It's why I've never understood this fascination and admiration for South Korean culture. It's fucking nuts even when you just scratch the surface of it, let alone dig a bit deeper. Something like over 50% of people believe it is not only necessary, but justifiable to have plastic surgery done in order to get a job or promotion in South Korean corporations. Schooling is nuts, the children get up at 5 or 6 in the morning and do pre-school prep before breakfast. Then it's off to school for all day. Then once school is over they go to another after school prep-school. Then it's home and doing homework til it's time for bed. If you fail an exam when you're 12 it's basically over for you. And don't get me started on K-Pop bands and how the chicks there are basically slaves whose lives are managed down to the last minuta of existence.
I mean, people think the Norks are crazy, which they are, but the Sorks are basically just Norks who OD'd on Capitalism and turned it into a dystopian commerce hall where almost everything is for sale.
Oh, and there is basically no pension system there, so if you don't manage to save up money while you work you're fucked when you retire. If you go out into some of the parks late at night you can find grannies walking around alone giving you the eye, and if you are into it they'll take you behind a bush, pull out their dentures and go to town on you in exchange for some cash.
But I guess I should not be surprised, it's the same with other glitzy places like Dubai. Everyone wants to go to Dubai and thinks it's the classiest place on Earth when in truth it's just a dusty dystopian slave state run by degenerate Arabs and populated by Pakistani slave labour, Eastern European hookers and Arabs with more money than sense.