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Different notions of privacy…Korea and the U.S.
I. “Find-Your-Friend” service in Korea
II. Privacy in Korean education
III. Different notions of privacy
V. Conclusion
I. “Find-Your-Friend” service in Korea
In Korea, if you start having a relationship with another person or get married, it is very common to request a service called “Find-Your-Friend” to your cell phone service provider. Once you request and register for this service, both registered parties are able to look up the other’s location whenever they want to. Therefore, many people who think that the other party is being unfaithful to you request this “Find-Your-Friend” service. Basically, this service eliminates your privacy and “enforces” you to be under surveillance because it usually pin downs the person’s location within the error range of 20 meters (about 60 feet). Therefore, if you are using this service, you are giving up your privacy since you are letting someone else to know what you are exposing your location and letting someone know what you are doing.
Korean’s have a tendency to think, “If you have nothing to hide, why would you be afraid to expose your location?” Therefore, if one party asks the other party to register for this service and the other party refuses to do so, the one who is to be blamed is the one who refused to expose his/her location.
Only a small number of Koreans think this kind of service is a “chain”, the rest thinks this is a “convenient device”. To be frank, I also regarded this service as a product of advanced technology since it was very easy to know the targeted person’s location. All you need to do was to push your cell phone’s button. Even when a friend of mine complained that her girl friend was turning into a stalker by using this service, I told him, “If you have nothing to hide, don’t’ bother. Let her locate you whenever she wants. Just let her feel safe.”
II. Privacy in Korean education
When you are in middle school and high school, you have to take evaluation tests each month to evaluate your academic achievement. After taking the test, you get scores for each subject, 14 in total, and your class and school rank comes out accordingly. Thereafter, in class, the teacher posts every student’s grade at the back of the class room. Everybody can see who got what score in what subject and their class rank and overall rank. Moreover, the school publicly announces the top 50, among 600, students’ names and ranks, by writing them up in a huge black board which hangs over the front entrance of the school. If your name is on that blackboard, you are in the top 10%, and other students show respect to you since teachers treat you specially. In other words, you get more respect.
When I was in middle and high school, I did not have any kind of preferences regarding this “revealing”. Probably because every school was doing it, and I thought it was a natural thing to do. It was a very efficient way of encouraging students to study harder, by both showing respect to those who did well, and making those who performed poor feel ashamed. Virtually no student complained about this habitual practice. It was a thing that was given and a thing that could not be changed.
However, in my opinion, this kind of practice has its own dark aspects. It puts too much pressure on students to perform well. But there are students who just can’t deal with that kind of pressure. In Korea, over the past 5 years, officially 623 middle and high school students committed suicide due to poor academic performance. If a student commits a suicide, he/she is not regarded to be a poor human being who struggled in school. He/she is remembered as a loser who was not good enough to keep up with the competition with his peer group. Also, that student becomes a disgrace of his teacher, school, family and friends. As a result, even mentioning that person is prohibited and he/she is enforced to be erased from everyone’s memory.
III. Different notions of privacy
With this background, I was pretty confused when Professor Moglen talked about privacy in class. He was very upset at the fact that the police were using Sprint’s cell phone user’s location identification service without acquiring the user’s consent. He said this was an invasion of privacy. But to me, it was a natural thing that is okay to happen. In Korea, even though officially it is denied, everyone knows that the Korean CIA (“KCIA”) locates their cell phones’ locations and bugs whomever they want, under the name of protecting public safety.
What I came to notice is the fact that Koreans and Americans have different notion of privacy. If you are in Korea, your privacy can be easily invaded for the interest of the mass or for a greater cause. For instance, when you are in elementary school, teachers enforce you to write a diary. After writing one, you are enforced to get it inspected by your teacher. Basically, you are being enforced to express your feelings and have it inspected. This is considered to be “acceptable” since teachers are doing it for a greater cause, your education. When you grow up in this kind of society, you become accustomed to revealing your private life if there is a greater cause. There is an old Korean saying, “sacrifice small things, for a greater cause.” If there is a greater cause, the invasion of a person’s privacy is justified and allowed.
IV. Conclusion
Frankly speaking, I have to confess my viewpoint regarding the students who committed suicide was not that different from the above mentioned point of view. However, after coming to New York and learning more about the true meaning of privacy, I came to realized that those students were the ones whose privacy have been severely invaded. They were enforced to reveal some sectors of their lives which would have never been enforced if they were born in the U.S. Now, I understand the true meaning of privacy, and I will do my best to protect it.
(997 words)
-- KeeryongSong - 29 Apr 2010
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