Korea is Not a Place of Blind Obedience

There is a meme (by that I mean a unit of information, a unit of thought) that pops up regularly when the English-language media (i.e., more specifically, the American media) discusses any tragedy involving Korea. It popped up during the Asiana Airlines crash. It has popped up again concerning the Sewol disaster. It's this: That there exists in Korea a culture of blind obedience derived from Confucianism, and it was this blind obedience that played a role in the incident being discussed.

I strongly disagree. My objection isn't contrarianism--opposite views for the sheer sake of opposite views. That simply isn't how things work in Korea, in my experience. In particular, with regard to the Sewol, students simply aren't taught blindly to follow the orders of adults. Above all else, students are taught to think for themselves, to have their own point of view, and to come to their own evidence-based conclusion about how to react to any given situation. Where adult authority conflicts with the students' opinions, the culture considers it bad form to force rather than demonstrate where the student or child is incorrect. Adults and teachers show and explain far more often than they pull rank as authority figures. Children are free to talk back, as it were, where talking back is a legitimate argument, or where there is confusion as to the necessity of having to do X or Y; where it's not just emotion-based attitude. In fact, many Westerners in schools observed all of this, misunderstood it, and complained about the "lack of authority".

I don't know what happened on the Sewol, but the children must have been convinced by the adults in charge--against the children's better judgment--that it was safe--until it wasn't.