Rooting for those who fight against worthlessness

Audio report: written by reporters, read by AI

Kim Seung-hyun

The author is an editorial writer at the JoongAng Ilbo. 

Political newcomers running in next month’s election would do well to watch JTBC’s “We Are All Trying Here.” Its Korean title, often abbreviated by the first syllable of each word,  mojamussa, literally means “Everyone Is Fighting Their Own Worthlessness.” They are probably too busy preparing for the election to watch a weekend drama now. In that case, they should watch it later, whether they win or lose. As the Korean title suggests, the drama may serve as an important guidebook for the political life ahead, in which they will inevitably find themselves fighting their own sense of worthlessness. 

“We Are All Trying Here” has nothing to do with politics. It tells the story of eight former members of a university film club who go on to work in the film industry and find themselves caught up in a series of petty, pathetic struggles. The protagonist is Hwang Dong-man, played by Koo Kyo-hwan, a man who has written 14 screenplays over 20 years but has yet to make his debut as a film director.  

The reason I apply a story about the film industry to the election scene is that the narrative awaiting political novices is likely to resemble Hwang Dong-man’s insecurity and pettiness. For an attention seeker who feels as if he might die without public notice, how painful must it be to live a life in which nothing goes his way? Hwang vents his jealousy over being pushed aside and his anxiety over not being recognized by looking down on those around him. He is a character who chooses to be an outcast and behaves like an adolescent boy at 40.

There is something oddly similar in the reckless ambitions of novice politicians and the frustration that will grow in direct proportion to them. How persuasive can it be to speak of the happiness of the people and the role of the state with such meager assets — assets that are unlikely to be recognized anytime soon? Failure looks closer than box office success, defeat closer than election victory. And yet it is hard to despise a kind of foolish innocence.

For such reckless challengers, mojamussa can serve as a consoling incantation. The values they embraced at the beginning may not be wrong, but they are bound to look like mere bravado. They entered politics saying they would turn the irrational and abnormal into the rational and normal, only to find themselves branded as abnormal instead. How can such obvious values be so hard to uphold? If they understand that everyone is fighting their own worthlessness, perhaps that alone will offer some comfort. After all, who sets out from the beginning wanting to rewrite a screenplay with the break-even point already in mind?

Worthlessness comes, without exception, even to those who win elections and succeed in making films. They end up bowing before hard-core supporters and kneeling before film producers. The so-called Daughters of Reform and Yoon Again supporters become their masters. In the process, the distance between politicians and voters only grows wider. They become ruling party lawmakers who privately believe a special counsel to cancel the president’s indictment is wrong but cannot say so out loud, or opposition lawmakers who cannot bring themselves to call martial law a delusion. A film director downing soju after a disastrous box office report almost seems tragic by comparison.

At such moments, they must repeat mojamussa to themselves again. They must ask whether they are willing to protect the values they began with, even if that means becoming an outcast for a while. Can they show the same resolve as an awakened Hwang Dong-man and say they will “draw up a shining truth from the depths of worthlessness”? Among the thousands of candidates who will lose in the June 3 election, there are surely future political leaders. What matters as much as victory is the will to keep fighting when one’s own worthlessness comes crashing in.

Failure is common in both elections and filmmaking. That is especially true because both are about moving people’s hearts. Winning the hearts of millions of voters or viewers is not something that can be done with small tricks. To think one can command those countless universes, each moving in ways entirely different from one’s own heart, with a few handshakes and glances is the mindset of a thief. What is needed is a long period of maturation and the conviction to endure it. To become a successful politician, one must fight one’s own worthlessness again and again.

I admire the courage of those who have chosen such a difficult path. Even if their desperate insistence that “I am special” appears excessive and embarrassing, it is often those who collide with the world and break apart in the process who eventually transform their own deficiencies into remarkable films. The same may be true of politicians who grow into figures capable of turning social conflict into political compromise. They must clench their teeth and endure in a sea of attention-seeking that ordinary people would find difficult to withstand. I cheer on the countless Hwang Dong-mans of our time who fight their own worthlessness, as if to say, “Stop me if you can.” 

This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.