By Andrew Salmon
This dispatch comes to you, dear reader, not from the soaring concrete towers of Seoul, nor the gentle lavender fields of sunny Provence, but from the stifling carriage of a stalled train.
Any reader who has traveled within Western Europe may guess which nation this train traverses. Yes, you’ve got it in one: I am writing from the Land of Hope and Glory; from my beloved homeland; from the green shires of Brave England.
Or as the U.K.-based American journalist I am staying with prefers to call it: “The New Soviet Union.”
“Eh?” you cry. “Is Westminster sponsoring revolutions, eliminating the peasantry and administering gulags?”
No. (Though on the first point, its efforts in Libya are proving pathetically inadequate; on the second, the gap between town and country is vast; and on the third, I don’t believe British civil servants would be systemically capable of establishing a working gulag. But I digress).
What my friend is alluding to is a very prominent part of British life: The appallingly inefficient and overpriced, yet apathetically accepted, standard of services ― specifically, transport services.
This train ride, I should add, was from London to Southampton on the U.K.’s south coast: a ride that should take an hour and a half. Due to a “fire in the signal cables” along the line, the train arrived a full hour (yes, one hour) late, though the journey time was only 90 minutes. Moreover, though it traveled only one third the distance of the Seoul-Busan railway, the trip cost the same price. And when we finally chugged into Southampton Central, there was an apology from the driver over the intercom, but no mention of either refund or discount.
After a few enquiries in Southampton, it became very clear that this was not an isolated occurrence: such incidents are commonplace. And there is more. I won’t mention London’s notorious subway system, which is outrageously priced, but in terms of efficiency, is quite frankly a national embarrassment; or the frequent disasters that strike Heathrow Airport (“Light snow falls; all flights cancelled,” etc., etc.)
What the hell has gone wrong?
Well, the U.K. invented the train and so has the oldest and most contrived series of tracks. These were later nationalized, promoting bureaucratization and inefficiency. Then, they were (re)privatized ― in other words, the government got rid of a financial burden by handing it over to the public sector, with the result that not only did the services did not improve, but prices went through the roof.
Things ― thankfully ― are different in South Korea. When building its rail and subway services, it had a latecomers’ advantage. It also had efficient central planning, courtesy the authoritarian governments. (I am reminded of Mussolini, whose chief claim to fame as a dictator was getting Italy’s trains running on time). And there has not been the rush to privatize that has marked the U.K.’s rail landscape. Finally, Koreans simply won’t put up with bad services. This last factor may be key.
We Britons like to think of ourselves as a people who know how to keep cool heads. Not for us any of that screaming, wailing and hand waving, oh no; we leave that to those emotional foreigners. It is debatable how far this condition is a reality, an ideal or an aspiration, but it is, in many ways, admirable: We are a nation of cool rationalists whose heads rule our hearts, who can be relied upon in a fix, who maintain a “stiff upper lip.”
The downside is, by promoting a culture where one is expected to stoically endure and suffer in silence, we seem to have adopted a long-suffering acceptance of bad services. While I huffed and puffed on that Southampton train, none of my fellow passengers was doing anything more demonstrative than rolling his/her eyes.
Things been so bad for so long that there now seems to be no alternative. We seem to have reached a point where Britons love a good moan (Australians even have a phrase for this: “The Whinging Pom”), but there is a reluctance to actually get up and formally complain, to “make a scene.”
Eight thousand miles to the east, things are different. Koreans speak approvingly among themselves of the native passion ― a passion for emoting. At the drop of a hat Koreans will yell, scream and pull their hair. Vocal? You betcha.
And that may be one of the clues to Korea’s stunning success. When people don’t like something, they will stand up and say it; if they are not heard, they will say it again, louder. This means politicians and bureaucrats learn fast when the electorate don’t like something. In the corporate world, service has improved by leaps and bounds in recent years ever since Koreans started traveling abroad and demanding the same (or better) quality of service they discovered elsewhere.
This is a land where people are not willing to accept the status quo, a land of ambition whose citizens expect ― nay, demand! ― that things continually get bigger and better, faster.
There are downsides, of course. The constant prioritizing of “progress” has led to the bulldozing of history and a vulgar, “get rich quick” culture. Korean hot-headedness can be an embarrassment ― as witness the crassness of much TV entertainment, frequent parliamentary punch-ups, street politics, and the “I can shout louder than you can, I am right, you are wrong, so shut up” manner of debate.
Still if that is the price of progress, it may be worth paying. After all, at least the trains work.
Andrew Salmon is a Seoul-based journalist and author. His latest book, “Scorched Earth, Black Snow” was published in London this month. He can be reached at andrewcsalmon@yahoo.co.uk.