are you at peace? (2025)
On October 29th, 2022—Halloween weekend—more than a hundred young people were crushed to death in the streets of Itaewon, South Korea.
On the morning of the 30th, I woke up, checked my phone, and saw photos of dead bodies on a street I had once walked. In the Netherlands, I opened the window for fresh air and saw people peacefully biking outside. My world has been split in two since that morning.
There were more tragedies in South Korea, both before and after, mostly claiming young lives. Being far from the source of the tragedy doesn't seem to help me escape it. I am here but also there, or not truly here but only there. The confusion grows stronger. I am too far from where the pain originates, but I still feel it—remotely, collectively. It is a part of the trauma of our era.
In Korea, people prepare tofu for those just released from jail. It is both a warning and a plea for them to live clean, not to commit a crime again, like the pure and innocent tofu. I eat, and eat, and eat the tofu. The sense of powerlessness my country instils in me—the feeling that I can do nothing in the face of these endless, repeating tragedies—tells me I’m trapped, no matter where I am.
South Korea has paid a high price in lives to develop the country and to allow people to feed their families in peace, free from the threat of invasion. Older generations believed that no one would dare invade once we became strong. Their most urgent goal was survival — to feed their families after decades of foreign invasions. We developed rapidly, without precedent. But now, we are facing a gaping hole in our safety systems.
The desire to survive gave rise to an obsession with hard work, hard labour, intense pressure on education, and a narrow focus on productivity and efficiency. Ironically, innocent lives were lost in the very pursuit of survival. As someone born in the '90s, I have often witnessed people my age dying in national incidents that could have been prevented with enough care and proper safety measures. These tragedies keep repeating, causing trauma to those of our generation. The repetition only deepens our feeling of powerlessness—we can do nothing but watch them die.
This generational trauma is stacked on top of the last, passed down, inherited.
Where does pain come from?
Where could this pain go?
I wish I could have stood with them.
I wish I could have fully escaped.
are you at peace? (2025)