The Great Gatsby - Reflections

Ye Ji Park

March 27 2012

Reflective Essay: The Great Gatsby and the Yieldless Yeji

These days, I’ve begun to recite a new motto: “I want to go to university!” Becoming a sophomore, the issue of choosing a university and performing as best I can to be accepted there has turned into a serious task. My advisor teacher no longer comforts me by telling “You’re freshman. This is a period for school adjustment. Don’t be too nervous over AP exams or extracurricular activities.” Instead, he admonishes, “Now you’re a junior. Prepare GPA, SAT, AP, and don’t forget volunteer or club activities. Oh, and try to do something continuously, to show the admission officers that you focused on one field steadily.” Realizing that not much time is left for me before submitting a common application, my dream has suddenly become to receive an acceptance letter from a university. Ever since this dream settled in my mind, I occasionally speak to myself, “I want to go to university!”, at random moments – when I ruin my calculus quiz, doze during the self-study period, or spend thirty minutes meaninglessly Facebooking.

Last weekend, I read The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, which is regarded as “a classic, perhaps the supreme American novel” (John Carey, Sunday Times). After reading the book in one sitting, I became a complete advocate of John Carey; the book truly deserves such praise. The Great Gatsby, published in 1925, discusses a lost generation after World War I and the American Dream through Gatsby’s tragic pursuit of Daisy, the symbol of a corrupt American society. The book’s clout, however, does not end up being restricted to a classic of the twentieth century; Fitzgerald’s masterpiece influences even the present-day generation. It encourages us, to stop aimless walks to school, obsession with joining companies, and blind pursuit of empty goals. The Great Gatsby stimulates us to reconsider our true dream – just as it has done for me.

The only dream Gatsby craved throughout his whole life was Daisy. From the moment he met Daisy, his life revolved around her. He survived in the war, dreaming of their reunion. He set his foot into the illegal industry of alcohol trafficking, to earn enough money to be socially approved as Daisy’s partner. He spent thousands of dollars hosting lavish parties every Saturday, in hope that Daisy would one day attend his party by chance.

Ironically, Daisy does not seem to be eligible as the subject of such admiration. She is not noble, virtuous, or high-spirited at all; rather, she is frivolous, irresponsible, and dependent. Despite her promise to remain loyal to Gatsby, she could not bear the long years until Gatsby’s discharge. Within a few years, Daisy started “keeping half a dozen dates a day with half a dozen men, and drowsing asleep at dawn with the beads and chiffon of an evening dress tangled among dying orchids on the floor beside her bed.” This shows that Daisy is superficial and unfaithful, easily forgetting her responsibility over an absent lover. Such lightness and irresponsibility make her to act without thinking about consequences – for example, speaking out that Gatsby “look so cool” in presence of Tom, which is enough for him to sense the secrets of an affair. Therefore, to prevent herself from committing such imprudent acts, she must depend on others. This is why Gatsby and Tom, during their dispute over Daisy’s love, repeatedly said that they are “going to take better care of [Daisy].” She is not an independent human, but rather a reliant doll.

Daisy doll, thus, due to her dependency, is a character without identity. Her life is not her own, but somebody else’s. Her opinions are not originated from her inner voice, but from people surrounding her. Daisy’s decision to marry Tom, for instance, was not because she truly loved him; rather, it was because of her family and friends’ recommendation to marry an affluent man from the upper class. The dream Gatsby had so arduously wished to achieve for years was an obscure, shallow, and will-less girl.

What Gatsby gained from his pursuit of this meaningless dream was nothing more than death. As Daisy became absorbed in her surroundings’, she appreciated external, material, and superficial values such as traditional aristocracy, more than inner, loving-natured, and thoughtful ones. Her prioritized values, such as distinguished families and inherited wealth, were something Gatsby, a son of “shiftless and unsuccessful farm people,” could never achieve. For Daisy, without her own identity, who thus could not go against the general trend, abandoning Gatsby was easier than forsaking society’s value. A dreamer cannot exist without his dream; for Gatsby, deserted by his dream, the end—death—was inevitable.

Reading Gatsby’s tragic end, a thought quickly passed my mind: maybe my dream was somehow similar to Gatsby’s. I asked myself; does my dream have an identity? Why do I “want to go to university”? No answer hitting my mind, I realized that my dream was ambiguous and ungrounded. There was no clear vision that I could achieve only by going to university and studying. I, surrounded by parents, teachers, and friends discussing college admission every day, just vaguely thought that “I want to go to university!”, a common but identity-lacking dream that a student must or should have. Realizing this shocking truth, I panicked, thinking that unless I find a concrete dream, I might be Gatsby Jr.

I started to ponder, “What should I do?” but no definite answers came to my mind. In anxiety, I searched various curriculums of universities, and asked for advice to seniors who already chose their major. Despite all those efforts, I still did not discover the true reason to go to university – there were several courses and advices to which I was inclined, but none of them was enough for me to devote my whole life.

Then I remembered a quote from Mark Twain: “The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand.” Realizing the vagueness of my dream, and admitting that I haven’t yet reached a point where I can really say what I want, was not a disappointing stage at all. Recognizing the limit and trying to improve… it was, by itself, already a step further than Gatsby’s goal. As long as I keep in mind the importance of having a concrete, identified, and qualified dream, I am confident that I will find one in near future. 

Challenges Facing Children: Citadel of Poverty and Trojan Horse of Education

Challenges Facing Children: Citadel of Poverty and Trojan Horse of Education

Ye Ji Park

Republic of Korea, Korean Minjok Leadership School, 10^th Grade

Most developmental psychologists define the approximate range of “childhood” as the span between 2 to 12 years of age. However, the public generally believe the range to be birth to 18 years. Developmental psychologists put huge emphasis on biological, social, and cognitive development during these early years, underlining the fact that growing up in an unstable environment will bring devastating effects. Still this fact is what is happening to approximately 1 billion children, among an estimated 2.2 billion on the planet, under the name of “poverty”.

The word “poverty” is originated from the Latin “pauper,” meaning “poor.” Practically, we define poverty as the state under low condition, especially regarding money and possessions. In economic sense, poverty means earning insufficient income to purchase essential goods and services. The income’s sufficiency is determined by the total costs of daily necessities an adult need per year, and the common international poverty line is gauged to roughly $1 a day. Based on this criterion, the World Bank estimates that 1.2 billion people in developing countries are under poverty.

However, considering the vast influence of poverty, defining poverty only economically is not enough. This is why UNICEF divided poverty into income poverty and basic-needs poverty. While the former only regards income, the latter embraces immeasurable, non-material aspects of poor conditions such as malnutrition, frequent illness, gender or race discrimination, marginalization in society, lack of access to education, etc.

Looking back in the history, it was income poverty that emerged first, ever since the dawn of civilization. Thomas Hobbes, in his famous work Leviathan, argued that three principal causes of quarrel in man’s nature – competition, diffidence, and glory – lead men to the state of war, where they seek to defend themselves or deprive other’s rights. To avoid “every man [being] against every man”, men agreed to transfer their rights to the “common power”, which Hobbes entitled “social contract”. The formation of society, therefore, naturally brings out “the authority” and “the submissioners”. Under “the authority”, “the submissioners” cooperated by specializing labor, resulting surplus values. The surplus, usually distributed unfairly around men of power, caused economic gap between “the authority” and “the submissioners”.

It was income poverty that summoned the basic-needs poverty. Earning insufficient money, the impoverished could not pay for food, proper medical treatment, or professional education. Living in these dire conditions, it is the children who suffer the most; mind, body, and spirit cannot possibly prosper, or even sustain, within such conditions.

One major biological harm caused by income poverty is HIV/AIDS. According to UNESCO IICBA (International Institute for Capacity Building in Africa), the population of HIV infectees reach to 30 million, among which two-thirds (21 million) are from sub-Saharan Africa. IICBA explains poverty’s influence on AIDS outbreak in two ways; first, through rapid rural-urban migration, people are extricated from the traditional conditions or public eyes, thus tend to practice risky sexual behavior. Second, the poor—especially young women, often the head of most impoverished homes—often use their sexuality commercially as the most convenient and immediate way to earn money. Despite society’s warnings about danger of infection, the poor refuse to give up rewards from sexual transactions and stay impassive to the caution. Considering that most wandering populations are young, it is inferable that the major target of AIDS damage is “children”, primarily girls aged 15-17. It is estimated that 9.5 million of sub-Saharan AIDS infectees are in this range. In addition, income poverty also results malnutrition; UNICEF estimated that child malnutrition densely exists in parts of Asia and sub-Saharan Africa—representatively low-income regions—not to mention that more than half of children in these regions are anemic.

Impoverished children also suffer from social deterioration, both externally and internally. The “external” is “the authority” discriminating “the submissioners,” a process which, in common terms, is called marginalization – relegation to remote places of the society. Because the poor, pressed for money, cannot participate actively in enactment of social services and programs, they fail to reflect their needs to society. As this phenomenon continues, the social works would be dominated by the rich, a state that may discriminate and further marginalize the impoverished. Meanwhile, the “internal” is the discrimination within the poor – a typical example is gender inequality. According to OECD, the lower the capita GDP is, the higher the GID index, and the more widespread gender discrimination is. (GID index is the indicator of gender inequality over four fields: areas of family (marriage tradition, etc.), physical integrity (rape, assault, etc.), civil liberty (given rights to vote, etc.) and ownership rights (private ownership of property.) It is uncertain why gender inequality is more severe in poor countries; one assumption is that poor countries usually have stricter and patriarchal traditions. Experience of marginalization and discrimination, in child’s development, would impede them from associating with rest of the society.  

With all of the above in mind, the most significant effect that income poverty has brought against the welfare of children is on cognitive development—mostly intellectual, due to lack of access to education. Education is often considered as a luxury for impoverished children; Madhu Pandit Dasa, the Chairman of The Akshaya Patra Foundation in India, claimed, “When children do not even have access to food, there is no possibility for education”. Because education does not promise immediate food on the table, poor parents turn their children over to labor; according to IOL (International Labor Organization), approximately 166 million children from ages 5 to 14 are working a maximum of 16 hours a day. Tuition fees are also a significant obstacle for the poors. Eric A. Hanushek and Finish Welch claim that governments in poor countries use 34 times of educational funds on post-secondary education than on primary education. However, since most poor children have never received basic education, economic support on professional education is meaningless; most students, enrolled in primary schools, are burdened with high costs for education.

Lack of education is of utmost importance because it intensifies income poverty. The “primary” relationship between income poverty and basic-needs poverty is that the former created the latter;

the “subsidiary” relationship is the reverse, as lack of access to education deepens the income gap. In modern society, simple manufacturing labor is no more the general trend; technological developments demands the workers be prepared with qualified skills, which can be only achieved through professional education, troubling the poorly-educated to search jobs. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the employment rate of workers with college degrees (87.8%) is 12% higher than that of workers with high school diploma and 40% higher than that of workers with less than high school diploma. As higher unemployment rate leads to less income, a vicious cycle is formed among income poverty and lack of education.

The more cycle continues, the bigger the gap between rich and poor will continue to grow. This is, actually, what is happening right now; most of the world’s wealth is concentrated in a few percent of the world’s population. According to the UNU-WIDER (United Nations University-World Institute for Development Economics Research) study, 85% of global assets belong to the richest 10% of world population. Gini coefficient, the number that measures economic inequality (the higher the coefficient, the more inequality), had also increased from 62.5 to 66 during 1998~1993, a dramatic change within only five years.

Thus, to bank up this incessant stream of poverty that sweeps away millions of children, we must break the cycle. The question is, which side to destroy first—income poverty, or lack of access to education? Surely, the choice should be made based on how much actual support the decision can bring to the suffering children.

If our target is income poverty, it is doubtful whether our assistance could influence children’s life. According to the UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime) survey, 59% of Afghans view “public dishonesty (corruption)” as a more serious social issue than “insecurity” (54%) or “unemployment” (52%). The survey also estimated that in 2009, the Afghans paid roughly $2.5 billion for bribery, approximately 23% of the year’s GDP. Such frequent occurrence of corruption makes us be doubtful; aids given to poor countries have high possibility of being abused by the authority, rather than helping children to live better life. 

On the other hand, supporting education is a great way to improve the children’s life directly, and one step further, to eradicate poverty. By providing children education opportunity, we provide them an ideal future; higher possibilities of getting a better job and pay, and lower possibility of suffering from diseases and discriminations. Once they achieve this future, they would provide the same opportunity they received to their children; a “virtuous cycle” would appear, then, demolishing the poverty slowly but steadily.

The possible solutions for the challenge, the suggestions we can try on to expand access to education are classified into three categories; teacher training, supplement of school resources (classroom, stationery, etc.), and a decline in tuition.

Roughly 20% of primary school teachers in more than half countries in sub-Saharan Africa and 30% in South Asia are not fully trained for teaching. The government needs to set up clear qualifications in hiring new teacher. For example, Nepal had once acknowledged anyone who received at least one month of training as a teacher. However, recently Nepal reinforced its loose requirement, demanding teachers to receive pre-service training of minimum ten months. Additionally, the government needs to stimulate current teachers by incentives; if the government promises “pay-for-performance”—paying teachers according to their students’ achievement—teachers would work harder for higher pay.

There are already attempts to replenish education resources. Volunteer organizations, such as Habitat, are recruiting workers to expand classrooms. They already had built rooms in Ali Abad community, North Afghanistan, benefiting 200 students, and they will keep on their job. By encouraging the public and volunteer clubs in high schools and universities to partake in these voluntary works, poor students could escape from the dense, tiny classrooms. Meanwhile, the HOPEN project—the name “HOPEN” as a compound of “hope” and “pen”—is currently ongoing in Korea with twenty high schools involved. HOPEN members hold regular campaign in each school, collecting students’ used pens and notebooks. The collected stationery is delivered to Mongolia, Cambodia, Nepal, and other mondial regions. If the project is diffused over high schools in various countries, the collection would be large enough to provide to all poor children. 

Curtailment in tuition is the most efficacious way to promote education. The government should spend more expenditure on primary education, not on tertiary, so to induce people pursue at least most basic level of education. Once people’s perception changes, and the pressure about tuition fee lessens, children’s enrollment will greatly increase; in Ghana, actually, once the fee was destroyed, there was 7% increase in preschool enrollment, 11.4% in primary, and 12.2% in junior secondary.

James P. Grant, former Executive Director of UNICEF, stated that “Children and women can be out Trojan Horse for attacking the citadel of poverty”. Poverty is definitely citadel, the one much adamant and indomitable that has lasted ever since the beginning of human society. Since it is human nature to form the society, and the natural law of society is to set order of “the authority” and “the submissioners”, the citadel of poverty would never collapse, unlike Troy. Nevertheless, the rampart can at least be destroyed partially by operating the Trojan Horse, which is, helping children to escape the morass of poverty by providing access to education. Once the first generation built their Trojan Horse, they will inherit the same opportunity of education to their children, so that the second Trojan Horse will be built. As time goes by, hundreds of Trojan Horses will create cumulative effect so that most of the citadel would fall apart. Then a possibly immature but still sound period will finally approach us from the long, long war with poverty.

Bibliography

UNICEF (United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund). 2000. Poverty Reduction Begins with Children. New York.

World Bank. 2000. Higher Education in Developing Countries: Peril and Promise. Washington, D.C.

Hanushek, Eric Alan, and Finis Welch, eds. Handbook of the Economics of Education. Vol. 2. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2006. Print.

Cohen, Desmond. "Poverty And HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa." HIV/AIDS: Policy -.27 HIV/AIDS Electronic Library Series. Web. 31 Dec. 2011.

<http://library.unesco-iicba.org/English/HIV_AIDS/cdrom materials/Poverty.htm >.

Nock, Stephen, and et al. "Teachers For All: What Governments And Donors Should Do." VSO International. Global Campaign for Education, April 2006. Web. 2 Jan. 2012.

<http://www.vsointernational.org/Images/GCE_Teachers_For_All_tcm76-22710.pdf>.

Spagnoli, Filip. "The Causes of Poverty (15): Gender Discrimination." P.A.P. Blog - Human Rights Etc. .3 Oct. 2008. Web. 30 Dec. 2011.

<http://filipspagnoli.wordpress.com/2008/10/03/human-rights-facts-68-poverty-and-gender-discrimination/>.

Seberkste, Bianca, and Michal Kielar, eds. "Education in Developing Countries." Website of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2010. Web. 2 Jan. 2012.

<http://www.bmz.de/en/what_we_do/issues/Education/hintergrund/bildungsituation/index.html>.

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This is an essay I submitted for Gulen Youth Platform 2012, which is an international essay contest held by Gulen Institute, University of Houston. I spent quite lot of time writing this piece, and it would be lie to say that I did not expect winning at all. Thus, it is quite bitter that I didn't win the prize, but I would regard it as meaningful to participate, attempting to win in an international contest, and console myself that it was a great opportunity to write a new type of essay - explanatory, professional, a lot of research and a bunch of bibliography - which is, actually, very true. Special thanks for Mr.Garrioch, who gave me munificent advice to improve my essay. 

How to Promote South Korea’s National Image

How to Promote South Korea’s National Image

Yeji Park

What the term “brand” means is exclusive; it includes products, services, and experiences that create familiarity and favorability among its audience groups. Not only business firm, but nations also, pay attention in maintaining its brand, since national brand plays important role in persuading foreigners to invest, visit, emigrate, work, study, consume, or become interested in that country. South Korea is no exception; it spends hundred millions of budget every year to cultivate and improve its brand image. Is it, then, successful?

"In the world popularity contest, South Korea feels a little like the ugly duckling that wants everyone to know it's really a swan." This is what John M. Glionna, journalist of Los Angeles Times, claimed about South Korea’s national brand.

South Korea is world’s 8^th largest exporter; 3^rd largest trader with China and Japan; 7^th with US and 8^th with the EU; 5^th largest automobile manufacturer; largest shipbuilding and electronic manufacturer. However, the FutureBrand Country Brand Index (CBI) says, among 113 countries investigated, South Korea’s brand image ranks 42. Among 20 countries in APAC (Asia-Pacific-Africa Collections), South Korea ranks 8^th, falling behind Maldives and Thailand, which economic status is much lower than South Korea. In short, South Korea’s brand is being underestimated than what it deserves.

Brand marketing experts point out the attempts of South Korea to establish brand image as the cause of underestimation. They say that brand image should not be built by the nation, but grasped by the consumers. What South Korea government has been doing until now is deciding and implementing an image of nation to foreigners, regardless of how they think about that image. To illustrate, one of the most recent phrases South Korea used in brand marketing is “Korea, Sparkling”. The intention was to emphasize Korea as a tourist attraction, but people did not grasp it; they were confused about the subject of “sparkling”—whether people are sparkling, sights are sparkling, etc.—and thus, could not relate the phrase easily with South Korea.

Hong Kong, on the other hand, succeeded in making people feel familiar between the city and the brand image. The nation motto of Hong Kong is “Asia’s World City”. Hong Kong is situated at China, thus Buddhism temples, Chinese medicine clinics, and other eastern cultures are affluent. Nevertheless, its past years under the reign of United Kingdom let the street closely lined with bars, Hollywood movies, or McDonalds. Likewise, Hong Kong is the interception point where different cultures cross over; the brand “World City”, thus, was very natural. People could easily understand and empathize with the brand, since it was not something artificial or forced.

From two contrasting cases of South Korea and Hong Kong, it is inferable that no matter how fancy phrase South Korea government invents of, it is no use unless people can easily grasp natural relationship between the nation and the phrase. The principal agent choosing brand image of South Korea, therefore, should be foreigners, not South Korea government.

However, letting foreigners to choose one image between all miscellaneous images South Korea reminds of, would be extremely complicated. What South Korea government needs to do is to facilitate the foreigners’ decision by simplifying the choices. South Korea government should choose few representations of the nation, and publicize these ideas to foreigners as “candidates” of South Korea brand. The candidates should be selected through consideration; whether it can represent South Korea is important, but whether it can get along with foreigners’ taste is also important.

What it means to “satisfy foreigners’ taste” is illustrated in the following episode. Professor Seo Kyoung-Duk, a well-known communicator promoting Korean cultures, is famous for putting advertisements about South Korea on mass media such as New York Times. Once, he decided to publicize Korean cuisine; knowing that introducing every Korean cuisine will only make foreigners be confused, Professor Seo chose just one dish, bibimbop. Bibimbop, one of the most traditional Korean foods, represent the image of South Korea well, but this was not the only reason Professor Seo chose it. Two characteristics of bibimbop matched well with the global trend—“take-out” and “well-being”—thus attract people. Consumers only need to buy take-out version of bibimbop (one container-packed, which inside all cooked ingredients are put), shake the container, and eat the well-being food full of vitamin and minerals. South Korea government should do what Professor Seo had done; it should choose and promote only few elements, which can be both representative and attractive. Thereby, the range of examples foreigners can choose as South Korea’s brand will be narrowed. Such process will allow foreigners to easily choose appropriate brand image.

There is no question about hardship of building national brand image; it sometimes takes centuries to establish a consistent image of the country. South Korea has struggled for more than thirty years to build national brand image. Its attempts, however, has not been successful until now; this is because South Korea constructed an artificial image and tried to implement it in everyone’s mind by force. It is important to let foreigners choose the most approachable and familiar image of South Korea by themselves. What South Korea needs to do in this process is just to introduce few candidates, so to save complication and confusion foreigners would feel without them.

Simon Anholt, policy advisor on issues regarding brand images to national government, claimed that “Korea’s image is improving, because Korea is improving. … It’s getting richer and more confident.” Foreigners are continually paying attention to improving Korea. On this golden opportunity, let us provide some examples for Korea’s image, and let people choose. South Korea’s brand value will, then, increase day by day; and who knows? Maybe South Korea will be rank one in the FutureBrand CBI survey someday.

Bibliography

Salmon, Andrew. A magic 'brand' eludes South Korea. New York Times. 29.11.2004. Web 07.03.2012

Williamson, Lucy. Selling South Korea: No 'sparkling' brand image. BBC News Magazine 31.01.2012. Web 07.03.2012

Glionna, John M. How about, ‘South Korea: Way better than you think it is’? Los Angeles Times. 03.05.2009. Web 07.03.2012

Smith, Patrick, Christopher Nurko, Tom Adams, and et al. 2011-2012 Country Brand Index. FutureBrand, 2011

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Writer's Comments

I have always been interested in brand marketing, not only in business field but also in national perspective. Recently reading an article from BBC News Magazine, Selling South Korea: No ‘sparkling’ brand image, I wrote 1000 words essay discussing South Korea’s past attempts to establish brand image, its efficacy, and suggestion for improvement. It was a great experience writing this essay, to search for articles and reports on the field I’m deeply fascinated in. J