The other day, I felt dizzy as I tried to get out of bed. Suddenly, the world around me seemed to spin so rapidly that I momentarily thought I was in the core of a vortex.
Since I was on the verge of collapsing, I was terrified, thinking that it could be a warning sign of a coming stroke. Was my heart not strong enough to pump blood to my brain? Were my blood vessels clogged with cholesterol? A series of fearful questions arose in my mind.
I rushed to the nearby doctor’s office five minutes before 9 o’clock. “Oh, Lord, I want to live. I’m too young to die,” I prayed desperately, while waiting for the possible death sentence coming from the lips of my stern-faced physician.
“I should have at least 30 more years ahead of me,” I murmured. “My father is 95 and still healthy and energetic. Besides, I have miles to go, as Robert Frost wrote in his famous poem.”
To my great relief, after examining me thoroughly, the doctor said, “Your blood vessels are clean. No clogging at all, both veins and arteries.” He continued, “The dizziness was caused by your eardrums. That is, you lost your balance briefly due to a temporary malfunction in your eardrums. It happens, as you grow older. It’s not serious at all. The dizziness will go away within a few days.”
I was greatly relieved and learned a valuable lesson: If you lose your balance, you will become dizzy and eventually collapse.
Suddenly, it occurred to me that our society had lost its balance lately and was faltering as a result. It takes two wings to fly, and yet in our society the left wing and the right wing detest each other so much that we cannot fly at all.
The same antagonism can be found in the hostile relationship between progressives and conservatives, young and old, and the privileged and the underprivileged in our society. Every day, we yell at each other, “You are an abomination!” In our mind there seems to be no room for compromise, negotiation or reconciliation.
In other advanced countries, there are hawks and doves in general. In Korea, however, there are no doves; only hawks. Indeed, our fight is not between radicals and moderates, but between extremists. There seems to be no middle ground in Korean society and as a result, antagonism and hostility are ubiquitous among us.
This unfortunate phenomenon seriously cripples contemporary Korean society. Meanwhile, we are losing our balance, feeling dizzy, and beginning to collapse.
A few days ago, I went to a Korean publishers’ meeting sponsored by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism. Once again, I witnessed the typical antagonism and hostility between the left-wing publishers who blamed the government for everything and the right-wing publishers who kept silent.
“At a time when publishers are going out of business,” roared an angry publisher, “only state-run institutions seem prosperous!”
Instead of appreciating the Ministry’s effort to financially support publishers, he harshly criticized the government for its indifference to the declining publishing industry.
“But publishers run private businesses,” someone sitting near me whispered. “Why should the government be responsible for the decline of the publishing business?”
Another person replied, also whispering, “But they publish books for our mental health. Books are important, you know.” Instantly, the former retorted, “If so, the government should also be responsible for the decline of the restaurant industry because restaurants provide food for our physical health, which is equally important.”
Another publisher stood up, complaining, “So many writers are starving these days, and yet the government does not care at all.”
“Why should the government be responsible for starving writers?” muttered someone near me. “They should’ve produced better works. Besides, there are best-selling writers who make fortunes.”
Listening to the two radically different opinions, I could see the vast ideological difference between the two factions of publishers.
It is well known that Koreans tend to assume that their government is responsible for everything and therefore blame the government even for personal injuries and accidents. For example, even those who developed lung disease due to the sterilizing powder they purchased and poured in their humidifiers sued the government for damages. To foreign eyes, it surely is strange that the Korean government is often playing the role of an insurance company. But that is the way it is in Korea.
Korea is a country heavily influenced by Confucian philosophy, which emphasized the importance of “zhongyong” or moderation. Strangely, however, Korean society seems to be seriously plagued by extremism these days.
When they used the streets, our ancestors walked imperturbably in the middle of the road, according to the old saying, “The great man walks on the wide road.”
Perhaps our ancestors metaphorically wanted to teach us the wisdom and necessity of avoiding extremism. In fact, moderate desire can become an effective cure for social maladies such as greed and extremism.
That morning, in the whirlpool of dizziness, suddenly I realized the importance of balance.
By Kim Seong-kon
Kim Seong-kon is a professor emeritus of English at Seoul National University and president of the Literature Translation Institute of Korea. ― Ed.
