Impressions of South Korea: Work Ethic 1

"Whatever does not kill you makes you stronger." Nietzsche

"You do not know what is enough until you know what is more than enough." Nietzsche
(approximate quote)

On my second visit to Korea, I stayed at my parents-in-law's apartment in Yeouido.

At night, I would watch the people come into and go out of restaurants across the street from the high-rise apartment complex. I would see some people come out of the restaurants at 2 or 3 in the morning during weekdays.

I would take walks in the morning. In these walks, I would see some restaurants open at 6 in the morning. There were also street vendors who were selling various types of Korean fast food. I do not know when they opened.

My father in law tells me that I am lazy. He doesn't tell me directly. He tells me by sweeping the hardwood floor of the apartment. He tells me by doing the dishes. He tells me by getting on his knees and cleaning the floor with a rag. He is trying to understand me but I don't speak much Korean and he doesn't speak much English. My wife often interprets what my father-in-law is saying. Often, I find him to be too judgemental. After all, I have bipolar disorder. When I work too much or too hard, I get hallucinations. I can become manic and lose all sense of boundaries. I have left my family and gambled at Mohegan Sun for three days straight, sleeping very little. I feel incredibly high and nothing feels real.

He says that God can heal all things, and that my lack of faith is the real problem. I hate the way he makes me feel so wrong. There have been plenty of times in which I worked very hard. My family owns a chain of retail-oriented salons in New Hampshire, Massachusettes, and Florida. I worked by myself at our salon/store in Massachusettes for almost three months. Everday, I had to get up at early, get to work by 9:30. The salon/store would close at 9:30. Each day, I had to motivate myself to go to work. Often, I did not want to go because my body ached, because I had stayed up late drinking or for various other reasons. I still went to work though.

One motivation was money. I would go to the bank and see that my business was doing pretty well. I had no employees so there was no payroll. I was raking in all the money. It made me so happy to see that I was producing results.

While at work, I would often think about my previous employees and why I had let them go. I hadn't literally fired them. Instead, I had constantly told them that we were on the brink of bankruptcy. Some of my employees just walked out. Others left after pay cuts.

I can't remember exactly what was so frustrating about them. Some of them did good work when I was at the store. When I left, they just sat in the back and chatted. Others exaggerated everything I said and turned it into something sinister or evil. Sometimes, I was reminded of episodes of "Friends." Other times, I felt pity for them.

I think I was searching for a motivation for working. Was I working to become a part of this society? More and more, as time went by, I found myself becoming selfish. I was working for myself or my family. There was no greater or larger goal.

I wanted to tell my father-in-law why I had lost my motivation. I wanted to tell him that I still had a thirst for hard work. The fact was, however, the opposite. My heart had been broken, deeply broken. The ideal image of America that I once had had been broken. I felt separate from Americans.

My mother-in-law tells me that my father-in-law was first in his class. I've heard this before from so many Koreans. My father was also top of his class. His comment reminded me of a Korean movie in which the father lies about having gone to a prominent college so that his sons would be inspired by him. I am sick to death of such comments. I know that I am not very intelligent, but this is too much. Sometimes I want to try. I want to be a good husband, a good Korean or Korean-American but this obsession with being #1, with going to be best colleges, with being the most technologically advanced country on the earth is driving me crazy. I take a deep breath. I find trivial things to complain about. The traffic is driving me mad. Those little napkins in restaurants are not for human hands. All these restaurants... 30% of all stores are restaurants. I feel like I am going to explode. I am beginning to hate my father-in-law.