The Regret of the Survivor

Part 1: Are Human Bodies Equal?

A Tale of Two Workers
We are Kim Yong-gyun
Layers of arrogance
I will keep talking
Workers who became 'chimney farmers'

Part 2 If even one person is not free

I am Alaida
A good bystander is a cowardly hypocrite
The Root of Hatred
Century of Liberation

Part 3: I'm sorry to the children

The trap of confirmation bias
Don't tell me to have a child
I feel sorry for the children
Beyond Intellectual Racism
The responsibility to break the chain
For the schools of the Democratic Republic

Part 4: Holding an impossible dream in my heart

The inheritance of poverty and politics
To keep memories
The fear of asymmetry
For real freedom
“Pants for the next revolution”
They say justice has no power, but
“Why don’t you buy milk?”
If it's a holy place, it's a holy place
In the land of the perpetrators
How would you act?

Part 5 Even though there is a long way to go

What is progress?
The politics of unabashed corruption
Symbolic Violence and the Neoliberalization of the Mind
The Trap of Controlled Nationalism
Building a new fortress
For a humane life for all
Machiavelli's humility
A turbulent golden age and a frightening imagination
Every nation has its own level of government.
Where is the opposition's wildness?
Something more frightening than terrorism
The empty space of the scream
Even if there is a long way to go

“We forget easily.”
Hong Se-hwa exposes the reality obscured by the sacrament of words.

Where is the center and where is the periphery? The author believes the center is merely a point.
When points outside the center are connected, the line becomes the periphery.
It is not the center but the periphery that social contradictions are sharply revealed and human suffering and unhappiness are brought to light.
So, the place that opens up a new world is also the frontier.
The author closely examines the periphery of our society.


In Part 1, “Are Human Bodies Equal?” the author reflects on the lives of working people.
Korea has the highest industrial accident death rate among member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), with over 2,000 deaths per year.
In the first half of 2020, when the world's attention was focused on the coronavirus and prosecutorial reform, on April 29, 38 irregular subcontracted workers died in a fire at a warehouse in Icheon, Gyeonggi Province; on May 10, security guard Choi Hee-seok took his own life in an apartment in Ui-dong, Gangbuk-gu, Seoul; and on May 29, laid-off Samsung worker Kim Yong-hee came down from a steel tower at Gangnam Station after 355 days.
Our society excludes working people from citizenship.
The author says that human nature is to be “a free subject wherever the body resides: at home, in school, and at work.”


Part 2, “If Even One Person Is Not Free,” criticizes the distorted landscape that hatred has left in our society.
The author defines disgust as an emotion that exerts political power.
In 2017, the Moon Jae-in administration excluded anti-discrimination legislation from its 100 key national tasks, its supporters declared that the existence of sexual minorities was a "later" issue, and in July 2018, 710,000 Koreans signed a petition rejecting the refugee applications of around 500 Yemenis.
The author confesses that he is an Ally (a person who opposes discrimination against sexual minorities and stands in solidarity for an equal society) and shouts, “A society in which even one person is not free is not a free society.”


Part 3, “I’m Sorry to the Children,” argues that in a society where consciousness betrays existence, the true purpose and function of education must be restored.
In our society, education has become a means to possession rather than an end in itself, and students have become customers before they become citizens.
How did these results come about despite the world's longest study time? The author believes the core of the problem lies in the separation of "learning" and "thinking."
If learning is acquiring knowledge, thinking is 'I' thinking on the basis of learning.
Our education stops at learning and does not help us think for ourselves.
Without 'me', we cannot have self-esteem and self-respect, and we cannot form self-consciousness.


Part 4, “Holding an Impossible Dream in Your Heart,” examines the poverty and discrimination prevalent in the Democratic Republic.
The reality of 'Hell Joseon' is in the numbers.
In 2015, an average of five people died from industrial accidents every day, and 38 people committed suicide.
But what is surprising is that this hellish Joseon exists and does not exist at the same time.
The group that rules our society does not see or feel Hell Joseon.
This asymmetry may be the most Hell Joseon-like aspect.

Part 5, “Even if there is a long way to go,” critically examines the reality and future of progressive politics.
The author asks:
"What makes the Moon Jae-in administration progressive?" In "The Cho Kuk Situation," the author confesses to seeing the shadow of greed that leads people to do everything possible to win in competition.
Whether that greed is illegal or not is a secondary issue.
He bitterly remarks that as 'neoliberalism of the mind' has now reached its final stage, the values ​​of solidarity, social justice, and publicness have become objects of ridicule and remain as the echoless cries of the weak.


Politics converged with governance and administration, the squares once heated by candlelight gave way to markets, and citizens returned to being consumers.

“There is a survivor’s regret inside me.”
Intelligence and compassion, sharp critical thinking and a warm gaze

After the author took over as the head of Jean Valjean Bank, the world he saw was a world divided like a rental apartment in a luxury apartment complex.
Every year, 40,000 people find it difficult to pay fines of less than 2 million won, and those who do not have the money themselves and cannot borrow money from family and friends.
Until then, the expression 'marginalized and abandoned people' had been used, but it was only an idea that did not reflect reality.
The reality of 'the guilty until proven innocent, the innocent until proven guilty' is that not having money is not only a crime, but also a crime that leads to crime.


For the author, who feels ethically guilty as a member of the older generation, the Republic of Korea has never been a democratic republic.
To the author, South Korea is a country of social aristocracy where those born with a silver spoon in their mouths have inherited wealth and strengthened and maintained their vested interests.
In South Korea, most of the instability factors in life are passed on to families and individuals.
In human society, if someone is in a situation where they need the kindness and charity of others, that in itself means that their dignity has already been violated.


Is a society where dignity, not wealth or poverty, is inherited? For the 26 years since "I Am a Parisian Taxi Driver," the author has consistently cried out from the same spot until his throat was hoarse.
Let's be angry, let's get involved, let's be in solidarity, let's persuade.
This book is a desperate voice from progressive intellectual Hong Se-hwa.