At a recent gathering, my friend HJ, who is in her mid-30s, was surprised to hear doctors and lawyers talking about personal problems. Like them, she had been raised with the idea that you have to study hard and work hard in order to make (or marry into) money. She never questioned why you had to make money and assumed it led to happiness. Those with more must be happier than those with less. Doctors and lawyers were among the few who had made it into the jolly zone, she thought. Testimony of their relationship and personal fulfillment struggles thumped her like a revelation.
``They are the same as me,’’ she said.

This discovery has led her to the heresy in materialistic Korea that money isn’t all, that it is simply a means to buy things, often of questionable value, and it’s the things you can’t buy that are most valuable. Westerners of my generation would consider this a duh-ish point because we were guided in youth by The Beatles (``Can’t Buy Me Love’’) and Pink Floyd (``Money’’) and other role models who we only later realized were multi-millionaires.

But HJ is peering through a foggy lens. She lives in a country whose national objective is not an American-type happiness for the individual with wealthy means, but economic growth for the sake of economic growth. Once austerely Confucian or other-worldly shamanist, modern Korea worships the golden calf, and harnesses its religions accordingly. And in this worship, the individual and her family has been sacrificed and must employ cunning and her husband’s salary to quietly create wealth. Now with a generation growing up who will not be able to afford housing, the pressure to stay focused on rapid wealth-creation is overwhelming.

What HJ needs to turn her revelation into action is support, allies, like-minded souls.

She needs, for example, friends like the taxi driver I rode with once last year. I’ve told his story so many times, I wish I had got his name. An enthusiastic man in his thirties, he is a mountaineer. He drives his taxi for a few months to raise enough money to go off to the Himalayas or somewhere, does some big mountains, and then comes home again.

Kangnam girls wouldn’t fancy him and society would think him a loser until he does something famous, preferably wrapped in a Korean flag. But he fascinated me. I could relate to his particular passion. As a student, I was a fanatic rock climber. I couldn’t look at a building without mentally working out a route up it. I dreamed of doing the Alps and Himalayas until I had a fall and found greater satisfaction reading books by mountaineers. But here was someone who was doing it.

This mountaineer-turned-taxi driver knew his passion and had arranged his life to follow it.

How rare is that?

There are many extraordinary Koreans, not the nation-builders, but unsung individualists. But how typical are they? Tell me if I’m wrong, but to this observer at least, it seems that the majority here live according to what they perceive to be the dictates of others. Their passions get shackled. Which means, in other words, that they are out of integrity with themselves and will end up dull and unhappy, be they rich or poor.

I don’t believe that in a free country, such lack of integrity can survive. Countries may be politically restrictive and they may be socially or religiously restrictive, but once freedom of the individual becomes possible, people like the taxi-driving climber and other misfits drive a wedge in and eventually topple old structures.

Here’s my prediction: there will come a youth trend in Korea of dropping out. There will come a point when youngsters resist the current ``training’’ _ I hesitate to call it education. They will resist their parents to follow creative pursuits that are frowned upon. They’ll move to the islands of Shinhan County and build cabins. The son of the businessman will join a rock band and the son of the artist will throw away his beret to start a business.

Actually, this in small doses has always happened, but I think there will come a tipping point, a defining moment where individualism breaks out for the majority. Korea will have its Woodstock. And, even though she’ll be an ajumah by then, HJ will be there.

Michael Breen is the president of the public relations agency, Insight Communications Consultants, and author of “The Koreans.”