[Editorial] Today's lives, 'mortgaged' to doubt and worry

Posted on : 2007-06-18 14:13 KST Modified on : 2007-06-18 14:13 KST

By Hong Se-hwa, Senior Reporter

I went to see "Jump" the other day, the first time I'd seen a show with friends. It was a well-structured martial arts farce. It has been popular with audiences, and indeed the place was packed. There were young and middle-aged people in the audience, as well as elementary school-aged students, but nowhere did I see anyone middle or high school aged. I will refrain from preaching about how this demographic needs art and culture to stimulate their sensitivities and imagination, but really, the show might as well have been tailored for teenagers and yet none was to be seen.

It was a splendid Saturday afternoon in June, and yet where were Korea's middle and high schoolers? Were they together with friends? Were they busy reading? Had they all headed to the mountains and open spaces to befriend nature? Everyone knows the answer, that they are cramped up in tight spaces, whether classrooms or study halls, that the prime of their lives are held mortgaged by an educational environment that judges them by how they rank against the others, where they have push their friends back to rank higher in order to get into a top-ranking university. In the past, all you had to put in escrow were your high school years. But we all know that this debt has gradually been spreading to middle school, elementary school, and even the kindergarten years.

Does that mean you get your life back once you get into university these days? The freedom and romance you enjoy when you become a university student lasts but a moment, then for the next four years you have to live your life held by your efforts to find a job. Does that mean your life is your own when you find employment these days? In most cases, no. Non-permanent contract jobs are rapidly becoming commonplace, and everyday restructuring, job insecurity, and results-oriented surveillance and controls are what await the newly employed.

The Asian financial crisis of 1997 hit a Korean society that lacked much of a social safety net, and when the crisis combined with a belief that material things matter most, it had the effect of teaching every member of society that no one will share any responsibility for his or her future. This left everyone stuck trying to live better tomorrows that for now are insecure. Lives where the present has been taken away, whether teenage years, college days, or life in the workplace; with lives like these it is hard to be good to yourself, and when you cannot be good to yourself you cannot be good to others. It is hard to be happy, so it is hard to expect to be able to be interested and concerned about others or to work with others collectively. Love between siblings has disappeared, and parents without money are considered an annoying burden, even if they are not object of mistreatment. The fact that Korea always seems to be fighting for the top rank worldwide in working hours, labor intensity, labor accidents, overwork and stress, bone and muscle ailments, suicide, crime, and a decrease in the birth rate obviously has something to do with the fact people today are endlessly living lives held back, as members of a society without a safety net living for uncertain tomorrows.

Those few days of glorious liberation in Gwangju in May of 1980 had something in common with those days of liberation in the Paris Commune in the spring of 1871. When the enforcers of state power were gone in Gwangju, there was no looting. Instead, the city overflowed with solidarity. When the people of Paris had to eat rats because of the Prussian army, they spent mornings in debate and at night enjoyed liberating celebration. Where did they get that light of liberation? They had it because while tomorrow was uncertain, they were certain of their belief that tomorrow would be approached together.

Each of the presidential candidates is promising a rose garden, saying they are going to guarantee us a future. We need to keep the candidates with neoliberal thinking at a distance, however, when its answers to Korea's problems of education and irregular employment and to the question of expanding the social safety net are "competition" and "efficiency," because that kind of platform will hold people's lives in escrow all the more. Unless, of course, you are an animal fed on economics, who is going to try to live only for himself.

Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]

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