Being a senior this year, I started to have some concerns about my future career. It just felt so meaningless to plan my life map in an abstract way, even not knowing specifically what I want to be. As I was so stressed out one day, I randomly watched television leaving my papers aside. By that moment, two television programs actually made me to sit on the couch and forget about all my worries. These two programs were the drama Reply 1988 and the children’s music competition show called We-Kid. So how did they grab my attention? And what do they have in common?

The key point of these two is that they recall the memories of traditional Korean culture. The drama Reply 1988 shows a story of people who are living in a small neighborhood in the late 1980s. Not only the story but also the characters, fashion and props in the scenes represented the period of time. By this, I was able to feel more sympathy as if it was about my own life. Though I did not live in that period, I could feel the warmness, purity and the peculiar affections remaining in Korean people.

The second program was We-Kid, which allowed me to listen to a few traditional children’s songs that I used to learn in elementary school. While the kids were singing, their beautiful voices brought a sense of empathy to my mind. These songs have unique characteristics that only fit into childlike voices, which makes it more special.

As I was touched by these two programs, I realized the reason why people felt more attracted to these materials that reminded them of old Korean memories. We can easily notice that the society is changing more rapidly than it has in the past. The circumstances are getting harder and more difficult to fulfill peoples’ desires and everyone is too busy trying to do their best in competing with each other.

This heartless, desolate situation has made people more stressed, affected their sense of humanity and even developed a feeling of loneliness deep inside. This has brought them to crave some kind of medium that could bring them back to the old days when everything was much more peaceful than it is today.

To sum up, these programs became an oasis for them, including me. Are you having a hard time with stress, worrying about something that did not even happen yet? Then, why don’t you sit back and have time to feel nostalgia?