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Someone told me once that Korea is a very trend-following society, perhaps more than any other country on Earth. Something comes along, it gets trendy, and then the entire nation gets crazy into it, for good or ill. Like, Kpop wasn't always a thing, it just exploded in the 2000s. They also have these weird food trends that seem to come and go like lightning (right now "salt bread" is a thing, with huge lines at popular bakeries. i have no idea why.)
This isn't a new phenomenon, and it also applies to religion. Buddhism spread to Korea in like 300 AD, and they immediately got super into it and it became the state religion in 372 and then was launched to other east Asian countries through Korea. Same with Taoism, and with Christianity in the 19th century, it just hits like a tidal wave. And, apparently, the same thing with Feminism and gender wars.
I would guess that it's just part of being a small, homogenous, tightly-knit country. Since they have their own language, they're a bit isolated from the larger Chinese and English speaking worlds. Culture just spreads and evolve really rapidly there. I guess it's sort of like how evolution happens fastest in small isolated populations, and much slower in larger populations.
Salt bread would presumably be the direct translation of what in Japan is called 塩パン. It's pretty good, buttery salty goodness. But I wouldn't stand in line.
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It's not that small. If South Korea got teleported to Europe, it would be the 7th largest country by population. It is small by area and has a very high population density, though I'm not sure if urban population wouldn't be a bigger factor in ease of fashion spreading. And South Korea is surprisingly far from the top on that metric.
Its different though. Europe is all connected by the Eurozone, geography, and so many of them all speaking English. South Korea is effectively an island, walled off by the no-man's-land of North Korea, and no common language with any neighbor except really strange English
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