Keeping a balance in life is certainly challenging task for, presumingly, most common people. For those especially living in an industrializing city such as Seoul, the task becomes even harder since the pattern of life seemingly much faster than that in the industrialized countries.
Flipping through pages on daily newspapers, I see plenty of articles dealing with effects/side-effects from changes in social, political, and cultural arenas. Our delegates departured for the U.S. for hopefully drawing successful compromises on conflictual issues regarding the Free Trade Agreements in both countries, there was a provincial election resulting in a major defeat for the ruling party and now the existance of the party itself is at stake. Society becomes old since young couples are less willing to give birth, and the government is concerned about how they would cope with foreseeable failure of the pension system. Family seems more easily dissolved, of course, there are undesirable outcomes we see in our daily life. Single mothers stuggling to raise their kids, middle aged fathers striving to provide financial security to the rest of members residing abroad, discrimination on migrant workers within the nation, being discriminated abroad as a korean migrant workers, ongoing war in Middle East, prevalent poverty wherever we lay our eyes on, and diseases silently tightening lives of millions, etc.
Despite all the sadness, we still seek for the betterment in the worsening situations, hope in the misery, and love in the desolute places. And paradoxically, when we hit the bottom, that is the very moment we realize there still is a hope for all, no matter how terrible situations you have to confront.
8 June 2006
