Learn how to catch a fish

By Hahm Jin-eui

Whenever I pass by Gangnam Station, I see volunteers of charities on the streets collecting funds to support children living in poverty in other parts of the world.

I try to at least support these causes in the most modest way I can in the form of the little allowance I have in my pocket. However, I always try not to contribute to activities that are intended to support material projects.

Some people might judge this to be insensitivity because I am being picky on the type of support I want to offer. I always insist on knowing precisely what my contribution will be used for, each time volunteer fundraisers approach me. For instance, does it go to provide clothes, food, education or housing?

After the 1950-53 Korean War, South Korea was a land of chaos, dead bodies, trash, and debt. In this country with little natural resource and people, it was not easy for the country to get on its feet and clean up the mess.

This notwithstanding, South Korea created the “Miracle on the Han River” and joining the ranks of the industrialist nations in less than a century after the war. Aid was not the main source of this unbelievable and astonishing change.

It was the brains of South Koreans that brought about these global companies in South Korea, highways that extend from one end to the other end of the country, and the apartments and skyscrapers that lights up the country’s skyline at night. The country has made great progress and rapid development by learning “how to catch a fish instead of asking for free fish.”

For these reasons, I believe financial support that leads to education is more important and effective in helping a country and this thought makes me ask the fundraising volunteers in Gangnam Station where the donation leads to.

Especially after I visited Siem Reap in Cambodia and watched the people living in the area, these thoughts became stronger. Last summer, I visited a water-house village at the Tonle Sap Lake. The houses were built on or above the water surface instead of land because of the flood that occurs every summer in the wet season.

Some of you might imagine a romantic resort with beautiful sunsets and luxury food but this place is not what you see in pictures of those kinds.

Not only do the people wash their clothes or fish in the dirty yellowish brown lake where they urinate all the time, they also drink water from that lake because it is the only place to find water.

Kids go around forcing a dollar massage to the visitors and it is easy to see empty aid trucks after offloading all their contents to the people. Notwithstanding the regular aid from abroad, the village was still gloomy and barely surviving.

However as I walked by a nearby school on land while volunteering to clean the water-house village, I saw kids happily playing soccer in the modern building in that village. They looked different from the kids who were begging around for money from visitors. These kids in the vicinity of the school were full of life and of excitement unlike their colleagues on the streets.

Surprised, I asked the kids what made them so happy. They told me and the other volunteers that they get a lot of enlightenment and fun in school and learning, the type that they have never experienced outside of school. Adding to my astonishment, I realized the school was built with the support of Kookmin Bank of South Korea.

This made me proud of my country for helping kids by giving them the chance to fulfill their dreams beyond simple material support. I was able to realize that by investing in education, the people in developing countries could be satisfied by learning how to catch their own fish.

Students in South Korea compete with each other every day for college entrance. The boring and routine days of studying make me miserable but it is hard to complain after seeing the kids in Cambodia.

To them, school was not a stressful place where you have to keep your mind straight not to fall or lose; it was their own Angkor Wat. School was where they and their dreams met and touched, fulfilling their hopes to become future helpful resources to their country.

This is why I am not able to complain about the everyday chance that students in South Korea take for granted and neither am I willing to offer material support to poor kids.

As South Korea learned to catch its own fish and developed to its current stage, other developing countries should also be provided with the fishing skills instead of fish.

The writer is attending Seocho High School in Seoul. She has been a Korea Times global student reporter since 2010.