Don't get butthurt on behalf of American blacks
Koreans cannot harm them even 0.0001% of the way they kill, harm, cheat, and exploit their own people every day. Their level of psychopathy makes me nauseous. For once Korean racism is right on the money, even if it is by accident.
They need more David Carrolls in their community to remind them how fucked up they are and how they need to change. Kind of like what I do with my people.
As for poverty... Complete and total isolation from the rest of the world, imposed by a neo Confucian government that wanted no more foreign interference in Korea's affairs. They practically razed all the coastal towns so that nobody would see anything worth invading. The penalty for a foreigner entering the country was death. Major highways and roads were left unrepaired. The government in Seoul paid tons in tribute to the Manchus to avoid colonization.
Defensive war doesn't work very well when you are sandwiched by China and Japan, so the idea was to conceal the entire nation from the rest of the world... Hence the nickname "hermit kingdom". It worked really well for about three centuries, but the end result was like a permanent economic depression.
Funny thing is Koreans tried to modernize and adopt western technology during the 1700s (!) but the king in charge purged all the reformists in a power struggle.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silhak
Oh well. Too little, too late.