Oh, and SK is an oligarchy. Essentially everything is run by a handful of families (those who run the chaebol), everybody knows about it, and it's been the status quo for years. Not that that's necessarily bad, though it isn't ideal. SK has risen from destruction to dictatorship to mostly-rich-and-democratic.
I disagree that weapon laws really matter, they matter maybe a little. Most of the variance in murder rates is more productively explained by things like homogeneity, rich-poor divide, cultures of violence, etc.
Switzerland. 3-4 ethnic groups with entirely different languages as well as quite different wealth levels, managing to go without massacres and civil wars for hundreds of years. (So that their different wealth levels now look like the difference between "well-off" and "filthy rich" to their neighbours...)
edit: Maybe people thing "Good comment" was sarcastic? I genuinely meant it was a productive addition to the discussion :-) Also, I'm not just making this up. There's significant scholarship on the question.
I agree with you wholeheartedly. The cultures of SK and the US are very, very different. Particularly, south Koreans are all united by being under the constant threat of devastating war as long as almost any of them have been alive.
South Korea homicide rates are 300% higher than Czech Republic, which is a shall issue country, and most permits are for concealed carry.
I find it very interesting that race is so front and center in the US, while class hides behind it and rarely gets mentioned.
That's an interesting theory, are there sources which I can read up on around this theory and the evidence for it?
No, it's really not. I spent a number of years living in Seoul, and you can have a 25 million people metro area with virtually no areas you wouldn't go to alone at night. They may exist, somewhere, but you really have to struggle to find them. That plus no loud and aggressive people on the streets, basically never having to feel guarded or adjusting your walking path to avoid that one sketchy person.
US cities can be such stressful, on-guard, subtly "stand your ground"/"toughen up" experiences in comparison sometimes. It's draining, really just wasted energy, and as a man, makes me behave in wasy I don't actually want to.
Culture really matters. Weapon laws really matter. And national pride in places and spaces that just simply don't shape up well is something to resist.
I have a feeling that the entire "arm the populace" mindset and everything that goes along with it (the lack of interest in consensus-building displayed by wanting to maintain an exit from it, etc.) is much more likely to generate the sort of politics and politicians that would ever require civilian I arms use.
States can certainly go bad in many ways. South Korea managed to impeach its most recent bad President through peaceful protest alone (search "Park Geun-Hye protests") with basically not even a punch thrown, however.