Universal Rights and Individualism come from Christianity?

This is probably pretty much obvious to many, but this part about western culture I never realized.  I will quote from Francis Fukuyama:

Westerners sometimes forget the importance of the transcendent monotheism of the Judaeo-Christian tradition to their political and social lives.  The idea that there is an eternal realm of divine law superior to all positive law gives the individual with access to that higher law potential grounds for revolt against all forms of secular authority.  It promotes both individualism and the concept of universalism.  The universalism is the ground not only for the Western concept of human rights that are transferable from one culture to another but for abstraction in the observation of nature and human behavior that is the basis for both the natural and social sciences (308).

Thus if I understand correctly, regardless of the one's religion in the West, there's a residue by-product  religious tradition that forms the basis of Western culture.  This is why we have the concept of rights and individualism.

If this is the case, then I would imagine Western cultures that have Judaeo-Christian traditional roots would be against collectivism, such as socialism or communism, but this is not necessarily the case (thinking of parts of Latin America, Russia, and parts of Europe).  Thus I imagine the explanation is rather more complex than connecting individualism to Christianity.

References

• Fukuyama, Francis. "Asian Values, Korean Values, and Democratic Consolidation".  Institutional Reform and Democratic Consolidation in Korea. Ed. L. Diamond and D.C. Shin. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 2000.

Korea as a Low Trust Society

In my ISM2107 Politics and Business in Korea class at Yonsei, the instructor often talked about high trust and low trust societies, referring to Francis Fukuyama's book Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity.

I recall reading some snippets about it, where a low trust society like Korea and China, tend to favor family run businesses, and that in high trust societies, such as Japan and USA, large conglomerates can form.

Korea had these large conglomerates, called chaebol, artificially engineered upon the society, which is more of an unique and rare exception as the culture is a low trust society.

Anyhow, I think this book is required reading for anyone into international business, economics, sociology or related fields, and it is especially intriguing for those studying topics related to East Asia.

Applied Outcome Thinking

Recently I have become absorbed with the idea of defining a life mission and then making strategies.  Everyone is capable and have great potential, but are they successful at doing what they want or getting what they want out of life.  After coming across people that are phenomenally successful at accomplishing their goals in life at a young age, I starting picking their brain and adapting my perspective in life to become more successful.

One book that I picked up but never read is this popular book on productivity called Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen.  I am trying to synthesize areas of strategy planning, project management, and personal productivity.  One chapter I chose was called Outcome Thinking where one defines specific projects and next actions.

In a sub-section called Applied Outcome Thinking, he noted two problems in life: (1) know what you want, but don't know how to get it, (2) don't know what you want.  And he said the solutions are (1) make it up, and (2) make it happen.

I think in this section he was trying to get the readers to visualize the ultimate outcome of their efforts.  He notes that you cannot define the right action until you know the outcome and also that the outcome is disconnected from reality if it is not clear about what you need to do to physically (tangibly) make it happen.

The last thing he mentioned is that when the operational behavior is grooved by everything the comes our way at all levels wondrous things happen.  This seems to connect back to material in the beginning in the book, where to be productive, it is important to know how to absorb and organize information, rather than throwing in the wastebasket in our head to sort and later organize when we get around to it as  is the normal mode of operational behavior.

Goals in Personal Management

Many people have plans or goals.  A lot of these goals have no relationship to each other, or in other words there is no overarching objective to tie them together, a mission per say.

In my past personally, I had strong interests all over the map, with hobbies and goals, and I never had any strong objective to tie them together.  Slowly I am discovering this, and pulling my interests between Asian culture and languages toward computer technology through developing business skills.  I think as I continue, my objective will come into fruition. 

Last bit of wisdom: If you don't have a sense of mission, you aren't going anywhere in life.

The Strategy of Goals

After some thought and reading the next section on strategy, I summarized what I understood from the text book as the following: Strategy is specific actions needed to accomplish goals (measurable steps) that are directed toward and required to achieve an objective, vision, or mission.

It is hard for me to separate objective and goal as they seem synonymous.  The free online dictionary defines an objective to be "something worked toward or striven for" and a goal to be "the purpose toward which an endeavor is directed".  This is all somewhat confusing.

The text book states as much, and goes on further define objective as "a compelling business need that an organization must meet to achieve its vision and mission" (Reynolds 38) and a goal as "a specific result that must be achieved to reach an objective" (Reynolds 39).

The text book seems to present an objective as something rather abstract, where as goals are something that can be measured to achieve that goal.

References

• Reynolds, George W. Information Technology for Managers. Boston: Cengage Learning, Inc., 2009. 
  

Establishing Goals

For my course Business Information Systems, I was reviewing the chapter called Strategic Planning.  In one section they cover Establishing Goals, which is a topic I am highly interested in because many of my ideas are all over the map.  I have a lot of enthusiasm and energy in life.

Well in this they define goal exactly as "a specific result that must be achieved to reach an objective" (Reynolds 39) and later state that an "objective states what must be accomplished and the associated goals specify how to determine whether the objective is being met" (Reynolds 39).

Personally, this got me thinking about defining an objective and goals on how to achieve that goal.  For example, one objective I wanted to do is certify basic proficiency in Korean language and the goal would be to pass TOPIK Level 2.  To achieve the goal of passing TOPIK Level 2, I would have to pass practice examinations to build confidence in my ability to pass the real exam.  And in order to pass practice examinations, I would have to review some Korean and memorize vocabulary with flash cards and reference sentences, review grammar, and increase my listening comprehension ability.

Thus if my sense is correct, a goal seems to be both the vehicle and routes it takes to get to the destination which is the objective.  There may be a variety of vehicles and routes it takes to get to the destination, which once plotted can be measurable in the success as well as the time it takes to apply the goal to get to the objective (destination).

The text goes on to say another thing interesting: "A key role in management is to recognize and drop goals that are no longer relevant.  They also must recognize and resolve conflicting goals to avoid having the organization work at cross purposes" (Reynolds 39).  I would add this would also apply to personal self management as well.  Some people may have too many goals, but many goals do not lead to a destination, conflict with each other, or become irrelevant.

References

• Reynolds, George W. Information Technology for Managers. Boston: Cengage Learning, Inc., 2009.

Crusade Against Discrimination

There was an incident in Korea a few months back on July 10th, where an Indian national was discriminated against due to the color of his skin.  A drunken Korean male thought he was Arab, and was spouting racial slurs against them.  They went to the police station, and the police ordered the victim to apologize to the Korean verbal assailant.  Since then there has been a national debate about discrimination.

His article today in the Korean Herald though condemned the media for ignoring the sexism and even physical attack against his friend a Korean female.  He has had numerous complaints from anonymous victims detailing how they were attacked because they married or dated a non-Korean.  Combined with my own observations and stories about numerous, and do mean numerous assaults and sexual harassment upon women, both Korean and foreigner alike, I don't find this surprising.  What is troublesome is the numerous problems of rape and child molestation in Korean, and how sexual predators get light sentences because they can say they were drunk at the time.

For more information, you can check out this article in the Korean Herald: http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/NEWKHSITE/data/html_dir/2009/11/06/200911060045.asp

South Korea & Taiwan's Explosive Economic Growth

In one course that I took at Yonsei University, ISM2107 Politics and Business in Korea, the professor had a book list that included this very awesome book by Robert Wade called Governing the Market:
Economic Theory and the Role of Government in East Asian Industrialization.

This book is incredible in that is sheds light on the explosive economic growth of Taiwan and South Korea.  This has been a hot topic in the field of economics.

From my understanding, both South Korea and Taiwan had authoritarian governments that engineered their perspective economies to become EOE (export oriented economies).  They were able to go about their planned economies with closed markets due to a very unique socio-political situations in both Taiwan and South Korea, and also in part due to the Cold War.  The USA opened its markets to South Korea and Taiwan despite their closed and governed markets combined with totalitarian state control.  As both Taiwan and South Korea were U.S. allies in the fight against communism, USA tolerated to some extent lack of democracy or free market economies.

Other developing nations, such as those in Latin America and Africa are naturally interested in the surprising growth of Taiwan and South Korea in hopes of replicating some of the success.  I think this book is a must read for anyone interested in Far East Asia or developing economies.

Additionally, given our turbulent economic times, as we (society) try to search for new political-economic tools, such as breathing life into certain struggling sectors, this book is an invaluable resource.

Studying at Yonsei

As an experienced student who studied at Yonsei through a study-abroad program, I wanted to see if perhaps I might offer some information for others that decided to journey to Korea.  I hope that it useful...

Undergraduate students that come to Yonsei will undoubtedly find themselves at Underwood International College, which is currently near the Shinchon and Daeshin border in Seoul, Korea.  Students have to take a Korean course and can enroll in Underwood courses, or other courses at the university taught in English.

Korean Language Requirement

Foreign students are required to take Korean language courses and so must attend Yonsei KLI, which is 20 hours a week of class time and 6 units.  Fortunately, there a little known secret for students that might want to opt out of this.  You can take a 0-unit Korean course that is usually offered to graduate students, but Underwood allows undergraduates to enroll in this course to meet their Korean language requirement.

If your focus is not on Korean language, I really recommend this.  If your focus is on the Korean language, then I would recommend coming to Korea on your own terms and try to get into Sogang's  ELEC program or another program of your choosing.

Underwood Courses

There are a small number of courses on topics about Korean culture and history.  These courses have the IEE number, such as IEE3107 Pre-Modern Korean History or IEE3220 Topics on Korean Language and Culture.  Most of these courses are fairly easy: show up, do minimal effort, and get an easy A.  Other courses, such as the economic and political courses, like ISM4508 Chinese Politics and Foreign Policy  or ISM2107 Politics and Business in Korea, are extremely challenging, and only a limited number of students receive an "A" grade, due to relative grading system in those courses.

My recommendation is to make the best effort to get something out of the experience, but don't take the go overboard and be too serious.  It is good to get out and meet people, especially Korean locals so that you can learn first hand about the culture outside the classroom.

Business Courses

A number of courses in the business college are taught in English, and many Korean students want to get into the course, because they have absolute grading, meaning the instructor is free to give out all "A" grades, should the students do that well.  The relative grading system, for business courses taught in Korean, only permit a small number of "A" grades to be awarded, so despite one's individual effort, the students may not earn the grade they deserve. I think this teaches the wrong message in life personally, but that's the system.

For the classes taught in English, like BIZ1102 Organizational Behavior, BIZ1101 Principles of Accounting,  BIZ2120 Marketing, etc. they will allow up to 6 foreign students to enroll.  Thus, it is quite competitive to get in these courses.  The quality of education varies, from being an utter waste of time to excellent quality with innovative professors that have passionate and engaging lectures.  Some of these courses can be quite challenging, even more so than courses in USA, and will require a lot of effort to get a good grade.  I found myself losing 2 months of any life to complete essays, research projects, and studying for the finals, but I felt it was well worth the effort, considering what I learned and the discipline I gained from the experience.

Continuing Pursuits of Education

I wanted to spin off this area for all pursuits of knowledge in my life, regardless of the topic.  And thus this begins...

...About myself briefly and why maybe I might be interesting...

I don't want to create a sob story, as I know others are in far worse predicament.  I came from humble backgrounds and always wanted to get an education, and now I'm doing it.  From high school, I started working in computers quite successfully, and I found a way to make the transition from work-to-school.  It is really a challenging adventure.

In my case, I found I was just rotting away, not really living life.  Then one day I left my work, and I said I'm going to go to college and study abroad.  And sure enough that is what I did: I completed the GE at a local community college, transferred to a state college, and did a 1-year study abroad in Asia.  I decided that I wanted to live life with passion, not just merely exist.  I didn't want to get older wondering what happened to my youth and wondering what I could have done in life.