[W Forum] When Reflecting on Familiarity

A smartphone edits a few photos it has stored by itself and displays them on the wallpaper. The 'photo from two years ago today' opens.

Following a bright smile in front of the fantastic 150,000-pyeong azalea spectacle in Saga Prefecture, Japan, a photo taken at the famous Takeo City Library appears. However, everyone in the group looks stunned. The embarrassing incident from that time comes to mind. Who would have thought this would happen...

Suddenly, with cheap weekend airfare and inexpensive rental car costs, and seeing the unexpected grandeur of Mihuneyama Rakuen's azaleas, we thought we were really lucky on this trip. However, the public library in Takeo City, a small town with a population of 50,000, is a popular spot visited by one million people, so on weekends, cars flock and you have to line up starting near the parking lot.

The parking lot had only one entrance and exit, like the electrical symbol omega (Ω), where you enter from the left and circle around to the right to park. As soon as we entered, we saw a car parked on the opposite side leaving, so we reversed a few meters and neatly parked. Just as we got out of the car, we saw a parking attendant wearing a hat running hurriedly from afar. Through gestures and clumsy English and Japanese, we realized that we had violated the rule of parking in order by driving a few meters backward against the one-way direction inside the parking lot. Only then did we raise our heads and feel the gazes of drivers lined up in a row. Although no horns honked, a louder horn sounded in our minds.

My face burned with embarrassment. Repeatedly saying "Sumimasen," I got back in the car, lined up again, waited my turn, and finished parking. The stunned expression in the photo appeared like that. Is this a cultural difference? In our country's parking lots, it doesn't matter the order you enter; as long as you park quickly, it's fine... Since then, even if it takes a long time or someone cuts in line in a parking lot, I have stopped the habit of driving backward.

Recently, a restaurant owner in Daegu parked his car in the middle of the road to unload goods and got into a verbal fight with the car behind him, which was featured in the news. He and his son cursed, saying, "You can pass by crossing the center line," but the backlash was so severe that he had to take down his store sign. Watching the video made me furious. But then I looked at that photo from two years ago and thought. The person who parked roughly on the road was probably used to parking in front of his own store. He must have been comfortably parking and unloading goods there every day for a very long time.

Isn't his reckless illegal parking on the road and our backward driving in the parking lot in Japan both mistakes born from familiarity? Was the Daegu incident excessive? Then what is the standard? Is that standard the currently shared level of civic consciousness?

Looking back, drunk driving in the 1980s and handing bills to traffic police until the 1990s were also familiar things. Before the 'Me Too movement,' sexual harassment language toward female secretaries was as familiar as a joke. Harsh discipline of children simply because they are parents was also accepted familiarity. Familiar violence in military barracks or schools ended in tragic outcomes. Using insider information obtained through official duties to speculate and increase wealth was probably also something we had become accustomed to in the past.

There are two things we fear: habits ingrained in us and the changes in civic consciousness that reject those habits. If we do not realize the faults of familiarity, at some point we will face the severe criticism of mature citizens.

It is time to reflect on familiarity. Breaking away from familiarity! That is reform.

Seo Jaeyeon, Executive Director, Galleria WM, Mirae Asset Securities

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