South Korea is a land that refuses to stand still. It's as if
everything that has ever happened took place only five minutes ago,
and everyone is still reeling from the shock and waiting expectantly
for whatever comes next. What took the West two hundred years took South Korea twenty;
as a result, two generations stand face to face straddling a
small expanse of time, bewilderedly trying to make sense of each
other.
The consequence of this incredible progression from
subsistence to uncompromising capital is a great pressure bearing
down on the next generation to keep up and even increase this
incredible pace of development. This pressure releases itself in ways
most visible - in the face masks hiding yet another teenage nose job,
the twenty-something young men moisturising on the subway, the
youthful suicides strewn across the tracks at university tube
stops. This insurmountable quest for perfect progress, the fear of
somehow being left behind and left out of all this visible success,
leaves a trail of well-hidden scars, as the past becomes just a speck
in the distance of Korea's eye-view.
The
people have even perfected a special kind of walk to keep up with the
fast pace of life, a kind of half-run shuffle, feet kept close to the
ground to prevent slipping, cautious yet determinedly as fast paced
as possible. Only two steps forward, and never any back, for that
would spell disaster. With change so hard fought, with change the
goal in itself, there is no time to look back.