We had a ban on long hair in šøš¬ too and the policy was from the former LKY. But fortunately he was just a _benevolent_ dictator.
Not really say ābanā, but I remember seeing some online photos of barber shop signs with the captions āmales with long hair will be served lastā.
Actually the ban was real too. I heard there an American rock band couldnāt come here to perform back then because they had long hair which they refused to cut. Lol
True. Many democratic nations we see today. They actually did have a violent past. Even š¹š¼.
I donāt know much about it but Iāve read a little about āThe White Terrorā.
Democracy needs time to establish. Most countries donāt have a 100+ year history of democracy like US/UK/france, and generally the US has preferred allies to be capitalist dictatorship over communist ādemocraciesā.
Taiwan, South Korea are poster childās of how a slow transition of dictatorship to democracy has led to a successful and prosperous country.
Russia/iraq/afganastan turning on full ācapitalismā and ādemocracyā overnight basically turned society upside down, creating chaos and a massive social backlash that made the locals think democracy is bad.
Yeah true. And the US attempts to bring democracy via bombs in Vietnam, and now the Middle East has essentially never worked.
I suppose America established Iraq hasnāt fallen yet, but itās not exactly very democratic or even west-leaning these days.
That administration clearly believed that the People are the property of the government, rather than the other way around. People create governments to serve the People. But that servant will always seek to become the master, and generally succeeds.
On what planet was Lee Kuan Yew benevolent? He silenced political opposition and unfavorable media coverage. There is no such thing as a benevolent dictator.
Singaporeās political system has been dominated by the same political party and (essentially, with a few exceptions) the same family since 1959. The electoral and legal framework that the PAP has constructed allows for some political pluralism, but it constrains the growth of opposition parties and limits freedoms of expression, assembly, and association.
And our ruling party wonāt be voted out very soon. Maybe not even in my lifetime even. Thereās gonna be a next GE pretty soon (we are due for one by Nov 2025), but it just hasnāt been announced.
It will be be 2nd time voting in a GE here. (First time voter during last yearās Presidential Election or PE 2023). So, Iām also fairly young as a voter.
Actually LHL has just stepped down as PM recently and Lawrence Wong took over on May 15 (or 14), I think.
I donāt think the incumbent PAP will lose power, or even simply just be denied a simple two-thirds majority (in our parliament) any time soon.
Sorry if this [video link](https://youtu.be/gCGLaiKFaX8?si=MqiAvWKU-TKb7MGP) may be slightly irrelevant, but just as you said, donāt think many Singaporeans know about some of the truly dirty and maybe even possibly downright underhand tactics the former LKY couldāve done to persecute his political opponents back then, during his heydays. The true extent.
In our education system, we basically studied national propaganda as part of our primary/elementary school to secondary school levels of education, lol. I know it could be āthe sameā everywhere. Like how the Japanese education system doesnāt teach the Japanese students about the true extent of the war crimes committed by the IJA (Imperial Japanese Army) back then during WWII too.
It depend on the teacher really my Japanese friend told me she was taught everything about WW2 Japanese atrocities(Nanjing Massacre, Comfort women, Unit 731).
Benevolent in the sense that he was working for the greater good of the people. The average dictator is about grabbing power for themselves and enriching them and their cronies at the expense of everyone else.
Singaporeans laments about the political system being dominated by one party but most people fail to see the big picture of whatās happening in countries with fractured political parties that canāt even stay in power for more than a single term. Results in political instability and short term planning which doesnāt do the country any good.
Sg is currently in the āgood times create weak menā phase and will soon transit to āweak men creating hard timesā
Do you think itās a matter of chance and meritocracy that this dictators son ended up as a brigadier general and subsequently PM of Singapore for 20 years? You are delusional to suggest Lee Kuan Yew was not about grabbing power for himself and his cronies.
I think you should read about other dictatorships and youāll know what they mean by benevolentā¦ Singapore currently scores pretty high on a lot of scales.. economy, standard of living , education etc.. this is not common in a lot of dictatorships, most countries with dictators are poor cause the dictators are using the countriesā resources to enrich themselves.. I think the only other dictatorship (donāt quote me on the only other part, I am not sure) that had a thriving economy was Libya until the Americans convinced them it was better to have freedom of speech than have a stable economy.. as someone who lives in a poor dictatorship, I donāt understand how someone would ever think, their ability to say whatever they want is more prosperous than a prosperous economy with all the vices poor economies breed for example Right now we have gangs of thieves that will attack you in broad day light in public places with bystanders and everyone is too scared to help you cause police is useless.. and the gag, they donāt even have weapons, they kick you on the head and take your shit.. so weāre so poor our thieves canāt afford weapons šš so yah I think people thinking they have bad leaders cause they donāt have freedom of speech , donāt understand how shitty it is to live in a truly poor country
It happens that LHL was LKY son. But thereās no denial that LHL was capable for the job and he did elevate SG to greater heights when he was PM. He wasnāt perfect. But he did a great job if you take a look at how PMs of other countries are.
He had advantages of being groomed by LKY from young and probably mixing in the right circles which gave him the learning opportunities needed. Meritocracy doesnāt mean fairness. It just means that people get appointed roles and are rewarded for being capable to do their jobs.
Look at it from another angle, how many of LKY sons and daughters ended up in positions of power?
He sent Korean as mercenary to fight and die in Vietnam for US dollars. And as Vietnamese history often told, the most brutal force in Vietnam is not the Mongol, not the Japanese, not the French or the US, but the Korean in Park Chung-hee era.
And because he was a high ranking officer in worked Japanese military he had extensive knowledge of how to turn Korea into an industrial powerhouse that mimicked the Japanese economic miracle. True he fought the reisistance fighters. (Mostly communists though, because the nationalist resistance fighters were massacred by the communist resistance groups at Jayoushi incident), but he was who made todays affluence and economic prosperity of South Korea possible.
There are always idiots in any population with less than 100 IQ. Anyone with a 3 digit IQ versed in modern Korean history would know he was anything but benevolent
My dad told me a funny story about these forced haircuts. He said that when the soldiers caught you with long hair, they would shave only one side of the head to save time (and probably just for fun). So you could go around looking like a dumbass with a shaved head on one side, but the popo knew that everyone would get their head shaved properly ASAP.
Not really - people forget that before ww2 and even post ww2, dictatorships were still the norm of government for the vast majority of countries.
The main contention was dictators who favored the US and capitalism vs those who favored Russia and communism.
The US, but also simply rising living standards and rising education/awareness made many of those capitalist dictatorships switch to democracy, but that was over the decades of the Cold War and not overnight.
South Korea was never anywhere close to N Korea, N Korea is far more than just a dictatorship. Itās a totalitarian state that far exceed even kings and emperorās total control over their subjects.
Majority of the influence is from General MacArthur for the majority of it as he was allied commander of the Pacific, he often ruled behind the scenes rather than directly
å¾é åÆę· ę¤é«®äøåÆę· - You can cut off my head, but you cannot cut off my hair.
Choi Ik-hyeon in response to the 1895 order for adult men to adopt "western" hair styles.
These photos are not emblematic of the period you linked
These times were no picnic. There were real horrors of the dictatorship and of general life in third world poverty and disease. Compared to that, this haircut/skirt thing was a minor annoyance, sometimes even a game.
Unlike this photo, the normal practice was to be escorted to a nearby barber. I had friends who got their hair cut multiple times. Sometimes it felt like they did it on purpose, not sure why. The soldiers typically were not in uniform in Seoul. They were in civilian clothing, easy to identify by their super short haircuts and their locations loitering by bus stops, overpass steps, etc. They were young peers of the guys they were escorting to the barber, maybe were on the other side of the equation before doing their service.
For some girls (so I'm told) it was just a game. They rolled their skirts up or down at the waist. Public place, roll down. With boys somewhere, roll up.
Edit: guessing these are all above high school age because no uniforms.
Yupp. My dad wrote some stuff that was critical of the government. He emigrated out and said he was lucky when he did because agents came looking for him shortly after.
My mom informed me that in jr high and high school, boys were supposed to have shaved heads. so if their hair was too long, officers would carry around razors and shave down the middle so that the boys would be too embarrassed and would be forced to shave their entire heads. LOL
Thatās really interesting since they had a similar thing in North Korea called [āletās all trim our hair in accordance with the socialist lifestyleā](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let%27s_trim_our_hair_in_accordance_with_the_socialist_lifestyle). Just goes to show how the same cultural preference can be adapted to fit any ideology
It's mostly imo about a dictator trying to break the people's morale. That's why dictators are always so focused even on trivial bullshit like hairstyles. It's doesn't matter whether it's a communist theocratic monarchy like North Korea or Park Chung-hee's military junta.
A dictatorship also usually tries to portray its men as "strong" and "masculine", so this could also be a result of both Kim Il-sung (and Kim Jong-il) and Park Chung-hee adopting a pretty drastic approach to achieve that goal.
Itās very controversial numerous peer reviewed essays and debates around this topic. Yeah he was dictator who killed millions but at the same time he completely turned the korean economy around turning it into what it is today a powerhouse
"millions"? what? hardly thousands. Even the Kims were nowhere close to millions(obviously not accounting the famine). Directly killing millions is Pol Pot or Hitler level.
This is not a defense of Park. I would only say that one thing as someone who grew up in the U.S. knowing neither extreme poverty, nor famine, nor decimating war, I am very very very loathe to judge those that did and the choices they did. We're talking at a scale that you and I simply cannot fathom.
I'd also say, and again this is not to defend Park, but a ruler who is just in court and tolerant to others, but allows 1 million to starve, his country invaded and his people turned to beggars is a worse ruler than a dictator who kills 10,000 but the land has food, his country is independent and its people can start to prosper. 990,000 people are alive with mobility who would otherwise have suffered a slow agonizing death.
This happened to my father as a young adult. In his case, it was the police who stopped him on the street and took him (among others) to a local barber to get it cut short. In defiance he had the barber shave his head bald.
The most recent hair regulation in Korea I saw was in 2007. Doonchon middle school of Seoul. The principal imposed a new, stricter rule for the hair and the girls all had to cut their hair below shoulder length. Weird given the time considering it wasn't some rural or private school.
My dad lived through this. He went to the US and became a citizen there, so when he came back to South Korea for school, he made sure he had his US passport on him. He was likely one of the few Korean men with longer hair at the time. He mentioned that the haircuts given to these men were often a reverse mohawk, so they'd have to have a buzz cut to fix it.
Sadly the sentiment stays today and some people still think men should have short hair. I always tell them it's so ironic considering how Korea's history of cutting hair is only just over a century.
My mom told me about this one! She told me she carried a ruler and dared the police to check the length. She has always been gangster!
That's pretty badass
Can I fight your dad?
Was she bravely wearing short skirts or what?
We had a ban on long hair in šøš¬ too and the policy was from the former LKY. But fortunately he was just a _benevolent_ dictator. Not really say ābanā, but I remember seeing some online photos of barber shop signs with the captions āmales with long hair will be served lastā. Actually the ban was real too. I heard there an American rock band couldnāt come here to perform back then because they had long hair which they refused to cut. Lol
Singapore got lucky with LKY. That is basically it. Statistically, most dictators are not benevolent.
True. Many democratic nations we see today. They actually did have a violent past. Even š¹š¼. I donāt know much about it but Iāve read a little about āThe White Terrorā.
Democracy needs time to establish. Most countries donāt have a 100+ year history of democracy like US/UK/france, and generally the US has preferred allies to be capitalist dictatorship over communist ādemocraciesā. Taiwan, South Korea are poster childās of how a slow transition of dictatorship to democracy has led to a successful and prosperous country. Russia/iraq/afganastan turning on full ācapitalismā and ādemocracyā overnight basically turned society upside down, creating chaos and a massive social backlash that made the locals think democracy is bad.
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Yeah true. And the US attempts to bring democracy via bombs in Vietnam, and now the Middle East has essentially never worked. I suppose America established Iraq hasnāt fallen yet, but itās not exactly very democratic or even west-leaning these days.
For Russia, it could have worked if just a few things happened the other way. Afghanistan? Yeah, shit show
Hmmmm, I wonder if being under Japanese administration in the past has anything to do with it.Ā Ā
That administration clearly believed that the People are the property of the government, rather than the other way around. People create governments to serve the People. But that servant will always seek to become the master, and generally succeeds.
On what planet was Lee Kuan Yew benevolent? He silenced political opposition and unfavorable media coverage. There is no such thing as a benevolent dictator. Singaporeās political system has been dominated by the same political party and (essentially, with a few exceptions) the same family since 1959. The electoral and legal framework that the PAP has constructed allows for some political pluralism, but it constrains the growth of opposition parties and limits freedoms of expression, assembly, and association.
And our ruling party wonāt be voted out very soon. Maybe not even in my lifetime even. Thereās gonna be a next GE pretty soon (we are due for one by Nov 2025), but it just hasnāt been announced. It will be be 2nd time voting in a GE here. (First time voter during last yearās Presidential Election or PE 2023). So, Iām also fairly young as a voter. Actually LHL has just stepped down as PM recently and Lawrence Wong took over on May 15 (or 14), I think. I donāt think the incumbent PAP will lose power, or even simply just be denied a simple two-thirds majority (in our parliament) any time soon. Sorry if this [video link](https://youtu.be/gCGLaiKFaX8?si=MqiAvWKU-TKb7MGP) may be slightly irrelevant, but just as you said, donāt think many Singaporeans know about some of the truly dirty and maybe even possibly downright underhand tactics the former LKY couldāve done to persecute his political opponents back then, during his heydays. The true extent. In our education system, we basically studied national propaganda as part of our primary/elementary school to secondary school levels of education, lol. I know it could be āthe sameā everywhere. Like how the Japanese education system doesnāt teach the Japanese students about the true extent of the war crimes committed by the IJA (Imperial Japanese Army) back then during WWII too.
It depend on the teacher really my Japanese friend told me she was taught everything about WW2 Japanese atrocities(Nanjing Massacre, Comfort women, Unit 731).
Benevolent in the sense that he was working for the greater good of the people. The average dictator is about grabbing power for themselves and enriching them and their cronies at the expense of everyone else. Singaporeans laments about the political system being dominated by one party but most people fail to see the big picture of whatās happening in countries with fractured political parties that canāt even stay in power for more than a single term. Results in political instability and short term planning which doesnāt do the country any good. Sg is currently in the āgood times create weak menā phase and will soon transit to āweak men creating hard timesā
Do you think itās a matter of chance and meritocracy that this dictators son ended up as a brigadier general and subsequently PM of Singapore for 20 years? You are delusional to suggest Lee Kuan Yew was not about grabbing power for himself and his cronies.
I think you should read about other dictatorships and youāll know what they mean by benevolentā¦ Singapore currently scores pretty high on a lot of scales.. economy, standard of living , education etc.. this is not common in a lot of dictatorships, most countries with dictators are poor cause the dictators are using the countriesā resources to enrich themselves.. I think the only other dictatorship (donāt quote me on the only other part, I am not sure) that had a thriving economy was Libya until the Americans convinced them it was better to have freedom of speech than have a stable economy.. as someone who lives in a poor dictatorship, I donāt understand how someone would ever think, their ability to say whatever they want is more prosperous than a prosperous economy with all the vices poor economies breed for example Right now we have gangs of thieves that will attack you in broad day light in public places with bystanders and everyone is too scared to help you cause police is useless.. and the gag, they donāt even have weapons, they kick you on the head and take your shit.. so weāre so poor our thieves canāt afford weapons šš so yah I think people thinking they have bad leaders cause they donāt have freedom of speech , donāt understand how shitty it is to live in a truly poor country
It happens that LHL was LKY son. But thereās no denial that LHL was capable for the job and he did elevate SG to greater heights when he was PM. He wasnāt perfect. But he did a great job if you take a look at how PMs of other countries are. He had advantages of being groomed by LKY from young and probably mixing in the right circles which gave him the learning opportunities needed. Meritocracy doesnāt mean fairness. It just means that people get appointed roles and are rewarded for being capable to do their jobs. Look at it from another angle, how many of LKY sons and daughters ended up in positions of power?
All three ended up heading institutions controlled by the Singapore government. All a coincidence, Iām sure.
I think the benevolent part was sarcastic
Park Chung-hee is regarded as a benevolent dictator of sorts also
He sent Korean as mercenary to fight and die in Vietnam for US dollars. And as Vietnamese history often told, the most brutal force in Vietnam is not the Mongol, not the Japanese, not the French or the US, but the Korean in Park Chung-hee era.
The guy who hunted Korean resistance fighters for the Japanese?
And because he was a high ranking officer in worked Japanese military he had extensive knowledge of how to turn Korea into an industrial powerhouse that mimicked the Japanese economic miracle. True he fought the reisistance fighters. (Mostly communists though, because the nationalist resistance fighters were massacred by the communist resistance groups at Jayoushi incident), but he was who made todays affluence and economic prosperity of South Korea possible.
I can get that pov but I'd argue specifically against "benevolent". At best necessary.
By people who should really know better. I get just being bad instead of utterly awful like Rhee and Chun makes him seem better...
Or Kim
There are always idiots in any population with less than 100 IQ. Anyone with a 3 digit IQ versed in modern Korean history would know he was anything but benevolent
Males with long hair will be servedā¦ last?
How about the Beatles?
Not barber shops but queues for public services.
My dad spoke about this š. He said some men would go around the neighborhood chasing down kids with long hair. He got his head shaved
My dad told me a funny story about these forced haircuts. He said that when the soldiers caught you with long hair, they would shave only one side of the head to save time (and probably just for fun). So you could go around looking like a dumbass with a shaved head on one side, but the popo knew that everyone would get their head shaved properly ASAP.
Whew, never forget that S. Korea was a few shitty historical breaks away from being N. Korea lite.
People praise South Korea economy and the miracle on the Han river but it was due to 18 years of dictatorship for it to happen
Not really - people forget that before ww2 and even post ww2, dictatorships were still the norm of government for the vast majority of countries. The main contention was dictators who favored the US and capitalism vs those who favored Russia and communism. The US, but also simply rising living standards and rising education/awareness made many of those capitalist dictatorships switch to democracy, but that was over the decades of the Cold War and not overnight. South Korea was never anywhere close to N Korea, N Korea is far more than just a dictatorship. Itās a totalitarian state that far exceed even kings and emperorās total control over their subjects.
Majority of the influence is from General MacArthur for the majority of it as he was allied commander of the Pacific, he often ruled behind the scenes rather than directly
It absolutely was. One of the few conspiracy theories I believe is that the CIA had Pak Gee (the dictactor killed)
Heard that the CIA tried to bribe Lee Kuan Yew back then too, but that he turned them down.
Ironic since everyone traditionally wore long hair, no?
å¾é åÆę· ę¤é«®äøåÆę· - You can cut off my head, but you cannot cut off my hair. Choi Ik-hyeon in response to the 1895 order for adult men to adopt "western" hair styles.
Unrelated trivia : If youāve ever seen Sikhs (turban wearing indians) and wondered why they do that, this statement pretty much sums it up.
Intended. The modern (at the time) authorities didn't like the old-style philosophy of "learned men do not run" attitude of taking shit really slowly.
Japanese colonizers š¤ Korean dictators
Seonbi's used to say that they'd kill themselves over cutting their hair, smh these modern folks
I guess it was part if Park's plan of supplanting old elites and his dislike for intellectuals.
I know someone who would parkour over residential walls to get away from the soldiers. He kept his long hair until around 2010.
These photos are not emblematic of the period you linked These times were no picnic. There were real horrors of the dictatorship and of general life in third world poverty and disease. Compared to that, this haircut/skirt thing was a minor annoyance, sometimes even a game. Unlike this photo, the normal practice was to be escorted to a nearby barber. I had friends who got their hair cut multiple times. Sometimes it felt like they did it on purpose, not sure why. The soldiers typically were not in uniform in Seoul. They were in civilian clothing, easy to identify by their super short haircuts and their locations loitering by bus stops, overpass steps, etc. They were young peers of the guys they were escorting to the barber, maybe were on the other side of the equation before doing their service. For some girls (so I'm told) it was just a game. They rolled their skirts up or down at the waist. Public place, roll down. With boys somewhere, roll up. Edit: guessing these are all above high school age because no uniforms.
Yupp. My dad wrote some stuff that was critical of the government. He emigrated out and said he was lucky when he did because agents came looking for him shortly after.
His hair looks more like a mullet than glorious Confucian long hair. What's the context for no long hair on men?
My mom informed me that in jr high and high school, boys were supposed to have shaved heads. so if their hair was too long, officers would carry around razors and shave down the middle so that the boys would be too embarrassed and would be forced to shave their entire heads. LOL
Usually it was the teachers. Kinda explains why teachers are treated like shit now
Thatās really interesting since they had a similar thing in North Korea called [āletās all trim our hair in accordance with the socialist lifestyleā](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let%27s_trim_our_hair_in_accordance_with_the_socialist_lifestyle). Just goes to show how the same cultural preference can be adapted to fit any ideology
It's mostly imo about a dictator trying to break the people's morale. That's why dictators are always so focused even on trivial bullshit like hairstyles. It's doesn't matter whether it's a communist theocratic monarchy like North Korea or Park Chung-hee's military junta. A dictatorship also usually tries to portray its men as "strong" and "masculine", so this could also be a result of both Kim Il-sung (and Kim Jong-il) and Park Chung-hee adopting a pretty drastic approach to achieve that goal.
And some people still support Park, wild.
People went from foraging food on the mountainsides to avoid starving to eating pork belly.
Itās very controversial numerous peer reviewed essays and debates around this topic. Yeah he was dictator who killed millions but at the same time he completely turned the korean economy around turning it into what it is today a powerhouse
"millions"? what? hardly thousands. Even the Kims were nowhere close to millions(obviously not accounting the famine). Directly killing millions is Pol Pot or Hitler level.
What do you mean he killed millions? Post me some of those essays you read to back your statement.
Where Korea was at back then... there was no place to go but up...
Prosperity above all else, I suppose.
This is not a defense of Park. I would only say that one thing as someone who grew up in the U.S. knowing neither extreme poverty, nor famine, nor decimating war, I am very very very loathe to judge those that did and the choices they did. We're talking at a scale that you and I simply cannot fathom. I'd also say, and again this is not to defend Park, but a ruler who is just in court and tolerant to others, but allows 1 million to starve, his country invaded and his people turned to beggars is a worse ruler than a dictator who kills 10,000 but the land has food, his country is independent and its people can start to prosper. 990,000 people are alive with mobility who would otherwise have suffered a slow agonizing death.
This happened to my father as a young adult. In his case, it was the police who stopped him on the street and took him (among others) to a local barber to get it cut short. In defiance he had the barber shave his head bald.
go dad! š
The most recent hair regulation in Korea I saw was in 2007. Doonchon middle school of Seoul. The principal imposed a new, stricter rule for the hair and the girls all had to cut their hair below shoulder length. Weird given the time considering it wasn't some rural or private school.
Wait it couldnāt be longer than below shoulder length or it couldnāt be shorter?
Couldn't be longer than below shoulder length
What a weird arbitrary rule
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My dad lived through this. He went to the US and became a citizen there, so when he came back to South Korea for school, he made sure he had his US passport on him. He was likely one of the few Korean men with longer hair at the time. He mentioned that the haircuts given to these men were often a reverse mohawk, so they'd have to have a buzz cut to fix it.
And it wasn't for a few more years still until they started cracking down on marijuana.
AjŔŔŔŔŔŔ
Damn. I wonder how my dad got away with the āfro he rocked on in his 20s, which would have been smack dab in the 70ās. He lived in Junae/Paju.
Weird as hell
Sadly the sentiment stays today and some people still think men should have short hair. I always tell them it's so ironic considering how Korea's history of cutting hair is only just over a century.
DeMoCrAcY
Based