Quality of Life and Happiness: The Myth of Development in South Korea

This paper attempts to debunk the myth of remarkable successfulstory about the Korean development and draw a new window onsustainability in a developing country, standing at the turning pointof its pathway. The question of why are some societies and contextsbetter than others are raised by the developmental tails and the morerecent downswing in the people’s faith. Three broad arguments fora better world can be systematically applied to the empirical studyof quality of life by estimating the mechanism for common denominators. The Easterlin thesis of cross-national differences betweeneconomic growth and quality of life appears to be supported in thebivariate test while the multivariate analysis reveals that wealthycountries display no greater objective quality of life than poor ones. The time series analysis shows that a rise in education and socialstability increases objective quality of life, and the possibility thateconomic growth breaks up with quality of life becomes more clear when we turns to historical evidence. By contrast, the importanceof the happiness level is viewed by respondents as positively relatedwith household income, wealth, and class consciousness differentials. The discrepancy of development suggests that the price ofdistorted achievement in the country paradoxically accumulated adriving force against the growth-oriented strategy with an increasingquest for quality of life and happiness.