korean efficiency

I get really frustrated sometimes when I consider all of the ways in which our world could be more efficiently organized. There are so many seemingly simple ways that our lives, homes, cities, world could be slightly altered in order to save energy and just make more sense. As the growing energy crisis looms above my generation, there are literally thousands of things that could be done to stop the unnecessary waste of energy. This is not the sole solution to our energy problems, but serious conservation must necessarily play a role in our future of energy use. More than anything, though, it really just bothers me to see things done poorly. It doesn’t make any sense to waste energy because lifestyles and cities are not properly designed or organized. Nor does it make sense to waste energy because people feel they have some sort of right to be lazy or unnecessarily demanding about their lifestyle.

The common reaction to this kind of thinking in the US is that it’s well and fine to dream of a society where everything makes sense, but that people will never change their habits to achieve this. I guess I have always responded to this attitude with a kind of disgruntled acceptance and cynical attitude about the general useless of humans. I mean, it is difficult to imagine your average American riding their bike to work, or drying their clothes on a line. It’s hard enough just getting people to separate their recycling from their garbage. I am ashamed to admit that I often fall into the trap of thinking it is for some reason impossible to get people to do what makes sense.

Now I’m going to tell you about how things are done in Korea. I’ve never thought of Korea as being a particularly environmental place. And I still don’t know if it necessarily is. But the way things are done here just makes sense. It’s like they already do all of the little things that I trounce around America saying: “we should do this”, and “we should do that”. To start off with, they do not fuck around with recycling in this country. We separate our household waste into: food waste, clear glass, dark glass, cans, plastic bottles, plastic wrappers, plastic bags, black plastic bags, paper and garbage. We live in a building with 150 apartments, and we have one (smaller than American) dumpster that holds all the trash. Next, there is no centralized air heating in our apartment building, all of the heating is done through the floor (as it is not winter yet, we do not know how warm this keeps your apartment). Every light I’ve seen in Korea so far is fluorescent. There is apparently no such thing a clothes dryer here; every apartment is equipped with a small washer, and a separate glass-enclosed balcony for air-drying clothes. All of the balconies on the apartment buildings face south. The apartment buildings are all designed so that they are tall and skinny, one apartment wide, so you can open your balcony and front door and get excellent airflow. (I should mention at this point that most Koreans live in apartment buildings that are essentially of the same design.) The use of motion sensors is one of the best areas of efficiency. All the lights in the stairwells and corridors of our apartment building have motion sensors, so that they only turn on when someone is actually walking there. All of the escalators have motion sensors, so that they too stop running when no one is using them. The light in the entryway to your apartment is on a timer, so that it’s only on for a short period while you’re entering or leaving the house. The printer in our office at school is filled with paper that has already been printed on one side. The city is designed so that there are pockets of commercial areas surrounded by the aforementioned apartment complexes, so you can always walk to the basic necessities. I’ve already discussed the urban agriculture. Add to all these major practices all of the clever little things I see on a day to day basis (for example, when there is a connection between two electrical cords outside, they use a cut up plastic bottle to protect the connection from rain), and it is amazing how cleverly life is organized here. It’s so nice to see people living in ways that actually make sense.

Seeing the way people live here really turned the cynic in me upside down. All of a sudden, I can say what I wanted to all along, namely that people can and will change their lifestyle to be more efficient. The world really can make sense! It may be a bit early for a victory celebration, though. The fact that Koreans will adapt their lifestyle towards efficiency is very much centered around a cultural heritage that emphasizes the common good over the individual. You separate your recycling, because it is just HOW THINGS ARE DONE, and to suggest that you’re too lazy to do so would really reflect poorly on you. There is nothing like the feeling of entitlement to a certain lifestyle that you find so prevalent in the US. And, aside from thousands of years of collective cultural conditioning, Korea doesn’t offer any real concrete examples of how to deal with that stubborn attitude. Of course, there are both positive and negative effects of this kind of culture. Everything is efficient, there is incredibly little crime (people often don’t even lock their bikes on the street) and everything is clean. But I’ve complained on more than one occasion about the blandness of all the residential buildings looking exactly the same. People have very little to no personal flair or style; everyone looks completely homogenous. There is seemingly no kind of counterculture (though I’m sure there is in Seoul). And there are no drugs! This is good if you’re talking about the absence of junkies and crack-heads on the street, or meth-heads rifling through your personal belongings, but kind of a bummer if you’re a lowly dope-fiend, a little homesick and looking to get stoned.

I’m not totally willing to accept that this is a perfect trade-off though. I’m far from convinced that in order to have a decent recycling program, city and apartment designing that is energy efficient, and lifestyles that make sense, you have to give up architectural aesthetics and rock and roll. This is to say that the Korean cultural identity is not the only way to convince people to live efficiently; it is just a very good example of the fact that it can be done.