Choi In-hun - The Square
I suddenly wonder if Lee Myeong-jun had not chosen to go to the neutral country, he might not have thrown himself into the sea. I recall the life in the neutral country he had chosen and mused about. Within it, there was none of the ideology, love, or existential human problems he had fiercely wrestled with his entire life. But was that truly his nature? Could he have lived stably, detached from thought? Could he have genuinely embraced and lived a life like the one he mused about after choosing the neutral country—working as a hospital security guard or a village firefighter, living without anguish, simply going with the flow? I believe it was impossible. He might have ended up destroying his own body, which he couldn't throw off the ship, on the rooftop of some building in a neutral country. And he, too, must have vaguely sensed that this would be his fate. That he couldn't control his own nature. That a life of merely getting by was never something he was born with. So I think again. If I were Lee Myeong-jun back then, what choice would I have made? I would probably have chosen South Korea. Though I had no one left to love, no one to form attachments to on either side, at least South Korea still held a shred of freedom. Within that freedom, wasn't there still a sliver of hope to fully express my nature? I would agonize and wrestle between the people I lost and the painful times I endured because of my nature, and the fact that I cannot abandon that nature. But I would choose South Korea, not merely to survive, but to truly live life. For leaving for a neutral country is ultimately no different than throwing oneself into the sea of nothingness.