Case Study: a City Where Modernity Meet Tradition, Seoul 

Introduction:

Geography: Seoul, the capital of South Korea, is a city located in the north-western part of the country. It’s 50km away from the DMZ (De-Militarized Zone) with North Korea. The capital Seoul itself covers about 600 km square, while the Greater Seoul which also includes Incheon and numerous other satellite cities covers approximately 12,000 km square. (Jabgo) Population: Seoul is also one of the most populated cities in the world. The Greater Seoul has almost 23 million inhabitants, while almost 10 million residents are in the capital Seoul city itself. This also means that Seoul is one of the densest city due to their relatively small land area. (Jabgo) Currency: The currency here in South Korea or specifically in Seoul, is won. 1 US dollar would be equivalent to 1,114. 90 won, whereas 1 Euro would be 1312. 18 won. Time Zone: The time zone of Seoul, South Korea would be GMT +9 hours, past meridian from Greenwich Mean Time.

Modernity vs. Traditions in Architecture:

In this unified capital city, there are the existence of both type of architectural buildings designated for opposite purposes. There are countless industrialized buildings, modernized structures as well as skyscrapers being constructed throughout of Seoul. For instance, the Lotte World Tower with 123 levels as well as the famous Namsan Seoul Tower, are considered some of the most well-known and visited constructions throughout the city. These towers can also be seen as the symbol of modernization of this city, where they are the outcomes resulting from the impacts of industrializations. Among the renovate constructions, multiple ancient traditional and cultural architectures can also be observe, peeking out within this seemingly modern city. The 5 Grand Palaces, Bukchon Hanok Villages, along with other religious temples are among one of the most ancient and traditional buildings here in Seoul. (Choi, 2012; Anikadaske, 2017) The constructions such as the 5 ancient royal palaces or the old villages not only lasted for centuries but they had been under several restorations for the purpose of educating Korean kids regarding historical knowledge and information. (Anikadaske, 2017) Thus, since religion had played a big role on Korean societies, it’s understandable that there are still countless temples and pagodas being preserve and restore for worshipping purposes. Therefore, it’s utterly possible for a photographer to take a snap with both modernized and traditional architecture within a single frame. This fact demonstrates the idea that even though Seoul is one of the most industrialized city in Asia, there are still some traditional cultural aspects within this contemporary city due to the reason that it’s crucial to preserve cultural customs as they are the roots of a race, are what defines a unique group of people. Culture is like a guide that help us define who we are. A race when losing their cultural identity and practices are as alarming as if they had lose their way in life. The situation is just like when a little duckling feeling lost because it had lost its mother.

Modernity vs. Traditions in Clothing and Fashion: In the modernized city of Seoul, the residents of the city are very up-to-date regarding fashions and dressing styles. When visiting this city, you would be stunned with the amount of westernized and fashionable clothes wore by the citizens of this city on their regular basis. The best example for this high trendy dressing style would be looking at the Korean idols, who are provided with a series of highly up-to-date and fashionable sets of Westernized robes every time they made a public appearance. Similarly, the Korean citizens who followed these widely broadcasted styles and trends, also try to find themselves the most trendy sets of clothes that are tremendously influenced by the Western cultures. This amplifies that Koreans are being modernized in their sense of fashions and clothing, where mostly what they wear on regular basis are trendy and Westernized clothes such as crop tops and shorts. It’s very normal that you would not ever see any native people in an industrialized city or especially cities in Asian countries walking around the street in their traditional cultural clothes. However, this is not the case in Korea or especially their capital city, Seoul. This is due to the fact regarding when visiting this city, you would be able to observe plenty of shops where you can rent the ‘hanbok’, also known as Korean traditional dresses, for several hours. Hanbok for centuries, had been utilized in every Koreans’ lives and the last time these robes were wore on a large scale was a century ago, during the 20th century.

Correspondingly, with the Koreans, hanbok is an utterly important factor that shape up their cultural identity. While the Koreans continue to preserve this traditions through the establishment of the special festivals for instance, the traditional events like the ‘Hi Seoul Festivals’, which occur for several months a year, where they often dress up in their traditional clothes, with the purpose of celebrating their cultural customs and practices so the later generations won’t neglected these important and historic rituals over time, teenagers and especially foreigners that visited this city often rent these robes for taking pictures and other tourism purposes. (Choi, 2012) This had gradually becomes a trend within the foreigners and adolescent groups. As a result, when taking a walk on the street of Seoul, you would be able to catch glimpse of people wearing hanboks on a regular scale. This demonstration amplifies the fact that even when this city had experience a tremendous modernization, which can be shown through the evolution of their dressing style, the Koreans still wear and preserve their traditional clothings and robes through the establishments of renting shops or even monthly festivals that reinforce the needs of keeping their cultural identity.

Modernity vs. Traditions in Ethics and Moral: Going deeper to the points being described above, ideas regarding ethics and morality within this city also shared both industrialized and traditional aspects. For instance, the expectations and restrictions regarding women and what rights they have had also evolved.

Korean women nowadays can dress in Western and fashionable clothing as well as participating in late night parties, where they were granted with the capability in having affairs and drinking sessions with other men. (Ranjit, 2017) Despite this modernized and open-minded expectation, there are still rigorous and harsh aspects to this tolerance, where Korean society still don’t accept unmarried women or single mothers, in which their children will be considered as illegitimate would be disregard by the surrounded community. (Ranjit, 2017) This unacceptance towards the idea of single mother is a traditional Korean teachings and ethics that had been transfer from generations to generations. With this being said, in this city, Seoul, it’s observable that there are the existence of both modernity and traditions within the same topic area. More examples regarding the facts of that despite the Korean ideas and thoughts become more sophisticated, there were still limitations and restrictions due to their traditional ethics, is through the analysis of their modern education systems. Specifically, the Koreans nowadays are more focus on modernized an education system that majorly involving rational understandings as well as critical thinking skills, in which it had been influenced by how academic programs had developed in the Western parts of Europe.

This can be shown through the highly acceptance of the international school systems within Seoul. Parents who afford and allow their kids to participate in this kind of school, believe that by giving them this opportunity to interact with Western education systems, their kids can have high chances of social mobility as well as success in life. However, on the other hand, the actually Korean academic curriculums failed to developed an efficient and modern system likewise, whereas their current education system were still heavily influenced by Confucian ethics such as the need of conformity towards norms and the society as a whole. (Ranjit, 2017) Since Korea was a country where Confucianism had been worshipped and followed for years, it’s understandable how this belief system get into the roots of the nation’s customs. In other words, in Seoul, excluding the international school systems, where students got the opportunity to interact with American curriculums, normal public schools still utilized a heavily influenced Confucian education system. This amplifies that despite the fact that Korean schools starts to acknowledge and incorporate modernized ideas regarding critical thinkings skills into their education system, most of their schools still being influenced by their traditional Confucian beliefs and ideas. Therefore, it’s observable that both aspects of industrialization and traditional culturality still exist in this city.

Compromised Traditions to Encouraged Industrialization:

There are some Korean traditions being compromised in order for the city to experience the process of modernization. One biggest changes within the Korean traditions would be through the analysis regarding the Confucian ideas of filial piety, where they were taught to respect the elders and take care of them both financially and emotionally. For instance, it had been a traditional belief that Koreans grown-up kids have to take care of their parents as they descend into old ages. However, this traditions soon change as the city get through industrialization and modernization.

Specifically, the amount of Korean kids actually care about and take care of their parents decrease drastically from 70% to only 31% due to the fact that they relies more on the government to do the job. (Herald, 2016) For instance, nowadays grown-up kids thinks that it’s the government jobs to take care as well as provide welfares for the elders. As a result, more and more Korean elders despite their old ages and weak health are forced to do harsh labors just to be able to sustain their life from poverty and sickness. (Shushan, 2017) In other words, nowadays Korean no longer follow the Confucians ideology of filial piety, they leave their parents and elders to the hand of the governments and other welfare packages. Correspondingly, the idea of filial piety as well as the fact the they have the responsibility of taking care for their parents gradually decreases as the city steps into its later stages of modernity, in which they starts neglecting their duty of taking care of their parents and leave it to the authority as if it’s the government’s job. This is one of the Korean tradition where it has been compromised to welcome the modernity aspects into the city. Due to the fact that as a city become more industrialized, the government would provide more aids and welfare packages to the inabilities and elders.

This acts also cause the realization regarding the fact that younger generations would become more dependent, relied more and pass that responsibility onto the government, in which triggers the decline of filial piety practices, changing into relied on the government aids to take care of their elders. With the act of defy these filial piety values, the Koreans enable the city to experienced modernizations as they no longer spend expenses on taking care of the elders, they have more spare income into technological and advance investments that can intrigued industrialized innovations.

These large investments had contributed greatly in encourage modernization in Seoul. In conclusion, some traditions must be compromised and change in order for a city to experienced modernity. This is due to the fact that if a race keep practice their own culture, they wouldn’t be able to catch up with industrializations, since there are very distinct aspects within both traditions and modernity. Therefore, as observed from the evidence stated above, some cultural and traditional virtues must be modify so that it can fitted and go alongside with the modernized ideas and values. It’s possible for both modernity and tradition to occur within the same city, because it’s as important to catch up with the world, to become industrialized as it is significant to preserve cultural identity.