“Think of the Country and Don’t Fight Each Other ”

In the afternoon of June 13 at the office of the teenagers’ volunteer group, “People Who Are Beautiful Together” in Seoul, there was a box full of large white envelopes with names of the 299 members of the 17th National Assembly written on each of them.

Inside the envelopes were the volunteers’ wishes for the Assembly in their letters with their own hand-writing, elaborated letter by letter with their pencils, and “Hope Talismans” in traditional yellow paper with drawings of their wish for “prevention of corruption.”

“We were thinking whether there was anything that we could do when we watched the news of corruption late last year. We are still little, so we can’t make financial contributions, and we can’t vote, so we decided to write letters with all our hearts and draw hope talismans in the hope that they could drive away temptations.”

Miss. Kim Tae-ok, 18-year-old president of the group, said, “We wanted to contribute, though it’s not much, to the clean politics of the 17th National Assembly with our hearts.”

The 40 members of the group started to write letters to and draw talismans for each one of the Assembly members starting their new term right after the 17th general election ended. Teachers who agreed to the idea of these young minds had 300 other students join the campaign from Youngrak Middle School, Bulgwang Middle School, Yale Middle School, and others.

They mixed the paint used to color the talismans with water offered to Buddha’s altar at the Jogye Temple, and received consecration prayers from priests and reverends. It was not for the sake of any specific religion or superstition, but they wanted to symbolize their earnest wish for the lawmakers to stay away from corruption.

In the letters were their wishes for clean politics and personal accounts that they wished to speak about to each lawmaker. A variety of wishes take up the majority of the letters, including: “Please work until there are no students who cannot go to school even though they want to learn” and “Scold the grown-ups who sell alcoholic drinks and cigarettes to under-age youths.” There were, in particular, many appeals for issues regarding the difficult economy such as: “It hurts when I hear my parents sighing and saying that our economy is doing really bad” and “We wish there would be no youth unemployment when it’s time for us to go out into society.”

Also, there were suggestions such as: “I see sidewalk blocks changed every year, but I suggest you spend that budget in helping people with disabilities and children who have to lead their families without parents” and some criticisms such as: “I feel uncomfortable whenever I watch you fight each other.”

Shin Sae-rok, 14 years old and a student at Shinhwa Middle School said, “It was good because I could tell the things that I wanted to tell to the assemblymen before,” adding, “I think everyone becomes a lawmaker out of good will, so I asked them to hold on to their beliefs and not be swept away by temptations.”

The letters and the talismans will be delivered to the party chapters on the afternoon of June 21 in person. They thought the message would be less heartfelt if they were sent by mail.

“The students had a chance to learn about things that they didn’t really know before, such as the difference between the proportional representation system and the local electorates, the structure of the National Assembly, and other elements of government,” said the group guidance teacher Choi Sung-ho, 34. “I hope that the wishes of the students are well delivered.”

Ji-Won Jun podragon@donga.com