Coded gray.

Monday 9 September 2002

Screenshot FreeCiv

Pic of the day: Screenshot from FreeCiv, the free Civilization game for Windows, Unix, Linux etc etc. And the only game I could think of that lets you play the Korean civilization right out of the box. ^_^

I'll never know Korea

Well, that almost goes without saying. I live in Norway, pretty much on the opposite end of the Eurasian supercontinent. While not exactly opposite sides of the world, there's really a lot of distance between us. The people who settled those lands haven't seen my ancestors since the deep of the last ice age, so it's been a while too. Then again, somehow they have picked up skiing, and we have picked up tae kwon do, so I guess there's some connection.

Why would I even think about Korea? Well, it started with the Norwegian word "høst", meaning autumn, fall, the season between summer and winter. It also happens to mean harvest. And then I wondered whether my overseas readers would be able to see the second letter "ø" as an o with a slash across, or would they just see a small rectangular block the way I see Korean text?

Why would I look at Korean text in the first place? Well, a few weeks ago I was reading some matter of anthropology and found a reference in a Korean science text. I tried to translate it with an online translation engine, but the result was more entertaining than educating.

While thinking about all this today, I realized that I had no idea whether Korean was written in an alphabet, the way western languages are, or in a pictographic script like Chinese, or something in between, or all of the above like Japanese. That's a lot to not know about a country which, like my own, is among the world's leading users of Internet compared to population size. (They also have an avid community of players for Dark Age of Camelot, and have eventually got their own servers, presumably in their own language. I have met several of them on the American servers in the past. From this experience I know that many of them write passable English, and that they can also write their own language in English letters.)

***

A generation ago, we would refer to Korea as a “developing country”, in that condescending way where it doesn't really mean they are developing, just that they are less developed than we are. That time is over. The economic growth in South Korea has been almost shocking. Admittedly much of this has been financed by borrowing from abroad; few countries have borrowed so heavily and got away with it. But for much of that time, the borrowed money was invested in building modern factories as well as infrastructure (roads, electricity, schools and so on). Often when governments meddle in investment, the result is low productivity and products without a market. In Korea this did not happen, or at least it did not dominate. Clearly the government in Seoul has listened closely to good advisers. This is an unusual thing indeed.

By now, the standard of living in South Korea is comparable to that of Southern Europe. In some parts of life, such as education and computer use, they are way ahead of the European average and close to Nordic standards. The current wave is supplying broadband connection to all of the people, a project in which they may be overtaking even us.

With this amount of education and computer literacy, you should expect me to be more likely to meet a Korean on the Net than, for instance, a Swede or a Dane. After all, there is no physical distance in cyberspace, and there are a lot more Koreans than Scandinavians. Yet except for the few I have met in that online game, I can remember none. Perhaps their English is after all not quite up to the task of talking to the world. Or perhaps they don't like to advertise that they are Korean, though I very much doubt that. Or perhaps we just don't talk about the same things.

I believe that languages don't just describe the world. They form our thoughts. They are like channels through which our thoughts flow. Therefore they influence what we believe to be possible. In addition, there are many non-verbal parts of culture. I am aware that Korea had a flourishing civilization while we were still struggling to learn the secrets of agriculture and trade. Even though they have adopted many western inventions and institutions, they probably spend a lot of time and thought on things that seem utterly weird to us. And we probably seem just as weird to them. I probably will never know for sure.

But of one thing I am pretty sure: Koreans are avid gamers. The place is home to some pretty huge online game projects. I'm not sure what Lao Tse would have said about that... I guess I could ask the I Ching oracle - unless I am sorely mistaken, that's where those symbols in the corner of the South Korean flag are from. "The Book of Changes", huh? I guess that is quite a fitting symbol.


Yesterday <-- This month --> Tomorrow?
One year ago: Family values
Two years ago: The black hole
Three years ago: A farewell (and not to arms)

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