Strong Seoul

      This past summer I visited South Korea. I stayed with my best friend from high school who is from South Korea but studies abroad in the United States. I spent an amazing two weeks there, with my best friend as my tour guide. She showed me everything she loves most about Seoul, the home and capital city. I ate the food, visited the sites, and most certainly walked around places many tourists would have never imagined. It was truly a one of a kind experience, and I'm incredibly thankful I could go. During my stay there, what I found most striking about Seoul was how bustling and up and coming it was. Cities in the United States are mostly established and so while there's the typical hectic craze of city life, construction and improvements aren't always necessarily a priority. In Seoul there was construction everywhere I looked. Sky-high hotels, malls, indoor amusement parks, office buildings, were being built all around with the latest technology and architectural style. It was incredible. As I learned from my best friend and her family, these changes are rather recent. South Korea's economy, business, wealth and status in the world has grown exponentially in the past decade or so.
      It has grown so much since the 1980's which has left me wondering about the current status of factory labor workers in South Korea as well as other Asian countries. In the two chapters from "The Curious Feminist", the author Cynthia Enloe described in great detail the woes of factory laborers, especially women workers that were caused by big business athletic shoe companies such as Reebok and Nike in the mid-1900's. Wages were abysmal compared to those of United States factory workers and executives took advantage of countries and their citizens for profit. However because of the organization of women in the South Korean workforce they were able to fight for pay increase and better conditions. And while this improved their personal standing, it also caused most of them to lose their jobs given that the big companies picked up and moved their factories to less enlightened countries.
      I wonder, are conditions any better today? When I visited South Korea, I did indeed see factories around the more industrial parts of Seoul, but there are factories in every city. I thought nothing of it. South Korea is a strong, democratic, and well, a good country. And my best friend nor her family mentioned factories or any issues within them. Enloe did point out that Pusan, the southern port city, contained most of the factories and problems associated with them, but it is not too far south from Seoul for it's situation to be ignored.
      Whether or not things have changed, South Korea is no longer a weak helpless country. It's bustling, it's citizens are strong, and it's capital is amazing, beautiful, and growing bigger and taller by the day. I don't think South Koreans would be so easily taken advantage of anymore. Progress is sure to ensue.