At 7pm, in a packed fourth-floor auditorium overlooking a street clogged with people heading home, hundreds of South Korean workers, many still in uniform, take their seats for an after-work class.
Within minutes, they are screaming and guffawing.
"Laughter makes you feel good," the instructor, Joseph Lee, tells the students -- 300 postal workers in the Kwangjin district of Seoul.
"If you feel good, it helps you make your customers feel good. So laugh until your back breaks, until your stomach muscles cramp and until your bellybutton pops out," he said.
In South Korea, where looking cool has often meant looking serious, people are learning the value of a good laugh.
In a country where smiling has traditionally been frowned upon, some people now consider laughter a business skill that is increasingly necessary as customers demand better service.
"Our people have difficulty laughing," said Lee, noting that centuries of Confucianism had taught Koreans to value the solemn more than the funny.
Traditionally, the men considered most attractive were humorless and stern, while women were taught not to laugh during matchmaking sessions or they would risk never giving birth to a boy. Children, meanwhile, were told that laughing too much "drives away good luck."
In modern times, South Koreans have had to come to terms with a grim social mood set by war, decades of dictatorial rule and a headlong rush toward industrialization.
But that mood is changing now, in part because of the popularity of laugh therapy.
In classes offered by local governments and hospitals, instructors preach the healthy effects of hearty laughter.
They cite studies that claim that laughter can stimulate the respiratory system and blood circulation, ease the pain of arthritis and prevent everything from the common cold to cancer.
But there are also business incentives.
The national postal service is among the public corporations that are capitalizing on the value of laughter.
Although the postal service was once a monopoly, it now faces competitors in parcel delivery service.
In the Kwangjin post office, a brochure calls on the office's 500 employees to smile at least once an hour, regardless of any particular reason.
The interest in laughing classes is partly a response to the economic slump, said Han Kwang-il, director of the Korea Laughter Center, who gives 15 lectures a week.
"People want to blow away their economic gloom with gut-busting laughter," he said. "But they don't know how to laugh and where to laugh."
Park Dong-sun, director of a laughter therapy center, Hahaha Korea, said that smiling faces would go a long way toward making South Koreans appear more attractive overseas.
"To people who don't know our manners, South Koreans' rigid look could be taken as an insult," Park said. "The next big jump in our economic growth will come when our people start laughing more."
Many postal workers said they found their company's laughing campaign inspiring.
"In my photo album, I could see that the older I become, the less smiling I was," Ko Ae-ran explained, looking flushed after a session.
"This laughing therapy really is changing my outlook on life. I feel a new energy flowing through my body," she said.
Lee said that as South Koreans aged, laughter declined. Surveys show that an average Korean spends the equivalent of 88 days laughing during a lifetime, and that about 70 to 80 percent of the laughter occurs before age 20.
But Lee believes South Koreans have great potential.
"Once they begin laughing, they are uncontrollable," he said. "They really roll on the floor. They just don't know how to begin."
RETHINK? The defense ministry and Navy Command Headquarters could take over the indigenous submarine project and change its production timeline, a source said Admiral Huang Shu-kuang’s (黃曙光) resignation as head of the Indigenous Submarine Program and as a member of the National Security Council could affect the production of submarines, a source said yesterday. Huang in a statement last night said he had decided to resign due to national security concerns while expressing the hope that it would put a stop to political wrangling that only undermines the advancement of the nation’s defense capabilities. Taiwan People’s Party Legislator Vivian Huang (黃珊珊) yesterday said that the admiral, her older brother, felt it was time for him to step down and that he had completed what he
Taiwan has experienced its most significant improvement in the QS World University Rankings by Subject, data provided on Sunday by international higher education analyst Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) showed. Compared with last year’s edition of the rankings, which measure academic excellence and influence, Taiwanese universities made great improvements in the H Index metric, which evaluates research productivity and its impact, with a notable 30 percent increase overall, QS said. Taiwanese universities also made notable progress in the Citations per Paper metric, which measures the impact of research, achieving a 13 percent increase. Taiwanese universities gained 10 percent in Academic Reputation, but declined 18 percent
CHINA REACTS: The patrol and reconnaissance plane ‘transited the Taiwan Strait in international airspace,’ the 7th Fleet said, while Taipei said it saw nothing unusual The US 7th Fleet yesterday said that a US Navy P-8A Poseidon flew through the Taiwan Strait, a day after US and Chinese defense heads held their first talks since November 2022 in an effort to reduce regional tensions. The patrol and reconnaissance plane “transited the Taiwan Strait in international airspace,” the 7th Fleet said in a news release. “By operating within the Taiwan Strait in accordance with international law, the United States upholds the navigational rights and freedoms of all nations.” In a separate statement, the Ministry of National Defense said that it monitored nearby waters and airspace as the aircraft
UNDER DISCUSSION: The combatant command would integrate fast attack boat and anti-ship missile groups to defend waters closest to the coastline, a source said The military could establish a new combatant command as early as 2026, which would be tasked with defending Taiwan’s territorial waters 24 nautical miles (44.4km) from the nation’s coastline, a source familiar with the matter said yesterday. The new command, which would fall under the Naval Command Headquarters, would be led by a vice admiral and integrate existing fast attack boat and anti-ship missile groups, along with the Naval Maritime Surveillance and Reconnaissance Command, said the source, who asked to remain anonymous. It could be launched by 2026, but details are being discussed and no final timetable has been announced, the source