The vision may delight but it certainly falls short of useful insight. Koreans typically tough it out, wondering if this is really the image they want. They wonder if with enough hoopla the gullible world, foreign and domestic, can be brought to believe it. We are dealing with one of the world's most active peoples. They deserve to be dealt with in the active posture they have chosen, and I find how they behave a lot more telling than what they say.
Korean philosophers have much to say about thought, ideals and morals.
These sage dicta can be studied and admired, and their relevance for Koreans is much discussed. The traditional code has little relevance. My quarry is the behavioral persona, not the silhouetted, literary ideal. We usually face the temptation to categorize separate characteristics of other cultures and mold them into our own coherent if insignificant shapes. But neither Korean nor any other culture is a store from which we can pick separate items for discussion however we like.