[Editorial] 'Sorry Dear Young Friends'

"You worked hard. And we're sorry."

That is what you want to say to the young people who turned in their sleep the night before the College Scholastic Ability Test, and for those who have been unable to sleep after the test because of the heartbreak and disappointment.

On the other hand you worry. First you think of their angry faces. You send us into the jungle (the test) and make us fight 'till we're bloodied and now you say you're sorry? You make us study for up to ten years while we exhaust ourselves and now you compliment us for working hard? You say you're sorry after determining our destinies with a single written exam?

The world is richer when it is full of diverse colors and designs and shapes. Education is about fostering each child's strengths and character and teaching them how things exist in harmony. Once they are regular members of society, however, there is discrimination based on what school you attended. It is only natural that people devote their lives to a test when it determines what schools they go to, which in turn decides their jobs, economic class, and how they are treated in society. Some say that since it is their work that feeds the rest of the population the test has to be made even harder.

They say there two things that you learn through living - about loving and understanding, and about being happy. The only thing you can say for a written test is that it is objective. It cannot judge your ability to love and understand. Your score has nothing to do with your capacity for being happy. One must not give up in the face of the system and one's score. They say that happiness comes from a sense that you are an existence that is acknowledged and respected. Everyone can make others happy. The important thing is ambition and determination.

The world exists because there are young people in it. The adults who snarl at them will eventually require their care. It just makes you want to say you're sorry, because they've been put in identical waffle presses that frame them according to their grades.

The Hankyoreh, 24 November 2005.

[Translations by Seoul Selection]