[W Forum] Some Origins

There is one phrase I learned from my students during this semester: Jonbeo. It is not the name of a movie actor. It is said to be an abbreviation of the phrase "jonnage beotida," which means "to endure like hell." When a student hesitantly presented an essay titled with this word, I could not tell them not to use slang in their writing. On broadcasts, it is euphemized as "with dignity" or "with respect," but the desperate struggle conveyed in the student's words made me nod in agreement. I also urged them: the teacher is enduring too, so don’t think you are alone. If you ever feel alone, call on the teacher anytime. In these times, I believe it is an important duty to be an ear willing to listen to anyone.

Everyone has worked hard to endure this past year. Each person must have been exerting invisible efforts in their own space. In a world where isolation, disconnection, and anxiety dominate daily life, we reflect on what we have lost. What we lost is not just physical contact. We have also lost stability, trust, prospects, and plans. Everyone longs for the days when we could hold hands and face each other without masks, and when looking at old photos, it feels almost unimaginable that such days ever existed. We keep promising to meet when times get better, but we do not know when that will be.

However, if you ask how happy we were in the past when interaction and face-to-face meetings were free, the answer is not easy. Healthy people falling, breaking down, and dying at work. People being discriminated against because they have different skin colors, genders, sexual orientations, political views, or religions despite being the same human beings. Those in power punishing individuals arbitrarily under the guise of justice and law, wielding the sword at their discretion. All these things happened in those free times and continue to happen now. Politicians boast before elections that they will change everything, but once in office, they hesitate, calculating economic profits and political votes. Keeping people alive is a simple and clear goal. It is the basic ethics of life. While calculating profits, precious lives disappear every day. Therefore, those in positions to make changes who neglect their responsibilities are killing lives.

All the conveniences we enjoy are actually possible only at the expense of someone’s sacrifice. The comfort of a system that delivers orders like bullets is only possible on the sacrifices of workers who fly like bullets but clutch their hearts from overwork and die. While complying with the ruthless logic of infinite capital, we have lost the ethics of coexistence that allow us to live together. In a society without hope for the joy of healthy work and the value of labor, anxiety eats away at the soul, and everyone invests even their souls. Without knowing the end. Relative deprivation, excessive competition logic, and abnormal values in a normal society cause the weak to fall.

As the year ends, I think of those who have passed away. Not deaths from the natural course of aging and "birth, aging, sickness, and death," but those who died in their prime. Children who died after being abused without parental care, young people who died in isolation, those whose homes could not be shelters and who wander. Having learned "Jonbeo" from my students, I urged "Jonbeo" again in the last class of the semester. Looking into each student’s eyes through the computer screen, I told them that all difficulties pass, so don’t give up; take good care to eat three warm meals a day, look at the sky twice a day, and let’s grow old together. These are difficult times when the shadow that hung before the COVID blue grows darker. My wish is to see our young people naturally grow old, not withering under the burden of their parents’ generation’s desires like a yoke. So this writing is a heartfelt plea to not die but to endure.

Jeong Eun-gwi, Professor at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.