2017학년도 영어에세이쓰기한마당 최우수상

                        20519 이 강 성 

주제 : If you could change one important thing about your country, what would you change? Use reasons and specific examples to support your answer.

About 2 weeks ago Korea had made a greatly important decision for rectifying the whole system and organization of one government, the Republic of Korea, my nation. Try as you may, however, there are still a great deal of domestic problems in our society. Being ware of these problems and trying to correct them would be a true foundation to build up a better and more hopeful country for future generations to come.

One of the most vulnerable points in advancing the nation, is the citizens’ way of thinking, their “mind”. Korean citizens possess somewhat distorted points of view toward social problems. If they can change and even eradicate this socially unfavorable attitude, their country, Korea may have an opportunity to lead the whole world.

To start with, Korean citizens tend to align themselves with others sharing the same interests without weighing or filtering them, which is called the “group egotism”. Unconsciously depending solely on others’ opinions could generate a social- chaos since it disregards other parties with different interests. We can easily observe this situation in sports, politics, etc. For example, in sports, my friends call it “the tendency of pot” meaning that they frequently change their thoughts about a one certain player’s image (his scores, playing skills, behaviors and so on.)

Moreover, in politics, by reading just a few news articles not providing various angles and deciding their predisposition of a political view is easily seen these days among many citizens. This biased viewpoint can lead our society into a serious social disorientation and an unwise political choice, sometimes resulting in the political shows Korea has seen over the last decades.

Another crucial part to change in the Korean citizens’ mind is accepting the differences. These days, we can easily observe the lack of open-mindedness in our society. Surely obvious is the fact that people often ignore or tend to blame on the other side, who do not acquiesce them. This ill tendency could confine Korea to the quagmire of danger, vulnerable to survive in the global world. Therefore, it is necessary that Korean citizens should learn to build a “open-mindedness”.

There are lots of beautiful points in Korean citizens’ mind such as diligence, munificence, and high level of education. While utilizing these properties inherent to ourselves, if there is a wide range of social agreement to change our way of thinking toward more tolerance, our country, Korea, will definitely have a more robust and promising future.