By Kim Ji-soo
Staff Reporter
There is a Korean joke that compares age and driving speed. The joke goes that life in your 20s passes by at 20 kilometers-per-hour, slow as a turtle, while your physical and mental state is turbo-charged to take control of life. Then in your 30s, it travels at 30 kph; in your 40s at 40 kph and so on and so on.
But for a lot of people I am sure the past year, from late 2008 until now, must have whizzed by.
The gloomy news about the world and local economy consumed our lives daily. Companies that seemed too mighty to fail (didn't we hear this line about Korean chaebol in the late 1990s?), folded, assumptions about our way of life came under scrutiny, leaving us concerned, anxious and wary. We were wary to the point where we had to strongly caution ourselves against becoming too hopeful for a turnaround.
However, it is human nature to grow stronger having endured hard times. People are slowly looking ahead to the New Year with the slightest hint of hope. Before we rush headlong into 2010, maybe we should take a retrospective look at what we could have done better.
Amid the gray clouds there were silver linings for Korea this year. Buttressed by the cheap won and fueled by huge government stimulus, the economy has been picking up. Trade balance has improved, and just recently Korea was ranked the 9th top-export country. In spite of this good news, there are reports that leave us wishing that we could do just a little better.
One incident involves how high school seniors are rushing to enroll in private institutions to learn Arabic. When I first read the story, my initial thought was that Korean society was really diversifying. On further reading, I found out that there were no Korean high schools offering Arabic lessons but because of how Korea's College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) is graded, students taking Arabic had a chance to get better grades even if they didn't score as highly as those taking more popular foreign languages such as French, German or Japanese. It's because the group of students who choose Arabic as their second foreign language on CSAT is much smaller than those choosing others. It's sad to discover that the pursuit of knowledge or simply the joy of learning a different language is determined by your chances of scoring better on the CSAT. Life is full of choices. Let yourself be guided by your conscience rather than common sense.
Other year-end news is that bars are getting fined for selling fake brand name whisky to clients. Koreans like their boilermakers and when the party is in full swing, few are likely to discern fake whiskey. Come on, stop playing around with what people eat and drink. There have been so many incidents involving food that it's impossible to write them all down.
It's the perfect time of year to jot down what we would like to change, personally or on a larger scale, and try to accomplish it in the future. Merry early Christmas and an early Happy New Year.