Entering

1.
Discrimination exists like air.

Studying Responding to Others' Suffering 1
Are you a "normal" person? Then you're privileged.
: The logic of vested interests that have discriminated against black people, women, and sexual minorities
The illusion of never discriminating
: The Black Crime Rate in the U.S. and the Controversy Over South Korea's Acceptance of Refugees
About your easy and cruel solution
Discrimination hurts even if you don't actually experience it.
David Williams, a sociologist who began research on racial discrimination and health.
We need your voice out of the closet.
: Psychologist Patrick Corrigan emphasizes the movement of people with mental illness.
Movement, stigma, politics, rationality

2.
Erased existence, unanswered pain

Studying Responding to Others' Suffering 2
The fight for the right to urinate isn't over yet.
: A History of Discrimination and Exclusion Through Restrooms
Who is the "ivory-less elephant" in Korean society?
: Asking about the minimum level of courtesy for humans in the struggle for survival
The fight 'MeToo' where the most hurt people take the lead
: The secondary suffering experienced by the socially disadvantaged who have shown courage
Staring at 'Invisible Pain'
Karen Messing, the scientist who walked into women's workplaces
Who is the basement room evacuation for?

3.
What are the "needle" of Korean society?

Studying Responding to Others' Suffering 3
Awareness of AIDS remains stuck in the 1980s
Needle Exchange Programs and Unscientific Stigma
Change begins with cracks and confusion
: A conversation about HIV infection and disability with activists Kim Do-hyun and Kim Ji-young.
Easy labels don't solve anything.
Don Operario, a health scientist who studies stigma against people living with HIV
A day without fear or censorship
: Celebrating the 20th Seoul Queer Culture Festival
For a society where no one is left behind
Miryu and Jong-geol, activists on hunger strike for the enactment of a comprehensive anti-discrimination law
To move politics that remains silent on discrimination
Economist Lee Badgett refutes politicians' "rational arguments" with data.
Absence of basis or absence of will?

4.
Our lives are more complicated than you imagine.

My essence is something no one can change.
Prosecutor Seo Ji-hyeon on the 'speaking out' of victims in Korean society
The victim is not acting like a victim.
Director Kim Il-ran of the film "Accomplice," which captures the individuality of suffering.
Helen Keller's Light and Shadow
: A conversation with a man who lived through his time, harboring errors and contradictions.
This is my fight
: Can future victims prevail? A conversation with poet Yoo Hee-kyung.

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Discrimination hurts even if you don't actually experience it.
A study that responds to the suffering of erased beings

A 1993 paper published by Dr. Knox Todd, an emergency medicine physician, sparked significant controversy.
The research team showed that the factor that most influenced medical staff's prescription of painkillers was the patient's race.
Among Hispanic patients who visited the emergency room with long bone fractures, the rate of not being prescribed painkillers was nearly twice that of white patients.
Even medical professionals who explicitly say they do not discriminate against anyone provide ‘unequal treatment’ based on race, which is due to ‘implicit bias’ inherent in the unconscious.
The problem is that implicit bias hurts minorities even if it doesn't lead to actual discriminatory behavior.
This is because relationships with people who give you negative views increase cortisol, a stress hormone that can cause various diseases.

The situation in Korea is more serious.
Some people cannot go to the hospital even when they are sick.
According to a 2020 National Human Rights Commission survey, one in five transgender people whose gender identity differs from their legal sex at birth said they had avoided using hospitals for fear of being treated unfairly when required to present identification.
People with disabilities who use wheelchairs often give up using public transportation for fear of the harsh stares of drivers and passengers.
Kim Seung-seop points out that Korean society often reveals explicit biases that go beyond implicit biases.
In fact, in the 2018 debate over accepting 484 Yemenis who fled civil war to Jeju Island as refugees, the argument that received a lot of support was an appeal to the explicit prejudice that they "might commit crimes."

Kim Seung-seop confesses that discrimination exists even in the process of studying discrimination, and that not all suffering receives equal attention.
He realizes that the words "transgender research" on the gift certificate he received as compensation for participating in the study could have been outing.
Although I avoided the same mistake in my subsequent research on mobility rights for people with disabilities, the anecdote of a colleague who uses a wheelchair telling me that he had difficulty using a convenience store gift card he received from me made me realize that "discrimination exists like air."
Meanwhile, the researcher's reflection that even he, as a researcher in 2015 when he first conducted research on laid-off workers at Ssangyong Motors, did not consider the wives of laid-off workers as "parties to suffering" led to follow-up research and studies responding to the "invisible pain" of female workers at department stores and duty-free shops.

“I am a researcher, but I do not consider myself a critic, but rather a player on stage.
(…) “The process of looking at the world from the perspective of the socially disadvantaged and producing unproduced knowledge cannot proceed unless someone very intentionally prepares and acts.” (p. 47)

The lives of those affected by hasty solutions have been erased
What is truly a 'reasonable' standard?

In the summer of 2022, a disaster occurred in which three people died in a semi-basement apartment in Sillim-dong, Seoul, due to record-breaking heavy rain.
Two days later, the Seoul Metropolitan Government announced a "safety measure" to ban living in basements and semi-basements.
It was a decision that did not take into account the complex circumstances of the person who had no choice but to live in a semi-basement apartment.
Kim Seung-seop asserts that this hasty solution, reminiscent of the "abolition of the Coast Guard" during the Sewol ferry disaster, cannot solve the problem.
Meanwhile, in 1988, New York City, USA, implemented the so-called "needle exchange program," focusing on the lives of those affected. To reduce new HIV infections, the program provided free, clean needles to drug addicts, defying social stigma.
This policy immediately sparked huge controversy, but ultimately saved countless lives.

Don Operario, a public health researcher who studies the stigma of people living with HIV, says in a conversation with Seungseop Kim that “public health interventions do not make value judgments about an individual’s life” (p. 212).
It's like the needle program that finds a way to save lives immediately before making a value judgment about drug addiction.
However, facing the general premise of health science that 'life is better than death', Seungseop Kim goes one step further and asks this question.
“Is life truly better than death for every individual?” “Must those with incurable diseases continue to struggle under that burden?” (pp. 176-177) This question soon leads to a discussion about the need for a comprehensive anti-discrimination law in Korean society.
“I believe that a world where all minorities can affirm themselves without fear is the foundation of democracy.” (p. 220)

In the book, Seungseop Kim shares his experiences writing expert opinions and testifying in court in lawsuits involving victims of occupational diseases, survivors of sexual violence, and sexual minorities.
It is said that in such cases, lawyers from large law firms on the opposing side often win by providing evidence to support their claims and presenting rational arguments with an elegant face.
“But some people have no basis for their claims other than the hardships of their own lives and the wounds deeply engraved in their bodies.”
He asks, “What should be the ‘rational’ standard for distinguishing between rationality and coercion under such conditions?” (p. 97).
In a Korean society where anti-discrimination laws are often dismissed as something to be dealt with later, citing the "rational" basis of social consensus, the question posed by a researcher who has agonized over scientific rationality more intensely than anyone else resonates deeply.

“Good intentions do not produce good results.
The world is complicated.
Solving social problems begins with accepting their complexity.
Instead of untangling a complex knot, cutting it with a large sword might make the wielder look like a hero.
But that heroic decision often makes things worse.” (p. 161)

Each and every person with their own unique history
The victim is not acting like a victim.

In the book, Seung-seop Kim meets with Prosecutor Ji-hyeon Seo, who sparked the Me Too movement in 2018, and Director Il-ran Kim, whose film "Accomplices," which captures the individual suffering of the victims of the Yongsan tragedy, is also featured.
David Williams, Patrick Corrigan, and Lee Badgett, who share their stories in chapters 1-3, have each experienced racism, mental illness stigma, and homophobia.
What they consistently say is that victims and minorities each have their own unique history and desires, and diverse identities.
Prosecutor Seo Ji-hyeon rejects the typical victim-like behavior demanded by Korean society, saying, “It is the victims who should be happy” (p. 254).
Director Kim Il-ran says that the “image of the victim that we know is only a part” (p. 266), and that we must look at the three-dimensional aspects of the victims.

In that respect, Helen Keller's story is noteworthy.
Helen Keller's life is filled with not only brilliant achievements but also the limitations and contradictions of her time.
However, Seungseop Kim says that there is no reason to belittle Helen Keller's life just because she had limitations and contradictions as well as her achievements. Rather, he says, "I would like to have more conversations with a human being who lived through her time with errors and contradictions, rather than with a stuffed hero who 'overcame her disability'" (p. 285).
That may be why he so freely confessed the sorrows and hardships he felt while researching in this book.
This is also why we must ‘study responding to the suffering of others’ in an age when “judgments about people and events are made in the name of justice by quoting a few words out of context” (p. 8).

“Even in every disaster or calamity, each human being is unique.
Each individual has different needs and concerns within their own unique relationships, history, and circumstances.
But we often consider them as one homogeneous group because we have experienced some common event.” (p. 300)

Between data and emotion
The best weapon you can have as a scholar

Kim Seung-seop says that he wanted the content of his first book, “For Pain to Become a Path,” to be “used as a small weapon that can be held in the hands of those who have nowhere to lean on, rather than as universal knowledge welcomed by everyone” (p. 8).
Regarding his previous work, “The Future Victims Won,” which tells the story of the Cheonan survivors, he said, “As a scholar, I wanted to present to the world the best weapon I could offer” (p. 294).
To this end, Seungseop Kim meticulously refines his language, ensuring that it neither lingers in academic language that is difficult for people to approach nor ends in emotional writing unsupported by data.
To borrow his expression, it is a process of broadening the point where “the warp that cultivates insight into the incident” meets “the weft that throws my body into the incident to sharpen my senses” while reading papers and books (p. 311).


"Studying to Respond to the Pain of Others" is another weapon that Kim Seung-seop has put forth as a "sincere scholar."
In the book, he cautiously but firmly voices his opinion on the most sensitive topics in Korean society, such as the 'controversy over accepting Yemeni refugees,' 'the enactment of a comprehensive anti-discrimination law,' and 'the struggle for the right to mobility for the disabled,' as well as on incidents where public opinion is tilted in one direction.
The rigorous approach to the subject, the intense questions that delve into the root cause of the cause, and the characteristically neat sentences have become even more profound.
Kim Seung-seop, who questioned the social responsibility for disease in “If Pain Becomes a Path” and the academic community’s responsibility for unproduced knowledge in “If Our Body Is the World,” asks himself in this book about his own responsibility as someone who “studies in response to the pain of others.”
Can we really say that this study has nothing to do with us?

“Studying Responses to Others’ Pain” is a collection of stories I shared with people who, despite the countless trials and errors I experienced during my research and the seemingly endless challenges I faced, never gave up asking questions.
“This book concludes the story I can tell the public in Korean society.” (pp. 7-8)