Abstract
This chapter examines how Korean people’s sense of societal fairness (i.e., social trust) has shifted over time (from 2004 to 2014). To that end, it focuses on the roles of egocentric and sociocentic economic concerns. In a bivariate stratified analysis, sociotropic concern is shown to have a significantly positive effect on societal fairness at both time points: people who hold a more positive evaluation of the state of Korean economy place higher social trust in 2004 and ten years later. Relative deprivation in terms of household finance also emerges as a consistent and negative predictor of social fairness. Intergenerational downward mobility, however, is negatively related only in 2014. In a multivariate framework that includes background (socioeconomic and demographic) controls, the effect of sociotropic concern remains robust across time. However, the relationship between relative deprivation and social fairness in 2004 is no longer significant. In other words, the two measures of egocentric economic considerations (relative deprivation and intergenerational downward mobility) significantly correlate with social trust only in 2014. Findings from this chapter suggest that during the decade since 2004, some Koreans may have experienced a worsening sense of economic inequality, real or imagined. And this most likely translated into greater grievances and perceptions of society as being more “unfair.” A major takeaway from this chapter is that, all else equal, those who feel more relatively deprived, as well as those who experienced downward mobility vis-à-vis their parents, have come to believe that society is less trustworthy (more ‘unfair’).
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Notes
- 1.
There is a huge amount of literature on Korea’s “economic miracle,” prompting some to theorize about the applicability of the Korean case. As Lie (1998) cogently argues in Han Unbound, however, the unique historical circumstances surrounding the Korean Peninsula make it difficult (if not impossible) to replicate what has been observed. Although he, along with some others, refer to South Korea’s successful transformation as an unqualified success, there is no denying that the country has indeed industrialized and modernized at a very rapid pace (see OECD 2018). For a comparative perspective, Evans’s (1996) book Embedded Autonomy is a good source.
- 2.
Trust, as has been argued and shown from a sociological perspective, is critical in reducing economic transaction costs among actors and organizations (e.g., Coleman 1988; Granovetter 1985). It is also true at the aggregate level of nations, as Fukuyama’s book Trust demonstrates (for an interdisciplinary overview, see the edited volume by Cook 2003).
- 3.
In addition to societal trust, scholars have also examined the antecedents and consequences of interpersonal (e.g., generalized) trust. Chapter 9 of this edited volume (“Interpersonal Trust and Its Associations with Respondents’ Community Characteristics”), for example, focuses on the community characteristics that are related to this type of trust across the residents of Seoul specifically. My chapter complements this work by looking at factors—namely, egocentric and sociocentric concerns—associated with societal trust among nationally representative samples of Koreans over time. Hence, while methodologically similar, the two chapters investigate distinct aspects of trust, one that is defined strictly in relational terms vis-à-vis other individuals and another that emphasizes a much broader and more abstract sense of fairness at the societal level.
- 4.
For a conceptual discussion on the difference between “egotropic” and “sociotropic,” see Steenvoorden and Wright (2019).
- 5.
Of course, knowing that others are willing to contribute to the provision of a public good does not, by definition, encourage people to follow suit. In fact, the very opposite may be likely, as shown by Olson’s (1965) classic argument of the logic of collective action.
- 6.
According to an oft-cited definition, social trust can be defined in terms of an “encapsulated interest account of trust” (Hardin, 2002), that is, one trusts to the extent that s/he has adequate reasons to believe that it is in the interest of other parties to be trustworthy. Social trust, put another way, is a calculation of expected cooperation. This definition is very different from societal trust, as emphasized in this chapter, which has to do with the basic sense in which society operates according to general rules that are deemed “fair.”.
- 7.
It has been observed that compared to other countries, the level of trust in Korea is relatively low. According to one source, this may be a product of inequality created by rapid macroeconomic development in the country. The argument is that while material conditions have improved, the rising gap between rich and poor has fostered Koreans’ distrust toward big business in particular and more generally toward one another (Suh et al., 2012). In addition, the relatively low trust among Koreans can partly be attributed historical reasons. Specifically, it may be a legacy of colonialism (Kim, 2008). When Korea became under the colonial rule of Japan, the traditional Confucian culture of mutual trust and cooperation became compromised. According to this view, as part of its ‘divide and conquer’ strategy, the Japanese administration sought to plant seeds of interpersonal distrust among its colonial subjects, a practice whose long-term impact may have survived until the present day. After the national liberation in 1945, a series of social turmoil culminating in the devastating civil war (1950–1953) coupled with a tumultuous period of military coups and dictatorships only worsened the situation, leading to a further decline in trust among the Korean population. Historically, the strong emphasis placed on familism may have also hindered the development of generalized trust beyond the kin boundary (see Park, 2004).
- 8.
In 1976, the top 10% earned 25.7% of the total share of fiscal income. That figure rose to slightly more than 43% in 2016. As of 2017, the Gini coefficient for Korea was 0.35, rising from 0.28 a decade earlier.
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Kim, H.HS. (2023). Changing Perceptions of Societal Trust Among Koreans: Relative Deprivation, Downward Mobility, and Sociotropic Concern. In: Kim, J. (eds) A Contemporary Portrait of Life in Korea. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-5829-0_10
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