cheese filling instead of a hot dog.
Ok, that’s just WEIRD! 1😂
The video title is “Depressed” not “Depressing.”
He based that on the suicide rate. It’s hard to have a metric for happiness/depression, but that’s a credible one.
The article took liberties with the message.
He spoke directly with many people across South Korea. Interview style and not coming at it with a load of certanties.
By the second sentence he said, “South Korea.”
I don’t know why so many people here have to imagine a slight and then react against it.
I guess he hasn’t been to Eastern Europe yet.
How do they compare, I’ve been to a few eastern euro countries and the people are happy and vibe is fun. The standard of living might not be high but it isn’t high stress worker drone society boxed in by societal expectations.
You have probably been in big cities where a lot of stuff is happening but visit the countryside and it is full of broken people and dying towns.
Another thing to note is that further south you go, the happier people will seem, while in the north, long winter days and lack of Vitamin D can really mess with local people.
The people over 45 have it especially bad here, since the world they used to know is no longer there, they can’t adapt to it, they don’t make as much as some younger people do, and they are beginning to lose their friends and family. While life is amazing and exciting to the young adults you are most likely to talk to in bars. The contrast actually adds to depression.
When it comes to comparisons, I think the main difference is that in East Asia, people have to deal with too much order and monotony.
In East Europe, the life as you know it might disappear at any moment. Life is fragile and fleeting and everything around you and everything you know will be dead one day. Nature itself reinforces that fact every year.
You basically just described every rural town, anyplace in the world I have traveled to.
The younger generation leaves the rural communities for the opportunities found in larger cities and towns. What is left behind is 50+ year olds with no-one to pass the farm onto. Eventually they sell out to someone or go bankrupt. The consolidation of land resources continues.
My wife and I are some of those the fled the rural hellscape. Those that stayed behind have spent their lives in poverty and ignorance. Both of my grandparents went bankrupt farming and died living with some of their kids in a city.
I actually did the opposite. I grew up in Klaipėda, a harbor town in Lithuania and moved a 100 km eastward to a small town to live with my wife.
I work from home so I can live here quite comfortably, despite it being boring. Both urban and rural experiences can be depressing in their own way.
Isn’t that basically just all rural areas at this point? I am not aware of any rural towns where you will have a jolly good fun time.
At this point it just seems like a trade off of rural living. You need to be part of some community if you want to live a happy existence in a rural area.
There are places in bigger cities that are depressing too, if you venture outside of the touristy parts. In rural areas, however, it is harder to avoid.
Seems very similar to Japan except South Korea has been gaining popularity in the West more recently.
These countries have similarities, but this seems more like simplistic stereotypes and generalizations.
South Korea’s suicide rate is almost double that of Japan’s. Japan has a lower suicide rate than the US, and similar to European countries like Sweden.
South Koreans work some of the longest hours of any rich country. They’re closer to India and Mexico than Europe. The Japanese work fewer hours than the US. Yes, Japanese people work too much, but I think Americans don’t realize that they work too much too.
AFAIK Japan is also pretty bad but not as much as Korea.
Where is Korea worse?
Korea and Japan are in the same general situation, but in Korea it’s taken to the extreme. So suicide rates, average working hours, etc etc.
Lowest birth rate in the whole world, too. 0.84 births per woman.
For the Koreans I met who moved to Japan, the work culture can be less bad, as can be working at certain companies despite where they graduated from. My sample size is small, though, and I am neither Japanese nor Korean.
Nicholas Plot, an American StarCraft professional commentator who has lived in Korea for 15 years, said, "One of the things that surprised me when I first came here was work ethics. They almost collapsed from overwork but didn’t say anything. In an apartment in suburban Seoul, 15 to 16 game players trained in an environment similar to a PC room, using bunk beds, he said. “When there is a small ecosystem where everyone pushes each other to get better and better, Koreans completely dominate (the environment). At the same time, I had no choice but to think about the psychological slump it created,” he said.
This is reasonably accurate. Korea is very heavy on the grind. If you ever want to learn work ethics and how to have fun with the short amount of free time you get, this is the place.
Source: 대한민국에서 살고 있어
It doesn’t sound like the kind of work ethic I want to learn. That’s basically voluntary slavery.
Individualism is great.
I agree with the first part, but I’m confused by “Individualism is great”. Not sure what individualism has to do with it.
Is this supposed to contrast with the US, a country where people work some of the longest hours in the developed world? I think the whole “the West is free and individualistic and Asians are conformist robots” thing is a myth.
Individualism is kinda the opposite of confucianism. Confucianism teaches that an individual is worth nothing and they must give all to family and state. I don’t agree with that. I deeply believe in thriving through self-exploration, free from peer pressure and especially religious dogma.
I wasn’t directly thinking about work ethic there, I just really hate the basic principles of Confucianism. I feel it’s restricting people. In the western world we have the same things, but they come from religions and conservatism instead (see the hate against trans people these days in the US). They’re also not as strongly embedded into society as they are in Confucian countries as far as I can tell. We value individualism a lot more, especially on the leftish/progressive side.
The reason I mentioned it is because Confucianism is often idolised in the Western world (“look there in China / Korea they still care about each other!”) but it’s also a terrible straightjacket for people not able or willing to conform to whatever stuff their society expects. Because people that impose rules upon themselves tend to want to impose those rules upon others even those that don’t share their belief.
I don’t mind others having belief systems but let me have none. And that’s really the part where things tend to not work out.
You’re thinking of collectivism, the actual opposite of individualism. Confucianism isn’t really related and is about finding meaning and cultivating the self, it’s a form of civil religion.
In fact, Confucianism is about self-cultivation and actualization, though in the context of society.
Source: 대한민국에서 살고 있어
No, YOUR mother is a craven harlot!
“It is the result of Korea maximizing the bad points of Confucian culture and the shortcomings of capitalism.”
"In Confucian culture, there are no individuals…
"In Confucian culture, we do not try to empathize with mental health problems…
"When you learn Korean culture…
I love when tourists (let’s be real: rich, white, American tourists) visit a country and come back a fucking expert on the culture, filled with all the judgmental wisdom to dish out why that culture is inferior to their own.
Fuck this clown and his “wisdom.”
How about you address his logic instead of going full ad personum.
You likely see this as a ramblings because barely anyone thinks about confucianism in modern times.
But it was state enforced for a while in multiple countries and left it’s mark in strict social hierarchies, blind subservience to one’s parents and focus on collective and ignoring individual needs and problems. Those reverberate in modern times and make the countries what they are now.
Sure, lived there 15 years and obtained dual citizenship.
I’ve now lived long term in my third country, so I am certainly in a position to compare living in multiple countries. If we want to focus just on depression, it’s a mixed bag.
Do Koreans work longer than other countries. Yes certainly. Statistics support that. Are they necessarily working ‘harder’? Not always. It depends a lot job to job, company to company.
To me the biggest thing contributing to overwork is the lack of holidays. For the longest time most statutory/bank holidays were not given additional days off if they fell on the weekend. Combine that with most companies not just giving you 2-4 weeks that you can use whenever you want, and most people worked a lot with little down time. Most companies would have a bit of time off in the summer, but they’d all take it at the same time and the prices would sky rocket meaning it was hard to enjoy what little time off you had.
This is not universal though. I know some larger companies had programs where people got specific days of the month off in addition and some had other half days on top of that.
focus on collective and ignoring individual needs and problems
This is a tough one. While they certainly do that in Korea, and things are changing in that regard as they’re acknowledging individualism more, it has certainly lead to a lot of efficiencies. As an example, to exchange a driver’s license in Korea it takes about 30 minutes and costs $10-15. In the UK you need to send it away, it costs £45, and takes 3+ weeks for them to process. If there are any issues, like say someone at the DVLA told you that your license officially printed in both English and Korean didn’t need a translation and then some jobsworth at the DVLA decided it did upon receipt, it has to be first sent back to you before you can go correct it.
For the most part bureaucratic stuff in Korea, while often talked about on the internet, is far easier to deal with, and much faster than it is in any of the other countries I’ve lived in. They also have a solid, central clearing house for making complaints about any organization in the country, government or private, and it can be done in just about any language.
The biggest issue I see contributing to poor quality of life is the density. Even when you have free time, you can’t enjoy anything outside of your house there. Want to go to the part? so did 1500 other people. Want to check out the cherry blossoms? Sure thing. Tag along wit your 5000 neighbours. Hit up ikea? Sure hope you like walking through it shoulder to shoulder without the ability to actually look at anything.
The density also means that no really has the ability to spread out and relax. Everyone lives in apartments/condos. Very few have yards. Those are the real day to day negatives that drag people down. I worked in companies as a proper employee and managed people as well, and while it was tough at times, it would have been so much better if it was possible to really enjoy your life outside of that. People want to, but it’s just very difficult in a small space with so many people.
How do you avoid catching COVID with such population densities?!
Air pollution from China along with thinking about other people besides yourself helped with that. When the pandemic broke everyone already had a box or two of N95 masks in their house. The government also took immediate control over the mask industry and started rationing them.
They had strict mask regulations, people stayed home, they closed most businesses that would help spread it, things like home delivery for groceries was already a pretty big thing in Korea at the time, and the delivery food business is massive there. Initially, outside of an outbreak caused by a church cult, numbers were very low in Korea.
They only started going up when they allowed the kids to go back to school, but were still generally very low because people were pretty careful. They also had public free government testing and home test kits were pretty easily available. If you tested positive on a home kit, you just walked over to the local outdoor testing center, stepped up and got tested, they texted you the results the next day along with instructions on how long to quarantine and then they sent you a care package of some food, masks, blood oxygen monitors, etc.
Nice. No, not just nice, heroic.
How did you get dual citizenship? I’m pretty sure my wife will have to drop her Korean citizenship if she becomes an American
People who have Korean first can’t get it if they go abroad and get a new citizenship, going the other way there are ways for you to keep both. They changed the laws back in 2011.
Society is complex, visting a country is different from living there an extended period of time and even then even small geographical distances can result in huge changes in culture.
For example if you started in London and travelled the M4 to Bristol and carried on through Newport and then Cardiff. You would find dramatic differences in housing costs, religiousness, sports played (e.g. football to rugby), views on public transport, job market, jobs people work, education level, favourite drinks, marriage, etc…
You could spend 3 months basing yourself in any one of those locations and derive completely different views on what is wrong with the UK.
Which is why the OP brushed this off as nonsense. It also isn’t uncommon for Americans to go somewhere and suggest it would be miles better if it was exactly like the USA, which is why you get the ad hominem.
It would be like a British Tourist suggesting they don’t drink enough larger or accusing themof being savages for putting salt in tea
The author wasn’t making a logical argument, so there’s no need to address his “logic.”
He’s a tourist who spent some time in a foreign country, and came to some very sweeping, rash conclusions about an entire country’s culture. It’s shallow, judgmental, and tragically commonplace among self-centered tourists who think they can understand an entire culture after 2 weeks living in a hotel on someone else’s dime. I am so done with the “white dude waxes philosophical about Asian country” trope.
“The most depressing country I can book a direct flight to and book all hotels and travel arrangements online, and make do with only English for the duration”
Well done on completely missing the body of the post and the whole article as you spent more time posting something completely unrelated to the topic.
Well what does the article say then? I can’t read.
Wait a minute, you can type but you cant read??
Only those 2 sentences and this one I’m afraid.
People are depressed in Korea, not that it is depressing to visit.
…wait.
And even then Korea doesn’t even break the top 10 in suicide per capita. Having more diagnosed depression is hardly a worthwhile stat when that depends more on the availability of doctors and psychologist to make the diagnosis.
I mean they’re still pretty high on the list.
Korea is 12th, behind lots of impoverished sub-Saharan African nations with incredible levels of corruption and anti-LGBT attitudes. Russia is just above Korea, and not much in the Global North outside of former Soviet bloc countries until the US in 31st, with its high rate of gun ownership making suicide a very easy prospect.
Which country do you think is the most depressing? As its defined in the article, i.e. the nation causing the most depression? My bet is every single nation above Korea is vastly more depressing and people only care about and think Korea is exceptional because it is much closer to our western Nations.
What I think is irrelevant with regards to your question.
Korea should be exceptional because it is developed yet has a high level of suicide and depression.
Committing suicide can be more taboo in some cultures. Even across different subcultures within countries.
It’s a good metric for comparison, but it’s not perfect.
