Mock Trial Opening Speech

This is a prosecution opening speech that I wrote for a mock trial case... There are many other versions, but I think this one's the best..:)

Opening Speech (Prosecution)

Plaintiff Counsel Samuel Seung Min Kim

May it please the court.

A FIVE-SECOND-PAUSE OF DEATHLY SILENCE. That, is precisely the amount of time Ms. Arthurs has given to herself on the morning of June 1^st, 2010.

Picture in your mind a high school newbie teacher. At the very first year of her teacher life, she encounters this naughty kid who always manages to destroy her class atmosphere. He doesn’t listen to her warning to the class to grow up. He doesn’t understand her way of speaking to students, which is to constantly shout “BEHAVE” into the class. His name is Kirwan Rohane.

And on this day of June 1^st 2010, the teacher smells something burning. As soon as she detects the smell, she doesn’t take a second in assuming that this is Rohane’s mischief. She walks toward the desk, but hears Rohane shouting that the test tube is about to explode. So she picks up the tong, but at the same time discovers the handle has been burned to fool her. It’s a trap designed to burn her hands.

She screams out loud. “YOU LITTLE WRETCH.” But before she takes her next move, she takes a pause. A pause that lasted for a grand total of FIVE seconds. Then, she smashes her hand to the face of the “wretch” named Kirwan Rohane.

And today, the prosecution side charges the teacher, her name being Ali Arthurs, for one count: assault occasioning actual bodily harm contrary to Section 59 of Crimes Act 1900. And it is of our burden, ladies and gentlemen, to prove BEYOND ALL REASONABLE DOUBTS that 1. The defendant has caused Kirwan Rohane an apprehension of an immediate physical harm and 2. The defendant had her full intention in doing such actions.

Now the defense side today doesn’t have to invest a single amount of time trying to prove the kind of “wretch” Kirwan Rohane is. In fact, Mr. Rohane will kindly come up to the witness stand today, and tell you that he has actually received two warnings from the headmaster himself. Tell you that he is not a very good student in school honestly. Tell you that he wasn’t concentrating on the class of June 1^st 2010. Tell you that his actions were actually more than enough to anger Ms. Arthurs.

And after that, Ms. Chris Burnes, Mr. Rohane’s good friend will come up to that witness stand and tell you that in fact Ms. Arthurs isn’t a good science teacher after all. Tell you that simply shouting “Behave” and “Grow up” is all she did to quite her misbehaving students. Tell you that Ms. Arthurs was in fact very angry at Mr. Rohane on that day. Tell you that the blow could be nothing but a deliberate one full of abhorrence towards Mr. Rohane.

And at the end of this trial, when everything’s finished, my co-counsel Sungwoon Si, will come back to you. He will stand at this position, and talk all this through. He will give you REASONS why Ms. Arthurs was thinking of REVENGE and was full of ANGER during that five seconds of UTTER PAUSE. Speak to you that the blow cannot possibly be an accident or a mistake.

Now, before I finish my speech, ladies and gentlemen, I wish to give you a five seconds of UTTER SILENCE, an UTTER PAUSE. Just like the one Ms. Arthurs has given to herself before smashing the face of Mr. Rohane. And during that five second, I ask you to think about basically anything: The lunch you had today, the things you have learned in school, and so on.

And AFTER that thinking, when I say “thank you” and get back to my seat, I want you to REALIZE the amount of thinking you can do for just five seconds of time. The amount of THINKING that the defendant could have done before the moment she took her next move. The amount of DETEST that would have been burning inside the heart of Ms. Arthurs during that FIVE SECONDS OF PAUSE.

(After five seconds of rest)

Thank you.

My insight on Korean Education

     One of my English teachers back when I was a middle school student used to say education in South Korea is one of the things that we are fully authorized to reproach about. Her rationale was that we the students are the ones who are directly being affected by the government policies on the education.
     And having been one of those "directly influenced" by the education policies for 10 years, I have a lot of things to talk about the problematic features of the South Korean education's current state.
     The biggest problem of South Korean education is with the fact that most of the South Korean students' education is heavily dependent on private education. 3 trillion won, approximately 30% of the national budget, is yearly invested for private education tuition fee. 
     Called "Hagwons", the private education institutions in South Korea has been successful in taking a great part inside the students' education. Currently, almost every student in the country goes to at least one hagwon, and it is close to sheer impossibility to get a good grade in school without the help of those private education institutions.
     These hagwons are especially concentrated on a region named "Gangnam" in Seoul. As a student who has lived in the Gangnam region for about 4 years before coming to KMLA, I will briefly illustrate the lives of normal South Korean "Gangnam" students.
     
      The typical life of a Gangnam student begins approximately around 7 o'clock in the morning. After getting up, students put on their school uniform, have breakfast, and then leave for school.
     An ordinary high (or middle) school in Korea finishes its daily curriculum around 5' o clock in the afternoon. The students, after being released from school, mostly go to "hagwons" until around 10 P.M. After coming back home around 10:30, the students spend the rest of the night doing assignments for the school and the hagwons. Majority of the Gangnam students go to sleep around 2 A.M. in the morning.


     Though there is a little bit of extremity added as it is an example of Gangnam students' lives, the daily routine of a typical South Korean consisted of "school-hagwon-assignment-go to sleep" stays the same.
     
     And the biggest problem with this way of life is, of course, the enormous amount of psychological and physical distress that students receive daily. The students are subjugated to extreme fatigue after being exploited all their soul by the everlasting cycle of school, hagwon, and assignment.
     However, perhaps another colossal cost that the country has to pay for possessing a deformed education structure is the enlarging of the gap between the rich and the poor. And as the tuition fee that the students have to pay for going to hagwons is mostly high and could be very burdensome to poor, a lot of those students living in the rural sides or those in a plebeian household are unable to go to multiple hagwons, unlike those who are rich.
     Such difference in the level of education between the rich and the poor, of course, leads to the expansion of the gap based on the difference in the position between the rich and the poor.


     And the government, after receiving huge amount of complaints from the social minors, came up with a policy: to restrict the private education in South Korea. Based on this theme, the South Korean government came up with a series of acts that hindered the growth of private education, such as regulating the hagwons that teaches students after 10 P.M. or collecting more tax from hagwons.

The head of the ministry of education, science, and technology, Lee Ju Ho

     Some might praise such behaviors to be minor-friendly and pursuing equality amongst students. However, I believe that these acts actually brings about larger amount of disadvantages compared to its benefits. Here's a reason why.
     As explained above, the private education in South Korea takes up the majority of the students' education level. And if the government happens to hinder the growth of such important factor in students' lives, all they are doing is simply stopping the future leaders and scholars from being competent.
      Plus, there is an error in the logic that the left-wing parties use when asking for policies hindering private education, which is that there should be an equality amongst students, no matter how they are born. 
     What they are failing to consider is the difference that evidently exists among students. There can be a student who is born with a physical or psychological ability best for figure skating, and there can be a student who is born with an aptitude for a plumber. And private education is the best way to satisfy such differences, as there are obvious limitations of the school education, for it is "universally" applied to all recipients. It was not the standardized school curriculum that brought about Kim Yuna or Ban Ki Moon; the private educations' help was there to maximize their innate talents. And to me, the idea of treating Kim Yuna and Ban Ki Moon "THE SAME WAY" just for mere "EQUALITY" seems to be nothing more than that of insanity.
      Yes, I know. It's harsh, and it's unfair to see students being discriminated. But c'est la vie. Such is the way the life rolls, and maybe it's the job of the school to teach the students how discriminatory the society is before they are tossed into the harsh reality, unprepared.

My Insight on Korean Politics

     So last time I wrote something about the things that happened in South Korea recently. I'm going to proceed such writing and talk about my overall insight on the status quo Korean politics.

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     About three days ago, I scribbled about the controversy over free lunch service that dominated South Korea (especially Seoul) for about three months. (From June to August) And one thing that Mr. Garrioch had asked me was: Why is free lunch service being such an issue in Korea?

     And I tried to come up with a reason why. Why do the South Korean politicians had to be obsessed with free lunch service out of a sudden? Weren't there other more important issues that could have been more closely dealt by the DP (Democratic Party, the most influential left-wing party in South Korea) and the GNP (Grand National Party, the largest right-wing party in the National Assembly), such as the low quality of public education in South Korea or the poor treatments toward those with a distressful job? Why did the free lunch service suddenly have to be a subject of extreme quarrel?

The mark of the Democratic Party (DP)

The mark of the Grand National Party (GNP)

     Honestly,  I didn't know. And when I asked the same question (why the "free lunch service" had to be an issue rather than other urgent welfare issues like the minimum wage) to my peers, the answer was also the same.
     Coming to think about it, I think the mere reason that made the politicians to be extremely enthusiastic about the free lunch service was the fact that it was something dealt importantly during the Seoul mayor election in 2010. Out of a sudden, Myung-sook Han, the official candidate of DP as a Seoul mayor, happened to bring up the issue (which almost nobody in the society, even the students, cared about) and since then the free meal idea has been a matter of severe altercation.

     And this, is the type of problem that I find in South Korean politics. The politicians are too busy fighting about the things that people don't even know why they should care about. Even to me, a person who was one of those attending public middle schools in Seoul, the free lunch service simply seemed simply out of place, out of time.

     Another good example of South Korean politicians' foci being deviated from the public's wants could be the Four River Project. The Four River Project basically aims to promote the quality of the four major rivers in South Korea (The Han River, Kum River, Yong-San River, and Nak-Dong River). This project was put onto open dispute after its proposal as one of the promises that the current president of South Korea (Myeong-bak Lee) made.

The mark of Four River Project

     Many people in South Korea simply assume that 'promoting the four rivers in South Korea' is something worth being done, for it is an issue passionately dealt with in the National Assembly. But if we stop and think about it for a moment, it is not hard to realize that the project referred to as "Four River whatever" by South Koreans is not something to be so crazily fighting over about. Before being proposed as part of the presidential election promise, there was basically no noteworthy public appeal neither a renown survey on the public asking for an improvement on the quality of the four rivers. In other words, the politicians have been being frenzy about something that nobody in the public really cares (or should care) about.

     In this piece of writing, it is not of my intention to censure a specific party for making foolish proposals. Rather, my intention is to criticize the overall South Korean politicians for being so uncommunicative with the public. Every now and then in "election seasons", we find Congress member candidates babbling about "being a good listener to public's needs," and then find them on the news for being involved in a corruption after a few months.

     One of the cardinal premises of a representative democracy (a form of democracy in which politicians "represent" the public) is that the politicians are able to correctly analyze the public's desires and reflect them in upcoming policies. And if that's not something being done in South Korea, I have to say, it is time for a reformation to be made inside the National Assembly Hall, not on the Four Rivers of South Korea that nobody even "gives a damn."

A scribbling about Seoul mayor Oh's resignation

     It all started with the Seoul Mayor and city council member election about a year ago. At the regional election, though the mayor seat was taken by the right-wing (conservative) Grand National Party's candidate Sehoon Oh, the majority of city council member was given to the left-wing (liberal) Democratic Party. 

     And one of the most important topics that were dealt in the 2010 Seoul Mayor Election was the "free lunch service to public school students" policy. Proposed by the Democratic Party's candidate Myungsook Han as one of the mayor election pledges, the offer received severe criticism of the Grand National Party for its huge costs.
     The public and the media seemed to forget the free lunch issue after the victory of Oh as the Seoul mayor. However, the controversy promulgated its revival about half a year after the election, when the Seoul city council, ruled by the liberal Democratic Party, passed a law promising free lunch for all public students until 2014.
     And such independent act of the city council was, indeed, more than enough to infuriate the conservative mayor Oh. As soon as he heard the news of the law passing the city assembly, he held a press conference and publicly called for a referendum on Seoul citizens upon the issue of free lunch service.
     Mayor Oh's party, Grand National Party (this will be abbreviated as "GNP" from now on), also showed a fervent attitude. The head of GNP, Junpyo Hong, appeared on a press conference with red face and severely censured the Democratic Party for using the majority in the city council to randomly establish a law that "needed some talk over."
Democratic Party(will be shortened to DP from now on), the source of all this louse noise, did not stand still of course. Hakgyu Son, the head of DP, came up with a clever plan: to ask people to NOT vote in the referendum. The election law of South Korea asked for more than 33.3% of Seoul citizens participating in the citizen voting, and it was Son's tactic to make the number to fall below 30%.

The members of the left-wing Democratic Party asking citizens to deny voting for the citizen referendum.

     For the next few weeks, the media was bombarded with the news of the right-wing politicians clashing with left-wing politicians everywhere: from public places like press conferences to informal places such as the streets.
     And two days before the day of the long-expected referendum, mayor Oh, who had (rather obviously) been the most ardent one in asking people to advocate the free lunch service, suddenly made a bold declaration: he would resign immediately if the participation rate falls below 33% or the majority of the referendum asks for a free lunch service.
      The whole Seoul and of course the GNP was suddenly gulped in chaos. Right after Oh's announcement of his gambling, Hong (the head of Grand National Party) opened up a press conference and proclaimed that such actions of the mayor was not something sincerely talked over before.
     Nevertheless, the next day, Oh appeared on his last press conference before the referendum and cried crazily while his speech asking for the Seoul citizens to vote. He even bowed (which is considered as an action containing the highest kind of respect to the receivers in South Korea) three times.
     And finally, the day of the days came. The referendum was held everywhere inside Seoul. Placards asking for citizens to not participate in the public vote still on the streets, the strangest type of election (in which people were asked to NOT participate in the vote, not GO AGAINST it) that I have ever seen in my life had at last commenced.
     For the whole day, "participation rate" was the top search keyword in Naver (a search engine that is like the Google of South Korea), and the GNP and DP silently waited for the results to come out. Both of the parties, respectively representing the conservative and liberal side of South Korea, invested enormous amount of time and support to this referendum. The party that would lose in this election would wreak havoc evidently.
And finally the number came out after the termination of the election at 7 p.m.


25.8%.
The GNP had miserably lost.
     And that day, on his way to home, mayor Oh told the media that he will state his official stance the next day after "arranging his thoughts."
     The next morning, mayor Oh called for a press conference.
     With voice of somewhat indifference and calmness, the mayor formally announced that he would resign from the seat.
     The DP and other liberal media hailed Oh's choice, while the GNP was, of course, extremely incensed by mayor Oh's random actions. Hong openly said that the life of Oh as a politician is over, and he tried diverse measures in effort to buffer the aftermath of referendum (which actually ended up in a failure in fact.)

Former mayor Oh stating his resignation in a conference.

     So what's my whole idea about this referendum?
     My idea about is that I am extremely disappointed at how the GNP and DP both acted to this issue.
     I didn't like the kind of strategy DP used. A true "democratic" party would ask for people to participate in the vote and exert their sovereign party named "election right." But instead, what they did was telling people to not appear on the poll places. They asked for people to stay silent.
     But did I like GNP's attitude? No. Especially the attitude of Mr. Hong, the representative and the head of GNP. He was thoroughly emotional in the matter of this referendum, always appearing on public places with reddened face. He easily made errors in public talks, a typical example being him saying that the GNP has actually won this referendum as 25.8% is a pretty high number. This (obviously) became a figure of extreme mockery by the liberals in the society. Personally, seeing the whole fuss that Hong created over during the referendum season, I started to become skeptical about his suitability as a representative for the biggest conservative party in South Korea.

The Restriction on Dating at KMLA

(A picture of my school, KMLA)

     As the "About Me" section in the right column says, I am a sophomore (10th grade) at a school named "Korean Minjok Leadership Academy(KMLA)." This school is actually one of those "special" schools that are granted to do "whatever it wants."

     And I believe that my school has been pretty much successful in fully utilizing such freedom; we possess a lot of differences compared to "normal" high schools. A good example could be the EOP (English Only Policy, a policy forcing students to use English Only in the school campus), diverse types of classes that cannot be accommodated in normal Korean schools (like "AP Psychology" or "AP French"), and wide support for teachers' academic research. (For more information, visit Here)

    However, perhaps the most important thing that distinguishes KMLA from normal school is the fact that it is a boarding school. There were less than five boarding schools when KMLA was established in 1995, and still the number is extremely small compared to other countries'.

     As a boarding school, my school has an extremely enormous amount of "regulation" and "discipline" codes, an example being "Cleaning Regulation" or "Computer Regulation." However, out of all these codes, the one that is considered to be the most important and harsh in its corresponding penalty (which is being expelled) is the "Dating between students of different genders."

     And being a guy who had lived in the KMLA dormitory for over half a year now, I am starting to be doubtful about whether the punishment on dating has to be this harsh.

     The first reason making me to think so is concerned with the basic reason why a "school" exists. It is taken for granted that the sole purpose of school is to make a person who will be able to successfully adapt and "melt into" the society. And, obviously, "dating" and "having relationship with a person who has a different gender" has a high possibility of being an important aspect inside one's life in society. If KMLA ends up strictly regulating the relationship amongst students of distinct sex, the students, after graduation, will not be able to sufficiently adjust to this part of society quickly.

     The second reason deals with the fact that "students have a right to choose whatever they want to do." The students, especially those who have lived in this world for more than 17 years, have the ability to make decisions for themselves. And when the decision happens to be a bad one, it is the students who should take care, not the teachers in the Student Discipline Department. Thus, the teachers do not have the right to intervene in the students' decision that they should date with each other; it is the students, actually, who have the obligation to pay for the choices that they have made about having deep relationship with each other.

     The last reason deals with the high possibility of teachers misunderstanding simple close relationship between a boy and a girl as a more serious one. It is an extremely easy thing for a boy and a girl to be simply "close" without having any type of amorphous emotion to each other. And this type of relationship have a high potential of being mistaken as one of love, thus receiving skepticism for no reason, and, perhaps, a wrong accusation of penalty.

     Of course, dating in high school possesses numerous problems, such as being unable to concentrate on schoolwork or the possibility of bringing about an "unwanted" consequence. However, isn't 17 the age to let students decide the kind of life they want to live?


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A little note for Mr. Garrioch who might be reading this entry:  My defending for dating in KMLA does NOT mean that I'm in a deep relationship with a girl, neither that I'm thinking of having one.

Schools Kill Creativity?

One of the first video clips that I watched after getting to know the existence of the TED site (www.ted.com) was "Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity." (It was not hard to find the Ken Robinson speech, actually, as all I had to do was click the "Most Viewed" category in the left column.)

As a person who have great interest in education and is actually experiencing the current South Korean education, there were many parts throughout the presentation that impressed me.

One of the phrases that literally “spoke to the heart” was "If you think of it, the whole system of public education around the world is a protracted process of university entrance." Strangely, this idea seemed to perfectly fit the condition of South Korea. Every type of education that I receive seems to be a series of procedures which ultimately aims for college (or university) entrance. Especially for private education centers, (so-called “hagwon” here in Korea) even for those subjected towards elementary school students, their sole and ultimate objective and reason for existence seems to be a university entrance.

Also, his saying that “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with something original” really struck to me. The thing in South Korea is that almost nobody in the class is “prepared to be wrong.” Sometimes, the atmosphere even seems to be hindering a certainbeing from being “prepared to be wrong.” Almost every class is simply “dead” and severely lacks voluntary participation of students. And it seems barely possible to expect a single piece of “creativity” being drawn from such a depressed class.

However, one question came to my mind: Are art and music classes that Sir Ken Robinson is considering to be "problematic to be neglected" really helpful in nurturing students' creativity? Throughout the lecture, Sir Ken Robinson seemed to believe that solving math and science problems is not a good way to attain creativity compared to art classes and music classes. Here, I thought it was worthwhile to cast questions on this ruling premise, as there are many ways in which math or science could be used to develop creativity of a person. Also, there could be individual differences on the means that would be the best in nurturing creativity, and simply asking for increase in the art classes without considering the difference in students might not be the best idea.

Nevertheless, I strongly agreed with the idea that there is a great imbalance on the importance of subjects dealt in the school, and this could severely damage the development of students' creativity. To be honest, I didn’t know who Ken Robinson before seeing this video clip. However, he now is one of my best public speakers, and I’m planning to search for his other public speeches given to the public in the boundary of education.

My writing style (Term Paper Attatched)

My Writing Style

On the August of 2009, my blog, consisted of approximately 500 entries mainly dealing with video clips and music files that I collected for 4 years, was formatted due to copyright issues.

What was left after being forced to press the “Blog Initialization” button by the “Korean Copyright Protection Organization” was sheer nothingness; there wasn’t a single entry or even the slightest hint of how the blog used to look like originally.

The deteriorated blog, renamed as “samuel1011’s blog,” was left untouched for the next two months or so. Then, around October, a thought about reviving the blog came to my mind.

From that moment, I started to think about the ways I could use to re-thrive my blog without violating the copyright law. So what actually makes a violation of copyright, then? A use of somebody else’s work without his or her consent. Then how could I make sure that every single thing mentioned in my blog is done so with the original author’s permission?

By making myself as the original author of all my blog entries. That was it.

This is exactly how my writing career started: by posting my writings as the blog entries.

At first, the blog posts were mainly essays based on my experiences, just like this one that I’m writing right now, accompanied with self-examination. Most of these essays didn’t have a set organization; I just wrote down the things that simply came to my mind. There wasn’t a strong logic or rationale pointing towards certain subject or topic, mostly appealing towards Pathos rather than Logos or Ethos.

A typical example could be the “Bliss of Short Height,” which talked about my relatively short height being an advantage, contrary to most people’s beliefs and perceptions. (It’s a pity that I can’t provide you with the writing itself because it was originally written in my mother tongue, Korean…)

Then, I started to post writings with insights in certain issues, especially about the extremely weak public education infrastructure of South Korea. Also the weak social welfare policies of South Korea was one of the subjects of my critique. My writing’s style shifted from Pathos to Logos.

Not so long after this change happened (about one or two months after), I entered KMLA.

To be honest, I have to say, I was extremely disappointed at the low and basic level of English writing education that I received in Ms. Choi’s class at the first semester.

However, in June, I was required to write a term paper in Mr. Johnson’s class. After brainstorming for a long time, I decided to write about a topic that I have written many logical, serious essay about (though a large part of them were in Korean): the low level of social welfare policies in South Korea and the ways that could improve the level of policies for the social minors.

And I believe that this term paper, On the Methodology of Solving the Inequality between the Rich and the Poor in Korea, is the best and the highest level of “logical writing” I have done so far.

So, my writing style can be dichotomized based on the tone: Emotional and logical. And my strength on the former type of writing is on my experiences. Nevertheless, a lot of my emotional writings based on my experiences fail to form a bond with the reader cause it’s about my life, not the reader’s. Also, (I found out this recently) I am unable to write a literary work, even in Korean.

My strength on the latter type of writing (logical) is on the social welfare policies in South Korea. However, I am pretty much ignorant about other countries’ issues, and also lack knowledge on certain parts of study that could be helpful in logical writing, such as high-level philosophy. 

On the Methodology of Solving the Inequality between the Rich and the Poor in Korea

Contrary to General MacArthur’s anticipation of 100 years, mere 30 years was the time needed for Korea to resurrect itself from the turmoil of Korean Civil War and Japanese imperialism. Park Jung Hui, reigning from 1963 to 1979 as 5^th, 6^th, 7^th, 8^th, and 9^th president in South Korea, established the social infrastructure for development under the name of “Saemaeul Movement.”

Accordingly, the GDP of South Korea started to surge during the 1970s, and by 2007, the GDP per capita has increased by approximately 300 times compared to that of 1953, from $67 to $20045. In short, the first 60 years of Korea ever since it was established has been a series of hectic projects for development. (Statistics Korea)

However, all this seemingly “Fast” development, unfortunately, brought about numerous problems inside the society such as: The conglomerates—like Samsung—destroying small entrepreneurs and thus eradicating possibilities of ground-breaking growth in Korean economy, or regionalism between Jeolla-Nam Province and Gyungsang-Nam Province.

And possibly the biggest problem caused from this “hasty” modernization and industrialization of Korea is, perhaps, the widened—and is pretty much widening even now—gap both in income and political power between the rich and the poor. Unfortunately, during the reign of development, the Korean government didn’t have the time to care of social minors who fell behind and cried for help. Thus, the rich started to gain predominance over the poor in the society through diverse ways such as higher level of education through private education or lobbying in politics.

Numerous researches prove this fact: For example, 59.4% of individual stocks are owned by top 1% of people in Korea, and 53.4% of real estate property in Korea are taken by top 10% richest. Also, it has been found that the money owned by top 20% richest, being $68,850 is 171 times larger than the total money owned by low 20%. In short: The distribution of wealth throughout the country is severely imbalanced. (Yonhap News)

 And the social welfare systems are not even helping this severe gap between the rich and the poor reduce. The annuity insurance and health insurance has been proven to be actually worsening the Gini’s coefficient, and unemployment insurance degraded the Gini’s coefficient by mere 0.01%. (Kim Hae Won, Kim Eul Sik, and Jun Seung Hoon 70).

So, if the wealth gap issue is such a serious thing in Korean society and the social welfare systems that are supposed to weave the gap ends up even worsening the situation, what are some fair policies that can be used to solve this chronic problem of every capitalistic society?

The first try can be made in the education sector of Korea. Currently, the biggest aspect of Korean education that promotes the expansion of gap between the rich and the poor is the private education.

That is, compared to the kids in rich households receiving opportunities to have better education, the kids in poor or socially minor households are bound to have fewer opportunities in receiving complementary education—in other words, private education. This can be proved in the statistics saying that while $160 is the only money spent for average one kid in rural areas, the twice of the number, $321 is the money that is spent for average one kid in Seoul. (Statistics Korea)

As receiving better education equals graduating better schools (for most of the cases) and better bachelor degree means higher pay, the possibility of rich men’s children getting high pays increase, and the same happens with the possibility of poor men’s children getting low pays.

Thus, as the supplementary education through private education and the corresponding increase of possibility in success results in widening the gap between the rich and the poor, private education should be the first thing to be decreased in its size and its influential scope. Then how, exactly should private education be

The government’s current measures taken to prevent overheating in private education is to simply “restrict” the market, such as making it illegitimate to teach lessons after ten o’clock. However, before anything, we have to think about the reason why students love private education so much. And the reason is simple: public education cannot satisfy their demand.

So to speak, if the government really wants to discourage citizens going to so-called “hagwons” in order to complement themselves disappointed from the low quality of public education, the process to enhance the quality of public education should be preceded before any other processes related to directly restricting the private education market. When the government decides to neglect this extremely important but evident fact, it would have to pay the price for preventing the growth of many student’s main source of study—“hagwons”—and thus temporarily—or at times permanently—prohibiting the nurture of student’s education

Some good examples of measures that can improve the quality of public education, or school teaching would be: 1) Evaluation on the teachers and personnel administration based on it (both from parents, students, and peer teachers) 2) Giving high-quality training on the methodology of effective teaching and school discipline, also doing a personnel administration on 3) Governmental evaluation on the classes of teachers.

And the moment the public education finally reaches the level of private education and the citizens see nothing to “supplement” from the “hagwons,” that would be the moment when private education would degenerate itself in this land.

The second try we can make is on the politics, and there are mainly two things we can do: eradicating bribery, and stimulating the participation of social minors.

Bribery is the chronic problem in politics that every democratic and capitalistic nation in the world suffers. However, for countries like Korea that has majority of the National Assembly filled with so-called “right wing” parties advocating the predominance of the rich in a society (National Assembly), it is highly possible for the right wing politicians, being bribed by the rich social “elites,” to use the power of majority in order to pass a law highly favorable to the rich people in the society.

Thus, eradicating bribery would probably be one of the most imminent things to do in the politics of Korea, or else the stances and thoughts of social minors would not be emphasized or even be proposed in the National Assembly: Just because they didn’t have the enough money to bribe them.

Some good and effective policies that can be implemented for rooting out lobbying and bribery would probably be: 1) Providing the politician with 1.2 times of money that he has been tempted to be bribed when he notifies to the police of being bribed 2) Force the individual—or organization—to pay at most $10 million when caught for bribery and so on.

And for some reason, contrary to other advanced and developed country, in Korea, researches and public surveys show that the social minors are very passive in making their voice or offering for their rights.

This can be proved from the fact that 90% of the people living in the top 10 “gu”s (districts) which voted the most in Korea have their own house, while only 26% of top 10 “gu”s which voted the least in Korea have their own house. The scholastic achievement also is different: 86% of the people in former cases have Bachelor’s degree, while only 50% percent of the people in the latter has graduated college. (Nak Gu Son 43-47)

In other words, social minorities, the ones who should be the most fervent and active in showing its political views and position, are being extremely passive and shy in showing itself.

Thus, as it is extremely easy for the government to simply end up in neglecting or not even knowing the ideas of social minors due to the bribery of social elites in a democratic society, it would be the wisest action for the Korean government to decide to hear the outcry of social minors.

Some examples of ways that promotes the participation in politics by the social minors are: providing incentives for the social minors to cast a vote or have a demonstration by providing material help to the voters or demonstrators, holding a campaign or doing a nation-level education on the indifferent poor people about the benefit that they can get from actively participating in the politics, and (in cases when there aren’t any public presentation of citizen’s idea) actually trying to learn the life and the sorrows of poor people through acting like one, thus spontaneously feeling the discomfort and things that need improvement.

The last type of attempt we can make is improving the quality of social welfare system provided to people.

Currently, the amount of yearly budget for welfare in Korea is the lowest out of the OECD member nations (Choi 1). Also, the efficiency of the social welfare systems are being highly doubted upon, as researches show that in some cases, the Gini’s Coefficient even exacerbated. (Kim Hae Won, Kim Eul Sik, and Jun Seung Hoon 70).

Thus, though it is a very urgent matter for the government to adopt policies in which slows down or stops the aspects that causes the gap between the rich and the poor to widen, the kind of policy that holds the same amount of significance would be to help the poor—both with temporary and permanent help—so they could have an opportunity to do a fair competition with the reach people in the society.

And some good policies promoting the quality of social welfare system can be: 1) Increasing the amount of people who are receiving the benefits of social welfare system 2) Allocating higher proportion of yearly budget to the social welfare systems and so on.

When I was young, I was always curious about why couldn’t everybody in the society be happy; why beggars had to shiver in subways craving for 500 won coin while millionaires used $50,000 for one bag in Louis Vuitton Shops, why 20% of the Korean society earned 71% of the total income of Koreans (Hwang A3), and why the gap between the rich and the poor had to exist at the first place.

Now I realize, finally, that it is not the nature of capitalism or any special trace of Korean society that gives 171 times more money to top 20% in the society compared to the least 20%, forces people who cry in the street after having all their properties under sequester, and take away children’s rights to receive proper education just because their parents don’t have enough money to pay for their hagwon tuition fee.

The true culprit for all this social unhappiness, dissatisfaction, and chaos inside the society is, indeed: the inefficiency of governmental social welfare systems and policies to decrease the gap between the rich and the poor.

Cited Works

1) The Official Site of Statistics Korea 18 August 2008, Dept. of Statistics Politics, 9 May 2011

<http://kostat.go.kr/portal/korea/kor_nw/2/14/1/index.board?bmode=read&aSeq=60300>

2) Yonhap News (The article was uploaded in Naver News) 2 December 2007, Yonhap News (According to Statistics Korea)

<http://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LS2D&mid=sec&sid1=101&sid2=263&oid=001&aid=0001843291&iid=>

3) Kim Hae Won, Kim Eul Sik, and Jun Seung Hoon. Research on the redistribution of lifetime income through Social Welfare System KLI (Korea Labor Institute), 25 June 2010

4) The Official Site of Statistics Korea 2007~ 2010, Statistics Korea, 11 May 2011

<http://kosis.kr/gen_etl/start.jsp?orgId=101&tblId=DT_1PE101&conn_path=I2&path=>

5) The Official Site of National Assembly in Korea 2011, National Assembly, 13 May 2011

<http://www.assembly.go.kr/renew10/mem/mem/mem_search.jsp>

6) Nak Gu Son, Map of South Korea’s Social Politics, Humanitas, 18 May 2010

7) Choi Min Young, “Welfare is the Responsibility of a Nation” Gyung Hyang Newspaper 1

8) Hwang, Hyung Jun, Jung, Hye Jin “Pareto’s Law Coming True?” Donga Ilbo Society A3