Recently, a post on social media stating, "I wish the President would stop systems like Magic Pass that make ordinary people feel deprived," sparked a debate. 

On the way to the polling station, as I stamp a piece of paper, I pause and ask myself. Setting aside grand ideologies or the outcome of political factions, what kind of country, breathing what kind of air, do I truly desire for myself to live in?

No matter how perfect a system politics promises, what ultimately fills our daily lives is the warmth of interactions with others we encounter on the street.

As the noisy clamor of the election subsides, the scene that unexpectedly remains most deeply etched in my mind was, surprisingly, outside the realm of politics. It was the controversy surrounding amusement park 'Magic Passes'.

Elevating My Fleeting Discomfort to Absolute Universal Justice

The act of purchasing a ticket that allows one to skip the line by paying a premium. Yet, when this ordinary rule was thrown into the public square of South Korea, it suddenly transformed into 'discriminatory class division' and a 'weapon that must be abolished'.

If I have to wait two hours, then you, regardless of how much money you have, must also endure aching legs and boredom exactly as I do—a fanatical obsession with purity.

Since when did we become such a vast asylum of jealousy, unable to accept the 'differences' and 'legitimate disparities' of others?

At the root of this bizarre phenomenon lies our society's twisted attitude towards 'inconvenience'. We often compare ourselves to Japan's 'Meiwaku' (nuisance) culture, where people are careful not to bother others. However, the emotional yardstick governing Korea today is the complete opposite.

While the Japanese concept is self-restraint, a caution not to harm others, the rule in the South Korean public square today is a severe imposition on 'others', demanding that no one cause me even the slightest inconvenience.

Report cards with rankings have disappeared, ball games on the playground have vanished, even life-saving medical helicopters must be removed for being noisy, and even newborns are not allowed to cry in public places.

It is essentially legal violence, elevating my momentary discomfort to absolute universal justice and mistaking the right to trample on the daily lives of others under that pretext.

This shallow and selfish desire for control, as satirically pointed out in Comedian Lee Su-ji's parody video, is already spreading like wildfire throughout society, far beyond kindergartens and schools.

Calling the Teacher Instead of Teaching Patience

The exaggerated, unreasonable complaints from parents in the video are less comedy and more a suffocating documentary. If their child faces even a slight disadvantage or annoyance, instead of teaching the child to compromise and be patient with the world, they immediately call the teacher to demand that the system itself be overhauled.

These individuals do not teach their children how to endure and mingle with others in the public arena of society. They merely teach them the shallow 'efficacy of power abuse'—that by raising their voice, throwing a tantrum, and causing a scene, they can change the rules of the world to suit their mood.

This chilling resentment and the normalization of 'mob rule' did not suddenly appear out of thin air. They are the result of the poison meticulously injected into the public's psyche by the shallow, propagandistic language of factionalism that has dominated our society for a long time.

They have constantly whispered: difference is discrimination, disparity is someone's exploitation. Those who succeed and those who are ahead are the corrupt who have stolen my share, and bringing them down is justice.

Instead of respecting rational systems and rules, they disguised the barbaric practice of gathering in the public square, raising their voices, and displaying their anger to force the law to change and gain compensation, under the sacred name of 'democracy'.

Thus, having grown into adults, we are now unwilling to yield even an inch to others. On the barren soil where the vitality of life has dried up, people have chosen the most violent and easiest path—to eliminate all the noise in the world—instead of cultivating inner generosity.

However, we must not forget: in a 'vacuum' where the traces and noises of others are perfectly eliminated, no life can breathe.

Erasing Others' Traces Also Erases Me

If we go about erasing the traces of others one by one simply because they bother us, we ourselves will eventually be relegated to another nuisance that needs to be eliminated in that perfect sterile room. In the cold silence created by tearing each other down, there is no joy of coexistence, nor the scent of human life.

Monsters who yell, "I'm upset, so abolish this system immediately" even in the face of others exercising their legitimate rights. In the place of systems where logic and reason should operate, the tantrums of the loudest and most enraged have come to reign supreme above the constitution.

A society that cannot recognize differences, a society that cannot smile and let go of those who have paid the just price, can never be an egalitarian utopia. It is merely a perfect ruin where no one gets ahead, where everyone drags each other down, their eyes glinting with resentment, forced to stand in a tedious line together.

In this chilling public square where the 'mob rule' of the loud-voiced has replaced common sense, we are walking into a rigid, controlled society, having completely lost the muscles of tolerance, the very essence of democracy.

Reflecting on this election, apart from the superintendent elections, I have almost no memory of publicly declaring support for anyone. Instead, I sometimes feel regret that I may have exhausted too much of my pen's energy warning against and exposing the true faces of those who 'should never wield absolute power'.

Those times when I fiercely debated, as if I were a candidate on the ring myself, were not due to blind fandom for a particular conservative candidate or shallow factional logic.

Rather, it was likely a desperate struggle to somehow stop the runaway motor of this mad world, which scrutinizes others' thoughts and tastes like a microscope and attempts to meticulously control daily life.

What I desperately wanted to protect was not the power of any specific politician. It was the true muscle of 'tolerance'—the ability to willingly accept the existence of others, even those whose thoughts are diametrically opposed to mine, and to patiently endure the awkward discomfort that unfamiliar differences bring. I wanted to end this era of madness where everyone is measured by the same ideological yardstick, where people hate each other and grab each other by the collar for the slightest annoyance.

I hope that in the void left by the 'mob rule' and the desire for control of the loud-voiced, this heavy and solid virtue of patiently enduring the discomfort of others will return to this barren land. Under the guise of solitary textual labor in front of my monitor, I suppose I longed for that so earnestly.

◆ Park Ju-hyun, Author

Composer, music director, columnist, and essayist. She actively expresses her opinions on political, current affairs, and social issues on Facebook, gaining widespread agreement. She published the essay collection ‘Crossing the Stormy Sea’.