College Entrance Exam Day – Korea’s Holiest?

Praying to the Academic Gods

Thousands of families go into prayer. Airplane flight schedules are curtailed. Trading is delayed on the stock exchange. Military exercises are suspended, police security is tightened. In short, Korea holds its breath and goes into a hush. It’s college entrance exam day. It is perhaps the single most important day in a Korean’s life, since it can determine university options and therefore career and marriage prospects. Korea families are rabid about ensuring that students do as well as they can on this test. They spend almost $18 billion each year on private tutorial courses (called hagwon), by far the most education spending per capita of any country. School kids routinely stay up studying until 1 am only to wake up again at 6 am for years on end as they prepare for this fateful day. For those families who have to endure this pressure cooker existence, life can alternatingly feel like necessary ordeal or social insanity.

 

For decades, Koreans have complained bitterly about the rigidity of its education system. It seems absurd that so much of a person’s future should rest on the results of one arbitrary day. God forbid that a student should catch a cold or otherwise feel slightly off-kilter. It is a leading reason for the soaring teenage suicide rates in the country as well as the main motivation for families to want to emigrate to other, more flexible countries such as the US, Canada or Australia. However, old social structures die hard. Exams such as this are deeply imbedded in Korea’s Confucian past. Change is especially difficult when entrenched interests point to such hard work and discipline as key ingredients to Korea’s success over the years. 

 

Looking at the country from the outside, there is much that looks good about Korean society. It appears to be prosperous and family oriented, with a big middle class. However, from the inside, it can seem like a hyper-competitive, dogmatic existence. It’s a shame that so much of the burden of such a life should fall on emotionally fragile teenagers. The costs, though not always immediately apparent, are no doubt high.

 

Business Week/Bloomberg article on Korea's test day

Poaching the Ivory Poachers

Nothing but heinousness comes of this brutality.

No, this blogger is not advocating committing murder. But the practice of poaching ivory from elephants needs to be exterminated. Now. This Shanghaiist article reports that 1.9 tons of illegally sourced elephant tusks have been found in the Tanzania home of three Chinese men. The culprits made lame excuses for the existence of the stash. The trio claimed that the tusks were being held for a friend. They asserted that they were simply small business people involved in the garlic trade, of all things (the tusks were hid among mounds of the pungent root). They were less sure-footed in explaining why they had tried to offer a bribe of $19,000 to the authorities to let things slide, or why they had dual license plates for their specially converted minibus.

 

As the tide of wealthy Chinese continues grow, one can only hope fervently that a consciousness of the heinous global rare wildlife trade (e.g. elephants, shark fins, bears, tigers) influences their consumption patterns. Paying large sums for rare gemstones, grape wine or fine cloth hardly has the same moral and environmental consequences as permanently killing off species that are both vital and magnificent to behold. 

Asia Getting a Legatum Up

The Legatum Institute has just released its 2013 Prosperity Index. The Legatum Institute is a London-based independent non-partisan public policy organization. Its annual Prosperity Index attempts to define “prosperity” beyond just dollars and cents. Instead, its secret formula takes account of several social virtues - Economy; Education; Entrepreneurship & Opportunity; Governance; Health; Personal Freedom; Safety & Security; and Social Capital.

This year, the Institute took a five year view to chart how the Economy sub-rankings in the Index changed from 2009 to 2013 (above). The results? Serious downgrades for the US (from 12th to 24th) and many other European nations. Hong Kong also got roundhouse kicked on the chin, falling from 11th to 18th. Singapore slipped a touch, from a lofty 2nd to a still-lofty 3rd. All other Asian countries rose commendably, led by China’s improvement from a lowly 34th place to 7th. 

When the other criteria were factored into the index, Asian countries did not rank so well. Singapore led the region at #18, followed by Hong Kong at #19. The top ten nations consisted of Northern European countries, Canada and Australia / New Zealand.

Hopefully, as Asian countries mature enough to be able to begin to ask about the true meaning of life, they too will begin to break in soon into the top ten pack.

More details: Four Major Changes in Global Prosperity - Harvard Business Review

Nanny Money-Bags

The 21st century Mary Poppins?

Below is a re-print of an article that appeared in the always-interesting shanghaiist.com website.
 

Just how far will some families go to have bilingual children? For the US's elite, it may include paying your nanny a six-figure salary. At Pavilion Agency, one of New York City's high-end housekeeping agencies, such numbers are the norm. The nannies are expected to be both caretaker and language teacher, along with whatever else the family may require.

On top of the astronomical salary, apartments, paid vacations and health benefits may also be worked into the arraignments. Before you run and hop on a plane though, consider your options carefully. The price of such a high paying job is very little social life, as the women are expected to drop everything for the whims of the family or even put up with extreme emotional abuse from their employers. The typical nanny in NYC though, earns around 90 yuan (USD $15) an hour.

"I'm desperately seeking qualified Chinese women," Says Pavilion's president Clifford Greenhouse in an article from China Daily. "Bring me one and I can give her a choice of ten top families." Elsewhere too, the demand for bilingual and trilingual nannies is on the rise, and those that are native Mandarin speakers can easily make 300,000 yuan more than their European counterparts. At the Elizabeth Rose Agency in Beverly Hills, mansions, hand-me-down Prada, and ball gowns can also come as perks of the job.

Club Red

Prison guard or concierge?

Now that Bo Xilai’s conviction has been confirmed with the rejection of his final appeal (to no one’s surprise), full attention can turn to examining his fate. Exactly how much of his life sentence will be behind bars is yet to be seen. It’s not unheard of that some political prisoners are released for “medical” or other reasons after only serving a few years, to live out the rest of their years retired by a placid body of water.

It’s also noteworthy to consider what conditions he will be subjected to during the years of his incarceration. Very likely, he will spend his time in Qincheng Prison, an elite correctional compound somewhere in the hills outside of Beijing. As this news article on Qincheng prison details, the place has a section reserved for elite political prisoners that is akin to the “Club Fed” network that exists in the US to house high-profile white collar criminals. Mind you, white collar criminals may not deserve to be locked up together with mass murderers, rapists and hardened violent criminals who can make dropping a bar of soap in the communal shower a life-debilitating event. However, it’s worthwhile to debate the fairness of the relatively cushy conditions of places such as “Club Qincheng”, which some observers joke is like a five star hotel.

 

According to second hand reports, Qincheng provides its VIP guests, er inmates, with the following amenities:

 

- large private cells (215 square feet) with soft bed, sofa, desk and en-suite bathroom.

- prison guards who provide “warmth and care”

- choice of clothes chosen by loved ones at home

- jail chefs that used to work in top Beijing hotels or for “ministry chief level” officials

- milk for breakfast, choice of meat and soup, an apple as dessert

- view of “pavilions, trees and grass reminiscent of a Chinese garden”

- a plot of land to grow vegetables

- TV privileges between 2 pm and 9 pm daily

- walks in the open air six times a week

 

Another source of spiritual comfort for Mr. Bo is that he follows in a line of prisoners who have shared political values and beliefs akin to his own, including his father Bo Yibo and Mao’s widow Jiang Qing. So in this respect, perhaps this sentence is more than simply a long period of reflection and remediation. It may even feel like a homecoming.

Want to be Wealthy? It’s a Feng Shui-In.

A compass for the road to riches

This New York Times editorial by novelist Kim Young-ha presents a rare and intriguing look into an ancient practice (I won't call it a superstition) that Mr. Kim claims is alive and well in corporate Korea today – the country’s version of feng shui, called pung-su. Many of the underlying principles of pung-su are similar to the Chinese system of geomancy that holds that mankind needs to be in harmonious relationship with his surrounding space and with nature in general. However, Korea’s active practice extends into something called physiognomy — the notion that a person’s personality and fate can be “read” in the shape of the eyes, nose, ears and forehead.This type of fortune telling has variations around the world, most notably in astrology and gypsy-esque divinations. However, Korea has a shamanistic strand to its cultural history that raises pung-su to the status of a minor religion.

 

Still, how much weight big-shot Korean CEOs truly place on the directives given to them by their shamans (versus through more conventional forms of number-crunched market analysis) in making business and investment decisions is up for debate.  It would defy credibility that chaebol chiefs rest the fate of their fortunes on the mysterious workings of the Taoist nether world. Nevertheless, as with Western religions, a measured dose of humility towards powers that are outside the human scope of understanding and control is certainly not a bad thing for anyone facing uncertainties, big or small. If nothing else, hedging bets is a good business practice.

2013 Forbes China Rich List

Many more of these to go around

The Forbes list of 100 richest mainland Chinese is out. In aggregate, the numbers are significantly bigger than in 2012 – 44%, in fact. The top 100 are worth $316.5 billion, or on average $3.16 billion each. The new money emperor is Wang Jianlin, the Chairman of Dalian Wanda Group, a real estate conglomerate. He is worth $14.1 billion. He eclipses China’s beverage tycoon Zong Qinghou, who headed last year’s list. The key themes for top wealth are real estate, internet/IT, and automobiles. Of the leading 25 names, close to half are in either real estate (seven) or internet (five). Another key theme? Despite the volatile times, the rich as a class continue to get richer. In a capitalist’s world, together with death, gravity and the speed of light, that seems an immutable law.