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Comment by novok | Hacker News Reader

When you look at songdo, it looks like a small section of greater seoul in general.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Songdo-dong,+Yeonsu-gu,+In...

Also why do people trust the government when it only became a democracy about 30 years ago, and things like this happened? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_Struggle#Torture_and_deat...

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> Also why do people trust the government when it only became a democracy about 30 years ago, and things like this happened?

Considering that the country's entire history span about 70 years (excluding the provisional government; the provisional government is exactly 100 yrs old in 2019), 30 years is a long time.

Presidents are elected with direct election; a direct consequence from the Park Jong-chol incident you have mentioned, and 1987 is the year of South Korea's 'real' democracy.

People have the power to impeach presidents with peaceful protests[0][1] and people are proud of it.

South Korea's democracy is highly trusted in the country, IMHO.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment_of_Park_Geun-hye [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-39227342

Is this why everyone and their mom switched from Kakao to Telegram during the Sewol crisis and PGH incident did not really help either.

SK is a well managed country but dont equate obedience or ignorance with trust.

Also koreans are simply ignorant about things like individualism and too much interference from the ones in power.

Really the impeachment alone makes it very trustworthy regardless of its past. If petty abuse of power gets one removed from the highest office then accountability is maintained.

Not without flaws of course (election of dynastics in a democracy is generally a warning sign of power being used to self-perpetuate).

All correct. However, I think it's important to make a distinction between South Korea's government and the people who are currently operating the government. The long history of peaceful protest makes South Koreans trust in the system, but they are certainly not trustful of the people in power. They exercise their right to protest in a fantastic fashion quite frequently.

In 1993, 26 years ago, the US government burned 76 people alive. The FBI lied about their planning of the operation. They “lost” evidence. They lied about not having used incendiaries. They got helicopters under false pretends with drug warrants. Less than a month after the FBI caused the death of just under a hundred people the entire site was bulldozed, which happily for the government, rendered checking their stories quite difficult.

No one was ever punished for those deaths. No one suffered any professional, administrative or political demotion, censure or firing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waco_siege

And the fact that Americans trust their government so much, especially the ATF and the Clinton administration, should tell you all you need to know about why South Koreans trust their government so much.

Or you're arguing against whatever case you're trying to make.

Because the government took them out of poverty? :)

Funny, downvotes :-) You might not like it, but it's true, the South Korean government (and people) went from poor to rich in basically 1 generation. Just like in China, people don't really care about abuses if their overall life is improving and they're not impacted directly...

When I first saw your un-edited comment, I tried to calm down myself. I didn’t write angry comments.

Sorry, after seeing your edited one, I couldn’t resist myself writing this comment.

Your comment implies that South Koreans are e.g. pigs that don’t care about democracy but just care about their own lives. That’s very ignorant (at the very least).

Your comment basically just plainly ignores so much South Korea citizens that protested to get democracy. You know what? The presidents that ran the country in a dictationship, used force to remove any protesting people got their righteousness from the US. Spanning as early as 1960 (when president Lee Seung Man tried to dictate the country with illegal elections) to 1987 (when South Korea finally got to elect our own presidents after 1960), people protested a lot. A LOT. Please search about the 1960 4.3 incident, 1979’s Bu-Ma protests, 1980’s Kwangju Democratic Uprising, 1987’s June protests, on and on...

Your comment also shows your view about China. People in China care about democracy they aren’t pigs either. Have you ever heard about the incidents in Tiananmen Square?

People care about democracy. Please don’t think that people only care about themselves.

My old boss was Korean and he told me about those protests. He was a college student at the time and often waxes poetically about how easy college was back then and he'd just skip it all the time to go in the street and protest. Then he got super rich from the new government. It's probably a little bit of both, maybe don't get so irrationally upset over HN comments. He's not calling the south koreans pigs. Americans are the same way, we ignore government abuses because our lives in general are comfortable enough we simply don't care much more than to comment about it on the internet.

You're putting words into my mouth.

People (taken as an overall population) care about democracy after they care about their general well-being.

That doesn't make them pigs, it makes them rational.

He didn’t imply people were pigs anywhere. Living in China I can tell you that while large parts of the urban population are relatively sympathetic to the idea of democracy in principle the peasantry really don’t care. The CPC brought them out of poverty as far as they’re concerned and they’re competent. That’s enough for them while things are going well. In 1980 most of China was dirt poor peasants so the people who despise the Communists are a minority of the long term urban population, a minority of a minority.

The important difference between China and Korea is that China killed everyone involved quite publicly as soon as protests started. If protestors in Korea had known they’d die after the first large protest there would have been few volunteers for a second.

The notion that people are bad people (i.e "pigs") because they care predominantly about themselves, or don't care about democracy seems to come from you.

Have you considered the idea that other cultures and nations have different ideas about how much authority they delegate to their government, and that not everyone is troubled by the fact that the government runs cameras if it means a higher degree of safety?

I've spent a lot of time in China and other Asian countries for work related reasons primarily and it is absolutely true that there's a lot of personal drive, lower trust in civic society, and much more trust in the state to organise personal life.

What's truly a narrow-minded caricature of the world is the idea that every Chinese person is secretly striving for Anglo-protestant values of freedom and charity oppressed by their government or something.

“The ballot box is connected to the bread box”.

East Germany only became a democracy thirty years ago too. (To be fair, it joined an existing democracy.)

An existing democracy which had a much much bleaker history than South Korea (heck, even North Korea) merely 80 years ago...

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