I recently attended a Korean lecture about arranged marriages between Korean women living in Korea and Korean man living in the United States at the beginning of the 20th century. It was interesting to see the Korean history in pictures. At that time, Korea was poor, so Korean immigrants working the United States sent money home to their families.
In my grandparents’ period, they lost their siblings due to starvation and disease. Even in my parents’ generation, it was common to report birth registration one or two years later than the actual birth due because the mortality rate was so high.
Korea has had very rapid economic growth since the 1970s. Nowadays, the younger generation has a wealth of resources. When I was a child, my mother told me to eat everything because the farmers worked hard to produce rice and food. But today, people in Korea have so much that they don’t feel like they have to eat everything on their plate.