The Age Handicap

SEOUL, South Korea — Last week, my fellow intern and I attempted to treat our colleague to a nice meal—instead, he paid for our steak lunches.. It was a comical situation; in our effort to thank this man for setting up our internships, we ended up setting him back nearly $100. Not only that, we inadvertently slighted him by attempting to treat him in the first place. In Korean business culture, when an intern pays for a senior, more established employee’s meal, it becomes a loss of face for the latter. Our colleague’s gesture was a kindness, yes, but also a necessary product of Korea’s Confucian social mores that say older people have responsibility for—and power over—younger ones.

There are definitely positives to being on the lower end of this age bias. I’ve only once paid for lunch at work (and that was when I went out with my young, hipster coworker), because I’m the youngest person in the company. When a seat opens up during rush hour on the Seoul Metro, the older men in suits stand by, and I only have to fight with the other young women in the car for it. When I go out with my Korean friends, the older ones take the lead and organize things while the rest of us sit back and relax.

However, on a societal level, the age hierarchy infantilizes younger workers. They become unwilling to even consider challenging their elders. The consequences can be severe; as Malcolm Gladwell relates in Outliers, Korean Airlines had a terrible safety record in the early 1990s because co-pilots would not correct their pilots. Korea also loses a lot of potentially excellent, young leaders because of this cultural issue. They feel under-qualified not by their lack of clear reasoning but by their lack of gray hair. On the flip side, older leaders become complacent in their positions not because of their abilities, but because of their age. This doesn’t mean that all 20-somethings possess clear reasoning or that elder Korean leaders lack abilities, just that equating age and wisdom is a mistake.

One day, a Korean-American friend and I were sitting in a restaurant with a large group of people. It was getting late and everyone was becoming restless as they talked about going elsewhere. “Let’s go figure the check out,” I said. “No, wait for one of the guys to do it,” she said. I turned to the one sitting across from me. “No, not him, one of the oppas,” my friend said, referring to the Korean term for an older, male friend. I didn’t understand—in America breaking up the check for a large group is the worst job. It’s frustrating: When I want to help and have the ability, I'm disqualified by my youth, even if I’m only junior by a year or two. Don’t tell anyone at my office, but I’m starting to think these free lunches aren’t worth the price I have to pay.


Anita J. Joseph ’12 is a Crimson editorial writer in Leverett House.