On my way home from work yesterday, I was, as usual, scrolling through YouTube Shorts on my phone. A short interview with the actor Cha Seung-won that I stumbled upon has been lingering in my mind ever since.
He was talking about nuanchi (눈치). In Korea, nuanchi is a complex concept, often understood as the art of reading a room or having social intelligence. We tend to dislike people who seem to only rely on nuanchi to be opportunistic, but he spoke of it in a different light—as a nuanced ability to see oneself and others objectively, perhaps even as an essential survival skill in society.
The moment I heard his words, a certain person suddenly came to mind: a former colleague I’ve lost touch with, but whom I once truly hated.
As an IT developer, I tend to value my principles and convictions. My former colleague, however, was different. When an issue arose, he would artfully evade responsibility under the guise of “neutrality.” He always took a step back when it came to important team decisions. In my eyes, that behavior looked truly cowardly. Yet, when it came to matters of his own self-interest, he was a person who knew how to raise his voice louder than anyone. I despised him, privately calling him an “opportunist” who maintained his position not with skill, but with political sense.
Until I heard Cha Seung-won’s words, that colleague was simply a “bad person” to me. But using nuanchi as a clue to rethink his actions, a different perspective began to emerge as I peeled back the layers of my own hatred.
Perhaps that was the best survival method he had learned in the midst of a competitive society. Staying in a grey area rather than showing his true colors to ensure his safety, and speaking up only at critical moments for his own sake. All the behaviors I had so disliked were, in fact, his nuanchi—his “way of life.”
“Ah,” I thought. “That person had to live that way to survive.”
Of course, this understanding doesn’t mean I’ve fully forgiven him. Perhaps I just wanted to put down the heavy burden of hating him, for the sake of my own peace of mind.
This small epiphany also posed a question to myself. Are the convictions and common sense I believe to be “right” truly universal values applicable to everyone? Perhaps the world is full of questions with no right answers, and we are all just desperately solving them in our own ways.
I looked out the subway window on my way home, thinking that there is still so much more to learn and experience.
