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Morning features and interviews. A morning story over a cup.
By Kim Won-sang (Media Communications, Solutions for Our Climate) · September 29, 2025I am an early adopter. I have great interest in new tech and often buy electronic devices. It is a hobby of resolving the curiosity a new product brings and filling a craving for new experiences. But sometimes the thought suddenly comes to me that this hobby and consumption habit could be criticized. It is because electronic products inevitably emit greenhouse gases in the process of production, transport, and sale. The awareness comes to me that consumption chosen not because it is truly necessary but at the level of curiosity or hobby is not climate-friendly.[ⓒESG.ONL]This worry was not mine alone. One of my colleagues was an ardent fan of F1, but after starting work on climate change, he said that out of guilt he was even hesitant to watch "F1: The Movie," which recorded millions of viewers. F1 machines that run around the world with huge teams, burning fuel lavishly and circling the track countless times — and a sport in which, while some people barely change their car's tires a few times over its life, the tires must be changed several times after circling only a few laps. On one hand it is a reasonable worry, but on the other hand the thought "is there really any need to go that far?" also came, and I once laughed it off heartily. The moment when consuming the culture one likes and empathizing with and responding to the climate crisis collide is a dilemma anyone faces at least once.If I keep following the thoughts that bite one another's tails, I reach a larger problem awareness — that all the activities of eating well and living well ultimately contribute to warming. That is, the act of consumption itself is connected to the climate crisis. Come to think of it, there are times I am seized by a contradictory sense that the activity of solving the climate problem and my consumption stand at exact opposites. And the fundamental question thrown out is this: Are the prosperity of human civilization and the response to the climate crisis really compatible problems? Like the joke often seen in the comments of internet articles, can humanity approach carbon neutrality only if Thanos comes to Earth and wipes out half of humanity?This question spreads beyond personal reflection into structural skepticism. Until now, economic development has revolved around consumption. Making a lot, selling a lot, and thus individual income increases and again leads to larger consumption than before. A belief formed that this is a virtuous-cycle structure in which the whole collective prospers and the economy grows. But where is the end of this model? Can that process be said to be sustainable? In the era of the climate crisis, might this feedback structure rather drive us to catastrophe? If so, instead of an economic model like the present one, in what way should we live? I still have not found a clear answer to such questions.Yet amid such worries, there is also an interesting case. I once tried to give a modest souvenir to an influencer I got to know through work. But he declined the gift, saying he would accept only the intention. It was an unremarkable item, fine to receive or not, but he viewed the very culture of exchanging gifts differently. What was more interesting was his story about birthday gifts. He said he asks the people around him not to send gifts or gift vouchers, but to donate to an institution or organization he recommends. Instead of goods easily thrown away or wasted in the process of ritual exchange, he expanded the meaning of a gift into social value and sharing. I thought that such small cultural practices could be the starting point that cracks the paradigm built around consumption.There is another hint too. In 2023, Apple released the Apple Watch as its first carbon-neutral product. Of course, there is room for debate over the method of carbon-neutral certification. But the mere fact that the world's most famous brand planned and released a carbon-neutral product line created a small hope. This shows the possibility that even when I engage in consumption activity, I might not contribute to greenhouse-gas emissions. What if the majority of the products and goods I consume were certified carbon-neutral and came onto the market? Then might a future in which consumption and carbon neutrality coexist be realized? If so, there would be no need for Thanos to appear and wipe out half the population.Of course, this is not a simple problem. We cannot overturn the consumption-centered capitalism that made humanity prosper in one stroke and open a new system. But nor can we turn away from the fact that greenhouse gases, a byproduct of the current system, threaten humanity's survival. We have now entered a phase in which we must create a human civilization where the whole world can eat well and live well, while at the same time creating a sustainable Earth environment good for humans to live in. It is not for nothing that people say a greater transformation than the effort humanity poured into the Industrial Revolution is needed.[ⓒESG.ONL]This is by no means a problem that can be solved by individual practice or the efforts of a few. But one thing is clear: that participation and solidarity are the fundamental driving force in drawing such a picture and moving forward. Not me alone, but everyone must look in the same direction together. It begins from pondering for a moment before pulling out a card at a fashion store, before bringing up a simple-payment QR code at an electronics store.In the end, whether it is essential consumption needed to make a living, or the hobbies and leisure activities that make one feel like oneself, and even the social task of responding to climate change — they in fact start from the same root. It is the question of what and how we will consume. The answer does not lie in reducing consumption. It begins from redefining consumption. What kind of consumption we do — that is precisely what tells us what kind of future we will choose.By Kim Won-sang (Media Communications, Solutions for Our Climate)
By Lee Choong-gul (essayist, former editor-in-chief of GQ Korea, author of the novel "Your Face") · September 19, 2025I wondered every day. Why do people watch others eat? And what's so fun about it? (Here the word "fun" resembles, rather than science, your emptiness as you kneel to the urge to boil ramen at two in the morning.)Sometimes I think mukbang is the Colosseum of the 21st century, a laboratory of digital crowd psychology. The Roman emperors' governing strategy was bread and circuses. Now it's pizza after chicken, chocolate cake after pizza. Algorithmic autoplay rules us. Roman citizens shed no blood thanks to sword-wielding gladiators; we, watching a circus substituted by others' satiety, forget our calorie worries.A bite, a sip is a unit of flow. The title of the first review of a new menu item, the countdown of clearing ten pizzas in ten minutes. Speed instead of rules, curiosity instead of loyalty, updates instead of memory. Experience is paid in installments. The play button is more generous than a credit card, taking dwell time as its credit limit. The algorithm does not know your stomach. It knows only time spent, the probability of staying. Call it the streaming of appetite. No matter how full the belly, the feed is not sated. A night when not the belly but the fingers starve and cannot stop scrolling. Resolve is carried over to tomorrow. Diet from the weekend, unsubscribe from the next video.[ⓒESG.ONL]Mukbang disciplines while pretending to liberate desire. Following a recipe in which broadcasters and platforms, advertisers and restaurants join forces, broth flows on the screen. Every ingredient is standardized to a collective standard the algorithm has designed. Soy-marinated crab must be plump, jelly must be chewier than a heart, rice must gleam with luster. The cheese wound around chopsticks is the rope of click counts, matter of data converted into ad rates. Who directs the stage's hunger, commodifies overeating, and pockets profit from appetite is crystal clear. A considerable share goes to the platform, the YouTuber gets about living expenses, the small business owner gets new customers and an intermittent sales bump. The YouTuber who ate three bowls of monster jjajang may be embarrassed by hyperlipidemia numbers at a health checkup, but a channel casually flipped to sustains someone's livelihood. Some call this a virtuous economic cycle and the practice of social justice, but I still can't find another name for coexistence.In any case, we willingly become captives. In the moment of being tamed, smiling, by the program, the smell of skate is sweeter than the smell of power. When the YouTuber takes a bite of chicken, our unconsciously opening a beer can may be a promise. The spicier the tteokbokki, the more resistance melts like spring snow. As if biting into bread, we chew and swallow the warning bell in our hearts.ASMR demonstrates that mukbang has evolved beyond visual consumption into auditory experiment. (It sounds like a thesis title, but) something like the effect that the coincidence of sound has on humans? Solitude needs noise. Her breathing as she eats saves us. When the sound of dipping assorted sashimi in chojang fills the empty space of solitude, another person pulls the trigger of rage. Whatever it is, even when the food disappears the sound remains and props up the world we live in.In fact, the YouTube algorithm gives generous scores to the sound of shaking off donut powder, the fricative of tearing open a hamburger wrapper, the sound of jjamppong broth coming to a boil, the performer's roaring laughter. The editing act of mukbang, which composes rhythm and time out of cut ASMR points, interlocks with this. On a stage that reveals human clumsiness, rhythm and time entwined, the happenings — hands flustered as broth spills, sneezing from the spice, scrambling to find tissues — raise the view count.Mukbang always leaves the residual heat of salvation. A heart made a mess today can only be embraced by a wrist-thick roll of gimbap. Late at night, a hand hovering over the immortal delivery app clicks the mouse. Right on cue, the man who ate raw sea squirt yesterday puts a fried-vegetable chip into his mouth. Even if the crunching sound rings out through the speaker, no one is there to hear it directly. The molars of the YouTuber, eating on behalf of subscribers, are simply earnest.The old dining table was a place to review the grammar of "we." Now a portfolio of tastes stands in for me. Vegan, carnivore, extreme spice, keto, halal, ramen ASMR. We carry several citizenships of taste and stamp them as the occasion demands. A like is a declaration, notification settings a signature. The playlist gains weight faster than the diet app sheds it.Tonight again, without eating anything for two whole hours, I listen to the sound of a 15-meter scarf of gopchang disappearing into his intestines. Ingesting images? I'm hungry, yet somehow I feel full too. Is it the psychology of keeping cake in the kimchi fridge while claiming to diet? Is the very act of storing it a display of will? Why does watching someone else eat faintly fill my own empty stomach? Could mukbang be a calorie-free diet? If you ask what kind of nutrient-circulation system that is, I'll answer it's something like mental vitamin B12. Who's to blame someone for filling emptiness by watching another's gastroptosis?[ⓒESG.ONL]"Let's eat together" is, after all, the lubricant of present-day humanity. But now many live alone. They eat alone, wash dishes alone, scroll alone. Instead, they watch together. Mukbang is a digital banquet without a video call. The word "lonely" is common, but even oneself doesn't know when loneliness will strike. Mostly after 11 p.m., when there's nothing to eat in the fridge, mukbang fills the gap. Biology might explain this as the workings of mirror neurons. Comments like "it feels like eating together" drift across the chat window, but that is not a relationship but a connection. The banquet's conversation is anonymous laughter, the Korean abbreviation "ㅋㅋㅋ," the alphabet "Mukbang!!!" A connection can be undone, so if the heart cools and you leave, it's over. We are tourists of the feed, and the creator's body is a vagabond who takes on the excess. The tourist has the freedom of movement; the vagabond is forced to move. And yet the subscriber has the right to leave, while the creator must draw up a tomorrow more stimulating than today.The algorithm joins in too, constantly whispering that where you should stay is "next." But when can we stay in "now" rather than "next"? Would some grand revolution be needed? If tonight I turn off the screen, boil one less ramen, and take one more spoonful of the story of the person beside me, could I stay, even for a moment? That moment might be the sturdiest dining table we can sit at in this virtual world.In fact, mukbang is a narrative genre. The protagonist is the food, the narrator the one who eats. The one who stirs kimchi stew and brings up the old days of going hungry, the one who pokes at sundae-guk and unspools army stories, the one who chews crackers and pours out yesterday's love life. When food works as a medium of story, we, scrolling the video as if turning pages, glimpse the failures and peace of strangers. Because mukbang is, rather than a spectacle of overeating (or bizarre eating), a stage of a trinity seasoned with desire, deficiency, and isolation. Because it is a device that sets a communal consciousness in our stead, the socializing of a lonely city, evidence that we still, as a crowd, laugh, sigh, and are pitied.The LCD screen at last becomes a folding-legged dining table, drawing people from every direction. Because that woman YouTuber says it's delicious, the solitary table seems to widen, and even cold rice seems needlessly warm. Mukbang's allure shimmers upon the illusion of connection. The delusion of not being alone, the sensation of eating together — whether real or fake, what matters is the fact that one is less lonely, even for ten minutes. If it's a moment when a monologue turns into a dialogue, then just then one is not alone. Even if, in trying to soothe solitude, one ends up proving solitude, everyone accepts the irony. Because no one can completely defeat solitude.Delusion is a very efficient energy that maintains community. Believing in the imagined community of the nation, following the scrap of paper called money, insisting that love will be eternal — all are delusions. Ah, we've come back to delusion again. In a world of the class Mammalia, order Primates, genus Homo living on delusion, when the art of delusion runs wild, mukbang is the most easily digested version of delusion.But now and then I think humans exist as a hole. A hole called the mouth, into which we shove things endlessly. Everything begins with a single piece of chicken. The ever-so-young woman YouTuber neither encourages nor restrains overeating. Exploring the middle ground, the moment she bites into chicken before the camera, she becomes two beings at once. One is a human getting through a meal; the other, an actor who becomes the subscriber's stomach and performs the chewing on their behalf. In the line "They said a new menu item came out, so I wanted to try it," the theater of demolishing 50 chicken wings shimmers. As the crowd cheered when a gladiator fell, when the chicken-leg bones pile up on the floor, the chat window catches fire.In fact, sometimes the person shoving food in like a machine looks like a pipe. When the stomach expands to its limit, and the jaw and tongue labor to cramping. When the creator crosses the boundary of pain and pleasure and unfolds a strange, wondrous, subtle suction show, the followers enjoy the overload of that body. Here the comments of admiration and emotion are like a solemn collective rite. And that person's body will soon become a text inscribing power.Ten giant pork cutlets, twenty packs of ramen, thirty chickens. Overeating disguises itself as a challenge, and the screen converts the quantity of food into capital. The sound of fried chicken poured onto a tray. Flesh being torn off. The chicken is already dead, yet it seems to die twice. Honestly, it's eerie and then funny. The face comedy of taking a big mouthful and shouting, "Wow, awesome!" The person who writes the comment "magnificent" is comedy too. The subscriber consumes the violence of mukbang and at the same time performs it in their own life. Eating more, buying more, watching more. Because in fact they too, little by little, live like a pipe.But no one is full. The one who eats, the one who watches, alike grow the emptiness in their bellies. Mukbang is a system of eternal deficiency. The process by which laughter and reward, indulgence and morality, voyeurism and compassion, asceticism and transgression are mixed and tuned into a single piece of content is simply astonishing. Even while thinking "he's going to burst like that," the psychological nutrient that one didn't eat it oneself rises up this side's gastrointestinal tract...Drugs are banned, sex is embarrassing, violence is dangerous. But food is a permitted pleasure, a guilt-free addiction, an easy festival. Police, priests, politicians, office workers — all are equal folk before a cut of top round. Mukbang blatantly shows who we are, what we yearn for, and in what way we are ruled. In an era past hunger, there is no narrative as powerful as overeating. Exaggerated abundance, paradoxically, reveals the memory of poverty. But can setting out a heap erase the famine of long ago? The paradox is not erased.At last the wedding hall stages a carnival of DNA. Biological fear (you mustn't starve), social signal (let's all eat together), financial ostentation (I spent a lot laying this out). At this point a light stronger than the flash the bride and groom receive pours out from the dining hall. The guests, valuing food over ritual, swarm to the dining hall like wild beasts. The bride and groom are the background. Flowers are decoration. The buffet is the lead. In the procession of those lined up holding plates flickers the shadow of a rice-ration station a century ago. As spoons are raised in unison like a military review, the plates are partitioned like national borders. The white pleats of the wedding dress are empty as air, the flower decorations wilt in haste, the MC's remarks scatter like distant cannon fire. The spoon is faster than congratulations, the teeth applaud. That moment is the most frightening. Because it seems the stomach walks about.Before the wall of hunger, everyone eats and laughs, eats and swallows. Laughter always goes awry because anxiety is not digested. Our ancestors starved for thousands of years, war was ceaseless, the table was never at ease. The alarm engraved in our cells sends its command whenever it gets the chance. Eat. Eat again. To starve is death. Miss the time to eat, and there is no next generation. But what could be more precious than the certainty of not starving, the promise that there will be food tomorrow too?The camera catches the eater head-on and persistently follows their mouth and utensils. I'm dying under the pressure of not being able to eat everything I want, while the fully made-up woman YouTuber demolishes a whole chicken as if dismantling it. Chicken grease glistens at the tips of slender fingers, the paper wrapper rustles rhythmically. The snap of her wrist, the sound of white foam as garlic sinks into oil, sounds like a small chorus. The next day, the monitor is drenched all over with a tomahawk steak juicy enough to relieve Gangneung's drought. And the day after that, steam rises from a thread of cheese dangling from chopsticks. When the camera persistently close-ups texture and gloss like a forbidden body part, an ecological gloom briefly creeps in.[ⓒESG.ONL]A meat-grilling screen is like a smoke laboratory — no texture, no smell, no carbon — but before it can even be moved to a real table, the Earth has already taken on the debt. The water and soil and air that became the fuel for a single plate of steak are nowhere to be found. The oil droplets rolling on the grill are not heralds of taste but small carbon bombs, and the mad gloss of samgyeopsal is a weather forecast of methane gas. A single bite of beef is said to weigh on the Earth as heavily as a plane ticket, but the camera would never measure the weight. Yet everyone, whether the Earth boils or not, listens more closely to the sound of ramen boiling.When indifferent-ized morality returns to the back alley of food, we share memes instead of guilt and stamp timestamps instead of asking questions. Through the crack of "10:12, the legendary meat-flipping clip," the politics of waste wafts up. Plates warmed and then cooled for filming, excess sauce hired for a single bite, wasted viewing time. But waste is converted not into sin but into performance. Dwell time is spoils, a skip is a loss, a revisit is loyalty. All that's left of the leftover food is a promise not to leave any next time. Even if this side cries out to make waste zero, that side unfolds a dazzling panorama of surplus. Upon the perverse bridge that connects the two poles of the LCD screen.The lips of the YouTuber chewing highway rest-stop dumplings are not the same color as the lips of the young man who eats only convenience-store triangle gimbap all week long. When someone's salivary glands are happy, another's stomach is an empty granary. Discord is often obscene. Society may be unequal, but in half a day one is bound to get hungry. The gaze is never neutral. Because it is a gaze that looks at the Other.In the days of Western imperialism, explorers recorded the tables of the East. The purpose of the record was to consume the strange customs of the Orient. It faintly overlaps with mukbang. Before the eyes of simultaneously connected viewers worldwide, Buldak spicy fried noodles are transformed into a challenge called extreme spice, and kimchi becomes an object of wonder called a biologically fermented food.A person's life is probably the sum of what they ate and whom they ate with. In the end, mukbang, I think, is documentary evidence left for later humanity to study why 21st-century Koreans ate so much, why the camera watches while eating food. Because the moment someone eating sundae-guk says, "Today the offal ratio is high," the food of the age will be recorded. People of the Joseon era left diaries and paintings saying, "Today at the table I grilled and ate sweetfish." Now we save the crunching sound of cartilage in 4K resolution. If future archaeologists excavate the YouTube servers, they would render a complex answer — the peak and the regression of civilization — and write: "These people's stomachs are worth looking into. But what's really strange is the hobby of stretching cheese. Long enough to reach from Pil-dong in Seoul to Choryang-dong in Busan." I'm truly curious how they would understand the genre called the cheese waterfall.Now I leave the last sentence. The reason tomorrow's me is less lonely than today's me is that I can eat something more delicious.By Lee Choong-gul (essayist, former editor-in-chief of GQ Korea, author of the novel "Your Face")
27.3 people per 100,000 population. It is the figure for the number of people who took their own lives over the single year of 2023. Although it has been on a downward trend since 2010, it is about twice the OECD average. Statistics that the proportion of self-harm/suicide patients visiting emergency rooms recently increased 3.6-fold over ten years — and surged especially among people in their teens and twenties — became known, adding to the shock. September 10, 2025, marks the 22nd year since World Suicide Prevention Day was established, but Korea's suicide rate is still high and does not show a meaningful decline. However, over the past 20-odd years, many points have certainly changed. Our society has begun to accept suicide and self-harm not as an individual problem but as something that the state, local communities, and private institutions must cooperate to solve. Also, suicide-prevention safety nets and campaigns tailored to the individual characteristics of women, adolescents, and sexual minorities are being carried out. Let us look at cases in 2025 of people reaching out to one another. [Graph of Koreans' suicide rate from 2003 to 2023 © Statistics Korea (Index Nuri)] A Neighbor's Life, Protected by the Local Community For a helping hand to properly reach the high-risk group for suicide, neighbors' attention is essential. The "Life-Respecting Safe Village" project, run jointly by the Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Korea Foundation for Suicide Prevention, actively draws out local-community cooperation. Various institutions — neighborhood clinics, cram schools, supermarkets, police boxes, and more — detect people showing warning signs of suicide early and connect them to specialized institutions. As of 2024, this project is being implemented in 56 cities, counties, and districts nationwide, and the number is increasing. Gangseo-gu in Seoul designated Hwagok 1-dong and Hwagok 8-dong as "Life-Respecting Safe Villages" this past April. Both have a high proportion of single-person households and are representative densely housed areas within the district. Strengthening patrols of frequent suicide locations, monitoring the sale of dangerous drugs at pharmacies within the area, and carrying out respect-for-life campaigns and education in parallel were key to the selection. In particular, Gangseo-gu previously led a suicide-prevention project successfully by designating "Gayang Complex 4 Apartment," which had a high proportion of single-person households aged 60 and over, as a "Life-Love Safe Apartment" back in 2021, adding to the expectations. [Hwagok 8-dong and others, designated as "Life-Respecting Safe Villages" © Gangseo-gu Office] Incheon Metropolitan City is also implementing a similar "life guardian (gatekeeper)" project. In Incheon, selected as an "excellent local government for suicide prevention" for three consecutive years since 2022, 2,632 "field-specific life guardians" are active. The drivers of the "Life-Love Taxi," operated for the first time in the country in 2017, played a big role in suicide prevention by listening to passengers' hearts and, when there was a problem, connecting them to specialized institutions. Starting with this, Incheon expanded the "field-specific life guardian" project by connecting various occupations and spaces — "Life-Love Pharmacy," "Life-Love Hospital," "Life-Love Cram School," "Life-Love Lodging," and more. Many cases continue — a cram-school director discovering signs of a student's self-harm and helping with treatment together with the parents, or a pharmacist listening to a customer's complaints of depression and insomnia, offering comfort, and connecting them to psychiatric treatment. The city is focusing in particular on continuous education for life guardians and on operating a system that links them to specialized support. The mental-health support project of the Korea Land and Housing Corporation (LH), which received a Minister of Health and Welfare commendation at the "2024 Mental Health Day Ceremony," also has the institution act as a neighbor to residents, saving the lives of residents in crisis. The "Mind Health Committees" of 1,160 rental-housing complexes nationwide — composed of management-office heads, welfare officials, mental-welfare centers, public-health centers, and other public and outside experts — identify and support residents at mental-health risk. Over one year, they helped 1,128 residents suffering from depression and hoarding disorder. In one example, a rental apartment in Jeungpyeong-gun visited a household that was behind on maintenance fees and out of contact, discovered a resident in crisis due to hoarding disorder, and provided support. Twenty local-community volunteers cleared the trash together, and the institution added financial support, so that neighbors in various forms are helping toward a hopeful life for a resident in crisis. Distinctive Companies and Institutions Spread the Message of Respect for Life The MOU signed in 2022 by the Ministry of Health and Welfare, TikTok, and the social-welfare corporation Lifeline Korea is a good example of public-private cooperation for suicide prevention. Lifeline Korea, the country's first telephone-counseling institution, and TikTok, the global video platform most used by teens, developed a "respect-for-life education program for teens" with the solid support of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. Contrary to worries that it might be an MOU merely for a "suicide-prevention TikTok challenge," the three institutions joined forces to create a substantive program over five months. "Life-Love, Care for Me" is an 8-hour program for late adolescents, in which young people strengthened their psychological and emotional functioning by creating outcomes themselves. By September 2023, more than 9,000 students had participated in "LaLa," a group education program for middle-school students. Even after the project, TikTok and Lifeline Korea continue their partnership. TikTok participated as a sponsor in the "Life-Love Night Walk" campaign co-hosted by Lifeline Korea and KBS. Lifeline Korea participated in the "TikTok Korea Creator Summit 2025," presenting to TikTok creators the mental-health problems within digital media and directions for solutions, and guiding them to a list of resources usable in crisis situations. [The "Ongi Mailbox" installed at CGV © CJ Newsroom] The incorporated association "Ongi," which runs the nonprofit "Ongi Mailbox" project — in which, if you put in a letter about your worries, a volunteer "Ongi postman" replies with a handwritten letter — has had a business agreement with CGV since 2021. Located at 21 CGV theaters, it seeks to build a psychological safety net for society and helps people ease feelings of depression in an everyday space to recover their mental health. The worry-letters delivered in this way numbered more than 6,000 over the single year of 2023. The incorporated association Ongi cooperates continuously not only with companies but also with public institutions. The mailbox at a memorial park operated by the Seoul Facilities Corporation is greatly meaningful in comforting those with the pain of loss. When a letter arrives expressing extreme depression, psychological-counseling volunteers write a first reply and connect the person to a mental-health center in their area. Companies, institutions, and the incorporated association cooperate to go beyond the act of exchanging comfort of the heart, building even concrete suicide-prevention measures. Beyond simply crying out that "life is precious," the voices heard on Suicide Prevention Day in 2025 are more concrete and warmer. Local communities look out for one another, provide suicide-prevention education tailored precisely to those concerned, and naturally spread the preciousness of life through various campaigns. In order to live together, it is time for everyone to join hands. by Editor L
The world-renowned demographer Dr. Jennifer D. Sciubba, in her book "8 Billion and Counting" (2023, Hyeoreum Publishing in Korean), proposes viewing the population problem from a global perspective. This is because, while most advanced countries including Korea are experiencing the problem of population decline, worldwide the poverty and social turmoil accompanying population growth are a bigger problem. Indeed, the "World Population Prospects 2024" report of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) predicts that the world's population will reach 10.29 billion in 2084, and that the region driving this will be Asia — excluding Africa and East Asia. And such population growth carries a strong risk of inevitably accelerating environmental and resource consumption. A World Where No One Goes Hungry (Health for all, Hunger for none) [Cover of the highlights of Bayer's 2024 Sustainability Report © Bayer] The global life-sciences company "Bayer," which marks the 70th anniversary of its entry into Korea this year, is also carrying out business in various areas with this awareness of the problem. Bayer takes "Inclusive Growth," "Reduced Ecological Footprint," and "Acting Responsibly along the Entire Value Chain" as its three pillars of sustainability. Today, we look at the sustainability report of Bayer, which carries out various activities for health for all and "a world where no one goes hungry (Health for all, Hunger for none)." Based on its rich portfolio in the healthcare and agriculture fields, Bayer is striving to improve the quality of life in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Bayer is also supporting food security in various ways — providing agricultural knowledge and partnerships and developing innovative seeds for smallholder farms in low- and middle-income countries that find it hard to respond resiliently to climate change and population growth. Last year, Bayer collaborated with Solynta, a hybrid-potato breeding company, to distribute a new potato variety in Kenya and India. Unlike the usual method of growing potatoes from tubers, this potato is distributed as seed, making it easy to store and transport, and it has characteristics advantageous against disease and climate change. Through this, Bayer presented another possibility to the potato-cultivation market, which reaches 20 million hectares worldwide. Freedom to Choose: Broadening Its Scope [Contraception awareness-improvement activity © Bayer] In addition, Bayer is increasing access to modern contraception for women in low- and middle-income countries by supplying modern contraceptives and devices at reasonable prices. Through this, over the single year of 2024 alone, 51 million women in low- and middle-income countries were able to make proactive family plans and manage their health with Bayer's products. This will become a foundation guaranteeing women the most basic rights for their bodies and health, and for their social advancement and economic status. Bayer is raising product availability by adjusting product prices to local purchasing power and strengthening patient-access programs for its products. In addition, Bayer's sustainable moves continue in the self-care field, which drew attention as we passed through COVID-19. Half of the world's population is said to still not enjoy basic medical services. In place of specialized medical services hard to reach as far as remote areas, Bayer last year provided educational programs to about 73 million people to help them choose self-care products as well as over-the-counter medicines and health functional foods. It is, in effect, an effort to provide all kinds of health to everyone. A Vision Practiced Through ESG Management [Carbon-reduction targets © Bayer] Along with sustainability through its products, Bayer establishes and practices various goals for sustainable management. Bayer set a goal of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions by 42% by 2029 and reaching net zero in 2030 by offsetting the unavoidable carbon emissions arising from facility operation and the like through carbon offsets. To this end, Bayer is gradually implementing action measures such as using renewable energy, investing in process optimization, and switching to electric vehicles. As a result of such efforts, Bayer stated that it reduced greenhouse gases by 21.3% in 2024. This is a figure reaching more than half of its final greenhouse-gas reduction target. Beyond this, Bayer is continuing efforts such as producing all product packaging from 100% recyclable materials by 2030 and allocating 36% of its procurement costs to suppliers leading decarbonization. Furthermore, it is working on overhauling and establishing systems to foster a healthy workplace culture — such as expanding the ratio of women hired in management positions from the 2024 level of 44.1% to 50% by 2050, and providing parental leave and health-and-rest programs. Not only the lives of the consumers who use its products but also the lives of the employees who strive for this are precious values that Bayer pursues. Bayer's moves — having entered 145 countries and striving for humanity's healthy life — have expanded into protecting future generations and the ground they will live on. This means that Bayer's vision of health for all and a world where no one goes hungry is no different from protecting the environment, such as by reducing carbon emissions and expanding recycled goods. In addition, Bayer's ESG management, which encourages the flexibility of the work environment and women's social advancement, suggests the various meanings that sustainability holds. Bayer's all-around ESG strategy can be found in Bayer's annual report. by Editor L
In Korean society now, a home has become documentary evidence of wanting to live like a human being, and a longing beyond mere space. When a friend who grew up in the same neighborhood, who rode the same bus all along and listened to the same music, buys a house with a parent's help and leaves the neighborhood, the young person finally realizes that the bus does not stop in front of his own semi-basement home. At that moment, how leisurely must the saying that a home is a place that remembers how much you loved and how you empathized sound to the young person? The sighs of those left behind bite one another's tails. My parents wrongly co-signed a guarantee, so even I have lived as a pauper all this time. My parents left me debt instead of light. Until I was in college, four family members lived in an 11-pyeong house. I was pushed by the jeonse crisis all the way to a gosiwon. At some point the question "Why am I still living in monthly rent?" is transformed, as if overwritten, into "Why do I seem to have failed?" Because now, like it or not, it is the era of "home-ownership authoritarianism," in which one's own home becomes housing stability, a future asset, and the only achievement accomplished without a parent's help. The nuance of the word "desire" is elegant and sensual, but the desire concerning a home is far denser than that, closer to appetite. Woven, one might say, with some measure of frustration and shame. From one angle it is a little funny and slightly chilling. Because a home is, astonishingly, a new way of destroying the internal order of a family by combining individual cases, statistics, and cracked emotions. Now class has been divided even within a family. Siblings staying in different economic strata cannot be said to live in the same world. A reason for silence, grounds for jealousy, and blocked anger. The home burns without rest, north, south, east, and west. Today too, somewhere in Seoul, a parent with means is gifting a child an apartment subscription. Because a home is another statement of account, the parent writes the contract and the child signs it. But who could call it a gift, this spectacle in which the word "registration transfer" runs rampant like a windfall? Sometimes I get so angry. Why on earth does the news make such a fuss every single day that apartment prices have risen? Whatever the case, stop showing celebrities' homes. When the camera licks the marble floor, the ceiling-high windows, the electric fireplace, and even the terrace where a pet dog frolics, and sweeps over the kitchen cabinets and the hangers of the dressing room, a "so what?" forces its way out of my polite mouth. Right on cue, when the subtitle does its "This home — is this for real?" nonsense, comments like "Wow, I want to live like that too" run wild. Ah, isn't this the very reproduction of housing fantasy? Doesn't watching something repeatedly ultimately prove that one comes to believe it? Every second, ads, variety shows, content, and dramas join forces to trumpet the absolute value of ownership. "You must live in a good house. Spacious, clean, sunlit, and above all, under your own name." Besides, drama characters live in Gangnam apartments every single day (that damn Gangnam. Even a single fish cake is pricier there, the utility-pole wires tangled over that expensive Apgujeong land like rain-soaked Indian water ghosts, that Gangnam where store clerks strut about pretending to be the owner). YouTube real-estate channels whisper, sirens be damned. "You have to buy now." "This place is going to skyrocket." "Leveraging everything isn't crazy. It's strategy, investment, calculation." Prophesying a society with no jeonse and threatening that you'll become a lightning-strike pauper if you don't listen, the camera happily scans an apartment model house. The mother walking in holding a child, the father reading a book in the parlor, the kitchen faucet embracing every scene, the bathroom slathered with marble, and the lighting cozy as the Virgin Mary. They bully you that it is your future. In Korea of this era, the words "owned or jeonse?" determine the phase of a relationship. At a blind date, at a loan window, at a family gathering, the question follows annoyingly. There is a heavy premise here. A home in my name is settling down, but a rental is temporary or unstable dwelling. The high and mighty cry out for an inclusive society, but slogans like that don't even reach our neighborhood, nor do they embrace those rejected by loan-screening standards. In a reality where the absolute power of "my home" blazes, society whispers even to the young person struggling with dirty Converse, a ramen-cooled aluminum pot, and a 30-million-won deposit. A person without a home is incomplete. A home is a game. Who enters first, who wastes less of their youth. And the young person believed it. Very deeply, like bone. But, as you know, most of Europe lives in rental housing. 80 percent of Berlin's citizens are tenants, Paris 60 percent, more than half of Copenhagen. They live without conflict under a long-term public-rental system provided by the government and the city. No loans, not chased by interest, they immerse themselves in life without the anxiety of dwelling form. Seen that way, the dignity of renting seems like the opposite of ownership. Human dwelling beyond the contract, one might say. But here, everyone shrinks their own domain on their own. "It's not my house anyway." In someone else's house anyway, the tenant lives with the Siamese twin called a moving plan. Two years or four, as the expiry approaches, searches catch fire. Contract renewal means a rent hike, and there is no fixed life. Jeonse is the passage to leveraging everything, monthly rent a kind of failure. A young person who must find a new home in September puts a rooftop or veranda where he can grill samgyeopsal onto his wish list. What is ironically sad about the tenant's naive daydream is that, on a night of wildly scrolling the real-estate page on the monitor, he will end up seeing, on the screen, not listings but a withered face. A home is a "place to live," not a "thing to buy," yet this generation's home is bigger than a home and more important than a human being. This is why "I want to live there" turns into meaning "I want to buy it even by going into debt." And so he spent five seasons for a single house in Seoul. The season of enduring, the season of preparing, the season of anxiety, the season of resignation, the season of calculating. The future dried up like credit spent out by a loan. Hell is another name for a present that has mortgaged its future. Overtime was a given, he saved 60 percent of his salary, and turned down both coffee and chicken. He dated, but deleted marriage. Because there was no house to live in together. The thoughts that would not be realized were all the more tenacious. He buried his individual life within the market's margin of error. Now is the last chance. If he missed it, it seemed he could never again set foot in Seoul. Even after six seasons changed, the home did not come. An impossible dream, a hope not grasped, a flowing phantom. The home was heavy. The ratio of concrete and desire was the same. He tried to burn the present to build the wall of later, but the wall did not protect him. To the young person who, as soon as he left the cradle, dreamed of his own home and ran aground, Mother Earth asks, "Why do you try so hard to wrap me in walls?" Ten years ago, before I built a house at the foot of Namsan, I lived in an apartment in Seongsu-dong. It wasn't my choice. I liked the old house. I wanted to live my whole life in that apartment, perched slightly on a mountainside so that a high wind blew year-round. But one winter, seeing my mother buy two radishes at the traditional market down below and carry them up to the house, I moved to a place where one could step on flat ground. In that not choosing is itself the most common choice, that too was my responsibility. Once I moved, I was confused whether it was a "place to live" or a "space bought and set aside." The exterior wall was the beautiful glass of the postmodern era, safe and clean at once. But somehow I couldn't adapt to the new home's sociability. If there hadn't been an enormous supermarket in front of the apartment's main gate, it might have been terribly lonely. Eventually, a few years later, I built a house somewhere on Namsan. My major is architectural engineering, but I also felt that its usefulness had run out with the building of this house. Apartments built these days come with words like premium, wide-type, master zone. Because a construction company's language is not architecture but marketing. Here ESG suitably slips in. High-efficiency materials, solar panels, LED lighting, eco-friendly wallpaper, smart meters... But the real structure of a space is not that simple. More important than how luxurious a wall is, is the question of whom that wall is pushing out. The city moves around homes, but the people within it grow ever more distant, outward. Individual characteristics are excluded from every blueprint, and social equity does not appear on the floor plan. An apartment-sales video emphasizes eco-friendly finishing materials but does not mention the damage to the nearby ecosystem. Greenwashing, which deceives consumers by feigning eco-friendliness with a straight face, is quite smooth and persuasive. Like a tree green on the outside but rotten within. No one asks: for whom was that house built, and who are the people outside the screen? I often wonder. Does the Earth build houses, or do houses tear down the Earth? It is doubtful how much environmental factors are considered when building a large apartment complex. The energy waste during construction, the structural pressure of cutting and filling earth, the disappearing green space and animal habitats — all are offset by a single image of a bird's-eye rendering, a single line saying a park is planned. Where did the village that was there go? And to whom will that energy be used? Might it, rather than a house where three generations live, fatten the bank account of a rich person expecting rental income? What connection is there between energy efficiency and structural inefficiency? Here a subtler item follows. What construction companies put forward as documentary evidence of fulfilling social responsibility is often things like community spaces, children's playgrounds, and convenience facilities for the elderly and infirm — but what if there are very few children at the playground, the community center is run by reservation, and no one sits on the benches? Building a home must answer not only the technical solution of erecting a structure but also the ethics of dwelling. Before drawing the plans, one must sense the days that will unfold in that home; before choosing materials, one must hear the voice of the land; and one must ponder what to anticipate and permit in others' lives. Who can live there, who is pushed out, and for whom it was prepared. Honestly, I don't expect too much. Because a story that is emotionally deep yet logical, and requests ethics even within pessimism, seems rather far from a company's priorities. I just want to ask that, next time you build, please pay a little attention to the view from the small units, let sunlight reach the lower floors well, don't spend money on bizarre garden stones but plant one more tree where shadow lingers. Anyway, when apartments swallow up everything of the city, what should we protect? Sometimes I look at construction companies' apartment floor plans. Out of some lingering attachment. Windows opening in all directions, an expanded living room, a dressing room, a powder room, a utility room each separate, a king-size bed, a bookshelf running wall to wall — imagining these, I stopped and grew doubtful about why people want such wide homes. Is area itself presence? A structure of self-confirmation that one is recognized by others? Ah, that's right. In the world there was a unit called pyeong. In the Republic of Korea, the right to breathe is guaranteed by the number of pyeong, indeed. Numbers always point to a place wider than reality. The notion that the hierarchy of the human species is determined by area is primitive, yet it has multiplied into a more sophisticated form. So in this era no one says "I want to live in a small house." Because a big house is a class system that architecture has brought upon itself. A 24-pyeong is one thing, but a 34-pyeong extorts others' meaningful glances. From 46 pyeong the words change. "Now that's a livable place." But what does "livable" mean? One more room, one more closet for stacking dead time — is that what it's about? Here the weight of the single line "That person lives in a Raemian" willingly implies the social truth of "a person worthy of living in such a place." I openly sneer. Even if I moved to the Han riverside and were pleased to death every day, I wouldn't collapse in happiness gazing out each day. The medal of living by the Han River excludes the metallic-thunder noise of the Olympic Expressway and the riverside road. However wide a house is, it only increases the cleaning. The wider it is, the greater the loneliness too. The unseen crevices will be taken by dust swollen like a ball. The comfort a pricey, wide home gives was sometimes wordless. No — it said much. If you live in Lotte Tower, you have to change elevators just to buy a single cigarette, and you'd have to attach an oxygen mask to the stingily opening windows. If you feared the electricity bill you wouldn't live there in the first place, but anyway you'd never know the joy of clear wind and bright moon. A space made too tidy by hiring a cleaner would surely push you into an organized sorrow. That place isn't a real home but like a set, so you'd feel you've briefly rented something — how would one live there? ...Even picking a fight, it only leaves my insides raw. A home is built on the ground, but sometimes it stands upon people. Yet even the smallest home has my dining table, my night, and a wall that swallows my resentment. Even where the ceiling leaks, the wall has collapsed, and the wallpaper is peeling, children grow. A home is the wish to be protected. A place not to forget who I am. A map of relationships, not an address. Now the story must be rewritten. A home must be defined as a right, not a commodity; that right must not shrink according to whether it is registered; and we must quickly agree that a value more important than ownership is a sense of stability. Dignity comes from staying and the everyday, from repetition and attachment. Therefore the starting point of a home must begin from a small room, a floor where one person can lie comfortably. What we want of a home is to find our own place on the ground. Not to invade another's space, and, that night, laughter spreading like a silver bell. And now I write the last sentence. I want not to "own" a home but to "live in" one. By Lee Choong-gul (essayist, former editor-in-chief of GQ Korea, author of the novel "Your Face")
At last, the second "Korea Social Value Fest" (hereafter "Fest") has begun. Held at COEX in Seoul for two days, August 25 and 26, the Fest offers an abundant program under the theme "Designing the Sustainable Future" — booths of some 170 participating organizations, and presentation and discussion sessions bringing together government, companies, and academia. When you're pondering how to navigate the Fest venue, refer to the booths that ESG.ONL toured and recommends in person. [Locolor market booth, a social-venture company strengthening regional mutual prosperity ⓒ ESG.ONL] ① The Path of Cooperation — Strengthening Regional Mutual Prosperity: Locolor The "Locolor" booth, with its familiar yet cute character visuals, makes passersby stop in their tracks. Locolor, which created popular regional characters such as Daejeon Metropolitan City's "Kkumdori" and Suwon Special City's "Suwoni," is a social-venture company that develops products and content using regional resources. Containing, as its name suggests, the meaning of "adding color to the local," it builds brands that convey the charm of a particular region and returns part of its profits, creating a virtuous cycle of growing together with the region. [Equal Table, which offers "low-carbon coffee" ⓒ ESG.ONL] ② The Path of Cooperation — Overcoming the Climate Crisis: Equal Table About 15 kg of carbon dioxide is emitted per 1 kg of coffee beans? Equal Table's "Tomorrow's Coffee" booth showed the connection between coffee and carbon emissions intuitively. Collaborating with an outside environmental-assessment specialist institution, they precisely measured the carbon footprint via LCA and presented "Low Carbon Coffee," which systematically reduces carbon emissions across the entire process from production to packaging. This coffee, which you can also taste at the booth, is said to be grown at carbon-neutral-certified farms using organic fertilizer and renewable energy while reducing water use as much as possible. At the booth, the carbon figure that one cup of Tomorrow's Coffee reduces is visualized so that the actual carbon-reduction effect can be easily understood, and companies such as hotels actually use Equal Table's coffee and use the coffee-consumption data in their sustainability management reports. [Green Oceans' eco-friendly resource-conversion products from oyster shells ⓒ ESG.ONL] ③ The Path of Cooperation — Promoting Natural Circulation: Green Oceans Korea is the world's second-largest oyster producer. In particular, Tongyeong alone is said to produce 80% of the oysters produced in Korea. But behind this hides a serious environmental problem. Of the annual oyster production of 350,000 tons, a full 310,000 tons of shells come out as waste in order to obtain 40,000 tons of oysters. There is a startup that noticed the situation in which, this problem unresolved for the past 20 years, more than 1 million tons of accumulated oyster shells are now being dumped into the East Sea — the company called Green Oceans. Green Oceans, noticing calcium carbonate, the main component of oyster shells, is developing various eco-friendly upcycling products, from art-education supplies to plastic fillers, reusable containers, construction boards, and artificial leather. [The Happiness Alliance's "Happiness Photo Studio" booth ⓒ ESG.ONL] ④ The Path of Future Generations — Happiness Alliance: Happiness Photo Studio As hot as the interest gathered at the Fest venue, there were also booths where visitors lined up waiting to enter. The Happiness Alliance booth was one of them. The Happiness Alliance, operated by SK Happynarae, offers various campaign programs with the goal of providing a social safety net for children. When you enter the Happiness Photo Studio booth following the docent's guidance, you can accompany the journey of a child growing together with the Happiness Alliance. Through video viewing and hands-on programs, you can experience the companionship with the Happiness Alliance, which approaches children in difficulty and helps them with a healthy meal and everyday life, extending beyond simple growth to self-reliance. Fitting the concept of a photo studio, you can also take a commemorative photo together. As you move along the route, the information about the Happiness Alliance's services, which you naturally become familiar with, is a bonus. [Products that Peace Hana provides in cooperation with local communities ⓒ ESG.ONL] ⑤ The Path of Cooperation — Overcoming the Climate Crisis: Peace Hana Agricultural products discarded for lack of marketability — must they really just be thrown away? Peace Hana is an upcycling innovation company that creates fragrances and functional products that enrich daily life, using as raw material agricultural products whose value went unrecognized due to prejudice over appearance or falling short of specifications. From aroma oils to functional bio products, it makes eco-friendly products usable in daily life. Peace Hana aims at realizing a sustainable circular ecosystem that goes beyond mere product manufacturing. It gives resources on the brink of disposal a new reason for existence, and through mutually beneficial partnerships with local agricultural communities, simultaneously realizes the dual values of environmental conservation and local-economy vitality. [The Social Solidarity Bank booth and finance Jenga ⓒ ESG.ONL] ⑥ The Path of Cooperation — Building a World Together: Social Solidarity Bank Social Solidarity Bank proposes solving social problems based on social finance. It provides problem-solving measures — from emergency-fund support to financial solutions and financial education — so that financially vulnerable groups such as youth preparing for self-reliance, low-income or low-credit people, and small business owners can achieve financial self-reliance. At the Social Solidarity Bank booth, which creates a virtuous cycle in which such support helps vulnerable groups find stability and contribute to our economic life, you can check and build knowledge about social finance through activities, and experience a Jenga game that teaches how to manage your credit score. Experience vicariously, at Social Solidarity Bank, the virtuous-cycle loop that runs from sponsorship to support for vulnerable groups and on to their self-reliance. by Editor L
The ownership group of LAFC, Son Heung-min's new team, is stacked with famous figures such as NBA legend Magic Johnson and US women's soccer legend Mia Hamm. What the LAFC ownership group, made up of 26 people in total, has in common is that they are figures who have created boundary-breaking innovation in their respective fields.[The achievements of LA84's activities © LA84 Foundation]Magic Johnson, after publicly disclosing his HIV infection in 1991, led social change by fighting prejudice against the disease, and Mia Hamm proved the possibility of women's sports to the whole world. Along with this ownership group, a phrase that stands out when you access the LAFC Foundation website also reveals LAFC's character. The phrase "We are a proud member of the LA84 Alliance, a joint diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiative of 11 LA-area professional teams in partnership with LA84" introduces the goal of the LA84 Alliance, which goes beyond a mere alliance of sports teams. The LA84 Alliance — a cooperative body jointly pursued by 11 LA-area professional teams, from the LA Dodgers, Lakers, Clippers, Rams, Chargers, Kings, Ducks, Angel City FC, Sparks, to LAFC — is moving for social change across the entire city. The core of this program is to expand each team's individual efforts into city-level synergy. At the "Alliance Unity March," held in July 2021 to mark the first anniversary of George Floyd's death, LAFC Vice President Benny Tran even gave a speech in person.[Notice of the 2025 Women's Empowerment Night © LAFC]Women's Empowerment Night: Practice Beyond a SloganOn March 1 this year, LAFC partnered with Cinnamon Toast Crunch to hold a "Women's Empowerment Night." This event, attended by high-school girls, was not a mere marketing event but an occasion to publicize a platform for developing women's leadership and expanding opportunities. At the event, a panel talk by LAFC's female staff was held. Mia Hamm participating as an owner also takes on meaning seen in this context. Mia Hamm is not a mere investor but a partner who draws up, together, LAFC's long-term vision for the development of women's sports. What is interesting is that after Son Heung-min's joining, Asian women's interest in soccer has sharply risen. At BMO Stadium, you can now easily find female fans conversing in Korean, Japanese, and Chinese. It is a diversity-spreading effect created by a single global star.LA County is the region with the largest Asian population in the United States. About 1.5 million Asians live there, a figure reaching about 15% of the total population. But apart from the baseball player Shohei Ohtani, a star representing Asians has not been prominent in mainstream sports. Son Heung-min's appearance is a symbolic event that fills this gap. The figure of the highest transfer fee in the history of the US professional soccer league MLS makes this symbolism felt even more greatly. It can also be seen as meaning that LAFC views the Asian market not as a mere "niche" but as the "mainstream."There was an effect. In fact, at Son Heung-min's debut match against Chicago Fire on August 10, 22,000 seats sold out. Fans wearing Korea, Tottenham, and Bayer Leverkusen jerseys were spotted throughout the stadium, and some fans even shed tears of emotion at this historic moment.Diversity Gathered by the Common Denominator of SoccerThe name of the LAFC supporters' group "3252" is taken from the capacity of the supporters' section at the north end of BMO Stadium. The cheering songs they sing are sung in three languages: English, Spanish, and Korean. This multilingual cheering culture began with the Koreatown-based "Tigers Supporter Group (TSG)." Founded in 2017 with 15 members, this group has now grown to more than 100 and is one of 3252's major fan groups. LAFC's strategy is to integrate diversity rather than divide it. While respecting each community's unique culture, it binds them into one identity through the common denominator of soccer.[The Tigers Supporter Group © lafc_tsg]The new scenes witnessed at BMO Stadium prove this: the fusion of Korean traditional cheering culture and Mexican-American cheering culture, cheering banners made in various Asian languages, and the increase in Asian family-unit spectators across generations. The lesson LAFC's diversity strategy gives to companies is clear: diversity is not a mere slogan but a core driver of business success. In particular, our companies competing in the global market cannot help but consider such an inclusive approach. For companies aiming to advance overseas, LAFC's case provides a practical benchmarking point.The Future of the Partnership Son Heung-min and LAFC Will CompleteOn the occasion of Son Heung-min's entry into LAFC, ESG.ONL examined the meaning of this new encounter. Part 1 illuminated community-based trust, Part 2 the social-contribution system, Part 3 sustainable eco-friendly infrastructure, and the final Part 4 the philosophy of diversity and inclusion, the foundation for the preceding elements to work in harmony.The true values of LAFC discovered through Son Heung-min were: the symbolism of an Asia-based global star and the opportunity to connect to global impact, natural communication and exchange with various cultures, the alignment of a personal brand and organizational values, and a practical platform for social change through soccer. It is worth expecting that LAFC will open up the possibility of providing Son Heung-min not simply a place to play soccer but a stage that changes the world.by Editor L
When you access the LAFC website and click the Foundation page, multi-digit numbers catch the eye. Number-based information such as more than 30,000 underprivileged youth and more than 40 futsal courts represents the concrete results the LAFC Foundation has contributed up to this very moment.Today, we would like to talk about the philosophy and system by which those numbers — which Son Heung-min likely noticed — were made. Most corporate social contribution is generally carried out in the form of one-off events or the delivery of donations, based on the company's current situation. The LAFC Foundation chose an approach completely different from this flow. Under the mission of "changing lives through soccer," it plays the role of a sustainable social-change platform, consistently built.LAFC, a Brand That Chose Good Inconvenience"The era in which convenience changes the world is now over. Now comes the era in which inconvenience changes the world."This is the message of Toun28 CEO Park Jun-su, introduced on ESG.ONL a while ago. This message also connects to the LAFC Foundation's philosophy.There was an easy path — holding dazzling donation events under the names of star players, or donating a large sum at once and receiving media attention. But LAFC chose "inconvenience." It creates and expands soccer communities for various local-community youth — the "Nicks Kids Soccer Program," a soccer program that meets 100 children in LA's Watts area every week; the LAFC So Cal Youth Program, in which about 4,000 young people participate in leagues and receive coaching; and the management and opening of more than 40 futsal courts benefiting more than 12,000 students year-round. Through this, it contributes to the healthy cooperation and growth of the local community. It is not easy. Every program is a continuation of inconvenient choices requiring continuous attention and investment.[Participants of the "Nicks Kids Soccer Program" in the Watts area of LA © LAFC]The result created by LAFC's such inconvenience is clear. Together with the global company "Chevron," with which it has partnered since 2018, it has newly refurbished 7 futsal courts to date. Most recently, it completed a new futsal court at Bud Carson Middle School in Hawthorne, donating an additional 10,000 dollars. Chevron's soccer-program manager Jenny Macintosh said, "Through our partnership with LAFC, we provide soccer to children through various programs year-round," adding, "this supports their growth on and off the field."In fact, soccer-court refurbishments have been carried out across all of Southern California, including Chipman Junior High School in Bakersfield and several schools in Hawthorne. This functions not as mere facility improvement but as building social infrastructure that provides local youth with safe play spaces.A Community System That Creates Motivation for Beneficiaries to Make Better ChoicesThe LAFC Foundation's point of differentiation lies in continuity. A representative example is the comprehensive service provided free of charge within schools through a partnership with "Beyond the Bell," an after-school program of the LA Unified School District. Howard Serpas, regional director of Beyond the Bell, explained, "Through the LAFC Foundation's support, children can access sports programming, gain opportunities to bring their families to matches, and invite pro players into the community." Such a partnership provides a win-win situation for both sides. It motivates children through programs and provides the resources they need in life, while LAFC can gain lifelong fans. The Nicks Kids Soccer Program, which focuses on the well-being of each child and aims to ensure that children are surrounded by positive people and a positive environment and guaranteed a positive future, has the potential to achieve the same effect. The LAFC So Cal Youth Program fosters youth soccer players and provides an environment of expertise for player development targeting local youth.[The LAFC Foundation logo © LAFC]John Gerard Thorrington, LAFC co-president and general manager, said, "The LAFC So Cal Youth partnership is very important to us," adding, "our club seeks to be a positive influence not only on the players already in the academy but on all youth players and parents in Southern California."Because of this, the changes appearing in the educational field are even more concrete. Program participation leads not to mere contact with a soccer environment for youth but to change in the entire educational ecosystem. Teachers are confident of the course's popularity. They testify specifically that a single program changes the learning atmosphere of the whole school, raises teachers' educational effectiveness, and boosts students' learning motivation. This shows the "power of a brand that leads to better choices" that the LAFC Foundation pursues. It is not simply giving help but providing an environment and motivation for the community's beneficiaries to make better choices themselves.[Recruitment for the fall 2025 "So Cal Youth Program" © LAFC]The Results Made by Meaningful InconvenienceLong-term partnerships more complex than one-off donations, everyday program operation beyond dazzling events, the pursuit of structural change rather than visible results — all are inconvenient choices requiring more time and effort. But the result of this — what LAFC gains — is clear: a beneficiary scale continuously expanding from 30,000, the 2024 Kevin Payne Community Impact Award, cooperation with 11 local pro teams through the LA84 Alliance program, and the choice of the global star Son Heung-min.From a Korean's standpoint, it would be a shame to view Son Heung-min's choice of LAFC as a mere transfer. Evidence continues that Son Heung-min has an interest in social and community contribution through soccer, including his personal soccer classes. In that respect, we come to view, from an ESG standpoint, his transfer to LAFC — assessed as evolving into a sports organization that acts directly for society beyond simply playing soccer.Son Heung-min's choice also aligns with the brand values that the MZ generation and Alpha generation demand — the trend of preferring brands that not only provide good products or services but also create social meaning and value together. To Son Heung-min, who seeks to be reborn not as a player who simply loves and is good at soccer but as a player who uses his influence for creating social value, LAFC can provide a perfect platform.The LAFC Foundation's impact, reaching 30,000 people, is the result of trust and systems accumulated over seven years. It is the result of continuous action and a systemic approach that cannot be made with dazzling marketing or one-off events. What Son Heung-min discovered was precisely this point. Not charity dependent on individual goodwill, but a social-change infrastructure built at the organizational level, and a sustainable operating system supporting that infrastructure, will be with him.by Editor L