Korean/Chinese culture is interesting because it's completely lacking in pretense or deflection.

Most people just openly admit they only care about status and money, that displaying it and only caring about it as the sole qualifier of a person's worth is totally acceptable. This is just normal. It's normal to pay for cosmetic surgery, normal to cheat in p2w games with money, normal to flaunt wealth just for the sake of flaunting wealth alone. Everybody is asked to take that assertion at face value and they....just do.

In the more individualistic, moralistic (due to theistic religion) societies like the West, the rules are the same that wealth is all the matters - but you have to do an elaborate song and dance to disguise how its expressed. So wealth is expressed through culture, prestige, being on the cutting edge of art or technology, or other meaningful things besides JUST having lots of money. There has to be some level of substance to how you flaunt your money and status.

But in the East it's just straight up the equivalent of those black rappers who flash wads of cash, only slightly less pathetic. Except it's only pathetic to us, to them they legitimately accept it as legitimate and not the equivalent of a child showing off a new lunchox to their classmates. They really are that fucking basic. Its almost admirable in its total honesty.