[Opinion] A Brave New World Is Coming

Professor Seoyonggu, Department of Business Administration, Sookmyung Women's University

Social Integration Index. This is an index that indicates a country's ability to resolve conflicts, in other words, how much social capital called 'trust' has been built. In short, it is a measure of how flexibly a specific country can manage conflicts among social group members and classes. South Korea's Social Integration Index is among the lowest within the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. While Nordic countries such as Finland, Denmark, and Norway lead with about 0.93, South Korea's Social Integration Index is 0.21. This is the second lowest figure after Israel. Israel suffers from territorial disputes with Palestine, religious conflicts, and tensions with neighboring countries. Compared to that, South Korea, which is considered to be in a somewhat better situation, incurs social costs due to conflicts amounting to 246 trillion won annually, according to statistics.

Especially due to the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), the world experienced lockdowns (movement restrictions), leading to the normalization of remote work and social distancing, and accelerating the Fourth Industrial Revolution. A future society centered on non-face-to-face (untact) interactions is rapidly approaching.

The future society will be a society of conflicts. Conflicts between income classes, genders, generations, and ideologies are expected to intensify. The 1932 British dystopian novel "Brave New World" depicts a society where humans are mass-produced in laboratories. In the human production factory, human classes are determined by intelligence levels as Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, etc. As a future society represented by artificial intelligence (AI) and untact approaches nears, the digital divide (information gap) deepens, and income disparities widen according to digital adaptability.

In this context, Robert Reich, a professor at the University of California and former U.S. Secretary of Labor, argues that COVID-19 is transforming the United States into a new class society. In other words, the U.S. is being reorganized into four classes based on safety. The first Alpha class is 'The Remotes,' people who can work remotely. They account for 35% of the total U.S. workforce and are experts who can work with laptops. They can earn the same wages as before COVID-19. According to Professor Reich, the first class is 'the class that can weather the crisis well.'

The second Beta class is 'The Essentials,' people who perform essential jobs but must engage in contact work despite risking their safety. This includes doctors, pharmacists, nurses, healthcare-related occupations, food delivery workers, police officers, firefighters, soldiers, and public officials. They make up 30% of workers, and the key difference from the first class is that their jobs inevitably require face-to-face interaction.

The third Gamma class consists of 'The Unpaid,' workers who do not receive wages due to COVID-19. These are people working in restaurants, retail, and manufacturing who must have face-to-face contact but whose work is not essential like medical activities, so they must indefinitely halt economic activities.

The last Delta class is 'The Forgotten,' invisible workers. These are people residing in blind spots of American society such as prisons, immigrant detention centers, and homeless shelters. They are the most vulnerable group to infectious diseases because they are in spaces where physical distancing is impossible. Society has isolated them under external pressure, but COVID-19 has brought renewed attention to them.

Although Professor Reich's hypothesis is based on American society, in South Korea, if we add 5 million self-employed people to the third Gamma class and 5 million low-income elderly aged 65 and over to the fourth Delta class, it unmistakably reflects the future society of Korea as well.

The future society is not a 'Brave New World' but a 'Hyper-Conflict Society.' We must urgently enhance conflict resolution abilities and social trust levels to prepare for the future. Without strengthening social integration capabilities, we cannot meet a splendid future Korea.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.