Episode 4: The Key to Meet Competition in Good Faith: Cooperation
- misaengasia
- Oct 5, 2018
- 3 min read
Updated: Oct 13, 2018
In the drama “Misaeng: An Incomplete Life,” episode four could be the most important episode in the series. This is because, in this episode, the interns get valued by their superiors based on the presentation they have been preparing competitively and/or cooperatively for the past weeks. Although the theme of episode four can be understood as “survival,” the main theme is how the terms "cooperation" and "competition" are one fixed bundle that follow each other in order to meet competition in good faith (Zhao 2015, 1), which allows a person to take a step forward to have a successful life, or simply “Wansaeng: A Complete Life.”
As mentioned on the first day of the class, Korea is a very competitive country. Thus, when it comes to a country with a ferocious competitive society like Korea, although cooperation within a team is a very important component, it seems very awkward in such a society like Korea. The following issue is portrayed by the interns in the drama. As it is happening to Geu-Rae's colleague, Ahn Young-Yi, who is currently facing difficulties with her partner Lee Sang-Hyun, no matter if it is a group project or not, people in Korea who have connections with their seonbae (seniors), they usually tend to go easily by using their connections by asking them for ideas and get help with their topic, showing no room for cooperation.
Moreover, the lack of cooperativeness is also emphasized during the second presentation: finding a suitable product that their partner will be willing to buy. In an extremely competitive country like Korea, people instinctively try to bring themselves up while toppling their opponents down. Although it is an individual assignment, both people in the group could cooperate and exchange ideas on the materials that they would be interested in buying to help one another prepare for their presentation to raise their chance of getting hired. So, the solution Geu-Rae comes up with is, instead of appealing and persisting to the executives and Seok-Yool with ideas and the reasons why he should buy the product, he appeals to their heart to sell the product that he thinks Seok-Yool would be willing to buy and even asks Seok-Yool if he would like to sell their products together if they both get hired by the company.
As a concluding remark, episode four conceptualizes competition and cooperation as situational factors that lead a person to become successful. Korea has a very competitive society, which is why Korea could have developed relatively quicker than most countries in the world; however, as known, cooperation is the most important aspect that is needed to become successful, and Koreans are missing this component. If they could prioritize cooperativeness over competitiveness, stress will loosen up—"the mutual and ubiquitous emotion faced in Korea" (Maguire 2016, para 7) on a daily base—allowing the country to further develop than it is today. With all this, meeting competition in good faith is a way for a person to take a step to become successful, and it is the most important feature to further develop Korea.
Written By: Aiden Chanhee Hwang
506 words according to WordCounter
Here are some discussion questions..
1. The natural tendency for human being is to choose competition over cooperation. Explain why you agree or disagree with the following statement.
2. Why do you think Koreans are so competitive (You can answer this question with the question 3)?
3. List at least one thing that you know Koreans are competitive for, and explain why you think they compete for it/them (ex. education and sports).
Bibliography:
Maguire, Ciaran. "Stress Dominates Every Aspect of Life in South Korea." The Irish Times, Oct. 24, 2016. https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/abroad/generation-emigration/stress-dominates-every-aspect-of-life-in-south-korea-1.2837362 (accessed on 10/05/2018).
Zhao, Hailin. "Differentiated Cooperation and Competition Within Teams." PhD thesis., University of Iowa, 2015.
Hello Aiden! This is Alice from Live group. I think that Koreans are generally competitive. We just live in that kind of society where people do not think that competitive society is unfair, but instead, think that it is a normal thing in Korea. To me, it seems like Koreans are competitive even with their friends. I think this is more common in university where students are getting ready to head out to the real world. For example, let’s say two people who are best friends applied for the same job position and only one got in. Even if they were best friends with each other, there are so many cases where one who got the job tends to ignor…
Hey everyone,
Chanhee, this is a good start, but what exactly does cooperation MEAN in Korea? Yuxin brings up a good point that we are perpetually in a state of competition - you don’t need to have read 17th-century philosophy to express that. But in this SPECIFIC context, it’s not like you can sell anything and everything with “heart”. You can put out the illusion of heart, nostalgia, whatever, and that can be a selling point most of the time. But even that is just one strategy in your tool belt.
That said, maybe a better thought might be, what are some ways to incentivize or encourage cooperation? If the natural tendency is competition, for example, then what are some…
찬희, that's an improvement, thank you. But you could still fix the 로마자before Mr Cheung grades the episode. Please see the post about Romanization on canvas earlier this week. As a Korean you can easily just use the romanization converter program. Also, missed you and 시온 this week...
I agree with this statement that people prefer to compete than cooperate with others. In Darwin's theory of evolution we know natural selection, know the most competitive ones could survive. In addition, not every one wants to cooperate with you, but you can compete with anyone you want, which guarantees the social justice. We all know that there is no permanent friends nor enemies, but we must keep the permanent interests, including personal interests, national interests. For example, there is no stable relationship among Japan, Korea and China because of the territory conflicts. To protect their own interests, competition is the most effective way, because only competition can promote the development of the whole country.
In my opinion, there are…
Chanhee,
You can't add bibliography entries at the end of an essay and not ever bring them into your essay with in-text citations. That's the same as not having any bibliography at all.
Fix the Romanization of all character names-- they need to be written according to proper RR Romanization-- it's good practice.
If I were you I would go back and rewrite this essay considering what your key point of analysis is. What I see here is a lot of play by play summary of what you saw in the drama, and a lot less analysis of deeper meanings behind it-- instead there are broad statements. The last paragraph is your strongest, but considering the email I got from…