ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses why an idea as apparently mundane and trivial as being a ‘morning person’ became so popular in South Korea following a large economic shock. A normally quite unremarkable book found itself at the nexus of the social changes within South Korea. Originating in Japan as part of the mind-body-spirit genre there, this same book, translated into Korean was marketed as a success-manual in Korea, advocating that its readers act on their own to solve the problems they faced, and happened to be the right book at the right time, selling huge numbers of copies, and spawning many imitators. Some popular ‘morning person’ books were collectively endorsed in South Korea, by mass media, by big corporations, and by churches. The endorsement by such powerful sections of Korean society rendered the transformative potential of therapeutic knowledge and practice – such as self-empowerment and individualism – to be effectively compulsory and therefore conformist.
