On Monday morning, when Seoul's daytime high hit 37 degrees Celsius, a yellow notification buzzed on my phone before the safety alert advising people to "refrain from outdoor activity." It read: "Subway Lines 1 and 4 are passing through Noryangjin Station and Hyehwa Station without stopping."
"It must be SADD (Solidarity Against Disability Discrimination)," I thought, and at the same time, the image of those who mock the group in their own language came to mind, leaving a bitter taste. "Tangjangyeon" is reportedly an expression that mocks SADD's protests by likening them to the tanks that appear in the shooting game "Overwatch." From "Owl Rock," "hongeo (skate fish)," and "China Out" to the "OO-chung" suffix, and now "Let's go to Starbucks," which began with "Tank Day." It is a world overflowing with words of hate, mockery, and discrimination.
It saddens me that I must bring up such a heavy and stifling story in this sweltering heat, when the discomfort index is soaring. But there is no choice. Someone must point out the hate and discrimination that ceaselessly tear down society and relationships, and many people must grapple with it.
After the cheering chant at Seoul's Paejae High School sparked controversy, the Korean Teachers and Education Workers' Union conducted a survey (July 2-6, targeting 1,109 elementary, middle, and high school teachers). Of the respondents, 89 percent said they had "encountered expressions of hate, discrimination, or historical distortion in students' remarks, assignments, and presentations over the past year." And more than half of the students (56 percent) reportedly "reacted by saying it was just a joke."
While "No Kids Zones," which sparked heated debate a decade or so ago, have become part of daily life, and even "No Senior Zones" and "No Ajumma Zones" have emerged, chilling mockery and hate have been consumed as "memes" by adolescents exposed to distorted views of history, turning into "play" and "games."
How dangerous is the vicious language that discriminates against a particular person or group without the slightest guilt or remorse? Hong Sung-soo, a law professor at Sookmyung Women's University who has delved into this issue, made the following diagnosis in a recent media interview. "When attacking a particular group becomes routine and is seen as acceptable, someday that attack can turn toward the group you yourself belong to. Conflict and antagonism between groups will inevitably intensify, and situations leading to physical clashes or violence can certainly be anticipated."
Even a glance at one's surroundings with a minimum of common sense makes the situation appear serious, yet the politics that should stand in the way still fails to function. It has been 20 years since discussion began on a comprehensive anti-discrimination law, and it remains stalled. Among the 38 member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), only Korea and Japan lack related laws. The United Nations has repeatedly recommended that the Korean government introduce an anti-discrimination law, but it has failed to clear the National Assembly.
On the surface, they cite the need for "social consensus," but their true intentions differ. They know full well that politics feeding off hate and discrimination can create solid camps and fandoms. This is the emergence of "hate politics." These forces use populism as a tool, targeting and attacking society's weak links to grow their own size. Once called "the fourth wave of the far right," it is now rapidly shifting to the left as well, like a solution spreading across litmus paper, having confirmed its effectiveness. Each side raises the stakes of ideological screening, further sharpening that fearsome language. Something must be done before even bigger monsters appear.
This May, at an evening gathering of acquaintances in their 50s, Starbucks' "Tank Day event" came up as a topic of conversation. To the question "Why did they do it?" the conclusion reached by most was this: "They probably thought it would be fun. It was May 18, and the rhymes of 'Tank Day' and 'tak on the desk' matched perfectly." (Shinsegae's explanation was different.)
The conversation that day ended dryly like that, but if we encounter such a scene in our daily lives, shouldn't we dare to step forward and speak up? To say how frightening a violence your words are, how cruel a harm your play is. And after that, even if it makes me a "seonbi-chung (goody two-shoes)" or a "damn boomer."
Seoul's temperature is approaching 40 degrees, making a mockery of the start of autumn. Everyone is fearful at the prospect that the Korean Peninsula's heat waves, said to be unprecedented, will become the new normal going forward. But if hate, mockery, and discrimination among generations, genders, races, the disabled and non-disabled, religions, political beliefs, and sexual identities become a new normal that "anyone can do like a joke," how terrifying would such a world be?
