The moment you stepped out of your front door today, you have placed yourself out there in the marathon called life. Here, you are running side by side with other runners, passing through many obstacles. And every single runner is running towards the same goal: their own form of success. As a runner in this race myself, today I also got ready for the race of the day just like you. I am also running towards my own form of success. I bump into other obstacles and other runners along the way, but I have no time to stop and observe my surroundings. This is because if I stop, I will be left behind.

However, because we are so accustomed to running this race and not looking around us, we sometimes end up causing harm or discomfort to others either intentionally or unintentionally. This edition of the Hanyang Journal has highlighted some of the current issues of the society related to the aforementioned harms, such as technological advances, secondary victimisation due to the media, and animal cruelty that we must keep in mind. In this continual race in our fast-changing world where things have to be done at a quicker pace, the adoption of unmanned machines has been convenient. Unfortunately, it has caused discomfort to those who are used to a slower-moving society, such as the elderly, as they find it even more difficult to adapt themselves to the emerging technological advances. Then there are the media in recent times which has carelessly reported on sexual assault cases. The media is responsible for creating victim-centered articles with clickbait titles and keywords that can easily re-victimize the victim, also known as secondary victimisation. This is often done in order to get more views and reactions from the netizens than other networks. We should also consider the animals that have experienced numerous tragedies, and the many that they will go through due to human selfishness. Sadly though, little progress is being made by the Korean government to fix these issues.

Achieving success after shutting down others to go further will not grant us the ultimate happiness we expect to gain when we succeed. Sometimes we must remember to let go of our obsession to succeed and to blend in, just like the message Arang-ga tries to deliver.

So readers, stop running for a moment and take a look around. It is not only your convenience, success, and rights that should be considered, but it’s also the others in your story that contribute to creating something beautiful in the end.