Born in a farming village in Heungdeok, Gochang, this reporter grew up waking at 6 a.m. to a song that rang through the neighborhood: "The dawn bell has rung, a new morning has broken." During the Saemaul Undong rural modernization campaign, I joined communal labor with my father to boost compost production. Thatched roofs gave way to slate, and banners fluttered with the slogan "Let's live well." The spread of the Tongil rice variety raised grain output and ended the spring hunger gap, yet through my elementary school years we still ate mixed grains and rice with sweet potato. Every year we caught rats, cut off their tails and turned them in at school, and we received the so-called "fire shot" against tuberculosis from a single syringe heated over a flame and shared among students. Electricity reached the village before I entered elementary school, freeing us from kerosene lamps, and by my high school years city buses began running two or three times a day. As industrialization advanced, however, villagers left in large numbers for the Seoul metropolitan area and other cities. In my university years I took tear gas and threw my share of firebombs and stones. After landing a job, I saw a computer for the first time — and it was little more than a glorified typewriter. Amid the 1997 foreign exchange crisis came the first peaceful transfer of power between rival parties in the nation's constitutional history. Pay was delayed at my company and the pain continued, but what followed was informatization, structural reform, expanded welfare, cultural opening and improved inter-Korean relations. Even one person's memory carries the arc of Korea's compressed growth.
Korea now draws the world's attention on the strength of advanced industry, democracy and the Korean Wave. Rising immigration and tourism, along with cases of overseas Koreans returning to their homeland, point to that changed standing. Many travelers abroad hear Korea's stable public safety and health care system praised, or feel the popularity of Korean culture firsthand.
Yet growth has cast deep shadows. The rural elementary school that once enrolled some 2,000 students when I was a child now has fewer than 50, even counting pupils from two nearby branch schools — a measure of how severely the region has hollowed out. A gap is widening between the country's dazzling achievements and the foundation needed to sustain them.
In those poor childhood years there was a belief that tomorrow would be better than today. Now uncertainty about the future looms large. Korea has vaulted into the ranks of advanced economies, but there is no guarantee that the formula for past success will keep working. Companies compete in global markets while institutions and practices in labor, education, the public sector, regulation, finance and pensions fail to keep pace with change. With U.S. President Donald Trump's America First agenda, wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, the contest for technological supremacy and the reshaping of supply chains, and the artificial intelligence transition all converging, the global economic and security order offers zero visibility.
Korea succeeded until now as a fast follower, but it must become a first mover and build a new order. That is why the country needs the capacity to govern — to execute innovation and build the strength to withstand shocks. Structural reform should lift productivity and potential growth and foster an innovation ecosystem. The labor market needs greater flexibility and security at the same time, and education must shift from an exam-centered model to lifelong learning and job skills. Pensions and public finances must secure sustainability with the burden on future generations in mind. Stabilizing the stock and property markets, easing polarization and regional imbalance, and improving inter-Korean relations are also key tasks. Structural reform means changing outdated institutions and the way resources are allocated — accepting short-term pain to create larger long-term opportunity. The longer reform is delayed, the more heavily the cost falls on future generations.
President Lee Jae-myung declared his commitment to structural reform last November, but neither the drive from the ruling party and the government nor visible results are easy to feel. The ruling party and the government should ask whether they are wasting energy on internal conflict and whether they are governing properly. They must set the direction and priorities of reform, explain the benefits and costs honestly, and persuade interest groups. The opposition, for its part, must not flounder in a swamp of zero-sum political strife while leaving unresolved the issue of the unlawful martial law declaration of December 2024.
The realist insight of Niccolo Machiavelli, who wrote "The Prince," is also a reminder that goodwill alone cannot steer a nation — that leaders need strong institutions, the ability to execute, realistic strategy, popular support and preparation for crisis. With about a year and a half left before the next general election, now is the chance to lay the groundwork for the nation's long-term future. It is time to give future generations the belief that tomorrow will be better than today.