The United KingdomvsSouth Korea
イギリスと韓国UKKR
Seen from the United Kingdom: each line below describes South Korea relative to the United Kingdom.
Culture Map: eight scales
Erin Meyer's eight scales, sorted by how far apart the United Kingdom and South Korea sit, largest gap first.
Filled dot: the United Kingdom, where you are looking fromHollow ring: South Korea
Where you will notice the difference5 scales
Trusting
South Korea builds trust through personal relationships more than the United Kingdom (4 steps)
The United Kingdom −2, South Korea +2, on a line from −3 (Task-based) to +3 (Relationship-based).
Communicating
South Korea leaves more to be read between the lines than the United Kingdom (3 steps)
The United Kingdom −1, South Korea +2, on a line from −3 (Low-context) to +3 (High-context).
Leading
South Korea keeps more distance between boss and team than the United Kingdom (3 steps)
The United Kingdom −1, South Korea +2, on a line from −3 (Egalitarian) to +3 (Hierarchical).
Evaluating
South Korea gives negative feedback more indirectly than the United Kingdom (2 steps)
The United Kingdom 0, South Korea +2, on a line from −3 (Direct negative feedback) to +3 (Indirect negative feedback).
Disagreeing
South Korea avoids open disagreement more than the United Kingdom (2 steps)
The United Kingdom 0, South Korea +2, on a line from −3 (Confrontational) to +3 (Avoids confrontation).
Not placed3 scales
These scales are left unmarked: either Meyer leaves a country off the scale or no source places it, and drawing it anyway would be guessing.
- PersuadingMeyer leaves South Korea off this scale and describes its reasoning as holistic
- Deciding, SchedulingNo source places South Korea on these scales
Hofstede: six dimensions
Scores from 0 to 100, sorted by the gap between the United Kingdom and South Korea. They describe national averages, not either country's character.
Uncertainty avoidance
South Korea scores 50 points higher than the United Kingdom (85 against 35)
The United Kingdom 35, South Korea 85, on a line from 0 (Tolerant of ambiguity) to 100 (Avoids ambiguity).
Indulgence
South Korea scores 40 points lower than the United Kingdom (29 against 69)
The United Kingdom 69, South Korea 29, on a line from 0 (Restrained) to 100 (Indulgent).
Motivation towards achievement and success
South Korea scores 27 points lower than the United Kingdom (39 against 66)
The United Kingdom 66, South Korea 39, on a line from 0 (Consensus-oriented) to 100 (Decisive).
Long-term orientation
South Korea scores 26 points higher than the United Kingdom (86 against 60)
The United Kingdom 60, South Korea 86, on a line from 0 (Short-term) to 100 (Long-term).
Power distance
South Korea scores 25 points higher than the United Kingdom (60 against 35)
The United Kingdom 35, South Korea 60, on a line from 0 (Low power distance) to 100 (High power distance).
Individualism
South Korea scores 18 points lower than the United Kingdom (58 against 76)
The United Kingdom 76, South Korea 58, on a line from 0 (Collectivist) to 100 (Individualist).
What the sources say, theme by theme
Entries for the United Kingdom and South Korea, side by side on wide screens. Each keeps its own confidence label and citations.
Design & quality
United Kingdom3 claims
The GDS Government Design Principles (published 2012, updated 2025) include "Start with user needs," "Do less," and "Iterate. Then iterate again." Iterative development is an official principle of the public sector.
Well attested1 source2025gb-design-1
Point 8 of the GOV.UK Service Standard is "Iterate and improve frequently." It states that a service is never finished and that maintenance such as bug fixes is not enough.
Well attested1 sourcegb-design-2
According to a 2023 NAO report, there have been 11 cross-government digital strategies in the past 25 years. The Police National Computer, introduced in 1974, is still in use.
Well attested1 source2023gb-design-3
South Korea3 claims
A 2013 ZDNet Korea column argued that the ppalli-ppalli ("hurry, hurry") culture leads to poor knowledge sharing, architectures that do not scale and dependence on particular developers, and so ends up slowing software development.
Thin1 source2013Datedkr-design-1
A columnist who worked with Korean teams as an outside partner observed that developers make up about 80% of a team and testers are few. He adds that this is not necessarily a weakness in an agile setting.
Thin1 source2024kr-design-2
- 정철환 칼럼: 개발자와 테스터 (CIO Korea) (2024)
SPRi (2014) and a ZDNet Korea op-ed (2023) argue that multi-tier subcontracting persists in public-sector SI projects, locking smaller firms into low-value coding so that they never build planning and design skills.
Attested2 sources2023kr-design-3
Failure & risk
United Kingdom4 claims
The GDS Way incident management standard requires incident reviews to follow a blameless post mortem culture.
Well attested1 sourcegb-failure-1
GOV.UK publishes incident reports, such as one on increased error rates on 5 January 2022. A former GDS staff member wrote in 2018 that publishing them builds trust and an atmosphere where people can learn safely.
Well attested2 sources2022gb-failure-2
In a 2019 blog post, the London fintech Monzo explained that it runs on-call with two people and records every incident. The Pragmatic Engineer warns against "blameless buck-passing," where blame is shifted while claiming to be blameless.
Well attested2 sources2019gb-failure-3
In the Post Office Horizon scandal, testimony that Horizon was "robust" was used despite bugs in the Fujitsu system, and more than 900 people were wrongly convicted. The Court of Appeal found that the Post Office had in effect reversed the burden of proof.
Attested2 sourcesgb-failure-4
South Korea3 claims
Introducing its 2021 developer conference SLASH21, Toss presented a culture that values fast execution over fear of failure.
Well attested1 source2021kr-failure-1
After a fire at the Pangyo data center caused a major outage in October 2022, Kakao presented its root cause analysis and prevention measures at if(kakao) dev 2022 that December. The measures include data center redundancy and triple redundancy for operations tooling.
Well attested2 sources2022kr-failure-2
Woowa Brothers, the company behind Baemin, lists "don't blame people" among its principles for KPT retrospectives. An SK Devocean presentation says the hardest step in a postmortem is not holding the person responsible to account.
Well attested2 sources2021kr-failure-3
Feedback & code review
United Kingdom3 claims
Meyer writes that the British deliver negative feedback less directly than Americans and far less directly than the Dutch. She describes frequent understatement using downgraders such as "a bit" and "slightly."
Attested1 source2014Datedgb-feedback-1
The Anglo-Dutch translation guide that Meyer cites reads "With all due respect" as "I think you are wrong" and "Very interesting" as "I don't like it." The guide is half a joke, and its authorship is disputed.
Attested2 sources2014Datedgb-feedback-2
A study of 44,000 pull requests across 20 projects that compared acceptance rates with the developer's country HDI (Furtado et al., 2020) placed UK developers in the group with the highest acceptance rates.
Attested1 source2020gb-feedback-3
South Korea2 claims
The "Pn rule", which marks each review comment from P1 (must fix) to P5 (minor opinion), started at Banksalad and has been adopted by Woowa Brothers, Daangn and others.
Attested2 sources2024kr-feedback-1
One Woowa Brothers team has a rule that reviewers leave a comment praising the author even when they have nothing to correct.
Well attested1 source2022kr-feedback-2
Hierarchy & decisions
United Kingdom3 claims
In Meyer's 2017 HBR chart, the United Kingdom sits in the same egalitarian and top-down quadrant as the United States, Canada, and Australia.
Attested1 source2017gb-hierarchy-1
In the public sector, the service assessment against the Service Standard acts as a de facto gate. According to DfE guidance, a service can fail its assessment if it does not publish new source code without a good reason.
Well attested1 sourcegb-hierarchy-2
The NAO (2023) identifies as a problem that many digital decisions in government are made by generalist leaders without technical expertise.
Well attested1 source2023gb-hierarchy-3
South Korea4 claims
On Meyer's Leading scale, South Korea is placed toward the hierarchical end. The evidence is a secondary excerpt from the book.
Attested1 sourcekr-hierarchy-1
A Substack essay argues that in chaebol such as Samsung, Hyundai and LG, decision rights are concentrated at the top to an unusual degree even by East Asian standards.
Thin1 source2025kr-hierarchy-2
Under Toss's DRI system, discussion is open regardless of rank, but one directly responsible individual makes the final call. Information is shared on a "100 inside, 0 outside" principle.
Well attested2 sources2022kr-hierarchy-3
Kakao has had staff call each other by English names since its founding in 2006, but its affiliate Kakao Games returned to the honorific "-nim" in 2024. News coverage also quotes industry voices saying many companies have flat forms of address but not a flat culture.
Attested2 sources2024kr-hierarchy-4
Communication & docs
United Kingdom3 claims
According to a book summary, the United Kingdom is on the low-context side of Meyer's Communicating scale but relies on context more than the United States, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, and Germany.
Thin1 sourcegb-communication-1
"Make things open: it makes things better" is one of the government design principles, and publishing new source code is point 12 of the Service Standard. GDS explained the benefits of coding in the open in a 2017 blog post.
Well attested2 sources2017gb-communication-2
In 2015, Inside GOV.UK published a blog post describing what happens when something goes wrong on GOV.UK.
Well attested1 source2015Datedgb-communication-3
South Korea2 claims
On Meyer's Communicating scale, South Korea sits with Japan and Indonesia at the most high-context end.
Thin1 sourcekr-communication-1
One practitioner argues that when agile is imposed from the top while executives and middle managers keep their old thinking, the only result is a heavier load on the teams.
Thin1 sourcekr-communication-2
Work & careers
United Kingdom4 claims
According to the ONS, full-time workers averaged 36.6 actual hours per week in 2024. The figure covers all occupations, not only engineers.
Well attested1 source2026gb-work-1
In the Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2025, 31.9% of UK respondents work fully remote and 25.8% work hybrid leaning flexible. Median salaries were $136,141 for engineering managers and $108,913 for back-end developers, about 60 to 70% of US levels.
Well attested1 source2025gb-work-2
Making 20 or more people redundant requires collective consultation. Consultation must start at least 30 days before the first dismissal for 20 to 99 redundancies, and at least 45 days before for 100 or more.
Well attested1 sourcegb-work-3
In a 2022 four-day week pilot (61 companies, about 2,900 employees), 56 companies continued afterward and 71% of employees reported less burnout. Most participants were small companies, and the pilot was not limited to tech.
Attested1 source2023gb-work-4
South Korea7 claims
OECD data put South Korea's annual working hours in 2023 at 1,872, about 200 hours above the OECD average.
Attested1 source2024kr-work-1
News reports say working conditions in the IT and game industries improved substantially after the 52-hour workweek cap took effect in 2018.
Attested1 source2023kr-work-2
In KOCCA's 2024 survey of game industry workers (n=1,510), 34.3% had experienced crunch and 69.9% were on an all-inclusive wage system, which bundles overtime into a fixed salary. At companies with fewer than 50 employees the share exceeded 90%.
Attested2 sources2025kr-work-3
Remote work policies vary by company. Naver kept Connected Work, which lets staff choose fully remote or three office days a week every six months, while Kakao effectively returned everyone to the office from 2024.
Attested2 sources2024kr-work-4
After the scramble for developers in 2021, the market reversed: in a 2024 Grepp survey, 34% of companies said they would hire fewer developers.
Attested1 source2024kr-work-5
In the 2021 Programmers developer survey, 63.1% of respondents worked at companies with 50 or fewer developers.
Well attested1 source2021kr-work-6
- 2021 프로그래머스 개발자 설문조사 (2021)
Reports say that in multi-tier SI subcontracting, freelance developers at the bottom of the chain are especially exposed to unpaid fees when a project is halted or an intermediary goes bankrupt.
Attested2 sources2019kr-work-7
Open source & community
United Kingdom3 claims
According to Octoverse 2024, the UK has more than 4 million developers on GitHub, up 19% year over year. Octoverse 2025 projects about 11 million by 2030.
Well attested2 sources2025gb-oss-1
- GitHub Octoverse 2024 (2024)
- GitHub Octoverse 2025 (2025)
An estimate by the industry body OpenUK (2023) attributes 27% of the UK tech sector's gross value added in 2022 to open source.
Attested1 source2023gb-oss-2
The public sector has made publishing code the default. The Skills Funding Agency reused GOV.UK's Smart Answers code and finished in under a week work that would otherwise have taken at least two months.
Well attested1 source2017gb-oss-3
South Korea4 claims
In GitHub Octoverse 2023, South Korea had more than 1.9 million developers, up 22% year on year.
Well attested1 source2023kr-oss-1
NIPA runs the Open Source Contribution Academy, which supports Korean developers in contributing to global open source projects. In 2024 it selected 282 participants from 931 applicants, and it held a launch ceremony again in 2026.
Well attested2 sources2026kr-oss-2
Open source projects from Korean companies include NAVER's APM tool Pinpoint (about 13.9k stars) and LINE's Armeria (about 5.1k stars).
Attested2 sourceskr-oss-3
In the EF EPI 2024, South Korea ranked 50th of 116 countries and regions, well ahead of Japan (92nd).
Attested1 source2024kr-oss-4