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How much do Koreans give? Charity?
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Real Reality



Joined: 10 Jan 2003
Location: Seoul

PostPosted: Sun Oct 12, 2003 10:05 pm    Post subject: How much do Koreans give? Charity? Reply with quote

Last year, South Koreans donated an average of 2,213 won ($1.92) per person to charities, and gave more to television station campaigns than those of newspapers, a parliamentary report said on Wednesday.

The welfare organization Community Chest of Korea said in its report that a South Korean's average contribution falls spectacularly below the 1.2 million won ($1,042) given in the United States and 240,000 won ($208) in Britain.

"Even with the differences in per-capita income, our charity donations are extremely low compared to other nations," Rep. Kim Sung-soon of the parliamentary welfare affairs committee said.

Published in The Korea Times and Korea Herald
2003.10.09
http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/site/data/html_dir/2003/10/09/200310090058.asp

The giving is the hardest part; what does it cost to add a smile?
~ Jean De La Bruy�re ~

If you haven't got any charity in your heart, you have the worst kind of heart trouble.
~ Bob Hope ~

Be charitable before wealth makes you covetous.
~ Sir Thomas Browne ~

Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches to conceive how others can be in want.
~ Jonathan Swift ~

http://www.cyber-nation.com/victory/quotations/subjects/quotes_charity.html
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Austin



Joined: 23 May 2003
Location: In the kitchen

PostPosted: Sun Oct 12, 2003 11:11 pm    Post subject: Misleading... Reply with quote

Those figures are very misleading, and I do not like where you are trying to take this thread.

You need to address why people contribute to charities in the first place? Is it truly a direct reflection of their level of generosity, or is it a measure of their level of guilt or something else?

Korean people are extremely conscious and reciprocal in their behavior towards their family and friends, but culturally they do not acknowledge nor recognize the existence of others outside of their innercircle. Trying to use some comparative numbers of developed nations with different cultural and family values is bogus, as nothing further can be accurately implied.

It is a matter of apples and oranges.
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whatthefunk



Joined: 21 Apr 2003
Location: Dont have a clue

PostPosted: Sun Oct 12, 2003 11:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

And how much did you give Real Reality?
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dumass



Joined: 02 Oct 2003
Location: New Zealand

PostPosted: Mon Oct 13, 2003 1:37 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Those figures are misleading.

Go to nationmaster.com and do a search. That says the US gives about $25per person.
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Real Reality



Joined: 10 Jan 2003
Location: Seoul

PostPosted: Mon Oct 13, 2003 2:25 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

dumass suggested looking at Nationmaster.com

According to Nationmaster.com,
Economic aid - donor (per capita):

Luxembourg $356.69 per person (TOP DONOR)
United Kingdom $75.28 per person
Canada $40.75 per person
United States $24.59 per person
Italy $17.33 per person
South Korea $0 per person
Saudi Arabia $0 per person

I guess these figures are not misleading.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/eco_eco_aid_don_cap
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peppermint



Joined: 13 May 2003
Location: traversing the minefields of caddishness.

PostPosted: Mon Oct 13, 2003 2:30 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

About the figures from Nationmaster.com, are those measuring individual donations, or government granted economic aid. The two things are quite different and I suspect individuals are more generous.
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rapier



Joined: 16 Feb 2003

PostPosted: Mon Oct 13, 2003 2:33 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

it is as Austin says. Koreans have no notions of giving to anything or anyone they don't personally know. its almost as if by giving, they expect to recieve something in return. Donating to a worthy cause, with no chance of being recognised as the generous beneficiary and all the status/ admiration that would bring, is a nonsensical idea to them.
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posco's trumpet



Joined: 20 Apr 2003
Location: Beneath the Underdog

PostPosted: Mon Oct 13, 2003 3:26 am    Post subject: Re: Misleading... Reply with quote



Last edited by posco's trumpet on Sat Dec 06, 2003 9:01 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Hammer



Joined: 06 Oct 2003
Location: Cheonan

PostPosted: Mon Oct 13, 2003 4:55 am    Post subject: kindness to strangers Reply with quote

today, the mother of one of my students gave me a bag of those fish-shaped fried bean cake things -I forget what they're called. Another one is always giving me gimbap. I've said "An yeong ha se yong" to these ladies a total of three times.
I don't think charity works the same here - people tend to be kind and generous everywhere (otherwise we'd soon run out of people.) Here it seems that you care about your family just cause they're your family - me, I get along a lot better with my parents now that there's an ocean between us.
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The Bobster



Joined: 15 Jan 2003

PostPosted: Mon Oct 13, 2003 5:35 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
Not long after sunrise, people (mostly women) come out of their houses and give food to the monks from the local monastery.


The Buddhist idea of charity is all tied up with the notion "making merit," and monks who beg consider themselves as fulfilling a role of creating an opportunity for others to move themselves higher on the spiritual ladder by being a recipient of kindness. On other words, it's part of their job to beg because they help others by doing so ...

At the other end of the scale, Andrew Carnegie spent the last part of his life giving away all the wealth he had amassed in the early part by giving funds toward the building of libraries all across the US. Notice, I said "building libraries," because to my knowledge he never bought a single book to put inside of those buildings - but it was part of the deal that his name be attached on the edifice itself.

Now that I think of it, is that really the other end of the scale at all? When we start searching out the motives for charity, the words "tax write-off" somes up a whole LOT of the time ... even dropping a coin in a box at the supermaket gives us some sort of payment, just the mere thought that now I am a slightly better person than I was a few minutes ago.
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camel96
Guest




PostPosted: Mon Oct 13, 2003 6:01 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I don't know anyone in the US who would give over $1000 a year to charity so presumably the figure also factors in philanthropic donations by corporations who in many cases contribute big big bucks which seem to skew the figures quite significantly. Would it be more realistic to say that Korean corporations are tightasses rather than Korean people...?
Just thinking aloud.
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whatthefunk



Joined: 21 Apr 2003
Location: Dont have a clue

PostPosted: Mon Oct 13, 2003 7:05 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

2 words....tax deductions.
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posco's trumpet



Joined: 20 Apr 2003
Location: Beneath the Underdog

PostPosted: Mon Oct 13, 2003 1:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote



Last edited by posco's trumpet on Sat Dec 06, 2003 9:02 pm; edited 1 time in total
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dumass



Joined: 02 Oct 2003
Location: New Zealand

PostPosted: Mon Oct 13, 2003 4:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

whatthefunk wrote:
2 words....tax deductions.


You hit the nail on the head there.

The USA have heaps of tax-deduction programs if companies donate to charities, where as Korea probably has 0.
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dogbert



Joined: 29 Jan 2003
Location: Killbox 90210

PostPosted: Mon Oct 13, 2003 5:36 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

dumass wrote:
whatthefunk wrote:
2 words....tax deductions.


You hit the nail on the head there.

The USA have heaps of tax-deduction programs if companies donate to charities, where as Korea probably has 0.


Nope. There are income tax deductions for charitable giving in Korea as well. Like in the U.S., however, it has to be over a certain amount/percentage, so the average taxpayer will not be able to use it as a helpful loophole.
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