I hate Koreans for doing this to other Koreans. I will never ever get over how koreans basically turned the whole country into hell joseon and there is no escape. Korea would be a much better place if they allowed themselves some slack.
South Korea doesn't have the privileges that Canada and Finland both have of friendly adjacent neighbors and natural resources, which provide opportunities when Nortel and Nokia respectively stopped succeeding in the marketplace.
That being said, there have been terrible knock-on effects from this societal policy. Brutal work culture, low birth rates and much more.
The border between Finland and Russia is 1,340 kilometers (832 miles). The border between South Korea and North Korea about 250 kilometers (155 miles). Also 5.5M people vs 55M people.
As a Finn I laughed out loud.
It does not help that they are naturally fatalists so its always all or nothing scenario.
PRC got similar problem, but it's more they're producing too much talent than opportunties so involution happens. With like 50m more STEM + skilled labour on the way to add the the competition. But one saving grace is PRC has like 150 cities with over a million people that folks can fuck off too and still have decent quality of life. You can always lay flat and chill in a tier2/3 city nearly as vibrant as Seoul/Tokyo/Tapei with less cost of living. SKR/TW and somewhat JP is kind of fucked in that sense, most of the opportunities are in a few geopgraphic grinders where you have to be.
And there is a long border with Russia, one of the worst neighbours any country could have.
Hell if you really wanted to you might even be able to make an argument that, with hindsight, Microsoft saved Nokia by letting it gracefully jettison it's failing phone business, get a much needed cash injection, and refocus on other parts of its business.
[0] Of course some argue that Microsoft actually took over the day Elop became CEO, and everything he did was part of some plan to sink Nokia so that Microsoft could buy its phone business on the cheap.
But i don't believe it was a grand plan from MS to screw Nokia so they could buy it..
Some even suspect that MS just bought Nokia because Windows phone was not selling and Nokia was loosing money, so MS was afraid Nokia would turn to Android and they would loose their flagship devices..
So they needed to ensure a phone maker for Windows Phone and wanted go into making their own phones, Nokia had a good brand that they had a good relationship with and Elop was still there to make things easy..
On the other hand, if Nokia had focused on Android from the start or at least had devices on both systems, they had the potential to be the leaders on Android phones by now..
It was a costly and useless move.
This is reflected in the structure of their armed forces. Per capita, they have the largest army in Nato if they mobilize.
I would say Chinese society values the family… people don’t really give a shit about others outside of family or friends.
My feeling on Japan is that they value their society and country much higher.
But I’m neither Chinese nor Japanese so take that with a grain of salt.
I would estimate that Japanese differ from Chinese to a similar degree that Russians differ from Spaniards.