[EchoHoon] Do You Have to Be the Best?

I happened to watch a YouTube Shorts video. It was an interview with Korean college students and office workers in the United States. The interviewee talked about the outstanding abilities of Koreans and the extreme competition they face.

It is a truly sad and bleak reality. Comparing Korea and the United States, it is regrettable that talented Koreans are not treated well in Korea. Rather, they say that the environment in the United States allows them to be treated well.

In a test at an American school where he was, he said he had better grades than a friend who went to Stanford. The interviewee said that he had only gotten a 3rd grade once despite studying only math throughout his high school's evening self-study sessions. Korea has many outstanding human resources, but they cannot flourish due to fierce competition, but in the United States, they can be treated with greater respect by working a little harder than in Korea.

I sympathized with many aspects. Competition in Korea starts from the age of 5. Already, English kindergartens and classes for the purpose of entering medical schools are emerging from an early age. And we grow up learning that we must win. We must be outstanding in general, as well as in grades, and we must earn a lot of money. We want and create octagonal and decagonal outstanding talents beyond the hexagon.

Freedom seems to have disappeared in a liberal democratic society. If by ‘freedom’ I mean what I want to say, it is the freedom to live as I am satisfied, regardless of how much money I earn, what I do, or where I live. People tell us that we must go to prestigious universities, get certain jobs, get certain titles when the time comes, earn a certain amount of money, drive a certain brand of car, and live in a house of a certain size through purchase, not rental. The obsession with having to live according to the standards that people say has arisen, and if we cannot live that way, we have become a society that considers us losers and useless beings.

Honestly, how great do you want this small country to be? If you turn your eyes abroad, there are many people living a truly diverse life. And there are more opportunities than in our country. Why do we insist on Korea? Of course, I admit that it is a good country to live in because ‘K’ is the trend worldwide. But if we only focus on those aspects and fail to look at the other side of our lives, the vicious cycle will not end.

If you can't be the best, if you can't earn this much money, if you can't live in a place like this, if you can't drive a car like this, if you don't have clothes, life, luxury goods like this. You can just live without these things. You can just live satisfied. People who live without cars, people who live in the provinces, people who work in this and that place, people who earn this much money. It's okay. Going abroad is also a good way. If you go forward to find better opportunities, you can find better opportunities than in Korea.

You don't have to achieve it quickly. You can go slowly. You don't have to be at the top. I hope it becomes a society that looks at ‘me’ rather than ‘others’.