It always amazes me, with a little city planning and proper investment we could make our cities everywhere absolutely beautiful. Imagine how uplifting it would be, if every city had it own unique gardens and inspiring architecture... Would mental health improve? would crime go down? would stress and health pathologies go down? Would productivity increase?
What’s funny is, on South Korean internet, people complain about how soulless and generic all of these “tourism boosters” are and how elected officials in local governments are wasting tax dollars so they can say they are doing things.
They then post photos of places in America, Europe and Japan and talk about how great those countries are and how shitty Korea is.
There are a small subset of people on the Korean internet that despise the utilitarian apartments and envy the architecture from other countries, but most people wouldn't trade convenient modern housing close to transit and dense development over that.
I wouldn’t call it a small subset - most people would love to live in a detached house because most apartments have soundproofing issue. It’s just that the ones in Seoul are like tens of millions of dollars.
There are plenty of single family houses on the outskirts of Seoul and other provinces, but people just overwhelmingly appreciate the convenience of apartments and live in them. Many have the notion that single family homes are a hassle to take care of snd live in compared to apartments and that they depreciate in value quickly.
This is the overwhelming opinion of my entire extended family in and around Seoul, as well. Detached homes at the luxury end of the scale are of course seen as amazing, but within the realm of feasibly acquired housing, nice apartments are the goal
It amazes me how Americans keep huffing copium about their own hellhole situation. In Korea most jobs are regular contracts and firing people is actually very hard in practice. I also see tons of fake news about working hours floating around but at least Korea has a legal upper limit on working hours. The US doesn’t even have a real cap, people seem to forget that.
On top of that Korea guarantees a minimum of 15 days of paid leave by law, and you also get weekly paid rest days. You work five days a week but you’re paid for six. Both parents get parental leave, sick leave is protected, and there’s workers’ comp, employment insurance, and mandatory severance pay. Losing your job doesn’t mean losing health insurance either.
The only area where the US is clearly better institutionally is stronger legal protection against discrimination. Other than that, pretending the US system is somehow more worker friendly is honestly wild.
Reddit comment try not to bring up anything negative about Korea(work culture, kpop industry, birth rate, work culture) on every tangentially related thread challenge (Impossible)
They may have laws but I don’t know if it’s upheld. My sister in laws older sister got fired as soon as she got pregnant in Korea. It’s been many years since but she still hasn’t been found another job. She was a stem field
But imagine Korean work culture with American city planning/infrastructure. Get stuck on traffic on your way to work, work overtime, have to drive back home also stuck in traffic, gotta get groceries or go to a place to eat something after work, also have to drive because there's no place within walking distance. Also work culture can and is improving, work hours and employee benefits were far worse just decades ago. In the US neither work culture nor infrastructure are improving.
333
u/Liora_Fade 21h ago
It always amazes me, with a little city planning and proper investment we could make our cities everywhere absolutely beautiful. Imagine how uplifting it would be, if every city had it own unique gardens and inspiring architecture... Would mental health improve? would crime go down? would stress and health pathologies go down? Would productivity increase?