South Korea: The Passenger

Eighty years ago, at the end of a devastating fratricidal war, South Korea was one of the poorest countries in the world, completely dependent on the United States for security and development. Today it’s the tenth economy in the world, dynamic and innovative, a lively and participatory democracy that sits at the table of the great powers. “Hallyu” – the Korean wave of contemporary entertainment – has reached every corner of the world. This rapid, astonishing transformation inevitably brought with it rifts and contradictions. If global youth look at Korea as previous generations looked at Hollywood and New York, young Koreans, on the other hand, view it as “Hell Joseon”: an aging country, an economic system dominated by powerful families, with a fiercely competitive education system, a wide generational gap, and, at the centre of it all, the role of women - one of the keys that The Passenger has chosen to decipher a complex, fascinating country, central to the dynamics of the contemporary world, very often exoticized and idealized in equal measure. IN THIS VOLUME: Hell Joseon by Elisa Shua Dusapin • The View from the North by Lee Hyeonseo • Lessons in Democracy by Jiyoung Choi • plus: the Samsung Republic and the most militarized border in the world, the real reason why Korean women don’t have children, democracy and K-pop, baseball, esports, and shamanism, and much more…