The mad scramble-The last minute culture of South Korea.

The mad scramble. 

One of the most frustrating things about Korean society from an alien perspective is the phenomenon usually referred to as ‘last minute culture’.

 This particular aspect of life here is probably my main source of grievance as an ex patriot. Usually when I am suddenly burdened with a random and seemingly pointless shit shower of tasks at work and told ‘we will do this tomorrow/in an hour/now because the boss says so’  I reluctantly get on with it while flustering, sweating, losing hairs and mumbling undetectable but acidic vexations barely under my breath while questioning the inaptness of the whole thing….........

 But this time, as part of a new resolution to better understand this wonderfully bonkers little nation, I have decided to do some research analysis (on google and talking to people and all that and fings) which will inevitably be followed by a ham handed conclusion. Here it is….

Hmmm, I have more or less fallen at the first hurdle. 

I have sifted through the interweb and the only real explanations I can find are from people in  the exact same position as me- baffled foreign expatriates.

Google primarily dredges up accounts written by foreigners relaying their own experiences of last minute culture, but the oddest thing is that even the Koreans themselves who have responded to the various forum posts on sites such as yahoo answers, don't seem to be able to shed any light on the matter. There seems to be plenty of humble agreement of it's existence but most of  the comments are along the lines of 'yeah we do that, I suppose it's just a cultural thing.'...but there's always an answer!......surely!

I asked some korean colleagues a while back as well as a Korean couple I knew living in England. They too acknowledged an awareness of this 'quirk' but couldn't give me a concrete explanation. Probably the clearest answer I've ever recieved was from Minha, a Seoulite and one of the most fantastically blunt and outspoken locals I have met in SK. 

We were speaking about work environments in particular, markedly the public school we were working at. She reffered to it as a 'communication issue'. She went on to say how individuals in different hierarchical roles in an organisation communicated differently...

Person C wouldn't feel confident questioning a decision made by Person B because they were either older or they had a higher status within said organisation, the same goes for person B and person A.This means that person A (our vice principal at the time) could make a sudden request and, however illogical or unreasonable, person B would then pass the message on to C and eventually down to Z ( muggins) and because nobody is willing to challenge the person from whom they hear the request something steaming and stinky will often land on the desk and you have to deal with it instantaneously. Person A is usually in a position, both metaphorically and quite literally in terms of their location in the building, where they are cut off from the rest of the chain. This factor combined with rarely being made aware of any contradictions or potential hiccups means that, as far as person A is concerned, everything is hunky dory and they can carry on with their afternoon nap. A vicious circle of ineptitude. 

A more analytical and objective approach to the question may be to look at koreas societal and economical development over the last thirty years. There are people in korea today who used to live on a largely agricultural and traditional little peninsula who are being forced to keep up with a country that is sprouting sky scrapers and churning out techy gadgets like they are going out of fashion while simultaneously pouring previously unthinkable amounts of money into pockets, not mentioning the sudden 'freedoms' associated with this rapid growth being displayed garishly on every corner in the form of modern korean popular culture.No wonder people feel pressured to get things done on a flimsy whim. So much seems to be getting done around them, it's difficult to catch up.

But then again, pleading extreme ignorance, I don't even know if this is a new phenomenon. People may have been running around like headless chickens before clocking off time in the time of the Joseon dynasty (1392-1897.)

If there is anything to have been gained from this perplexing ponderance it is a desire to learn more about this ever-present hierarchy. My next post....