the 1970s the characteristic Korean household consisted of three to four generations. From earliest times it had been customary for the oldest sons to replace their fathers in the same households. After younger sons got married, families that could afford the expense helped them establish their own households. They then repeated the process, becoming three-and four-generation families sharing the same abode.
This custom caused an endless array of problems in Korean families because it made friction inevitable, but it also ensured that no member of any family would be left completely helpless. One of the primary obligations of oldest sons was to look after their aged parents—a responsibility that they invariably laid on their wives. As a result of this custom most aged parents were able to live out their lives in relative comfort, without worry about having a place to live, food to eat, and someone to take care of their other personal needs.
Korea’s transformation into a highly industrialized, affluent society during the 1960s and 1970s changed this ancient custom dramatically by introducing a totally new element into the society—the hakgajok (hahk-gah-joak), or “two-generation family.” By the early 1990s the preponderance of hakgajok had fundamentally changed not only the social structure of the country but much of the economy as well. The change from three-and four-generation households to two-generation households resulted in a striking increase in the demand for housing, furniture, kitchen appliances and utensils, household accessories, and so on, giving an extraordinary boost to the development of a mass market in Korea.
There are still many multigenerational families in Korea, particularly in rural areas, but they are becoming the exception rather than the rule. The move away from multigenerational families was not caused solely by the desires of newly married young people to be independent from their parents. Parents themselves, newly affluent and used to far more independence than their own parents had experienced, often preferred to live alone rather than be relegated to the position of housekeepers, cooks, and baby-sitters for their married offspring.
Because the phenomenon and various influences of hakgajok families were totally new to Korea, by the mid-1990s the term itself had become a catchall for many of the changes taking place in the social infrastructure as well as the psyche of the people. Hakgajok now represent a growing majority among Korean households, impacting on every area of the social, economic, and political life of the country.
Among the numerous cultural changes that are being encouraged by hakgajok are a significant decrease in the role of ancestor worship as well as in the age-old custom of respecting and honoring parents in general, a decrease in the use of respect language, and a general loosening of the family bonds that have been so crucial to survival and success in Korea.
While hakgajok played a positive role in the creation of a mass-market economy in Korea and helped fuel a dramatic rise in the standard of living, their overall cultural impact may prove to be negative.
Haksaeng 핛앵 Hahk-sang
The World of Korean Students
Until the 1880s higher education in Korea was generally reserved for the sons of the elite scholar-official yangban (yahng-bahn) class, who went on to monopolize virtually all local and national government posts in the country. Becoming a student at an institute of higher learning was therefore an impossible dream for the majority of young Koreans. When this monopoly on education ended, hundreds of thousands of ordinary Koreans flocked to newly opened high schools and colleges, joining the ranks of the formerly exclusive, privileged class of haksaeng (hahk-sang), or “students.”
Unlike most of the sons of the hereditary elite, this new breed of Korean haksaeng was not dedicated to maintaining the social and economic status quo that had kept the yangban in power and generally wealthy for more than a thousand years. They wanted, and demanded, change. And it was this new class of educated Koreans who were at the forefront of resisting the colonization of Korea by Japan from 1910 to 1945 and again took up the struggle against their own militaristic leaders after Korea regained its independence.
From the 1950s through the 1980s, Westerners in Korea were often surprised and sometimes shocked at the propensity for Korean haksaeng to engage in anti-government protests. But these students were not setting precedents or imitating politically active students in the West. They were following an Asian tradition that goes back to ancient times.
Throughout the Confucian sphere of Asia, intellectuals had traditionally regarded it as their right and their responsibility to monitor the behavior of government leaders and to demand that they step down if they misbehaved. Thus in earlier centuries the only Korean voices raised against authoritarian and corrupt governments were those of a few scholars who had the courage to put their lives on the line for their beliefs—and more often than not they made the ultimate sacrifice by doing so.
When the yangban monopoly on education ended in the late 1800s and schools were opened for hundreds and then thousands of ordinary Koreans, many of them went on to become both the conscience and the voice of the people, and unlike their scholarly predecessors they advocated direct action. When Japan began the process of invading and annexing Korea in the early 1900s, this new class of students was in the vanguard of those who took up arms to defend the country.
But it was the latter part of the 1950s, after thirty-six years of occupation by Japan and a devastating civil war that followed the division of Korea into north and south camps, before the students of South Korea had a major impact on the political system and subsequently the lifestyle of all Koreans. Always more courageous and aggressive than their teachers and elders, students once again took the lead in uprisings against inept, corrupt, and militaristic leaders. They helped bring down administrations and influence political reforms that were subsequently enacted by succeeding governments.
By the 1970s student uprisings of one kind or another had become so common in Korea that there were special police units to deal with them. Most of these demonstrations were on a limited scale and were controlled by determined police action without serious damage to either side. However, larger uprisings were invariably crushed by the police and the army, occasionally with great loss of life. The resolve with which Korean students undertook protests against dictatorial governments was indicated by the term hyolso (h’yohl-soh), one of the words that bound them together. The literal meaning of hyolso is “written in blood,” and it referred to a “blood-brother” kind of bond between those who chose to defy the government openly and physically.
The sacrifices by Korean students were not in vain, however. By the early 1990s the authoritarian rule by a long line of ex-generals and their military aides had been replaced by a democratically elected civilian leadership, and the militarism that had marked the South Korean government since 1948 had begun receding into the background. This success, combined with continued economic progress, resulted in most students’ going back to their books and to an easy life on campus before they joined Korea’s fast-paced corporate world.
In 1995 thousands of Korean students once again took to the streets in a massive effort to force the democratically elected government of President Young Sam Kim to punish his predecessors, Doo Hwan Chun and Tae Woo Roh, who were accused of accepting several hundred million dollars in bribes from Korean and American firms. The protests, backed by strong media support, succeeded. Both Chun and Roh were arrested and sentenced to long prison terms. Thirty-six leaders of the country’s giant chaebol (chay-buhl) conglomerates were also called in for questioning about the “donations” they had given to Roh. But the general consensus was that such political corruption was so widespread and deep that it would not be pursued beyond punishment of the two ex-presidents.
Present-day Korean students are politically aware and continue to make their influence felt in the country, but student violence in the streets is no longer common. The biggest challenge facing Korean students today is to get on the “escalator to success”—the schools, beginning with elementary schools, that are most successful
