"We All Lie" by Hajin (하진), Friday, November 26, 2021

The third Thursday of every November, barring no situations like a pandemic delaying the start of the school year or an earthquake in a major city the day before the exam, South Korea holds its once-a-year College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) or 수능. Much of a Korean student's academic future rests on the score he or she receives on the test. Unlike American SATs or ACTs, failure to get a good score means either waiting another year to take the exam or settling with a lower-tier college. The subjects covered on the CSAT are Korean language, Mathematics, English, and Korean History. There are YouTube videos in which graduates from top universities around the world (in this video US college graduates) attempt to solve the questions on the CSAT. Korea is a country that places so much importance on students' scholastic abilities, but it comes at a cost--both financial and emotional. 

IS THIS REALLY TRUE? Several dramas and films have looked at the economic inequality in the world's eighth-largest economy. But before Squid Game shocked viewers on Netflix, a biting satire about upper-middle-class housewives in an elite neighborhood in Seoul poked at the very heartbeat of Korean education. SKY Castle follows the housewives who live in a luxury apartment complex called SKY Castle and who are married to some of the most successful doctors and professors in the country. With so many apartment complexes built in Korea, and new is best, English words like mansion and castle are used to make the glorified condominium sound especially luxurious. But SKY doesn't refer to the building's height. SKY stands for Seoul National University, Korea University, and Yonsei University--the three most prestigious schools in South Korea. Parents pay exorbitant fees to private academies in order to give their children the opportunity to score well enough on the CSAT for a spot in SKY. But money alone can't guarantee a good score, sorry Lori Loughlin. Parents place enormous amounts of pressure on their children to study. In SKY Castle, one mother even locks her daughter in a study room for her to study. Students feel immense pressure to perform well on the exam, and sadly, the pressure can cause all kinds of mental health problems. Korea has one of the highest suicide rates in the world, and the pressures students feel about their future is a major contributing factor.

PEOPLE CHEAT EACH OTHER, RIGHT? Singer Hajin sang two in K-pop groups, but "We All Lie," the theme to Sky Castle, is her biggest song. It examines the darkness all people have in them, and it fits very well with the themes of the drama. As the well-to-do ajummas are plotting and being horrible to each other, the song appears from time to time in the middle of the drama. I really should try to finish Sky Castle. I need to find a place where I can watch with English subtitles. I watched 3-4 episodes, and it was one of the few dramas that kept me engaged. The song, though, makes me think about the motives of people trying to get ahead. As a department head, I've seen a fair amount of fishy resumes and smooth-talking interviewees. I've looked at LinkedIn accounts that didn't seem to match other sources. I'm the skeptical one questioning why you want to teach here. What are your intentions? What do you hope to accomplish here? Inflated resumes, and fabricated skills may sound nice to the person in charge of doing the hiring, but I know it's me who has to deal with the truth when it comes out that we've hired incompetence. At a Christian school, "thou shalt not lie" but we'll let bullshit slide?

 

Read “We All Lie” by HAJIN (하진) on Genius.