The Chonnam Tribune asked Park Hae-gwang(Professor, Dept. of Sociology) for his opinion about current trends and the young generation. 

Q1. What kind of effects would snack culture have in our society?
: Snack culture is not inherently serious and depthful. It is mainly of witty, sensational and transient that is not enough to deliver meaningful messages. Our culture represents our society and spiritual values then leads us to think and learn many things. It does not mean the culture should always be serious but snack culture is not capable of containing deep meanings As snack culture will be widespread with the development of technology, they are concerned that it becomes a dominant culture among young generations.

Q2. What is your opinion about B-class culture and its impact on our society?
: B-class culture tends to go against dominant social order as a kind of subculture. Younger generation go crazy over the culture since it represents what they think and feel toward something. B culture does not have great influence with the society but its trends might get spoilt. This culture combined with politics came up groups such as DC inside or Il-be. It also might be only falsely outer form of B culture as depoliticized cultural products without healthy sarcasm. Like “Saturday Night Live Korea” on tvN, B culture in mainstream culture is not always good. B culture with natural resistance should emerge and it carries real meanings when it introduces freshness into our society.

Q3. What would be the reasons for booming of kidult culture?
: One of the reasons would be the awareness of adults being able to enjoy kid's contents. Those products in kidult culture are more and more commercialized and the financial means of people to buy those products have increased. In fact, people who have various collections often need to spend great fortune. Also, the desire to own dreams and memories people used to have would be the other main reason of the booming trends. Unlike the mainstream society that values economic and political power above other things, kidult culture focus on something small and simple. As the case of Hayao Miyazaki, it could develop creativeness and philosophical values that leads to the new prominence and value in our society.

Q4. What is the reason for young generation enjoying snack culture, B culture and kidult culture? How would these cultural phenomena affect their emotions?
: Snack culture is a newly rising culture among young people but B culture and kidult culture have been existed. The features of these three cultures are all different but they all share one characteristic; way out of stress. Social pressures to be successful made the youth wants to get out of their present situation and they share cultures they do enjoying via SNS. Snack culture needs to have deeper meaning through the combination with other types of culture. B culture and kidult culture will be transformed naturally but it would be better if it progress in the right direction of showing something new and diverse features at the same time. 

By Park Su-kyeang, Student Editor

    Kim Hae-in, Guest Reporter