[Choice Times=Joo-hyun Park, CEO of Jaedam Entertainment]

Out of nowhere, I found myself thinking of my old girlfriend, Jiyoung. It’s been more than ten years, but after watching the news just now, I felt a chilling sense of déjà vu.

Jiyoung had an unusual obsession with “sharing.” To prove the transparency of our relationship, she recorded our phone calls and turned on live social media broadcasts every time we went on a date. When I said, “Please, can we just be by ourselves for once? I’m exhausted,” she would widen her eyes and reply:

“Oppa, I have nothing to hide, so I’m showing everything. This is all part of love.”

That was when I realized something. At the psychological core of people who voluntarily submit themselves to surveillance is not transparency, but a severe form of narcissism.

“Look at me—watch how clean and perfect I am.”
That desire suffocates the person standing next to them. In the end, we broke up because of that cursed “public relationship.”

Listening today to what the presidential spokesperson said on the radio, I felt it again: there is a “Jiyoung” living in Yongsan as well.

Defending the live broadcast of President Lee Jae-myung’s policy briefings, the spokesperson said it meant “subjecting oneself to scrutiny,” even invoking CCTV footage from Lee’s days as mayor of Seongnam. He went so far as to dress it up with highbrow terms like “the Panopticon.” To my ears—as someone who works in music—it sounded like nothing more than an attention seeker rationalizing himself.

Let me be blunt, speaking as a producer. What the presidential office is doing right now is not governing the country. It’s shooting a making film.

In music production, there are always amateurs like this. The song itself is a mess, but they keep uploading studio vlogs, bragging, “Look how hard and transparently we’re working.”

The spokesperson said this is “process-centered administration, not results-centered.” I nearly spit out my coffee.

In the professional world, the only place where “process” is sold is on idol audition programs. Singers prove themselves with vocal skill and chart rankings. Begging, “Please look at how much sweat I shed in the practice room,” is something trainees do.

The exchange rate is now flirting with 1,500 won to the dollar, the economic charts are on the verge of a free fall, and yet the people responsible for running the country are asking us to watch them work on CCTV, as if this were a reality show. It’s like an album collapsing commercially while the artist obsesses over the gloss of the music video.

Worse still, when the heads of public corporations don’t play along with the show, they get scolded for “trying to create a political narrative.” It’s like a session musician pointing out that the sheet music is wrong, only for the lead vocalist to snap back, “Are you jealous of me?”

Mr. President, and Mr. Spokesperson.

The public is not interested in your “work process.” Maybe fan clubs are.
What we want is a well-made final product.

Turn off the CCTV. Turn off the live broadcasts. Please, put up some soundproof walls and just do the work properly. The dissonance we’re hearing right now can’t be covered up even with Auto-Tune.

P.S. Instead of force-feeding us things we don’t want to see, if you’re really that hungry for surveillance, why not at least tell us who “Hyunji” is.

#PoliticalNarcissism #RealityShowPolitics #ResultsOverProcess