Recently it has been reported that South Korea has become a member of the “20-50 club” last month. Before there were only six members: the U.S., the U.K., Japan, France, Germany and Italy. There are two criteria for the membership: The GDP per capita should be $20,000 or more, and the population should be 50 million or more.

Except for South Korea, the other members are also members of the Group of Seven, and only Japan and South Korea are non-Western countries. This means that South Korea is no longer even a newly developed country. The 20-50 club status alone is sufficient enough to merit the Koreans’ pride in their economic achievement and international prestige.

In terms of power and prestige, this honor surpasses its hosting of the 1988 Seoul Olympics and its membership to the OECD and the G20. Now it is time for the Koreans to ponder and debate over where they should go from here. Before they do, they should examine what the membership of the 20-50 club means to them.

Excepting the characteristics mentioned above, the members have the following in common: they have the Western democratic political system; they have the free market and free trade economics based on the neo-liberal economic order; and, third, they have a large number of foreign residents and migrant workers and their societies are either aging or aged. Because of these common characteristics they are faced with common problems and common tasks.

Politically, they have to deal with the democratic deficits, including the functional fossilization of the legislative body, populist demagoguery, the excessive influence of the business community in politics, and an increasing generational and ideological divide. Epistemic communities and civil society organizations exercise increasingly powerful influence on state institutions to revitalize democracy.

In the economic arena, the fight between classical capitalist and revised capitalist or socialist approaches to economic growth and social welfare is intensifying, even to a dangerous degree, when their economies suffer from recession and unemployment.

In the social arena, with the end of World War II, the club members began to accept an increasing number of foreign workers as they needed additional workers. Consequently, they struggle with how to integrate foreign residents into their respective societies. This is the reason why multiculturalism has become a political slogan in all these countries.

On the other hand, due to the rapidly developing means of communication, the digital divide between old and young generations has quickly widened. As a result, the democratic deficits have worsened and political instability has become more serious.

For South Korea, it can avoid the mistakes other members made and benchmark their achievements. In this sense, South Korea enjoys what Ian Morris calls “the advantages of underdeveloped countries.”

In the political field, democratic deficits in South Korea are more serious than in other member states, mainly because democracy in South Korea is only a generation old and has to contend with the Communist monarchy in the North. The main concern for South Korean democracy is how to accommodate the extreme left-wing within the framework of a democratic system, while preventing the North Korean regime from using them as its fifth column.

In the economic arena, South Korea’s problems are more serious than those of other member states largely because its economy is much younger and growing faster, while its social welfare system is less comprehensive than other members’. In terms of income distribution, South Korea is more egalitarian than other member states except Germany, but its social welfare expenditure as a percentage of GDP is less than a half of other members’. Ironically, South Korea suffers from a political schism because its social welfare system is too young, while others are mired in political feuds because their social welfare systems are too old. South Korea should find a third way between the American and European models. There exists no perfect model for Korea to strive for.

In the social field, South Korea is neither an aged society nor a multicultural society yet; however, it is becoming both. Because of this, South Korea suffers more than other club members. The aged society issue is closely linked with the social welfare issue, and multiculturalism with Korean culture. The question is whether Korea is ready to abandon ethnic homogeneity. In the age of globalization it is near impossible to preserve ethnic purity. As far as the social welfare issue is concerned, it is not very difficult to find the third model suitable for Korea because the type of a country’s social welfare system is more determined by the stage of economic development rather than the cultural characteristics of that country.

The culture of a country can hardly be changed by a government policy or social movements alone, unlike the social welfare system; it is largely determined by the global environment. In the age of globalization Korean culture is bound to be eroded by foreign civilizations, mostly Western civilization. In this regard, Korea is unique because five club members are Western countries and Japanese culture is already approaching Western civilization. Japan is unique in a different sense: It accepted Western civilization much earlier than Korea, and its traditional culture is much less Confucian than that in Korea.

Korea’s direct exposure to the West began only after the end of World War II, and it does not have a tradition of the rule of law and civic culture (civilized way of life), which are important traits of Western civilization. A country can have economic development without the rule of law and civic culture, but it can hardly have democracy and a civilized way of life. Western civilization is the foundation for democracy and modernization. The civilized way of life does not simply come with material advancement. Civilization has two sides: material development and cultural development. Western countries are still struggling to perfect the cultural side of Western civilization. In the cultural sense, “civilized” refers to a complete absence of barbarism. In other words, to be civilized in the cultural sense epistemologically means “to live in society as in a household.”

Korea, as a member of the 20-50 club, is catching up with Western members in the material sense of civilization, but it is a long way to catch up with them in the cultural sense of it. The question is not whether the Koreans should accept the cultural side of Western civilization but how fast they should accept it, because one cannot enjoy democracy and economic development for long without the law of rule and the civilized way of life.

By Park Sang-seek

Park Sang-seek is a professor at the Graduate Institute of Peace Studies, Kyung Hee University. ― Ed.