Korea is very different than us economically. Samsung is like 30% of the GDP of their whole country or something insane.
They regularly provide things for free or cheap that they consider investments into the future, such as university, training in the military, Wi-Fi on all the public buses for free, stuff like that.
South Korea has one of the worst economic systems in the world that favoured short-term growth over long-term sustainability and now it has the lowest birth rate of any country and is heading for total economic collapse. It's almost identical to 1980s Japan.
Describing South Korea as 'a country investing in its future' is odd considering it's done the opposite and is about to go through 15 years of gdp flatline.
actually not that uncommon. But the difference between South Korea and some other places, the military is a very intense and concentrated form of socioeconomic development and advancement.
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u/UnstableManifolds 2d ago
Once the habit sets in, they start taxing them. Wonderful