Learning From Bhutan

This year is the 30th year of diplomatic relations with the country of Bhutan, Koreans visiting Bhutan in recent years has increased greatly. This year starting in June for 3 months, Koreans are receiving a 50 percent discount on events in Bhutan. What would ordinarily cost 250 dollars daily has been reduced to 125 dollars. A university professor writing in the Catholic Peace Weekly tells the readers that on the plane from Bangkok to Bhutan most of travelers were Korean.

He was visiting the country on invitation to attend a one day workshop on Sustainable Development Goals that were presented by the United Nations and the the ways to achieve them in society.

Bhutan is about one fifth the size of Korea with a population of a little over 750,000 and a GDP that is 166 in the list of nations. It's a Buddhist nation and in many ways just opposite to Korea. In 1970 at the start of restoration under a dictatorship, Korea and Bhutan were similar in the GDP with about 200-300 dollars. Bhutan from that time began its Gross National Happiness goal. Today Bhutan has not quite 3000 dollar GNP while Korea comes close to 30,000 dollar GNP.

However, Korea has one of the highest suicide rates and one of the lowest birthrates in the world and is not able to rid itself of one of the lowest happiness i and quality of life indexes. In Bhutan 9 our of 10 citizens consider themselves happy, one of the highest in the world, Why do we have this  great discrepancy?

Bhutan's philosophy of government is determined by how happy the citizens are. In 2008 the country began their periodical 5 year plan in achieving happiness with a committee devoted to that cause. A happiness policy, which is based on:  * achieving a fair development of the economy * protecting the environment for the citizens, and animals * progress in developing traditional values and systems* to include the citizens in the running of the government and listen to their requests, be efficient and transparent in the running of government and to be conscious of the above four pillars of our society.

The aim is  for the well being of the citizens, health, leisure, education, cultural diversity, good government, community building, ecology and renewal, which will be viewed with other indexes to measure the progress of the efforts.

Recently many countries are going to Bhutan to learn about their policies. Thailand has stared a center with an index for happiness. He wonders looking at Bhutan what have we lost in searching for material prosperity. We can use Bhutan as a mirror to look at ourselves.

He concludes the article with the hope of our new president who is an admirer of the Bhutan experiment. Korea with an excessive search for prosperity at the expense of happiness is able to work together with Bhutan to help the developing  countries to acknowledge the  good and bad qualities of each and to help others achieve sensible progress.