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South Korea has her share of societal problems but in terms of quality of living, it can be truly excellent if you have the means. As a longtime Silicon Valley resident (one of the most affluent areas of the US, mind you), it almost felt like stepping into a third-world country as I set foot on SFO, returning from trip to Seoul. Yeah, probably a lot of that has to do with not-so-great facilities and rude workers of SFO but a lot of these sentiments did not go away completely -- I'm specifically referring to things like public transport, day-to-day use of technology, roads/infrastructure, services, and accessibility to food/entertainment. Overall, everything is just so much more convenient and streamlined in Korea than in the states.
Last edited by shoenberg3; 05-21-2014 at 03:26 AM..
South Korea has her share of societal problems but in terms of quality of living, it can be truly excellent if you have the means. As a longtime Silicon Valley resident (one of the most affluent areas of the US, mind you), it almost felt like stepping into a third-world country as I set foot on SFO, returning from trip to Seoul. Yeah, probably a lot of that has to do with not-so-great facilities and rude workers of SFO but a lot of these sentiments did not go away completely -- I'm specifically referring to things like public transport, day-to-day use of technology, roads/infrastructure, services, and accessibility to food/entertainment. Overall, everything is just so much more convenient and streamlined in Korea than in the states.
Im sure my mother in law who earns about $300 working 70 hour weeks cleaning the train stations would agree with you. I highly doubt she would have ever set foot in the Gangnam for anything other than work, and she only lives about 5 km away.
At least she is not one of those poor old ladies who pushes rickshaws collecting recyclables for a living.
Last edited by danielsa1775; 05-21-2014 at 04:32 AM..
Good point and that's why I mentioned foremost that Korea has societal problems that it needs to deal with. But I still maintain that everyone, regardless of income level and where they live, can take advantage of conveniences and streamlined technology that Korea offers -- for example, excellent public transport system throughout most of peninsula and good access to affordable food. Of course, an affluent person living in Gangnam will be able to reap these luxuries much more but that wasn't my point.
Plus, such terrible disparity in economic structure isn't unique to korea: I could make a similar point about the inner-city African-American who lives in horrid ghettos -- you can't quite find such drug-filled, violent hellholes in korea -- like I see in midwest cities where I currently live
If the average Korean earns more than your average Australian I would be very shocked.
I guess the data came from ILO (International Labour Organization), a division of the U.N. and they're the numbers for 2012.
In this list, Singapore, Japan and Hong Kong are ranked below South Korea.
I would not be surprised if the gap is bigger today in 2014.
Yes, the most developed in Asia are Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. I added Taiwan as it is pretty close in terms of level of development to the others.
If OP is trying to use HDI as the gauge of which country to visit, then those are the 5 countries. I personally would not use HDI to determine which countries/cities to visit. After all, the most boring city I have been to is Zurich, which has among the highest HDI for any country/city. Also, HDI favors the city-states more, as a larger countries need to average the primary city with the countryside. You'll also be surprised as how "developed" some cities are in developing countries.
Just because a city is boring, it does not mean the standard of living there is poor. Some of the most exciting cities in the world to vacation in have a very high rate of poverty, like Cairo, Egypt and Rio De Janeiro, Brasil for example.
Hong Kong is not a country. I would say Japan, Singapore South Korea and China.
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