Last month, a photo appeared in the Korean and Thai media. Lee Won-ju, the daughter of Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong, and Daesang Holdings Vice Chairman Lim Se-ryung were pictured dining at a famous restaurant in Thailand, but it was their company, Lisa of idol group Blackpink, who drew attention in the photo.
Lisa was born in a village in Buriram Province, about 400 kilometers from Bangkok, and is known to be from the so-called “Loso,” meaning low society. In Thailand, the upper class is called “Hiso,” meaning high society, and the lower or working class is called loso.
Seeing the loso Lisa with the two representing Korean hiso reminded Thais of Lisa’s success story. Lisa’s popularity in Thailand is beyond imagination. Recently, a Thai media outlet even wrote a column saying, “Lisa deserves respect and praise, which is Thailand’s honor and dignity and should be forever etched in history.”
Young Thais, who have low chances of moving up the social ladder, empathize with Lisa. They self-hypnotize with hope that “I can be like her if I try hard enough.” Of course, some argue that Lisa may be a loso but not a “dirt spooner,” who was born to a low-income family. She went to an international school in Bangkok, where tuition is expensive, and her father is a famous chef, so she grew up without any financial difficulties. However, the Thais are not interested in whether Lisa is poor working class or not. What is more important is that she has already become a symbol of hope in their minds. Similarly, for South Koreans, what matters more than Son Heung-min’s background is the fact that he realized his dream of becoming a global star football player through hard work.
According to a recent report by Statistics Korea, only one in four South Koreans aged 19 and older believes that they have a high chance of climbing the social ladder. Some 54 percent said the chances are poor for their children’s generation, up 0.2 percentage points from two years ago. Is our society providing young people with the same sense of hope and expectation of “I too can succeed” that Thais get from the loso Lisa? In the first month of the new year, let’s hope for a society where the hopes of many Koreans do not end up as a mere fantasy.
