The Irrational Rational Fear of Cancer, MERS, and Terrorism

At the time of this writing, there have been fourteen deaths that have been attributed to MERS.

As a result, thousands of schools have closed, despite cooler heads warning that this was unnecessary. More than 20,000 tourists called off visiting Korea since June 5th, costing Korean businesses millions in lost revenue. Subsequently, the Bank of Korea has cut interest rates to a record low of 1.5 percent amid fears of a sharp fall in consumer spending.

As I had said before, however, I think that the fear of this virus has spread faster than the virus itself and that this fear is irrational. After all, this is not the first time an unusually strong strain of the flu virus spread in Korea. Also, statistically speaking, people ought to be much more worried about cancer and hypertension than about influenza or SARS or MERS or Ebola.

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So why do people overreact to relatively less dangerous things such as MERS and react so coolly to much more dangerous things like cancer? After all, the smoking rate in Korea is 42 percent – and even after the new tax takes effect and helps suppress demand, 34 percent of Koreans will remain smokers.

For all intents and purposes, people react disproportionately to different things due to different reasons.

Firstly, there is a difference in timing. Of the fourteen people who have died after having contracted MERS, the time that it took for them to die was a matter of days. Cancer, on the other hand, is often perceived as something that will occur some day far in the future. Despite what people say, we are all afraid of death. However, the further away death is perceived to be, the more abstract it becomes and the less we fear it.

Secondly, it's a matter of how much control we have. When we think of cancer, many of us tend to think that we have some control over it. We can quit smoking, eat less junk food, drink less coffee, apply more sunscreen, go for annual checkups, etc. Of course, we might not necessarily choose to exercise our convictions. How many times have we made the same New Year's resolution to drink less and exercise more and quit smoking? The point is that we feel that we can exert some control over cancer if we choose to do so.

But what about MERS or Ebola? Unlike cancer, diseases like MERS and Ebola feel like they are beyond our control. What if the disease is airborne? What if the lady sitting next to me on the bus is one of those patients who was quarantined but chose to go out to play a round of golf? We cannot see a virus; nor can we taste it nor smell it. And when we cannot control something, well...

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Thirdly, we also cannot ignore the power of imagery.

Many years ago, I saw a family friend die of cancer. She wasted away in the hospital. She lost weight, her hair, her youthful vigor, the sparkle that used to twinkle in her eyes. And the screams...

But toward the end, there was a calmness to it. Her system had been filled with morphine and she was finally asleep, peacefully. Her family had gathered all around her to bid her farewell. There were tears, hugs, and prayers. And then she was gone. The death of a loved one is tragic, but when people are given time to prepare for death, sometimes death becomes a little easier to accept.

On the other hand, however, what is the imagery associated with MERS? Violent fits of coughing, increased body temperatures, isolation and quarantine from all those that you love. Doctors and nurses wearing hazmat suits? Death suddenly seems abrupt and lonely.

What is the imagery associated with terrorism? Google “ISIS” and you will see. Or don't Google “ISIS” and spare yourself the unpleasantness.

Seriously, don't Google “ISIS”.
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Consider that MERS has killed only fourteen people and that thousands of schools have shut down. Also, despite the fact that only one Korean teenager has so far volunteered to join ISIS, the media spent a disproportionate amount of time worrying about ISIS's influence among Koreans. Also, the government has created spyware for smartphones that will watch out for, among other things, mentions of “IS” and “terrorism.”

So, for various reasons, we fear the wrong things much more than we need to and we fear those things that we do need to fear less than we ought to.

The kicker, however, is that this messed up set of priorities is perfectly rational; so long as we define “rational” as “that which is based on or in accordance with reason or logic.” So, it's the reasoning that is faulty.

I am reminded of a phrase that I once learned in a computer science class I took in school a long time ago – Garbage In, Garbage Out (GIGO).

For good or for ill, humans have never achieved the status of homo economicus and probably never will.

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Documentary Review – The True Cost

Today, a correspondent who goes by the moniker “TheBoss” shared with me a link to a documentary called “The True Cost.” For those who are interested, you can watch it for free here.

This documentary explores the “hidden costs” of fast fashion. The filmmaker, Andrew Morgan, highlights the terrible work conditions and pay in garment factories located in third-world countries such as Bangladesh and Cambodia. The film goes to list the hardships that these workers face – urban squalor, polluted environments, deteriorating health conditions, broken families, etc., and, of course, also focuses on the avarice and ignorance of shoppers in the developed world, all the while accompanied by a moody score.

I have already written an article where I defended the existence of sweatshops. You can read it here.

However, I felt that I had to add a bit more for this particular documentary. Although this documentary lasted for about ninety minutes, one question that is never asked throughout the whole film is “as compared to what?”

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This is a very important question. Essentially, this documentary is about economics and it calls for economic reform. However, it is calling for sweeping economic reforms but, at the same time, refuses to talk about economics by ignoring this question.

When we compare the work conditions and the pay that workers in Bangladesh receive to those of workers in the developed world, they are, indeed, awful. There is no doubt about that. However, that comparison is misleading.

The real comparison that has to made is those Bangladeshi workers' current pay and work conditions with these workers' realistic alternatives in Bangladesh.

What this documentary gets absolutely right is that their working conditions are dangerous as evidenced by the collapse of a factory building in Bangladesh, which resulted in the deaths of more than a thousand workers. So the question is why do so many of these workers still choose to endure such harsh conditions and low pay? After all, no one is forcing them at gunpoint to work in these factories.

The fact that they still choose to work in these dangerous sweatshops is powerful evidence that these workers' alternatives are even worse.

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Throughout the film, various activists, and Mr. Morgan himself, call for changes to be made in the fashion industry. It demands that workers be guaranteed a living wage. It demands that consumers in the developed world change their shopping habits and attitudes about materialism in order to alleviate the strains that those workers suffer.

Let us be generous and assume that they succeed in their efforts. Let us say that those workers are paid a living wage (whatever the hell that means) and affluent shoppers' demand for clothing produced in the third world drops significantly. Then what would become of those workers?

Naturally, they would be forced to choose to toil at jobs that pay even less and in conditions that are even dirtier and more dangerous. Case in point, local NGOs in Bangladesh estimated the total number of female prostitutes was as many as 100,000 and UNICEF estimated in 2004 that there were 10,000 underage girls used in commercial sexual exploitation in the country, but other estimates placed the figure as high as 29,000.

The intent of this documentary appears to be shame its viewers into believing that we are pointlessly destroying the environment and prolonging the suffering of the poor with our materialism, over-consumption, and avarice.

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As Milton Friedman used to say, these people are soft of heart, but, unfortunately, they are also soft in their heads. This documentary was all emotion and no perspective.

Never mind that most of the documentary was filmed in countries such as Bangladesh and Cambodia – countries with poor records of protecting property rights and encouraging market activities that promote industry, trade, and economic growth – things that Mr. Morgan seems to think are harmful.

What this documentary did not focus on at all are the benefits that would not have existed had the global trade that fast fashion helped to spur did not occur. For example, this documentary did not mention at all that in the past eight years, Bangladesh's GDP has doubled and the same can be said for Cambodia.

This is how economies develop. Before the Miracle on the Han River, Koreans, too, lived in conditions that were not too different from those conditions that we now see in places like Bangladesh and Cambodia.

Many people in the developed world take our affluent societies for granted. Our ancestors had to suffer for our affluence to exist. The only difference is that we can see Bangladeshis and Cambodians suffer now but we cannot see the suffering that occurred in our own past.

Mr. Morgan and those other activists in his film may have good intentions. However, it does not change the fact that they all suffer from a debilitating case of economic ignorance; and it is this ignorance that is the true enemy of the poor.

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However, the point is that all of this may be moot in the not-too distant future because of improvements in technology. According to this article in The Economist, robots that can stitch and sew keep getting better and cheaper. Mr. Morgan might get his wish some day after all. The question is whether he will be happy with the results.

Feeding the MERS Panic

As MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) continues to spread in Korea, over a thousand people are now under quarantine as it has been confirmed that a third person has died after having contracted the virus.

As a precaution, hundreds of schools have been closed, too.

Also, about a hundred airmen from Osan Air Base have been placed under quarantine at a military hospital when an NCO tested positive for MERS. This is the one to watch out for. Considering how people are packed together in the military, a virus like MERS could be even deadlier than the North Koreans could be.

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Personally, despite all that, I think that the fear of this virus has spread faster than the virus itself and that it is important that people should have some perspective. After all, this is not the first time an unusually strong strain of the flu virus spread in Korea. Also, statistically speaking, people ought to be much more worried about cancer and hypertension than about influenza or SARS or MERS or Ebola.

That being said, however, the public's concern is not entirely hard to understand. After all, wanting to be safe is certainly an understandable response.

Therefore, considering the fact that most of the people who have been quarantined are those who had been unlucky enough to have been in close proximity to the initial patients, especially those who had been in the same hospitals, the government could have publicized the names of those hospitals where the patients were quarantined so that the rest of the public could take precautions and avoid those places.

However, the government chose to keep those names a secret. The government reasoned that publicizing those names would create panic. The government's reasoning is not without merit. If the rest of the public chooses to avoid those hospitals like the plague (pun intended), those hospitals could lose badly needed revenues.

The fact remains, however, that there is something grossly perverse about the government refusing to share information with the public that could be in the public's best interest.

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I think that this is as good a time as any for the government and the country's hospitals to discuss a new insurance policy that hospitals can choose to purchase should epidemics like this occur again in the future. However, that is a discussion for another day. For now, this fire has to be put out first. 

Whether the government's action is justifiable or not, however, for every cause there is an effect. In response to the government's refusal to release the names of those hospitals, members of the public have taken matters into their own hands.

The public's response ranges from the benign, such as recommending that people apply Vaseline inside their noses and buying up tens of thousands of masks (that might or might not work), to the dangerous, such as using social media to create and disseminate their own list of hospitals that they suspect are under quarantine. For all intents and purposes, this list does not seem to be entirely accurate.

When people are afraid, they will seek safety wherever they can find it. And for understandable reasons, the public does not feel safe when the government is keeping tight lipped about this. Therefore, it is only natural that some members of the public have begun to panic. Again, it is not entirely rational, but when was the last time the masses were ever rational in the face of a contagious and potentially deadly disease?

The government could have taken control and ended this panic. If it had decided to publish the names of those hospitals, it would have been able to provide authoritative information that could have put all those false rumors and silly homeopathic medical advice to rest.

On top of that, if it is ever revealed that any of those people under quarantine or patients suffering from MERS contracted the disease because of the government's failure to publicize this information, the government is going to find itself being sued by a lot of angry people.

The government could still act now and allay the people's fear. Instead, the government chose to arrest two people for spreading false rumors about MERS.

Until this virus runs its course, members of the public are going to do whatever they can to feel safe. Unless the government chooses to change tact, any panic that might (or might not) result will be the government's fault.

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Movie Review – Mad Max: Fury Road

WARNING: The following blog post contains a lot of spoilers. If you have not yet seen Mad Max: Fury Road and wish to do so without having the plot given away, then do not read this.

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I had never seen any of the original Mad Max movies. I knew that they existed but for some reason, I was never interested in watching any of them. I would have also ignored Mad Max: Fury Road had it not been for the hubbub that was generated by a Men Rights' group that claimed that the movie was “a feminist piece of propaganda posing as a guy flick.”

So I went to watch Mad Max: Fury Road the other day and it was amazing. The cars looked like it might have come out of Henry Ford's most feverish nightmares, the music was in-your-face, the sets were over-the-top, the action scene was breathtaking and kept me on the edge of my seat, Tom Hardy's Max did not sound as ridiculous as his Bane's voice (it was still a little ridiculous), Charlize Theron can do no wrong, and there was actually a story in the middle of all that! I thought the cherry on top of the whole movie was an extra who played a flame-thrower electric guitar on top of a moving stereo-car.

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However, having a one-track mind, while watching the movie, I could not help but be drawn to the world's economic system.

The movie's antagonist, Immortan Joe (who was played by Hugh Keays-Byrne who apparently was in the original Mad Max movie) is a diseased old man and the tyrannical cult leader of a desert tribe.

Presumably as a result of the nuclear war that destroyed Earth's mighty civilizations, his back is covered in boils. He hides his back from being seen by everyone else using a plastic body armor, which actually has what looks like military ribbons painted onto the chest plate. He also hides his face throughout the whole movie behind a wicked looking mask. He also promises Valhalla for his soldiers who martyr themselves for him (amazing how despite the fact that almost everyone has very funny sounding names, Valhalla's name doesn't change at all).

Whereas Immortan Joe's subjects look like they're dying of thirst, he lives in his mountain-lair, which only a select few are allowed to enter – those select few being his sons and his harem of slave-wives. There is plenty of clean water that is pumped from underground and the water is used to grow fresh green vegetables. He occasionally releases the mountain's valve system and allows water to fall onto his subjects for a precious few seconds; after which he admonishes his subjects not to become addicted to water lest they become angry at its absence.

During the movie, it is revealed that he considers his slave-wives and the children they bear him to be his property. Some of his slave-wives whom he no longer uses to breed have another job – being milked. Yes, Immortan Joe literally milks his women dry.

Tyrant. Cultist. Slaver. Hypocrite. Liar. Immortan Joe does not possess a single redeeming quality.

That IS a wicked looking mask though.
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While I watched the movie, however, it struck me that Immortan Joe was running a rentier state, which is a state that accumulates revenue through the exporting of natural resources rather than through taxation. To be specific, there are several characteristics that have to be met in order for a society to be considered a rentier state.

• Revenues are paid to the governments in the form of rent.
• Revenues are directly accrued by the state.
• Revenues must be accumulated via exports.
• A significant portion of the state's wealth must come from this revenue.

Judging from the scenes in the movie, Immortan Joe did not tax his people. For all intents and purposes, there seemed nothing worth taxing. The same is true of rentier states. As rentier states accumulate their wealth from natural resources, rentier governments have very little incentive to institute extractive institutions such as a tax agency or other ancillary bureaucracies that gather information about their subjects. Of course, this is not to say that rentier states do not gather information about their subjects at all. After all, even rentier states have to carry out the census. However, for most rentier states, patronage works far more effectively than legal institutions.

That is why rentier states (such as Brunei, the country that I was born in) tend to be omnipresent in the lives of their citizens vis-à-vis religion.

Immortan Joe's rentier state was certainly an exaggerated and over-the-top version of the real thing. I don't know if the director, George Miller, actually set out to depict an exaggerated rentier state but regardless of his intent, he did a remarkable job doing so.

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Now let's jump to the end of the movie. At the end, Immortan Joe's dead body is brought back to his city, where he is quickly set upon and mutilated by his former subjects. Immortan Joe's only remaining son is a deformed midget who now fears for his life. The bulk of his army is either dead or stranded in hostile territory somewhere in the desert. More importantly, his wives, who are led by the battered but alive Imperator Furiosa (played by Charlize Theron) are finally free from his iron grip.

Right before the movie ends, however, Immortan Joe's former slave-wives, the ones whom he milked, happily release the mountain's water valves and allow the long-suffering subjects to finally drink to their hearts' content.

From an action movie's point of view, this was a great ending. A tyrant is dead, people are free, and everyone lives happily-ever-after. Down with the hateful patriarchy! Long live the loving matriarchy!

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From an economist's point of view, however, there remain unanswered questions. There is no doubt that Immortan Joe was an evil man, that his regime was tyrannical, and that his belief in his right to own his women and children is a perversion of property rights. But what happens when that water, which Immortan Joe guarded so zealously, is just given to anyone who wants it?

After all, one would think that fresh drinking water is a very valuable, rare, and finite commodity in a post-nuclear apocalyptic world. If all of those pitiful people who understandably and rationally want to drink as much water as possible are allowed to do so, would that not eventually lead to a quick depletion of the water supply and thus be contrary to the best interests of the whole group? In other words, wouldn't this be the perfect example of the Tragedy of the Commons?

In order to ensure that everyone survives, would the new matriarchy establish a socialist utopia where everyone is given just the right amount of water that each person needs? If that happens, then one is immediately reminded of Friedrich Hayek's seminal book The Road to Serfdom where he warned that government control of economic decision-making through central planning inevitably results in tyranny. Will the matriarchy eventually become as evil as the patriarchy it deposed?

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Alternatively, would the new matriarchy establish a form of currency so that individuals can create a rudimentary market and allow market forces to decide how much water can be consumed and by whom?

We will never know. The movie simply ended far too soon.

I give Mad Max: Fury Road four-and-a-half out of five stars.

Smart Sheriff and the New Normal

Laws are usually passed with the best of intentions. For example, even the most controversial laws such as Korea's National Security Act and the United States' Patriot Act were passed with the intention of protecting the country from enemies, spies, saboteurs, and terrorists.

Of course, how those laws get misinterpreted and/or abused are abundant for all to see.

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Recently, the Korean government funded a smartphone app called “Smart Sheriff,” which is an app that blocks access to pornography and other offensive content. Of course, in its infinite wisdom, the Korea Communications Commission, which regulates the telecommunications industry, required telecom companies and parents to download and install “Smart Sheriff” onto any new Android smartphone when it is purchased by anyone aged 18 years or younger.

However, “Smart Sheriff,” which I will simply refer to as SS for brevity, does more than just block access to pornography or gambling sites. There are also hundreds of words that the app specifically gets alerted to such as crazy, garbage, thief, porn, suicide, pregnancy, dating, boyfriend, girlfriend, breakup, menstruation, adoption, divorce, rape, and homosexual love.

Yes, the law may have been passed with the best of intentions; namely, protecting children. It is also true that it doesn't take a literary genius to figure out that SS is rather Orwellian.

What concerns me more about SS than the immediate feeling of being spied on by Big Brother, however, is the way it could become the new normal of tomorrow.

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There was a time when marijuana was perfectly legal in Korea until it wasn't. Now, however, people think that marijuana is dangerous and should forever be designated as a banned substance. (Yes, yes, I know that marijuana is safer that tobacco and other legal drugs. I don't care to listen to the same conversation that I've had about marijuana since I was twenty. Roboseyo already said everything that I have to say about this subject long before I started blogging.)

There was a time when Koreans thought that employment was meant to last a lifetime. That also changed. Now, I doubt that there is anyone under thirty who is still deluded enough to believe that working at any chaebol company for a lifetime is actually realistic (or even desirable).

Going back to SS, I fear that young people will come to accept being lorded over by the government as being normal. It's true that there are ways around SS. Savvy internet users, and I am sure they are legion, could use VPNs or they could simply choose not to buy an Android smartphone (more good news for Apple!).

However, very few things in the world are as pervasive or all-encompassing as government laws.

What happens when an entire generation of teenagers come to accept that SS, and Big Brother in general, is perfectly normal? What happens if they truly believe that SS is there for their benefit – just like people believe that drug prohibition is for their benefit? Will they eventually lose their sense of rebellion or freedom? Will they become angry and lash out? Or worse, will they actually come to love Big Brother? Will they be socialized into accepting further encroachment on their liberties for a false sense of security?

I'm struggling to find an appropriate way to end this post. A pithy quote from James Madison or Voltaire? Too cliché. Simply ask “who is John Galt?” Too many people dislike Ayn Rand.

I don't know how to properly end this. All I feel is as though I were staring into the abyss.

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Movie Review: Ode to My Father

WARNING: The following blog post contains a lot of spoilers. If you have not yet seen Ode to My Father and wish to do so without having the plot given away, then do not read this.

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I did not watch Ode to My Father in the theater when it was released in December last year. I watched The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies instead; much to my utter disappointment. But that's another review for another day.

I watched Ode to My Father for the first time at home yesterday when I saw that it was on VOD. Before having watched it, I refused to read any review or plot summary of the movie. I read the first paragraph of a review once accidentally, where I learned that some have described the movie as Korea's version of Forrest Gump. Anyway, I was very grateful that I watched it at home because for most of the movie's running time, I was either on the verge of tears or I was actually bawling. The movie unashamedly uses cranked-up melodrama and string-heavy musical scores to squeeze as many teardrops as possible from its viewers.

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Let's back up a bit and breeze through the plot. The movie starts with the Hungnam Evacuation. The Yoon family, like countless other families, are fleeing North Korea. In a dramatic scene when the family climbs up a rope net to board a ship that would take them away from North Korea, the story's protagonist, a young boy named Deok-soo loses his younger sister whom he was carrying on his back. His father gets off the ship to find his daughter but not before telling his son that Deok-soo will have to be the head of the family until he comes back. He tells Deok-soo to go to his aunt's house in South Korea where she is running a shop and that he would meet them there later.

After arriving at his aunt's house/shop, Deok-soo keeps the promise that he made to his father and assumes the role of the family's breadwinner. When he grows up, Deok-soo (played by Hwang Jung-min) heads to West Germany to work in a coal mine in order to pay for his younger brother's college tuition. While in West Germany, he meets his future wife, Young-ja (played by Kim Yun-jin). A few years later, Deok-soo heads over to South Vietnam to work as a private contractor (it is never specified what kind of work he does) during the Vietnam War in order to pay for his younger sister's wedding (a different sister) and in order to buy his aunt's shop from her drunkard husband – the same shop that Deok-soo's father told him to wait for him at.

In 1983, Deok-soo manages to find his long-lost sister (played by Stella Choe) whom he had lost in Hungnam through a television program, which helped to reunite family members who had lost each other during the tumultuous days of the Korean War. It turned out that his now grown-up sister had been adopted by an American family after she was found by an American soldier in Hungnam and shipped off to an orphanage in Busan.

The movie then fast forwards to the present-day when an aged Deok-soo (in rather unconvincing makeup) who is now in his twilight years tells his wife that perhaps the time had come to sell his shop, the same one that he and his family fled to all those years ago. The movie ends as Deok-soo wistfully says that his father probably won't be able to come to see him at the shop now because he is too old.

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The Absence of Foreign Devils

One of the things that I really appreciated about this movie is the absence of foreign devils. In a movie that starts out with the Korean War, it would have been easy to portray American soldiers as snarling warmongers, as was the case in Welcome to Dongmakgol.

Instead, the movie showcases an American major general who chooses to dump weapons and supplies into the sea so that there would be more room for refugees to board the ship to safety. This unnamed major general was actually based on Leonard LaRue, the skipper of the SS Meredith Victory, a United States Merchant Marine cargo freighter.

In a different scene, a German manager prevents Korean coal miners from attempting to rescue their co-workers from a collapsed mine, not because it is not worth saving those workers, but because it is unsafe to do so. Of course, the miners refuse to heed the manager's warning.

More importantly, however, during a scene in present-day Korea when a group of Korean juveniles hurl racist epithets at South Asian immigrants living in Korea, the aged Deok-soo comes to their defense as he knows just how difficult it is to live as a working class immigrant in a foreign country.

I spent the first twenty-eight years of my life as an immigrant in foreign countries as well. I could not help but feel moved when I saw that scene. Considering the fact that Korea is one of the least welcoming countries to foreigners, I thought that this was an important scene for all Koreans to see.

Not that Americans didn't have much of a PR nightmare...
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The Forrest Gump Comparison

The movie begins with a fluttering butterfly that flies around Seoul before landing close to an aged Deok-soo. And the movie ends with the butterfly fluttering away. It was clearly a homage to Forrest Gump's opening and closing scenes.

Also, through several twists of fate that can only exist on the silver screen, Deok-soo gets to meet several historically important Korean figures such as Chung Ju-yung, Andre Kim, Lee Man-ki, and, Nam Jin.

However, this is where the similarities to Forrest Gump end. When it comes to addressing historical facts, though it was certainly done in a lighthearted and comical manner, Forrest Gump did not shy away from America's darker past. For instance, the movie does not try to brush aside the Ku Klux Klan, the immorality of segregation, the hypocrisy of some in the anti-war movement, or the drug abuse that existed within the counterculture movement. The movie also did not shy away from the corrupt politicians of that era – in particular Kennedy's philandering ways (or the fact that he and his brother, Robert, were assassinated) and Nixon's Watergate scandal (and his subsequent resignation).

On the other hand, Ode to My Father deliberately makes no mention of any of Korea's darker past. There is no mention of the corrupt Syngman Rhee government, the student protest movement, the Park Chung-hee dictatorship, the Chun Doo-hwan junta government or the Gwangju Uprising. The movie treats Korean history as though none of those things ever happened.

It's true that the movie does not pretend that life was happier under the authoritarian regimes of the past. No one can watch the scene where blackened and grimy Korean migrant workers toil away in coal mines and then think that people's lives were being portrayed overly idealistically. That being said, however, those are some pretty big chunks of history to gloss over.

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Philosophical Objection

Before Deok-soo leaves for Vietnam, his wife Young-ja angrily objects to his decision. When Deok-soo tells his wife that he is obligated to head to Vietnam to earn more money for the family because it's his role to play as the eldest son, Young-ja asks him why he seems to be the only one who seems to be making sacrifices. She tells him to stop living for others and to live his own life. She asks him rhetorically why he seems to be absent from his own life.

However, as soon as she says that, the national anthem plays for the day's flag-lowering ceremony and everyone has to stand at attention and place their hands on their hearts while looking at their closest flag. While the flag is lowered, a speaker plays the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag, which states:

나는 자랑스런 태극기 앞에 조국과 민족의 무궁한 영광을 위하여 몸과 마음을 바쳐 충성을 다할 것을 굳게 다짐합니다.

It translates to: “I pledge, in front of the proud Taegeukgi (the name of the Korean flag), to devote my body and soul for the eternal glory of our country and our people.”

Koreans had to participate in a nationwide flag-raising ceremony twice every day until the mid-1980s.

During the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag, as Deok-soo dutifully makes his pledge, Young-ja refuses to stand until she notices a random stranger glaring at her disapprovingly for her lack of patriotism.

Young-ja then reluctantly stands up and also pledges her fealty to the flag, the country, and her compatriots; thus answering her question as to why Deok-soo cannot seem to stop living for others and start living his own life.

In part, this scene was reminiscent of Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis, whereby the protagonist, Gregor, slowly turns into a cockroach after he has spent many years working at a job that he hates because he feels obligated to pay off his father’s debt and care for his family (although it turns out that his family members are more than capable of taking care of themselves after it is revealed that Gregor's mysterious and unexplained condition prevents him from working).

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I was also reminded of Ayn Rand's quote from Philosophy: Who Needs It.

Now there is one word – a single word – which can blast the morality of altruism out of existence and which it cannot withstand – the word: “Why?” Why must man live for the sake of others? Why must he be a sacrificial animal? Why is that the good? There is no earthly reason for it – and, ladies and gentlemen, in the whole history of philosophy no earthly reason has ever been given.

It is only mysticism that can permit moralists to get away with it. It was mysticism, the unearthly, the supernatural, the irrational that has always been called upon to justify it – or, to be exact, to escape the necessity of justification. One does not justify the irrational, one just takes it on faith. What most moralists – and few of their victims – realize is that reason and altruism are incompatible.

This brief scene encapsulated all the things that I detest about Koreans' belief system – the collectivist nature of 우리 (our or us) – the subjugation of the individual to the group. It is the morality that states that the only meaning and value that an individual possesses is only insofar as he is able to serve the collective; that the group may sacrifice him at its own whim to its own interests.

It is a poisonous philosophy that I learned to reject a long time ago, a philosophy that I think that the Korean people have been marinated in for far too long.

What is absolutely true is that this philosophy has been part of the Korean people's worldview for a very long time. It would have been dishonest to pretend that it has never existed. And to be fair, I think the director, Yoon Je-kyoon, leaves just enough room to let viewers decide for themselves whether living for others is the proper way to live one's own life.

However, what is also true is that all forms of art are selective recreations of reality as perceived by the artist. It is the artist's way of expressing his own metaphysical value-judgments. Yoon Je-kyoon does his best to obfuscate his own personal views in this movie.

Regardless of his view, taking the middle-of-the-road approach, especially in regards to something as profoundly important as an entire people's philosophical approach to life seems like it was more of a disservice.

It is my view that the Korean people need to have a soul-searching discussion about what it means to live for others and to live for oneself. Though there is no guarantee whatsoever that people on my side of the debate will win, if this movie helps to nudge people toward having that discussion, then I think the movie would have succeeded in more ways than just box office returns.

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Verdict

I highly recommend this movie for those who are looking for a good cathartic release that can only come with crying. However, it isn't just tears. The movie manipulates your emotions by taking you on a roller coaster ride full of laughs and tears, even if the laugh is made uncomfortable by the fact that there is one scene that makes light of male rape.

If that is what you are looking for, this movie will deliver in spades.

However, if you are looking for something that is more historically accurate, or if you are looking for something that treats philosophy more seriously, this movie might not be for you.

I give it three-and-a-half out of five stars.