What do you know about South Korea? For many, South Korea is a land of cutting-edge technology of modernity, where skyscrapers soar skyward without limits as pillars of the future a society where education and honesty are fundamental values. South Korea is synonymous with K-Pop a vibrant cultural industry that has taken the world by storm and above all, it is perceived as one of the safest places on the planet.
But. . .
What if I told you that this is all an illusion? that it's just part of the picture the country wants you to see? Welcome to the dark reality of South Korea.
I've spent almost two months in Seoul getting to know and wondering what it's really like to live in this society and nothing is as it seems when you get here. In this episode we are going to try to understand a hidden dilemma, something that at first glance cannot be appreciated a really oppressed society about to explode a dystopian future that we may soon be facing in the West. I need you to open your minds for this video and try to understand how South Korea works South Korea has approximately a population of fifty-two million people but this figure drops considerably every year as we are talking about South Korea being the country with the lowest birth rate in the world What is the reason for this?
We might immediately think that the problem is that life is too expensive, but this is not the case It's true that Seoul is one of the most expensive cities in the world but also the salaries are in line The average salary in Korea is about three thousand dollars and an apartment does not usually cover most of the salary Then leisure and food are not expensive The problem why people are not being born here is much bigger than just the economy, the money The main problem is social pressure Let's start at the beginning but literally at the beginning this pressure can be seen at an early age when children begin to enter school they feel this first pressure translated into extreme competitiveness because from a very young age they are taught that they have to be excellence and stand out from the rest and that's something that has already been instilled in culture to understand this society a little more we can turn to the Gaussian bell, this statistical function in Korean society, the pressure to excel above the rest creates a situation where only a small percentage of students can achieve the highest academic standards in that way we are able to understand the fact that only a low percentage of students have the opportunity to get those high grades That is, not everyone can get an A here is only a small percentage of students that can do it the best ones and that's represented that way in school and in college because you're constantly competing for a ranking of who are the best students which so you see are the ones who are going to prepare for this exam called Suneung where they compete to have the best possible grade to be able to get into these most prestigious universities and this is so embedded in the culture and their minds that it is not like if you get a bad grade you simply won't be able to study what your parents would like you to study or get into a certain university but getting a bad grade, being below this Gauss bell is directly translated into people giving you the cold shoulder dishonoring your family, being seen as a failure by your classmates and making it much more difficult for you to have social relationships all this puts such pressure on the youth that the percentage of people who have depression, anxiety, stress in the youth of this country is exorbitant and we might think that once you finish college that pressure disappears but that's when you realize that it will haunt you for life because this same visual representation is adapted to any activity in your life like when looking for a job, and once inside the job to get better positions his competitiveness never ends and they have it so internalized that it is the goal of the entire population Imagine for a moment a company of two hundred people where everyone wants to be the boss of the company all competing to be the boss of the company, you already have to compete And we have only just begun, because this pressure is not only in education but now we are going to talk about beauty And for this I am going to introduce you to Mika a girl who has been living in Korea for many years who will help us to understand some parts of this video In South Korea, beauty is not just a standard or a fashion but an obsession ingrained in society From an early age, people are taught that outward appearance what others see, is crucial to success in life and social acceptance and those who do not meet the canon of beauty will encounter discrimination and barriers wherever they go but this has not always been the case and all this is greatly affected by a relatively new factor, k-pop the culture of idols or pop stars in Korea as they are carefully selected by companies with high standards of beauty which in turn create a standard in society for most people unattainable These idols are handsome, tall, slim, strong, with a style of dress. . .
They are physically perfect. All of this has further fueled this social pressure to be physically accepted creating completely unattainable standards for the majority of the population and this has had its consequences at all levels of society believe it or not, this academic competition we were talking about is not the only factor when it comes to getting a job and if you do not meet these standards of beauty if you do not look good, you will not be accepted in a job or by default they will accept someone who looks better and not only that, if you do not meet these standards you will also suffer social discrimination you will not be able to join a group of friends people will not want to be around you because you are ugly or because you are fat or because you do not have the right haircu 365 MC is a hospital where people go only to lose weight they do designed diets, liposuction. .
. You make an appointment there and even if you are at your ideal weight if you want to lose weight they will get you some method to lose weight when I was working here, in a modeling agency, our manager one of the things he advised us to do was to go to some specific hospitals where they would give us some prescriptions for pills to be skinnier obviously, they are illegal in most other countries but here you can buy them simply with a prescription saying hello I want to lose weight, please and these pills are similar to amphetamines they make you not want to eat anything all day you can't sleep or you can't stop moving and also, most of the time when you exercise maybe you are walking and you feel your heart rate go up as much as you were running a marathon, for example because when you joined the Korean modeling agency how did they view your physique? I am currently one point seventy-five meters and I weigh about sixty-eight kilos despite being in the correct measurements I was asked to lose weight up to fifty kilos because in Korean society a woman who weighs more than sixty kilos is considered fat it's not even a matter of models anymore I mean, you see very few people on the street who are even slightly over their weight they are very ashamed of being fat you're not even fat for them, yes.
sure, that's the thing for them, if they don't weigh forty-nine kilos because most of them are very small, they are fat what happens is that there are also girls who are about seventy and have to weigh forty-nine kilos because they don't understand the difference in heights, which is muscle and most stores sell one size fits all everything leads you to the fact that you have to be slim yes. It's very hard to fit into society if you're not it looks like something out of an episode of Black Mirror but really, I'm not exaggerating, it's true it's what's happening here obviously you don't notice this when you come here as a tourist you just see them and think, look how cool how well everyone dresses, how well everyone looks but the reality is much darker than that this has created a large percentage of the population, mostly women suffering from dysmorphia, a problem that is not only mental but has condemned them to the fact that cosmetic operations are the most normal thing here therefore, those who were not born into this almost unattainable standard with a nose and a contoured face, perfect skin, slim, and perfect hair undergo dozens of operations and treatments to reach that canon of beauty We are located in Shinsa one of the neighborhoods that comprise the Gangnam district Gangnam is the place par excellence of plastic surgeries and most of the buildings that you can see in the area are all literal buildings of aesthetic clinics dental clinics, hair grafts, everything that has to do with aesthetics and looking good for your understanding, it is literally the entire clinic you're telling me that this whole thing here is a clinic? everything, everything, that is a.
. . all that is an entire hospital?
a whole hospital, you can have everything done, I mean from your teeth to your face, the whole thing that's intense you can get out of there new they do everything on the spot changing your identity, huh? yeah, look, I'm going to talk to you about one thing that I find super creepy and that is the Gangnam beauty is a thing. .
. totally real and that is that there are people who are going to have natural surgery and there are people who are looking for this it's literally being a photocopy of each other they operate on the jaw, which is an operation that I think I have seen in Korea and a few other places it is a very difficult operation, by the way the jaw is cut off the whole bone then they take and the nose is put in a silicone tube to make it look much higher the eyes are operated on so that they go from being slanted to being much more open and have like that anime eye face literally this person and this person are two different people and it's a perfect beauty ideal for them are all the same, that is, that is the objective they look for that, it's literally Gangnam beauty if in Turkey you are able to see everybody with the head bandana that they just put on hair here you can see people wearing masks for operation recovery Another strange thing you realize when you walk the streets of Seoul is that this city is under constant scrutiny it's an ultra-vigilant city it's full of cameras everywhere, I swear when I read it, I wanted to check this out would they really be watching every move? no matter where I was or what I was doing?
and yes, they are always there, watching every step I take it is a weird feeling to know that you are constantly being watched and controlled in Seoul, you are never alone there are always eyes watching you from the heights of the buildings to the street corners it is a reality that few can escape and many have learned to accept living under control and that is why we very rarely will see police patrolling the roads or the city because they don't really need to because they are watched twenty-four hours a day from every angle if you plan to commit any crime that you know they are going to know from where you came from to where you ended up and everything you did it is practically impossible not to get caught and what happens? They have very strict laws and it is true that as a tourist you feel very safe walking around the city you know that at no time will anything happen to you at no time will they try to rob you and people think it's all because of the culture and it's not entirely true they are always watching you South Korea is a relatively new country that has embraced innovation and modernity in other words, this country has built a futuristic structure that amazes everyone but in its eagerness to look to the future South Korea has decided to leave its past behind now, in the megacity of Seoul classic and ancient structures are being replaced one by one by new constructions symbols of progress and modernity and little by little there is almost only an old neighborhood left a reminder of times gone by but it too is destined to disappear in pursuit of modernity but this we'll see in a while because, obviously, we're going to go and see it in person but ultimately, in South Korea, the future is the only direction that matters have the best grades in school, find the best job, follow the highest standards of beauty. .
. achieving all this is very complicated and all this pressure results in many psychological problems and if that's not enough, the mental health seeing a psychologist in Korea is frowned upon by society it's taboo. I think you are beginning to understand what I'm talking about, right?
and with all this we come to the dark part of the video and the fact is that all these things have made one out of four people in Korea decide to live their lives alone they simply decide to not have human contact, work from home and if they have to go out, the country has already made it easy for them to do so you arrive in Korea and you are excited because there are a lot of things open twenty-four hours a day everything has little screens so you can serve yourself you even have vintage clothing stores cell phone case stores, open twenty-four hours without dependents and you think, fuck, how cool, isn't it? but in truth, all this is done so that this type of people who do not want to have social contact can continue buying, consuming and being part of capitalism but without having to talk to another person and before we see the consequences of all this let's go and visit the neighborhood I was telling you about which is called Guryong Village it seems that the bus has left me in the middle of nowhere clearly we can see that behind me there is the typical image of this city a whole new area of Seoul with big luxury buildings, new housing. .
. basically the Gangnam district is getting bigger and bigger and right behind me is the poorest neighborhood of the city Guryong, which probably won't last much longer well, we just got into Guryong this is a shanty settlement built right around the time of the Olympics here in Seoul in 1980 basically the people with few resources in the city were kicked out of their homes and as a solution they went to the outskirts and the government built this settlement for those people the city of Seoul, with the opportunity of the Olympics wanted to make an image wash, build more luxury buildings and with that the rents went up a lot and many people had to leave their homes and many of them ended up here, in Guryong this was a farm area and at that time it gradually got bigger and bigger as people settled down and became a maze of narrow streets without any kind of organization poor and little houses made of sheet metal, wood, porespan, and plastic everywhere but this place is slowly coming to its tragic end and in fact the neighborhood is practically all abandoned it's a strange feeling because, really you walk through this place and it's complete silence you hear nothing but the noise of the road in the background and the wind a completely desolate feeling i had seen this on the internet before coming here, but I thought there were far fewer houses that had it and it is that if we see this wooden board in any house, and normally like writing here it means that the person who lived here inside either died or was absent from his house for a few days this means that the government has come here put the board and an eviction notice to make little by little the population of Guryong disappear from here so that they can continue to expand the Gangnam district and build modern buildings here so, they get their perfect city and that is also why we see very few people since they have practically kicked them all out and they say that by 2025 Guryong will no longer exist that way they will be able to expand this skyscraper thing and make the city even richer you might be wondering then what are all the people who live here going to do the government is supposed to have a plan for all these people who live in this neighborhood which was basically to build them houses outside of here and give them decent housing to leave this place having a place the problem is that they have been postponing this plan over time so as they are kicking people out of here they are not looking for solutions and you have to take into account that the people who live here are the people with the least economic power in the city they will probably be forced to leave the city and go to towns in the outskirts of course, we are talking about the population that lives here most of them are over seventy years old so this process is really complicated for them and they have been living here for 40 years but of course, the progress of the city is much more important and what I find strong is that even here there are surveillance cameras everywhere I don't know why I thought that this part was not going to be watched but there is no place in Seoul that is not pointing a camera at you at all times this is the sign I was talking about before we would like to inform you that trespassing or damage to this residential facility that has been unoccupied and closed due to the temporary relocation of unit one residents may be punishable under article 319 and below it puts the date, in this case, 2021 one thing that strikes me about the abandoned houses is that I think most of them were abandoned in a hurry because they all left things inside in this one, for example, you have this closet full of shoes and clearly the dwelling was abandoned in 2018 it's a very strange place as if something happened and people had to leave it without looking back I don't know if many of these things also have to do with the fact that there was a big fire here about a year ago maybe there were a lot of people who just had to flee and leave everything behind I don't know I guess since the fire there are fire extinguishers everywhere even in the houses that are abandoned I've been walking the streets of Guryong for a couple of hours and maybe I have passed only four or five people and this place is pretty big, but definitely, 75% of the place is completely abandoned and destroyed I think in five years there is not going to be a trace of this place and there will be only skyscrapers everything you see there looks like a big wave that is eating the city and I'm sure that in about five years they will start building skyscrapers here to start with and provide context, South Korea has become the country with the most suicides in the world even surpassing Japan, famous for that suicide has become the leading cause of death among people between the ages of 10 and 39 nearly 50 % of deaths among adolescents are caused by suicide and one of the most common practices in the country is to jump off a bridge into the river and the numbers are so large that Korea has had to start making anti-suicide bridges and this sounds a little strange but this bridge, the Mapo Bridge is one of them and that many decide to end their lives in this terrible way in some part because of culture. when Koreans commit this act they want it to be as non-violent as possible for the person who is going to find his or her body that is to say, they are going to try to do this act in the least bloody way possible and we come back a little bit to the same thing it's this culture of not wanting to disturb, not wanting to have physical contact even after death and I guess that's why one of the most common suicides is to jump off the bridge into the river first of all, we can see that they made the fences much higher and not only that but they also incorporated two types of cylinders to make it practically impossible to climb it that way if you try to climb or jump from there it would be impossible because the cylinder will rotate oppositely and I have come to the Mapo Bridge because it is the bridge with the most records of these deaths and that is why they were the first to implement this type of measures to prevent these suicides after that part, when you have crossed the part that has concrete underneath and you are just above the water everything turns into this kind of structure that has sensors in it in addition, many people who have lost people on these bridges or people who come just to try to help people who are in this situation write messages on the bridge these messages are the last barrier and say things like think of your family, don't do it and hopeful messages to try to prevent these acts try to kindle that last flame before you make the decision to jump into the void I even find it curious that they put mirrors here I don't know if this has to do with it to show you that this is real when you are walking on the bridge you come across these phones installed here these are called the life phones and it's basically, a phone that puts you directly in touch with the suicide prevention unit and we see it every few meters all this is caused by a very repressed society a society that does not dialogue, that keeps their feelings to themselves but we are human and we need to express ourselves and that is why many South Koreans to express themselves turn to alcohol and as I have read in several pages, South Korea is one, if not the country with more alcoholism in the world and is that when they drink they can talk about these things and empathize with their peers nightlife in Seoul is crazy.
Every day of the week there partying but alcohol not only opens you up to others to being able to talk about your problems but can also bring out all your inner demons one of the things that is very striking here is that you can leave any of your property in a subway station for three days something very expensive and it doesn't matter they're not going to touch it, they're going to leave it there and me, the first week I got here I saw a girl on the street who looked like she was being kind of mistreated by a guy and I went to get into the fight my friend grabbed me by the arm and said don't even think about getting involved mind your own business, you know? and I was quite struck by it and this is something that I will always have in my head like, I should have gone in if only to see if the girl was okay but he explained to me that a lot of times foreigners and Koreans in that context, in reacting, have very different things and it's that the foreign can have problems with the police especially, that all of a sudden there's a girl, for example who's on the street drunk and all of a sudden the guy wants to go and help her helping her like, for example, putting her in a cab to take her home and the police have gone abroad and deported him, whatever abroad to try to help the girl unbelievably, it could even be considered sexual assault and then other times what happened to me can happen to anyone supposedly everyone knows that this country is the safest country in the world but the issue of sexual assault, sexual depravity is an issue that people don't get into much hey don't want to see it but I've lived in much less safe places and the only place I've been raped twice was in South Korea and I didn't get into shady things one of the first times it happened to me when I had just arrived in Korea I was eighteen, I didn't have many friends and I wanted to go and experience the nightlife I went into a bar and ordered a drink and I was drinking with the bartender the whole bar saw me walk in alone and I was making friends with the guy who was pouring my drinks I said yes, I came in alone, so and so after half an hour I was approached by two guys one on this side and one on this side while one was talking to me, the one in the back was doing something else which I didn't realize at the time. In the end they left.
I was still drinking my drink. . .
and I started well, obviously there is a gap here, I mean, I don't remember it what I remember is having a blackout, having several scenes in my head emembering like stairs, remembering a cab and suddenly waking up in a motel totally naked and without any of my belongings I had just arrived in the country I had no cell phone, I had nothing what I understood was that I had been drugged and that I had lost consciousness and what struck me was that everybody in that bar had seen how I was all alone and nobody did anything about some random guys taking me half to dreadlocks seeing me that I was obviously out of it and not doing anything about it no one had even the faintest inkling the first thing I did to solve this was to go to the first police I saw on the street. I managed to get there and I exposed my fear the only thing that struck me about the police was that they were very interested in my case until when I mentioned the person's description and said it was a Korean person it totally changed the subject and suddenly they said you are supposedly here on a visa and you are trying to change it to a student visa, right? you want to live here in South Korea for many years, right?
are you really sure you want to start your life here in Korea like this? because when you make a complaint to a Korean, it can affect you a lot and I felt a little bit like I was threatened by. .
. Were you blackmailed? yes and I promise that they start to say to me, but are you sure you have been raped?
are you sure it was a Korean? and so of course, me with my eighteen-year-old mind that this had just happened and was just trying to do the right thing and feeling like I didn't understand anything that was going on. .
. . I didn't know what to do anymore so it created doubts in me I felt totally blackmailed and I was very angry that I raised my voice and felt like because I was a foreigner my experience or testimony was being questioned so much because the other person was Korean everything was fine and dandy until the moment I mentioned that I was a Korean man do you think it would have been different if you were Korean?
totally at the end here sexual assault is a very punishable thing behind the glitter of lights and modernity lies an uncomfortable and hidden truth South Korea is not as perfect as it seems at first sight and I am concerned by this, because our society is beginning to reflect some aspects of Korean society we spend more and more time on social networks where we consume images and videos of perfect lives most of the times of complete strangers that are actually carefully selected to create an idealized and unreal appearance and we can see how our society strives more and more to achieve that fictional perfection or rather this new standard striving or faking to be attractive, successful and prosperous while, paradoxically, cases of depression and emotional problems increase doesn't this sound familiar?
