[Opinion] Recession of Hope

Choi In-ho, the author of famous novel “Spring in Seoul,” liked to sing “The Song for Hope” and “We Shall Overcome” in the dark times of 1980. He also recommended the desperate youths to sing “We Shall Overcome” rather than “The Song for Hope.” “The Song for Hope,” with the opening line as “In this troubled world,” unlike its title, is more like the song for despair. “We Shall Overcome” is the adaptation from the same-titled English gospel song.

The late Reverend Lee Gyoung-jae, who devoted 30 years as the director of St. Lazarus Village, a center for Hansen’s disease (Leprosy), often said after he visited China in the early 1990s that there was no hope for socialism. He also said that in one Chinese orphanage, there were more than 80 teachers while there were only 17 children. At that time, Koreans went to China’s Yenben city and nearby provinces and cried out, “China is several decades behind us. The Manchurian region was a Korean territory during the Goguryo Kingdom.”

In a recent poll, 70 percent of the respondents said no to the question that Koreans have hope. As a reason for such an answer, 36.2 percent of the polled cited economic recession, and 36.1 percent pointed out political instability. About the question who or what is most responsible for political instability, 41.7 percent said the president, 21.5 percent said the ruling party, and 11.8 percent said the opposition parties. One out of three respondents said that they were willing to immigrate if chances were given. What is more serious than the economic recession might be a recession of hope. Meanwhile, in a survey recently conducted by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, 18 percent of the respondents have considered themselves first class, and 64 percent have expressed hope that they would climb to the upper social class. The results support the view that China is more capitalistic than Korea.

In the mid-1990s, there was a joke popular among the Chinese intellectuals. It was a sarcastic joke about Mao Zedong, Gorbachyov, and Deng Xiaoping that Mao turned left with a left turn signal on and Gorby turned right with a right turn signal on, while Deng turned right with a left turn signal on. To which direction does President Roh Moo-hyun turn and with which signal on? One certain thing is that a left turn can never be a “We Shall Overcome” just as “The Song for Hope” is not as hopeful as it looks.

Editorial writer, Oh Myung-cheol oscar@donga.com