Anachronistic.

  Economy. Many countries of the world is in recession. Korea is not so good, either. But, there is a particular aspect if you are in business in Korea. The polarization of income. The middle class is disappearing fast. Not exactly 'middle class'. I would rather define 'working class with spendable income'. High-quality markets will not feel any change. However, the markets for working class will face the change. That is why I expect success of IKEA. Before, funiture dealers imported IKEA products and sold them in bigger price. (Each consumer cannot be import expert.) But, IKEA opens its shop in Korea and sell more affordable price, working class who want to save spending will choose IKEA. And, any kind of outletmalls with similiar price position will face the same.

  Society. Economy affects society. I am noticed one symptom of social pathology. Anachronistic. We do educations like other civilized countries. But Confucian ideas are so deeply rooted in Korean society, democratic values like freedom, equal of all men, charity are often overwhelmed when economy is not good. Child is a mirror of adults. It can be found in a school. In a class of public grading school, kids from fancy town don't hang around with kids from not so fancy town. Their parents teach them to do so, and they learn it like a social rule. People from western world don't know that Confucial teaching has it that a class(caste) system is fair. It has 10 classes(caste) from king to slave, and Confucian teaching is that each doing duty of their class will make the society work, peaceful, and beautiful. Revolutions are evil. He didn't though of equal of mankind. Today, in a capitalism society, money replaced caste. It combined with this old habit, made an odd concept that the economic level is worth respected as a social level. This is not so much Confucial tradition in real, rather monster of half breed with mammonism. I feel like as technology is developing, society is getting anachronistic. Koreans has only half century length history of capitalism. They only experienced it's good to make more and more money for their own sake. Koreans need to learn by experience more about distribution, welfare, and, of course, democratic republic. What they are for.