“You better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout, I’m telling you why, Santa Claus is coming to town.”  Maybe, everybody has heard this Christmas carol at least once in their childhood.  At Christmas time every year, we can hear this song when we walk on the streets.  Lyrics of this carol tell that it is good for children not to cry and pout.  By this content, we can know that this carol wants to make children be good boys and girls who readily obey what their parents say.  Likewise, in Korean society, lots of people are required to be a good children in family, school and society.  Then, is it really good for us to live as a good people in our society? 

 

 

●Don’t Do This! Don’t Do That!

 Before becoming an adult, we are taught how to be good children in the family by our parents.  They always tell us, “Don’t touch it! Don’t do that!”  They also tell us, “Say hello to grandfather.”  You can remember the carol song, “Santa Claus is Coming to Town,” which parents often sing to us.  Here in the song, parents want to tell their children that it is better for them to watch out and not to cry and pout.  By singing this carol, parents expect their children to be changed as the lyrics of this carol show.  Parents want to make their child do exactly what they want and what they order so that the child can grow up to be a good child.  Children of pastors are one of the good examples of those who are severely required to be good.  Because one of their parents is a pastor, children are obliged to learn how to be example children to others.  Choi Eunchan, Program of Archives Management in Hanyang University ’13 said, “My father is a missionary, so he imposed many restrictions on my behavior.  He told me not to sleep out at my friend’s house, not to smoke, not to drink alcohol, and not to say swear words.Also, I need to observe The Ten Commandments, ten rules which God told Christians to keep in their life.  It was really stressful for me to keep all that my father wanted.”

 

●Good Child Grows Up to Be a Good Man?

Good children who have been trained to behave kindly and civilly in a family go to school.  They continuously need to be a good person.  During school days, teenagers learn the way how they can be a good man.  In school, the good student is who follows the fixed education system well.  Here, the final goal of fixed education system is the pass of good university.  Therefore when a student gets a high score in his exam, he starts to be called as a good boy who goes closer to higher level of university.  Also in school, nowadays many teachers often give stickers to good students who did homework well and who obedient to teacher.  For students, the sticker is a kind of rewards.  h And this reward makes students get eagerness in school activities.  Like in this way, students practice to follow the arranged rules and fixed systems what adults made for making good students.  After getting a job, employees can be called as a good worker when they follow rules well and do work well under the order of rank.   Companies want employees who are complaisant.  When we carefully remember our childhood and school days and when we see our elders who are working for companies, we can find out that we always follow many requires required by parents, school, and society.  To be a good man we didn’t stir out of the fixed conditions.  Good men are obedient to elders, study others face, have no opinions oneself and have few wants.  Also they are people who unresistingly followed the rules which are made by elders and society.  They do not make troubles because they do not want to blow a hype.  However, it can be the problem when we severely required being a good man.  Therefore many children who studies in a compulsive education environment get a Good Child Complex.  They do not show their wants and suppress eager.  Instead they try hard to listen that one is a good child. 

 

●Is the Good Tempered the Answer of Life?

In Korean Society, there are lots of good tempered children who are made by society’s require.  However, different from what parents, schools and society were expected, today’s society is not friendly to good tempered children.  Good children cannot easily survive in family education, school education, and society environment.  In the past, concealing one’s eager and obeying to elders was the virtue of modesty.  However, now it is needed to appeal one’s opinion and wants strongly to others.  If we do not show our opinion, the situation is going against us.  Nobody knows and does not try to know our opinion.  Also the phrase ‘Better bend than break’ is not an advice any more.  People who bend oneself became looked foolish.  We need to do work better and gain good result by oneself than others.  Then, now society sees people who behave shrewdly in a situation as people who smartly overcome a crisis.  Society prefers who can think situation differently and creatively and no longer need whose thinking is fixed in a small area.  Therefore, today’s society became where good tempered people are considered incompetence, stuffy and foolish.  And those good people are regarded as who don’t know the way of living in a society.

 

●Reinterpret the Bad

Follow these changes in perception of society, people start to reinterpret bad characters of fairy tale, novel and movie.  One of the famous bad characters is Nolbu in the story of ‘Heungbu and Nolbu.’ Heretofore Nolbu was a symbol of bad guy in Korea.  We know that Nolbu is a person who did not help poor younger brother so he is really selfish.  However, nowadays some start to reinterpret his character that he is not a bad guy.  Instead they explain that Nolbu as a person who hardly gained money through extreme hardship and who exhaustively acts economic action.  According to reinterpretation, the reason why Nolbu breaks swallow’s leg is because he is a person who tries to find one’s wants by oneself.  And the reason why he cut a gourd in two continuously after many bad things came out from split gourd is because he is a person who does not frustrate in a crisis.  In contrast, Heungbu is described as a person who does not make an effort but just try to depend on other’s help.¹  Here, Nolbu is the representative image of successful men in our society.  Nowadays there are many people who envy rebel and there also be many women who think that bad guys are more attractive than kind guys.  Also we can sparingly see villains who are main character in movies.  Like this, today people start to reinterpret bad people as a realistic people who and they adapt those bad people’s behavior and character.

 

●Bad Man, Rebel of the Fixed Rules

However, bad man is not a person whose character is evil and who against humanity.  Bad man is just a contrary concept of Good man.  As we already talked about personality of good man, good man obeys fixed rules and required behaviors.  And good man is person who does not appeal one’s eager and opinion.  They just follow what they have learned by family, school and society.  However, in contrast, bad man is a person who does not live following the rules.  Instead, they find new way of success and go where nobody challenged.  Bad man does not live in a fixed routine and grandly speaks his opinion so that can change the situation.  And bad man is a person who attempts to break away from routine methods so he is a person of distinct individuality.  As we can see, those personalities of bad man are what society requires today.  Now is the time when characterful and self-assertive person is needed.  And society also need talented person who can cope actively with changing society.  Kwon Ok-kyung, a head of Child Reading Education Laboratory said, “In this information-oriented society, conditions of talented people who society need and call are changed.  Now, this society call people who can cope actively with changing society, who are opened to new knowledge and technique and who are creative and self-initiated in working.  In other words, present and future society wants someone who has problem solving skills, not the people who are academic background-oriented and fixed in rules.”²  Good man may be a human image of which society made.  When we read traditional fairy tale, the main point is didactic morality.  In books and cartoons which we read in childhood, justice always prevailed.  However, it may be the constrained human image of society in those days when people required to be a good man and to contribute to society because then was a time everybody bepoor.  But now is the age of freedom and individual.  Not the whole society but the individual is thought more valuable.  And because of the Neoliberalism and recession, people start to put ability before goodness.  Therefore, in these days, bad men who are independent, creative and self-initiated are needed than good men who are fixed in rules and passively change. 

 

●Is it Right to Live as a Good Man?

When we are students, we just study for going to higher-ranked universities.  Then when we are undergraduates, we try hard to get a good job.  Thus, we live following fixed steps.  We do not try to deviate from routine life.  We just obey our surrounding environment.  This looks like we are living as a good person.  However, are we really living nicely in our life?  In endless competition we really good people when we cheat on an exam?  Steve Jobs is now considered to be a successful man.  From Koreans’ perspective, he is a good man because he succeeded, so we think there are many things we can emulate from his life.  However, in fact, he was not a good person not at all.  Sometimes when staff members told him a good idea, he announced the idea to others as if it were his own.  People who do what society requires or who have success in a society are images of a good person in Korea.  However, the definition of a good person is different in other countries.  “Scandi Mom” can be an example of Northern Europe’s education method.Parents in Northern European countries emphasize not the learning ability, but the physical ability and morality.³   So those parents and teachers teach children and youths to do many outside activities, and meet lots of people to learn in relationships.Following this education, those Northern Europeans think the definition of a good man is one who acts nicely to others and acts morally.  If we take definitions of good from those countries, can we call a good person as a righteous person?  Maybe we are living without the true definition and roll model of a good person.  Then, what we really need to find is the reinterpretation of ‘good person.’  Whether a person adapts to society or deviates from routine, after all, the good person is maybe someone whose process of living is good.  Then, now, what is your definition of ‘good?’  And are you a ‘good’ in your life?

 

 

 

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^{1 Kim Chihong, “Modernity of Nolbu,” DBpia, April 20, 2008
2 Kwon Ok-kyung, “The Effect of Reading Education Program on the Parent’s Self-Concept and Efficacy,” Korea Odyssey of the Mind, 2008}

^{3 Kim Jungmin, “Healthy Life Keyword which will Lead 2013,” Chosun Media, January 1, 2013}