China, Japan and Korea are also “shame” cultures rather than “guilt” cultures and “failure” is viewed as something of a personal responsibility. The suicide rate among students in Japan attributable to their failure to meet high grading expectations (a level of “failure” which would be considered honor-roll performance in US schools) is a perennial concern. A few spectacularly wrong meterological predictions would fall into that category of “failure”.

I am sure that Korean meterologists are just as competent as their western counterparts, but all of us have a tendency to point to other countries as being somehow superior in one area or another (look at the health care debate in the US, for example, and film-maker Michael Moore’s, uhmmm, interesting take on it). The recent attention given to climate concerns, especially in the West, might give the impression of greater precision in the field than is warranted and lead to the unwarranted assumption that Western or foreign metereologists would not have had such spectacular “failures”. In the face of that kind of criticism, Asians have a tendency to apologize and accept personal responsibility for the failure to live up to the high expectations of others, even when they are patently unreasonable expectations. In the not very distant past such shouldering of responsibility included expunging the shame of failure with suicide. Taking responsibility by resigning one’s position is a more likely outcome today.

Bringing in a foreign metereologist would allow them to say “Look! We’re bringing in the best there is and no one could do any better.” Criticism will be deflected and the attrition rate among meteorologists reduced. I don’t know the specifics, here, but it makes sense to me. Americans can seem very harsh in areas that seem of no consequence to others.

I understand that people don’t like when it rains during their kid’s beach birthday party after it has been forcasted to be sunny; but, the above makes it sound like the public may be a bit more harsh then just showing general disappointment.

Anybody know?