A few days ago, I found small scribblings on the corner of the toilet wall. The scribblings written on the wall showed someone’s stuffy reality and she did not know what to do for her future. Surprisingly, there was a comment for the first scribbling as well. It said, “I thought these were only my worries, but I realized everyone has the same worries about job seeking and their future through your message. I am sorry that we youths, so called beautiful flowers in the whole lifetime, just wander here and there without having a burning passion. I really hope that you will be ok and cheer up!” The contents appealed to my emotion. I felt empathy for those who scribbled their own stories even on the toilet wall. Actually, it is not just their own agony but the agonies of all the young generation.
     Recently, several major mass media covered the issue of the increasing number of 20’s and 30’s who visited the 2015 Fall Study Abroad Fair. Most of the young people who want to go abroad considered South Korea as an ultra-competitive place from the entrance of school to job seeking and raring their kids. They said, “There is no hope for living in Korea anymore.” It reflects that young Koreans have become increasingly dissatisfied or disillusioned with their country. ”Hell Joseon” is a new term capturing such a creeping sense of futility among them. When I heard this expression at first, it gave me a bad impression because of its negative connotation from the meaning of ‘hell’, but this kind of term is mixed with the self-deprecation of young people because they still are the ‘880,000 won generation’ and the ‘generation of three giving-ups’; dating, marriage, and childbirth.
     On October 2nd, young people did a performance with the title of ”The Youth, Overturning Hell Joseon” and played a game of slap-match in Noryangjin, Seoul. This event was organized by the planning group of a citizen’s network named ‘Sympathy for the Young People’ that about 20 youth organizations have joined. All of them spoke about their troubles in front of the public such as paying expensive tuition fees, failing to get a job, and wandering part time jobs. I was impressed with the story of a student who spoke about her own experience organizing a small scholarship foundation with friends to help students who could not afford to pay tuition fees. She said we still have a possibility of overturning the lethargic reality through helping each other and sharing our agonies actively.
     I had doubt whether there is hope for the young generation, but now I believe that we are not the abandoned generation. We have the power to improve our reality. As long as we try to change our society, we can be a generation longing for a happy life in the future.

By Oh Hee-su, Editor-in-Chief