What we ask of our anger
In a recent New York Times essay, Helen Gao describes a troubling trend in China. As optimism about the economy weakens, frustration has turned toward successful individuals suspected of undeserved privilege and women blamed for men’s difficulties.
The author describes online campaigns investigating successful individuals for evidence of possible favoritism or fraud that can discredit their achievements. Such scrutiny occasionally exposes wrongdoing, but can also show a difficulty believing that someone else’s success doesn’t threaten our own. When we feel uncertain about our own future, someone else’s success can become harder to regard generously.
In Korea, these concerns are often expressed through the language of fairness. The 2026 OECD Economics Surveys: Korea explains that intense educational competition is closely linked to divisions in salary, future job security and social protection that one enjoys throughout their lifetime. University admission or a first job can shape future opportunities, making rules governing the competition personal to those involved.
An unfair advantage threatens the belief that our sacrifices will eventually be rewarded, a belief that motivates many of us to strive for success. Numerous presidents across ideological divides have made fairness an important promise, even if they differed in how they understood and pursued it.
The case of former Justice Minister Cho Kuk illustrates why these expectations matter. His wife was convicted of medical school admissions fraud involving their daughter, while his own conviction included academic fraud involving his children. For those navigating the competitive admission system without comparable support from their parents or influence, the case raised questions about whether opportunities were equally given and the same standards applied to everyone. Anger over such cases involving other public figures cannot simply be dismissed as resentment of others’ success, as people have legitimate reasons to condemn practices that appear to undermine their own efforts.
But fairness is a wide umbrella that brings together grievances of different kinds. The recent controversy over Korea’s Asian Games men’s football team is one example. Remarks emphasizing military-service benefits of winning a gold medal, alongside a photograph featuring a military discharge cap, prompted criticism about their responsibility as a national representative and demands to abolish preferential treatment. The outrage concerned both the fairness of an established policy and the attitude of those benefiting from it.
The arrangement entails alternative service rather than the absence of all obligations. Nevertheless, it allows athletes to continue their athletic careers while other young men face interruptions in their academics and professional careers. I support abolishing this preferential treatment, and understand why the remarks by players disappointed those, including myself, who expected greater sensitivity and national pride from the players.
What gives me pause is criticism that moves beyond the interviews themselves. Questioning the policy and asking athletes to acknowledge their words’ implications are reasonable. Ad hominem attacks on their personal life or unrelated aspects of their careers, including their families, is harder to justify. Being deserving of criticism does not, by itself, determine the extent of the consequences someone should bear.
Social media can make that restraint harder to maintain. The so-called “online disinhibition effect,” in which anonymity and distance loosen the constraints we feel when speaking to others in real life, can make people post a harsher comment without encountering the counterpart’s reaction or having to respond. Coupled with an environment where users can validate their judgment by seeing others posting similar responses, these platforms make it easier for understandable frustration to become a far more severe personal attack on the perceived culprits.
There is also the question of when criticism ends. If the actions involve legal questions, the criminal proceedings have a formal process that determines the responsibility and punishment for those convicted. But the actions that are below this legal threshold, which offend public sentiments without explicitly violating the law, lack a similar framework.
This absence prompts people to disagree about what accountability requires and how these people should be punished. A public apology can satisfy some but disappoint others. And for those who believe that more is owed, the troubling remark or action can gradually become the defining account of a person, and everything they subsequently say or do is viewed in a negative light.
Philosopher Martha Nussbaum offers a useful distinction between the desire for payback and anger directed toward preventing future harm. Another person’s suffering does not necessarily repair what first concerned us, encouraging us to consider what we actually hope our response will achieve. For the players’ case, a forward-looking anger could mean calling for a revision of the service policy and asking players to acknowledge the impacts of their words, while refraining from treating everything else about them as forfeit.
This is where I see a practical role for benevolence. Leaving someone room to explain, apologize for their misbehavior, and change gives criticism a possible destination. If a mistake permanently determines who someone is, what would count as improvement?
While harsh public condemnation of those who misbehaved can have some deterrent effect, recognizing someone’s efforts to change also communicates something equally important. It shows others that owning a mistake and responding to criticism can make a true difference, which is a possibility that becomes harder to see when we do not offer a second chance to be reconsidered. We need not immediately accept an apology, but we should remain able to recognize changed behavior when it appears.
I do not mean that the aggrieved public should calm down while the unfairness continues. Unequal opportunities and policies that disproportionately benefit some over others require institutional answers. Patience alone cannot provide them. But we should ask whether our anger is helping us reach those answers, or absorbing the attention they need.
We may succeed in making an individual miserable while leaving the background that offended us untouched. A concern for fairness should encourage us to seek something more lasting.
Park Jin-wan is a nonresident fellow at the European Centre for North Korean Studies at the University of Vienna and co-founder of the U.S.-ROK-Japan Trilateral Next-Gen Study Group.