Well-being (왤빙)

With my 5th graders in the school cafeteria

How happy are you? Do you measure your contentment in life based upon your wealth, your community ties, or your safety? How does your country measure well-being?

The OECD, which stands for Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, measured well-being in its 34 member countries using 11 topics, some of which include housing, education, governance, and work-life balance.  By exploring the interactive website, one can see the distribution of countries based upon the Better Life Index. With scores close to 8.0, Canada and Australia ranked the highest, when the 11 topics were set equally.

South Korea belongs to the OECD, and its Better Life Index is 5.3. Ten months have past since I moved to Korea, so naturally, I was curious to see how this country defined well-being. Access to jobs, education attainment, and personal safety were ranked the most important components of well-being in South Korea. In comparison, Australia and Canada placed greatest emphasis on housing, education, and life satisfaction.

Some of the statistics surprised me, so I’m including a few. See how Korea ranks!

- At 2256 hours a year, Koreans work the most amongst the OECD countries. The OECD average is 1739 hours.

- 44.7% of Korean men and 7.2% of Korean women reported smoking daily in 2008. Smoking rates for men are the second highest in the OECD, while the women’s rates are the lowest.

- Amongst the OECD countries, Korea has the lowest percentage of the labour force that has been unemployed for more than a year. Currently, it is 0.01%.

- Only 80% of Koreans believe that they know one person who would help them in a time of need.  (I was confused that in a country that emphasizes the collective over the individual, people would indicate social networks to be weaker than in other OECD countries.)

- The educational level of Koreans is one of the highest in the OECD. 98% of Korean young people aged 25-35 years old have attained education equivalent to a high-school degree. Korea also has the highest literacy scores in the OECD. The PISA average is 539 out of 600. (Talk to any educator in the Korean public and/or private education system, and they’ll tell you not to accept the numbers blindly. Korea’s education system has its unique challenges.)

While you think about this, let Kanye inspire you. Thanks for reading!

Entry #1

I finally did it. Here is the blog that I’ve been promising to create since I graduated three months ago. I just found out where I will be living and teaching English for the next year, and I think it’s fitting that I write my first entry today.

Currently I'm in Goesan, a rural town in central South Korea famous for its chili peppers. Beginning in August 19, I will be teaching Korean elementary schoolchildren in the city of Cheong-ju until July 2011. Cheong-ju, a city of over 600,000 residents, is the 9th largest city in Korea and the provincial city of Cheung-chung Buk-do Province in central Korea.

For the past month, I’ve been taking intensive Korean language courses while attending countless (and often seemingly never-ending) cultural and teaching workshops. It’s training for my first real job, though I often forget that’s the purpose for me being here since I’m in a bubble of 72 other Americans who are quickly becoming my new family and friends. 

My Korean is improving daily, and I sometimes answer English questions in Korean without thinking. I still write like a second grader, but there’s been a 300% increase on my quiz scores since Day 1. Hopefully I make enough progress to pass my Korean final next week. By the end of this year, I hope to be able to write an academic paper in Korean without having my language teachers mark up every line in red ink.

This being my first blog, I expect it to be a hodgepodge of posts on my daily experiences living in Korea as an English teacher, Korean-American (or 교포 which is pronounced gyopo in Korean), and cultural ambassador (which we’re reminded of daily). Not to worry, though, I don’t want to bore anybody with my personal life. Expect some posts on Korean culture, architecture, public transportation, and urban development (plus anything that suits my fancy). I may no longer be a college student, but the learning never ends.

Peace!