Ask a Korean

Learning music might not may a child smarter, but it may teach the child "metaskills" like character which cannot be learned directly. Here's an (snipped) quote from something I read a while ago: [1]

"When a student learns piano, all Americans can see is that the student is now equipped with the skill to play the piano. Under this view, unless the student can put that skill into use in the future somehow, the time spent on acquiring that skill is wasted. This is a deeply mistaken attitude, and the ever-smart tiger cub Sophia Rubenfeld-Chua has the perfect answer showing the flaw of that attitude:

''I’m never going to be a professional pianist, but the piano has given me confidence that totally shapes my life. I feel that if I work hard enough, I can do anything. I know I can focus on a given task for hours at a time. And on horrible days when I’m lost and a mess, I can say to myself, "I’m good at something that I really, really love." I want my kids to have that confidence – confidence rooted in something concrete, not just "aww everyone’s a winner!!!" confidence, because in your heart you never believe that.''

The point of learning the piano is NOT about acquiring the skill of playing the piano so that the student can earn a living as a pianist. It is about building the character of the person. Here is the thing about character -- you can't build it by explicitly setting out to build it. Character is not a skill like tying your shoelaces. If it must be put in terms of…

Haven't experienced a Korean workforce first hand, but as a Korean I can probably provide some insight into the culture.

In general, the culture is very hierarchical (respecting elders) thus seniority and age play a big factor in leadership. I would assume that this makes it very easy for mediocre (but good enough to survive) management to stay in positions far too long. Asian culture, but Koreans especially, can be masochistic1 and martyr2 like in their methods. In some ways this creates a tremendous amount of excellence, but it also creates soldiers who may not necessarily be incentivized to innovate, and those who innovate, out of cultural respect will tend to not dare "disrespect" seniority. Being a good soldier makes for career advancements.

Management can also claim the failures of the company as their own personal failures, rather than the gray collective failure of a group(e.g. japanese ceo's claiming company failure as their own), thus employees kind of get absolved of blame.

Work in Korea also tends to be a live at the office kind of affair. It's not uncommon for the white collar folk to go into work at 7a, and stay until 7-9p. Then go drinking with coworkers until midnight, and rinse and repeat. While this makes for very strong bonds amongst coworking peers and better teams, I would imagine that it also takes a toll on the mental capacity of the workforces.

Mainly, I wouldn't be surprised if work in Korea tends to be death marches all the time based on…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_meat

> Since 2009,[58] Yulin, Guangxi has held an annual festival of eating dog meat. This purportedly celebrates the summer solstice, however, in 2014, the municipal government published a statement that the festival is not a cultural tradition, rather, a commercial event held by restaurants and the public.[59] Various dog meat dishes (and more recently, cats) are eaten, washed down by lychees wine. The festival in 2011 spanned 10 days, during which 15,000 dogs were consumed.[60] Estimates of the number of dogs eaten during the festival range between 10[46][61] and 15 thousand.[62] Festival organisers say that only dogs bred specifically for consumption are used, however, there are claims that some of the dogs purchased for slaughter and consumption are strays or stolen pets, as evidenced by their wearing collars.[45] Some of the dogs eaten at the festival are burnt or boiled alive[63] and there are reports that the dogs are sometimes clubbed[46] or beaten to death in the belief that the increased adrenalin circulating in the dog's body adds to the flavour of the meat.[45]

> Opponents of dog meat consumption in South Korea are critical of the eating of dog meat, as some dogs are beaten, burnt or hanged to make their meat more tender.[104]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_meat_consumption_in_South_Korea#Controversy

> The controversy over dog meat consumption often centers on the slaughtering methods employed, which include…

So this article says that it's misunderstood, but real:

http://askakorean.blogspot.co.uk/2009/01/fan-death-is-real.html

Quoting from that:

This pamphlet from the EPA[0], at pages 49
and 51, clearly states the hazard of using
portable electric fans during high heat. It
specifically says “Portable electric fans
can … increase the circulation of hot air,
which increases thermal stress and health
risks[,]” and “DON’T use a portable electric
fan in a closed room without windows or doors
open to the outside.”

Problem is, that link now goes somewhere else, and not to a pamphlet at all. Tricky.

However, this has been discussed at length here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8740683

It's also been submitted lots of times, although the last time was a month ago, so maybe we should see it again:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11844310

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9825096

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8136969

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5357829

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3943075

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3890949

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3425519

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3310449

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1465409

[0] http://www.epa.gov/hiri/about/pdf/EHEguide_final.pdf

This is huge. Early analysis is that this is a net positive for Korean democracy since the entire process, from protests to ouster was relatively peaceful and the people involved in the ouster tried to follow the rule of law as much as possible. It's exercised for the first time a part of the legal system that's never been explored in the country.

At each stage of the very complex process, the government figured out what to do without too much fuss, even operating as a temporary parliamentary democracy.

It wasn't too long ago that this could have gone very differently: seizure of power, military occupation, coups, violence and corruption.

This is Korea's Nixon moment.

edit
There's some very serious discussion regarding criminal charges they may now be brought now that she's freed from Presidential immunity.

edit2
For folks who want more background on what this is all about, "Ask a Korean" has done a magnificent job of writing the charges up.

http://askakorean.blogspot.com/2016/11/the-ultimate-choi-soon-sil-gate.html

http://askakorean.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-ultimate-choi-soon-sil-gate.html

Here's at least one: I've read some rebuttals to the "ethnic theory of plane crashes" here: http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/foreign-airline-safety

and here:

http://askakorean.blogspot.no/2013/07/culturalism-gladwell-and-airplane.html

Put it simply, Gladwell seems to form a theory, then find enough facts to support that theory. But that's not the way to do proper research.

In this case, had he actually consulted with pilots, koreans, and finally korean pilots, he might have ended up with a different conclusion (let alone now have made so many trivial errors in the text).

He could also have compared accident statistics and looked at how many accidents could be attributed to poor CRM in different countries. But again, he didn't do that.

He mentions that CRM training is used nowadays in all airlines (to improve crew collaboration) but fails to mention that the accident that sparked the focus on CRM (the worst airline accident of all time) was caused by a Dutch captain, from a country with a low power-distance index (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster)