[MZ Column] Angry People and a Society of Hatred

Recently, the Netflix drama Righteous Thieves has become a global sensation. It has garnered significant attention domestically as well, partly because many Korean-American actors, including Steven Yeun, star in it, and the director, writer, and producer, Lee Sung-jin, is also of Korean descent.

Personally, while watching the drama, I kept thinking about the "instability of life." On the surface, some lives may seem problem-free or even perfect, and furthermore, glamorous and impressive, but throughout the drama, it unfolds how unstable those lives actually are.

Especially when consumed by hatred, such unstable lives tend to be exposed. We accumulate a certain "uncomfortable energy" in this unstable, imperfect life?one that does not go as planned, where our hopes and reality often clash. In other words, there is an energy of anger that leaks out from the gap between ideals and reality. This energy builds up and builds up until, at some point, it finds a target to hate and begins to pour out.

Personally, I addressed this issue in my book Angry Society. We live in a society full of people searching for targets to hate?a society of hatred. Sometimes, those targets become specific groups of people. Other times, all the hatred is poured onto those closest to us. People hate certain groups, believing their lives have been ruined because of them. Or they believe their lives have been destroyed by those closest to them. Those who hate are dependent and masochistic in that they desperately need the object of their hatred.

Righteous Thieves shows how such hatred exposes life. This story is not so much about lives ruined by hatred, but about how already broken lives explode into hatred. In the drama, the female lead’s husband was secretly cheating, and the male lead was attempting suicide. All these events reflect the phenomenon where the ideals of life we believe in do not align with reality, causing cracks and creating an environment where anger and hatred sprout. Then, they encounter each other and begin to pour their energy onto one another.

As stories of hatred unfold, their ultimate reconciliation comes before "death." The two, sensing their imminent death, open up to each other and come to understand one another. More precisely, by honestly revealing themselves, they gain the courage to empathize and understand each other. Until then, they had been shouting, "I can never understand you!" while even pointing guns at each other, but in reality, it was not that they "could not understand," but that they "did not want to understand." They lacked the courage to understand and forgive. They did not want to understand. Rather, they wanted to be consumed by the energy of hatred until the very end.

However, facing imminent death, they naturally realize there is no need to cling to such hatred any longer. They simply honestly acknowledge their brokenness, imperfection, and that no one can be entirely right, and they let go. And they come to realize that, in fact, "anyone" can understand. In truth, everything can be understood. The remedy for hatred is understanding. The antidote to hatred is understanding. On the opposite side of anger and hatred lies precisely understanding. Perhaps, in our society today, it is this very "understanding" that is most desperately needed.

Jung Ji-woo, Cultural Critic