203. A master with a full stomach doesn’t see the hunger of servants.
상전 배부르면 종 배고픈 줄 모른다

Any mid-level managers in an organization would have subordinates as well as a boss. Ideally, they should be in firm control of underlings with consistent fairness, and yet should be “slow to anger but quick to kindness.” Here, empathy must be the foundation of their guiding principle. If I were one of those managers, I would ask myself, “Could they finish the assignment I am about to give without breaking their back? If I push them too hard, would the quality of the outcome be compromised? Do I know about their domestic situation sufficient enough to ask them for occasional over-time work? Or shall I completely ignore the personal aspect and drive them as hard as I can? How would I handle the assignment, if I were one of them?”

Towards the immediate supervisor, the manager must be responsive to a given directive as well as responsible for what his or her department has been contributing to the goal of the organization. The manager should try to be as transparent as one can be about the pressure from the upper management, without sacrificing any confidentiality involved. This sincere effort may bring about a great deal of empathy and possibly sympathy from subordinates. They may share the difficulties of a given project as if their well-being is indeed on the line. These are all part of an ideal scenario.

One’s own emotional experience must play a role in developing the ability to understand another person\'s emotions and feelings. Parents who have lost a child must understand much better the other families with a similar tragedy. Having quit smoking in the past, I can sympathize with those who struggle to do the same. Alcoholics and drug addicts empathize with others in similar situations. Surprisingly, however, sharing another person\'s emotions based on one’s similar past is not as universal as one may assume. Does the poverty I experienced, as a child of the Korean War, make me more compassionate towards the poor? Sad to say, the short answer is, not really. When old friends, who grew up together, meet nowadays, we seldom talk about the shared misfortune of the long past. I do not know why, but it may be the same reason why war veterans often avoid sharing their memories and experiences with others.

Medical training demands a long period of arduous effort from students. In this country, after a four-year college, those who are successfully admitted to a medical school, go through another four-year program, the last two in clinical practices. After eight years of schooling, they take up internship and residency for three to seven years, along with board exams for formal certificates. Sleep deprivation, and lack of personal time are the hallmarks of this training. Most of the young physicians swear to themselves that they would change this seemingly ridiculous tradition once they become established in the profession.

However, tradition is still striving and well. Is this a case of absence of empathy and compassion among practicing physicians? Or does the mantra, “I did suffer and thus so do you also,” vaguely insist that the hardship was indeed an essential part of the training that makes the medical profession a “profession of pride?” Or perhaps they might have simply forgotten what they have gone through as in Entry #58, “Frogs don’t remember they were once tadpoles.”

Now that you are full in the stomach, you have forgotten that other people might still be hungry. This is essentially what the above proverb is complaining about. The proverb refers to this selfish man with little empathy as sang jeon (상전), or simply as “master” or “lord.” He was most likely born into a wealthy family, with a silver spoon in his mouth, and was probably never exposed to any adverse conditions, certainly not hunger. How could he then learn about the hunger of his servants?

During the French Revolution, the underprivileged commoner eventually retaliated, with a non-stoppable vengeance, by guillotining both King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette, along with persecuting the Catholic clergy! Immediately after the communist North Korean military captured Seoul in 1950, many citizens that had been “suppressed” thus far carried out an uprising of revenge against the bourgeois families with democratic inclination. In summary, the proverb emphasizes the ease with which a lord or any influential person becomes deficient in empathy. (01/14/20)