Essay, Captions by City Editor Oh Young-jin
'Silent Me'
Each of nine entries with the exception of the 10th, titled ''Silent Me,'' reflects what Korea is like today. Each of them is a shameful leaf from the history of the passing year of 2009.
Politicians in scrimmages at the National Assembly show the lack of dialogue for resolving the differences. When you check on Naver.com images for physical fights, the results easily go back to 2005. This does not mean that Korean politicians didn't have fist fights in the chamber before 2005. It means that the photos before then were not stored online.
Angry workers protesting at Ssangyong Motor are not something new. We remember worksite sit-ins in the 1970s and 1980s, when Korea was often associated with militant union workers.
Corrupt politicians have been with us for decades and they won't go away anytime soon, however hard we may try. We also have lived with North Korea's brinkmanship for decades, first with its conventional weaponry and now with nuclear weapons since the 1990s.
There may be two ways of looking at these shameful parts of our history in the making at this time of year awaiting the advent of a brand-new year. First, we can disregard them and pigeonhole them until this time next year or we can try to do something to fix them one by one, if not all at once. Fixing the problems should start with each of us ― that is where the 10th entry ― ''Silent Me,'' comes in ― playing a part by raising one's voice about things that have gone wrong and demanding corrective action to be taken. If we do our part, by this time next year, we will have a shorter list of shame.
foolsdie@koreatimes.co.kr
