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borisdiebestie t1_itpng9e wrote

I did not find that surprising. My impression as a tourist two years ago was that especially young Koreans were immensely superficial. Outer appearance (Make-Up, designer clothes, plastic surgery) and posing for social media seemed to be the very defining thing in their lives.

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Arumdaum t1_itt88nq wrote

Girls everywhere wear makeup and young people everywhere spend time on social media. As someone who's spent a lot of time in both Korea and the US the main difference is that Koreans care a lot more about how they dress (and then, not designer, unless this guy was hanging out only in super rich areas).

Korea's emphasis on material wellbeing is probably more related to the fact that Korea was extremely impoverished as a whole until very recently

Same with Taiwan, except Taiwan started somewhat better off, and this is perhaps also shown by the chart

And same with how "freedom" is present only for Korea and Taiwan, considering both only transitioned away from dictatorship fairly recently

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