The Politicized Pulpit: South Korea's Churches at a Crossroads Between Radicalization and Renewal
Change won’t be easy, as it requires the Church to admit its shortcomings, potentially losing its power and members who prioritize political alignment over religious conscience.
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[85th Edition] Letter from the Editor
Dear Readers, Spring has come to renew the calendar; with it, a new edition. I myself was new to the position of editor-in-chief not too long ago. There certainly was a fair amount of tension during those first days. The initial tasks that I had to get through after taking up the mantle felt like insurmountable mountains. Upon reflection as I write these words, those same tasks seem like small details in the larger picture; the base sketch of the final painting that is managing the creation of a new magazine. Just as I perceive tasks differently from when I was at the beginning of my job as opposed to the end, we perceive the world in our own various ways. It is a lesson learned in elementary school, to know and understand that everyone can have different views regarding any topic. Nevertheless, it is still an important piece of wisdom that continues to be relevant, and sometimes we all need a reminder of the most basic of rules. I imagine I will, as I walk into my second semester as editor-in-chief and face the same duties again. The SNU Quill thus strives to bring you varied perspectives of varied issues within the SNU community, but it also continually works to bring you new angles and explore topics that may seem like a given. Hence our 85th theme, Frame. A frame is the most basic of structures, on which foundations are built. Frame is the structure through which we view our surroundings. Frame is a choice that we make, conscious or unconscious, as we navigate our rapidly changing world. It is also the threshold of new spaces, a border through which we can look or step. The 83rd and 84th editions looked to the past and future, respectively. This edition attempts to look at the present alongside both, painting pictures of the various events that have existed, currently persist, and will continue to remain throughout the passage of time with a careful brush. SNU Society first brings to you a series of snapshots, capturing stories of the campus. We are invited to consider the issue of housing, where students are weighing their priorities as well as tangible and intangible costs. From a long-standing topic we turn to a more recent shift: the Office of Global Affairs (OGA) to Office of International Affairs (OIA) name change and what sort of message it sends with its changes, external and internal. Continuing the topic of SNU’s internationality, we then explore the various reasons SNU students choose to go on the long journey of an exchange student, as well as the intersections within these categories. In Features, we move back to view things from a broader perspective. We start in Korea with Konglish: what is commonly perceived as an infringement of external language on Korean takes a different meaning in the context of Korea’s history. From there, the view is expanded to a global level with the topic of climate justice in court, where we meet an attorney who weighs in on how climate harm is being translated into legal responsibility worldwide. We circle back to Korea but do not lose connection to the globe or history; the modern issue of cat moms versus environmentalists is shown to be deeply connected to the feminists and bird conservationists of the late 19th century. Finally, in Arts and Culture, readers are presented with fascinating perspectives on media and culture that can be taken for granted. Omori explores the layers of grief and repression of trauma in what seems like just a simple horror game at a baseline. There are the fast food fads that have taken over Korea as well as the rest of the world, but keep getting shorter with each turnaround; and a more long-lasting trend, MBTI, which has allowed Koreans to define each other for perhaps half a decade — although you will soon see that this categorization of the self is nothing new. All in all, these are the snapshots of this edition, carefully rendered by each writer. While reading the stories on display in this edition, I encourage and invite you to think about your own frames — and how they define how you view the world. Welcome to the 85th edition. Sincerely yours, Soomin Chae
48 Hours on Fake Dopamine
Thousands of Koreans a day order meals that never come and take smoke breaks without cigarettes. I spent two days living the same way, to understand why it works. ‘Your order has arrived.’ My phone said so just before midnight on a Wednesday, and my phone was lying. Nothing had arrived. Nothing had been cooked, paid for, or carried to me. I had spent eleven minutes choosing fried chicken, filled a cart, pressed the button and watched a courier cross a map, and every step of it was fake. I went to sleep less hungry anyway. For two months I had been reading about these “dopamine sites”: web pages that reproduce the routines of spending with everything left in except the buying. If you have ever filled an online cart and closed the tab before paying, you already understand most of it. The best known spoofs Baemin, Korea’s biggest delivery app. Its name, “food never comes” in Korean (음식만안와요), turns a complaint into a promise: only the food does not come. Another is built around damta (담타), short for “cigarette time,” the office smoke break. In April, Money Today reported that the smoke-break site alone drew about 30,000 visitors a day; by early summer the story had reached The Times of London and Psychology Today. That number was what caught me: not that the sites existed, but that so many had decided a break that gives them nothing was worth taking. So, I gave the trend two days of my life. The rule: from Wednesday to Friday night, every craving had to go through a fake version before a real one. I wrote down every visit. I spent around five hours on the different websites, four in total: nine fake orders, five virtual cigarettes. Nothing bought. Around it, just an ordinary week: morning shifts at my university office, evenings studying in a cafe, iced americanos in between. The fake app is as complete as the real one: menus carry ratings, reviews and delivery times, and the address field is optional. I compared two chicken places, chose the one rated 4.9 stars, and added cold buckwheat noodles (naengmyeon, 냉면) on the side. While the courier icon crossed the map, I felt the same small lift a real order gives. Not a real pleasure but more like anticipation: attention narrowing onto something good that is on its way. Then came the effect that explains why people keep coming back. As soon as I ordered, I felt less hungry. I was also happy about the unspent money. Not relieved. Happy, as if I had actually earned it. The fake smoke-break site is simpler. Click the cigarette and it lights. Hold the filter down and it burns faster. I have never smoked, yet I took five three-minute breaks anyway, in themed rooms: an office rooftop, a university gate, outer space, a room of silence. A counter shows how many strangers are on break with you. During my second cigarette, someone in the chat complained about a manager. Someone answered, “Me too.” A third: “Me too.” I felt less alone, which I had not expected, since I was alone, in a cafe, watching an animation of a cigarette burn. None of this was an experiment in any strict sense: one person, two days, no control condition, nothing measured beyond what I noticed and wrote down. My hunger and my comfort were feelings I reported, not data, and since I have never smoked, nothing I felt at the smoke-break site can speak for someone who does. The pattern itself, though, is well documented by people working with rather more than a sample of one. Dopamine, the chemical the sites are named after, has more to do with wanting than with having. A 2001 brain-imaging study by Brian Knutson and colleagues found the brain’s reward system firing hardest while people waited for a payoff, not when they received it. My chicken order ran that course: a cue, the app icon at midnight; then the wanting, eleven minutes of menus and ratings; then the button meant to settle it. In real life a fourth step follows: the food, the bill, the full stomach. The sites give you the first three and remove the last one. My missing hunger has an explanation too. In 2010, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University reported in Science that people who imagined eating a food, bite by bite, ate less of it afterward, not because they liked it less, but because they wanted it less. “The anticipation often generates a psychological reward equal to, or sometimes greater than, the actual purchase,” the media psychologist Pamela Rutledge wrote in Psychology Today. Even the receipt was part of it: a record of what I had not spent, a small reward for not buying. By Thursday night it was less an experiment than a new habit. I filled carts without appetite, wanting the filling more than the food. Through other people’s posts I found more of these sites, including a fake mall selling impossible things; I stayed too long in the reviews of a ten-million-won (about $7,000) time machine. Meanwhile, my friends had booked a real dinner for Friday. The comfort was real too, but each visit delivered a little less of it. Rutledge warns that such simulations help when they add to a life and cost us when they replace it. Critics call them a kind of scrolling: a short break that fixes nothing. “This is an era of uncertainty about the future and heavy emotional strain,” Kim Heon-sik, an adjunct professor at Jungwon University, told the Hankook Ilbo. “People now find comfort in the very state of being loosely connected online.” So, should we worry about a generation ordering food that never comes? Not about the sites: they offer a free break that works and fixes nothing, which is what breaks are for. What is worth watching is the line Rutledge draws: whether these rituals are added to a life or quietly stand in for one. It is not visible from outside, and in two days I felt it move: by Thursday the fake order came instead of the decision, not before it. When thirty thousand people a day take their rest with strangers in a fake room, that says something about the weight they are carrying. The real question was never whether the fake dopamine works. It is why so many people need it this badly.
K-Beauty Moves Fast. But Can It Stay Distinct?
Walk into an Olive Young store in Seoul today, and it becomes clear that K-beauty is no longer defined only by large legacy brands. Shelves are filled with names that did not exist, or were barely visible a few months ago. Some sell a single viral toner pad. Others focus on ampoules, or minimalist skincare routines. Products rise quickly through rankings, social media clips, and online reviews, only to disappear behind the next trend a few weeks later. What looks like consumer obsession with trends is also the result of structure. Korea has built a beauty industry that moves rapidly. Korea still has large integrated cosmetics companies such as Amorepacific and LG H&H, which have long managed broad parts of the beauty business, from research and development to manufacturing, branding, and distribution. Yet the recent beauty boom follows a different model. Instead of controlling every stage of production and distribution themselves, they move through a connected system of manufacturers, retailers, social media platforms, and export networks. This structure makes launching a beauty brand easier than before. Original Design Manufacturing (ODM) companies can handle formulation, production, packaging, and quality control, allowing small brands to focus more on branding and marketing. Olive Young gives indie brands visibility through rankings, reviews, shelf placement, and online exposure. Social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram rapidly circulate textures, ingredients, and product formats across borders, and export platforms help smaller brands reach overseas consumers earlier in their life cycle. Together, these layers create a market optimized for speed. Products can move from concept to shelf quickly, and trends can spread almost immediately through social media and retail rankings. When a toner pad, ampoule, or sunscreen texture becomes popular online, similar products often flood the market within a short period of time. Brands react quickly to what is already gaining attention, which makes the industry highly responsive but also increasingly repetitive. That constant cycle of launches and imitation has helped transform K-beauty into a global phenomenon. The low barrier to entry allows indie brands to appear continuously, making the market feel dynamic and experimental. Consumers are exposed to endless product discovery, while brands respond quickly to changing preferences. Compared with earlier generations of beauty retail, where consumers often stayed loyal to a few established brands, today’s shopping experience is driven more by constant discovery and rapid trend turnover. As a result, K-beauty constantly produces something new, yet much of that newness can begin to feel strangely familiar. Many newer brands rely on similar manufacturers, ingredients, minimalist packaging, and social media language. Products compete through immediate visibility—a viral ingredient or a celebrity campaign—instead of aiming for long-term recognition. For example, once PDRN serums become popular on TikTok and appear in Olive Young rankings, dozens of similar products quickly follow. As more brands converge around the same trend, consumers increasingly remember the ingredient rather than the brands behind it. The result is a shopping experience driven by continuous trend-chasing, making consumer loyalty difficult to sustain. This does not necessarily mean the products themselves are weak. K-beauty continues to produce technically sophisticated and trend-responsive products with strong formulations and fast product development cycles. What feels less distinct, however, is the identity behind many of the brands. As more companies chase rapidly changing trends, brand images can begin to blur together. Earlier generations of K-beauty often built clearer aesthetic worlds and emotional positioning. Brands such as 3CE felt recognizable through a specific visual identity and mood. Consumers remembered the brand and the lifestyle it presented, not simply the individual products. Today’s indie brands operate in a much faster and more crowded environment. The market feels more dynamic than before, yet the trend itself often becomes more memorable than the brand behind it. This shift also changes how consumers experience beauty shopping. Consumers scroll through TikTok clips, compare Olive Young rankings, watch influencer reviews, and quickly move on to the next launch. Shopping increasingly feels like continuous browsing rather than long-term attachment to a brand. New products appear constantly, micro-trends spread rapidly, and consumers are encouraged to keep searching for what comes next rather than settling on a particular brand. For indie brands, this creates a different kind of challenge. K-beauty already knows how to move quickly, but speed alone is no longer enough to make a brand memorable. In an industry where trends often receive more attention than the brands behind them, building long-term recognition and consumer loyalty becomes increasingly difficult. This is why the future challenge for K-beauty is differentiation. The industry’s ecosystem has lowered barriers to entry and opened opportunities for smaller brands. That accessibility is one of K-beauty’s greatest strengths. By relying on value chains, indie brands can reach consumers more easily than ever before. Given this unprecedented opportunity, indie brands should try more than trend imitation to stand out. Beyond keeping pace with trends, they may need to build a recognizable image, consistent vision, and lasting relationship with consumers.
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