A woman in a red tracksuit kicks a deflated soccer ball against a wall in an empty lot and says, “Was this thrown away because it was deflated? Or was it deflated because it was thrown away? Is this how I live because I look like this? Or do I look like this because I live like this?” Like her name ‘Miji’, she ‘does not know yet’. Because she cannot know yet, Miji (Park Bo-young)’s existential wandering ultimately leads to comparison and self-blame. Remembering her twin sister Mirae (Park Bo-young), who diligently builds the skills society demands unlike herself, she scolds herself, saying, “Yeah, it’s my fault… it’s my fault for being deflated.” At first glance, Miji’s monologue seems like mere complaints, but it contains fundamental questions. Is an individual’s life a matter of predetermined structure and environment from birth? Or is it a matter of individual subjectivity and capability? The drama <Unknown Seoul> brings back this question that is repeated in the era of neoliberalism’s infinite competition. Writer Lee Kang reflects the existential pain individuals experience in a neoliberal society and the current spirit of the times brutally in this drama. A ghost is haunting South Korea. The ghost of ‘survivalism’.
“Right now, your age is the last sowing time”
In a society of infinite competition, people continue self-management and self-development as if they are being chased to survive. The survivalism that emerged in a neoliberal society does not simply mean biological survival. “Neoliberal survival is a ‘metaphor’. What is semantically opposed to it is no longer death, but ‘elimination’ in a competitive situation. Neoliberal survival does not mean to sustain life, but rather to not be pushed out in various forms of competition and to enter a select few categories” (「Survivalist Modernity」, Kim Hong-jung, Eum, 2024, p. 208).
Miji’s existential wandering also stems from the fear of elimination, which is akin to psychological death. Miji, labeled as ‘thirty’, is a source of concern for her family and the villagers of Duso-ri. This is because she helps with school cleaning, grocery store work, and farming, maintaining a life as a ‘professional short-term contract worker’. People around her constantly nag her, as she is busy living day by day. Today, it is time to hear the admonitions of her neighbor, Vice Principal Yeom Bun-hong (Kim Sun-young). “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I say this because our Miji really seems like my daughter. Thirty is definitely not too late, but it’s not that early either. … Right now, your age is the last sowing time. If you don’t sow anything now, what will you harvest during the busy farming season later?” Seeing that Miji seems not to understand her profound metaphor comparing life to farming, Bun-hong emphasizes again, “It’s the age to make decisions rather than explore career paths, thirty is.” Bun-hong’s nagging vividly shows the pressure that the culture of survivalism exerts on individuals. The fast-paced society does not allow time to truly know oneself or to reclaim oneself. Lawyer Ho-su (Park Jin-young), who worked at a famous law firm, also forgot himself while living according to the rules for the benefit of the group. “Originally, when something is stuck in your heart, it’s like a kid with a stone in their shoe,” Ho-su realizes late that he had been gradually folding his beliefs for the company’s benefit. Ho-su chuckles and says, “Does it make sense that I don’t know and forget myself? But that’s what happened, all this time.”
Trying to Live as Each Other
Mirae’s life, which has walked the path of an elite since childhood, is equally exhausting. Mirae’s rightful whistleblowing at a financial corporation in Seoul turned into unfair group bullying against her. Instead of confronting workplace harassment, Mirae silently endures. To not disappoint her family’s expectations and to pay for her grandmother’s nursing fees, Mirae does what she does best: ‘enduring’. Miji, who learns a little about Mirae’s struggles as she struggles alone in Seoul, decides to live Mirae’s life instead. Thus, their ‘life swap’ begins.
Their life swap crosses socially delineated boundaries such as urban and rural, Seoul and the provinces, regular and irregular employment. Miji and Mirae experience each other’s anxieties, wounds, social gaze, and discrimination, and only then do they deeply understand each other’s lives. Furthermore, by experiencing another’s life, they objectify themselves and escape the vicious cycle of self-blame and self-criticism. After a long time of blaming herself since her grandmother suffered a stroke, Miji realizes only after becoming Mirae, “I only understood after becoming someone else. My greatest enemy is myself.” Thus, Miji and Mirae let go of the countless days they had been harshest on themselves for being themselves. The narrative of Miji and Mirae presents a way for modern individuals, who have become their own greatest enemies in a culture of survivalism, to understand and heal themselves through the lives of others.
From Survival to Coexistence
<Unknown Seoul> also reflects the survivalism of the ‘Nukalhyeop’ era (a neologism meaning “Who threatened you with a knife?”). Nukalhyeop is a way of saying “Who forced you to do that?” or “Who told you to do it, you did it on your own, didn’t you?” It satirically reveals the reality where the logic of self-responsibility and the era of self-survival have been extreme. This phrase appears briefly in <Unknown Seoul>. Se-jin (Ryu Kyung-soo), a novice farmer who inherits the strawberry field left by his grandfather after organizing his life in the city, faces the full brunt of rural exclusivity. While Miji unexpectedly ends up living in Seoul, showing the hardships of urban life, Se-jin demonstrates that returning to farming is also not easy. In the past year, Se-jin’s strawberry harvest, recommended by a village resident for organic farming, did not even reach three boxes. Ironically, the village resident who recommended organic farming threatens Se-jin, saying, “Hey, did I threaten you with a knife to do organic farming?”
<Unknown Seoul> diagnoses the survivalism deeply infiltrated in the zeitgeist and daily life of Korean society and captures the existential pain of the youth living within it. However, the drama does not stop there but seeks possibilities beyond that. Living in Seoul for the first time and working for the first time, ‘Unknown Seoul’ is a space filled with anxiety because it does not know what to do, but it is also a space of possibility and hope because the future that does not come is still unknown. Miji, who has not been able to cross the threshold for a long time, transcends her anxiety today by repeating a magical phrase. “Yesterday is over, tomorrow is still far away, and today is still unknown.” <Unknown Seoul> is an unknown journey to rediscover the true meaning of life in a society where survival has become the goal.
