Day 8 - Korean Bureaucracy

I had been warned before arriving in Korea that the bureaucracies there rivaled those of the U.S. I have been very fortunate to only have limited experience dealing with bureaucracies, so I don't really know how bad Korean bureaucracies are. I will give you a few examples and you can decide.

When I registered as an alien, the application was one page that required my signature twice (side note - Korean names are very short so the space allotted for a signature is extremely small). As I sat down across from the administrator I noticed several ink stamps on her desk. The administrator asked my interpreter some questions and then stamped my application. More questions, another stamp. Seven different stamps! I know they were different because she would have to switch the stamp when she realized it was the wrong one. She never picked up the right stamp on the first time. The odds were significantly against it. Seven different stamps for a one page application? That's impressive.

Another example comes from filling out the paper work for my new job. In order to get my ID I had to fill out a questionnaire. It was all in Korean so again I had to rely on my interpreter. "Name, Age, Address, Phone, Blood-type...", Wait, did I just get asked about my blood type? Can I read the job description again? I wasn't certain, so we left that blank. "Father's name, Father's occupation...". Really? Continuing, "Mother's name, Mother's occupation, Siblings, Siblings' occupation, Name of someone you know in Korea". You might think at some point I would stand up for my rights and question the need to know these things. I did not. I was too amazed at the questions I was being asked. The Korean government knows all about my family now. Sorry, guys. Then we got to the really hard questions. "What are you good at? What are your hobbies?" What? I was reminded of the Steve Martin movie, A Man with Two Brains. In that movie Steve Martin is somewhere in Europe when he gets pulled over for drunk driving. The policeman asks him to walk a straight line, then juggle, then juggle on one leg, then walk on his hands to which he replies, "Dang! your tests are hard!" What am I good at? A tough one.

Wikipedia states that the purpose of a bureaucracy is to successfully implement the actions of an organization of any size. I guess that is essentially true. Too bad the path towards that implementation is all over the place.