Studying Barbed Wire

The barbed wire that is still deployed on the perimeter walls of old high schools
and apartments complexes captures the essence of modern Korean culture perfectly. While it's true that the barbed wire is a vivid reminder of the Park Chung-hee era, when Korea was ruled by dispersing, curfewing, or jailing its opposition, it is truer to say that the barbed wire wrapped around school and apartment walls symbolically captures the family life of modern Koreans.

Most adult Koreans will tell you that they are happy with Park Chung-hee's handling of the economy, but unhappy with Park's turn to authoritarianism later in his presidency. They will probably shake their heads while looking down and say "that was not right" if you mention the imprisonments, curfews, and the deaths of opposition party members caused by Park. This is normal adult behavior. Adults do not want to be controlled. But if you were to compare the 12 hour school days of Korean high school students, the almost zero-sum social life of Korean high school students, or the violent brow beatings and emotional punishment that results when rules are broken by teenagers - oh, excuse me, teenagers are not called "teenagers" in Korea; they are called "students"; teenagers do not exist here - to the barbed wire, you would almost immediately be lectured, if they were comfortable enough with you to not be "polite to the foreigner" and be direct and honest, on "the spirit of Korea" or "that Korea is a small country without many resources" (of course, so is the U.K.) or that "being a Korean is hard".

Korean family life is, more than less, frighteningly like the dictatorship of Park Chung-hee. The barbed wire deployed along the walls of old high schools - and I am being perfectly hypocritical here, because I know I profit from this system - is easily compared to the life of "students". And what is more worrying than this analogy is that Korea seems to be tightening its dictatorship over the student rather than liberalizing it.