Stairway to Heaven

Here in Korea it's 'Chuseok' again; that chaotic time of year when families everywhere criss-cross the peninsular to visit the husband's parents the wife's parents, the grand parents and the shrines of their parents to leave ritual offerings and say prayers for their ancestors through time immemorial.

This year the autumn equinox harvest festival is a little unusual; stretching over a full 10 days and set to the distant rhythm of war drums beating across the Pacific. The holiday begins innocently enough by exchanging boxes of spam, extra virgin olive oil, or possibly war survival kits, if you subscribe to the ominous portents of the conservative media. 

War survival kits, now a popular alternative to traditional spam or olive oil at Chuseok

http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20170925000797&ACE_SEARCH=1

Rapidly the vacation becomes fraught as record numbers jostle elbow-to-elbow through airports, tailgate for tedious hours along the highways and pack the trains to capacity. 

http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20171001000143&ACE_SEARCH=1

For some the pressure is too much, with divorces in the weeks before and after Chuseok rising to twice the daily average.

http://m.koreatimes.co.kr/phone/news/view.jsp?req_newsidx=237244

In the western world the concept of god or divinity has undergone some major revisions over the centuries, much like we now roll out new software updates for our computers. The first humans probably huddled around camp fires, nervously asking each other how to prepare for the hereafter, desperately hoping that the answer wouldn't be more nerve-racking than preparing for a first mammoth hunt or perhaps even worse, a first date. 

Seemingly the first holy men recognised an opportunity to improve their social status and quickly launched to market Divinity 1.0, based on visible, mortal, tangible god-kings like the pharaohs of ancient Egypt. The pharaohs evidently believed the afterlife to be rather empty and ill-furnished; they therefore spent a lifetime arranging to store plenty of food, luxuries and concubines to take with them when they passed over. Meanwhile the peasants could only take the rags they stood up in. All in all, this was not a very equitable belief system for the great unwashed.

Egyptian Pharaohs - leaving no creature comfort behind in their journey to the Afterlife 

The next roll-out, Divinity 2.0, featured a whole host of new, improved, more ethereal gods; this time invisible and immortal, with dominion over each aspect of earthly life. Greek, Roman and Norse priests gave us a god for everything from love to harvests and from war to volcanoes. 

Greek gods; one available for every occasion, all sacrifices gratefully received

As before, each god required devotion and sacrifices in return for delivery from evil. It all sounded wonderful but as the centuries ticked by we slowly realised that protection from war, famine, pestilence, etc could not be bought with any amount of prayer or sacrifice.

The wisest holy men foresaw their high social status being utterly ruined by unsatisfied customers and so, analysing the flaws in their model, they rushed out Divinity 3.0 even before Divinity 2.0 was abandoned. This time just one single Great Omnipotent Deity requiring devotion and sacrifice. Cleverly, our devotion this time would not earn us tangible rewards in this lifetime but virtual rewards in the next life - which we would need to take on faith, of course. Finally a bullet-proof deity concept which could survive the most intense customer scrutiny !  

Local variations of Divinity 3.0 were rolled out around the Mediterranean in quick succession including Judaism, Christianity and Islam - although in some parts of the world the latter is still arguably considered even less user friendly than Windows Vista ever was.

Meanwhile Korea was surviving happily on a simple diet of shamanism, or the worship of nature spirits, until Buddhism was introduced in the late 4th century. Since Buddhist and shamanistic teachings were not contradictory and since Buddhism tended more towards philosophy than deity worship, Koreans found it possible to integrate the two and follow both doctrines together. 

The spirits of the trees, mountains and animals are highly revered in shamanism

Korean Buddhism largely went unchallenged for a full millennium until the late 14th century when neo-Confucians supported a military coup, winning themselves the opportunity to try to displace Buddhist mysticism with a traditional and deeply hierarchical Confucian rationalism which included ancestor worship.  Therefore the modern Chuseok vacation reflects an ancient fusion of  Buddhist and Shamanistic concepts overlaid by more recent Confucian reverence for one's ancestors.

Although Korea undoubtedly had its own versions of Divinity 1.0 and 2.0, little was known about western divinity until books by Portuguese Jesuit Matteo Ricci were brought over from Beijing in the early 1600s. However even then the Chinese translations  limited the Christian doctrine to a relatively small, wealthy, educated overclass. It was not until the 1780s, when the literature was re-printed in simplified Korean Hangul script, that Christianity became accessible to the masses.

After centuries of Buddhism and Confucianism which both reinforce rigid social hierarchies, with little upward mobility within the system, Christianity eventually started to win followers through its message that all men are equal under god and reward is ultimately based on effort and merit not birthright. Current figures suggest that among Koreans, 20% identify as Protestant, 8% as Catholic and 15% as Buddhist, leaving about 55% following  non-organised worship including shamanistic or Confucian rituals.

For those with faith, the stairway to heaven is, somewhat predictably, earned by putting in long and regular hours. Gentle inquiries show it is not unusual for a family to dedicate their entire Sunday to promoting church business. Given the lack of family time available during the week, this means that a devoted Christian family can regularly spend half the weekend (or half of its entire weekly family time) serving the church. This ardent presenteeism suggests that entry to the Afterlife may be controlled by a celestial Human Resources Dept. which values time-keeping over productivity in the same way that we see here in this life every day.

Robert De Niro as Louis Cyphre in Angel Heart:
"They say there's enough religion in the world to make men hate each other,
but not enough to make them love.
The future isn't what it used to be, Mr Angel."

   

Advice from the top: Blame your parents

These days the vast majority of youngsters are under increasing pressure to perform flawlessly. Competition is intense for the dwindling opportunities which are available in a world which needs ever-fewer people to keep it turning over.  Huge efforts and sacrifices are made by parents and youngsters to improve academic achievement, entrepreneurial skills and networking to make their applications to a school, a university or for a job stand out from all the competition.  

All the while we recognise that a privileged few, by chance born higher up the mountain than the common ilk, have high-level paths mapped out for them. These are more convenient to follow than fighting through the congested chaos of the common riff-raff living in the dark valleys far below. Usually people born to privilege recognise their advantages and are considerate enough to show some acknowledgement, gratitude or at least humility. Usually. However just occasionally someone comes along who is so totally oblivious to the status that they enjoy but neither earned, deserve nor even recognise that they deign to lecture their minions about it. For such people social media can make them instantly infamous and in recent times the example which has drawn the most wrath is Ms Yoo-Ra Chung with her illuminating rebuke to critics in 2014 as follows;

"Blame your own parents if they don't have the ability. 

Don't point fingers at us if your parents don't have what it takes.

Money is also a form of ability"

Ms Yoo-Ra Chung, an 18 year old high school truant, in the 17th Asian Games, Sept 2014,
where she competed as part of South Korea's gold-medal winning equestrian team 

In 2014 Yoo-Ra Chung was selected by the Korean Equestrian Federation (KEF) to represent South Korea in the international dressage championships at the 17th Asian Games due in Sept 2014. This was more than a mild surprise to seasoned observers who ranked Ms Chung somewhere between 500th and 600th on the international circuit at the time.

http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20161214000725&ACE_SEARCH=1

Ms Chung's team happily won gold in the Asian Games, after which, in an extraordinary double-helping of exceptional good luck the country's most elite women's university, The Ewha Women's University in Seoul, curiously revised its admissions policy. At the end of 2014 Ewha suddenly added horseback riding to the standard list of sports open for students applying on an athletics basis. As if this wasn't subtle enough, Ewha's Chief of Admissions is alleged to have told faculty members to select a candidate who brought a "gold medal" to their admissions interview.  The admissions panel probably understood this as a cloudy metaphor for a candidate giving a 'gold star interview performance', but any confusion instantly evaporated when Ms Yoo-Ra Chung duly arrived for her interview quite literally wearing her gold medal.

http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20161107000746&ACE_SEARCH=1

In a country where people commit a near-religious devotion and every cent they earn to getting their kids to into a prestigious university, Ms Chung's suggestion that kids should blame their parents for their incompetence amounted to vigorously prodding a sleeping bear with a fairly hefty stick. Media dissent and public protests followed swiftly as people demanded to know why much more highly achieving candidates without Yoo-Ra Chung's obvious connections had been denied selection.  Ms Chung's mother, Ms Soon-Sil Choi, just happened to be the best friend and confidante of the (then incumbent, since impeached) president Ms Park. Also Ms Chung's father had been a top aide to president Park in the early days that she entered politics. The public and the media smelled a fish.   

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/03/15/asia-pacific/politics-diplomacy-asia-pacific/seoul-female-student-protesters-lit-fuse-triggered-parks-ouster/#.WWHl7YiGPb0

Seoul, August 2016; 18 months after the admission of Ms Yoo-Ra Chung,
students and graduates of Ewha Women's University demand resignations.

For the Korean equestrian team 2015 started with eye-watering good fortune as a president of Samsung Electronics assumed the chairmanship of the KEF and shelled out donations of ~US$ 3.2m. However this paled into insignificance next to another vault-busting donation of almost $US10m to a then-unknown 'sports consultancy' founded by Yoo-Ra's mother - offshore in Germany for reasons which still remain opaque. Subsequent investigations suggest that Yoo-Ra Chung, her $1m horse and training staff were apparently the only beneficiaries of this sports consultant.

Meanwhile impudent questions from the media refused to go away. Officially Yoo-Ra had a perfect attendance record and respectable grades at Ewha university despite rarely showing up for class and regular failures to turn in any assignments. Seemingly she could not muster the good grace to play her role in her mother's little farce. Yoo-Ra's blatant contempt while under such intense media scrutiny suggested that the integrity of more than one or two people on the Ewha staff had been compromised. However, in what amounted to a modern day version of The Emperor's New Clothes, the university maintained the facade, held its nerve and attempted to weather the storm. That was until Yoo-Ra's admission that she did not even know what her major was supposed to be. This simple comment showing that a student was unaware of even which subject she was ostensibly studying finally rendered the position of the university untenable. Overnight the distinguished careers of at least 7 senior staff ended; including the university president and six professors who were consequently indicted. This was no doubt a welcome outcome for the protesters but in reality the staff probably had little choice in their complicity with the whole charade.

During 2015, as the influence of Yoo-Ra's mother over Ewha university became clear, people started to ask how wide and how deep Yoo-Ra's mother's influence might reach over her life-long close friend president Park.  By 2016, as investigations dug deeper, revealing Yooo-Ra's exceptional good fortune to be a mere lightning rod to a much greater government scandal which would see the president herself impeached and some of the country's most rich and powerful facing criminal investigations which are still ongoing.

In 2016 Yoo-Ra declined repeated requests to return to Korea to account for her role in the greater scandal. Instead she fled to Denmark and reportedly tried to claim Maltese citizenship before finally being extradited and detained on arrival in Korea in May 2017. During her first court appearance, Yoo-Ra claimed no knowledge of the details behind her circumstances and stated simply that her mother was responsible for everything.

http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2017/06/13/2017061301201.html

So the salutary lesson here is as follows; blame your parents' incompetence if they can't fix something for you and similarly blame them if they fix it for you and then you screw up all their hard work.

Last month Yoo-Ra's mother was sentenced to 2.5 years in prison for peddling influence to secure Yoo-Ra's place at Ewha university. Trials surrounding the greater political scandal are still far from over ........

November 2016; 2 years after prodding the bear,
citizens called for the impeachment of President Park

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/south-korea-downfall-of-president-park-geun-hye-1.4023811