The title is a take from the signs in cute little plates in the 8o’s that says Good girls go to heaven Bad girls go everywhere .These messages were of course meant to elicit laughter and comments. Remember the admonitions of mothers, aunts, grandmothers and all the well intentioned nosy neighbors to stay good.
While we laugh and chuckle, there must be something behind the duality or polarity, of being good and being bad in society. Society and thinkers have looked at the world in two hues, the black and the white for quite some time. The grays will take a little while to flourish in the mind. Life seems to be appreciated in pairs of opposites.
The pair of being good and being bad infers character traits that society had prejudged according to its standards. Those who followed society’s rules and standards were considered good . The good then gets the largesse and the accolade of society. They get good grades, awards, plaques of recognition; maybe even get elected to political office. Oh, society remembers them post mortem, too as heroes. How about those who looked and took the other way and therefore “bad” in the eyes of society? Well, may be they get the red marks, they get to have some pretty price tags on their heads and numbers on their chest , a jail term or two. Sometimes, they make it too, only later. But just the same they make it to the headlines and society bids them good riddance posthumously.
What is behind the label ? Actually, if you look at being “bad” it can also mean being nonconformist. It means they make their own rules and standards whether it was a reaction to earlier failures, defense mechanism, or a survival mode. Sometimes, they are said to be the impatient ones-looking for the shortcuts and cutting corners. Maybe they woke up earlier and already have seen something while the majority was still sleeping. Or they are the mavericks of society –those capable of independent thoughts and actions, those with very strong internal locus of control. These are the ones that are not affected by what others say. Instead of listening to others they listen to themselves. Deviants are also the terms used to describe them, though the term indicates they have been measured against a kind of scale.
Measured or not, the “bad” ones are rebelling against the path set for them to follow. Some of them have seen the way a long time ago through their own means .Now whether seeing the light at the end of the tunnel early on meant success is another thing. Society had set the path to success: go to school enter a good if not well known university, get a job, get married and raise a family. However, to the nonconformist, the order have not only been reversed they created their own order. Inspired insights gave them their maps. But the maps did not guarantee paved and smooth roads.
How did the young Kim Hyun Joong in a highly prescriptive Korean society manage to find his way in his early struggles? Was it passion for music, ambition to claim the stage, burning desire to put away society’s regulations to pursue a dream, or all of the above? If your answer is all of the above, you’ve got it right ! Through his own admissions , he has opened his book of life to public scrutiny .It was not a story for the faint hearted .Getting lost in the park at a very young age attracted to the performance of bands , forsaking good grades and school to run away to earn a living , subsisting on little food(one time had to steal ,yes that was the word because he did not pay for it ) and barely a roof over the head , with pride never having to ask for an allowance , learning to play the guitar ,piano with his raw talent, getting into trouble with the police for friends, learning to drink booze and smoke ,at an early age ,etc, etc. What else did he not do? Just imagine other things he did to get those scars on his handsome face. Or where could he have gotten those battle scars on other parts of his body, too?
Was he just in luck or his destiny has been laid out when somebody tried to scout him for a performing group for China? The company had an early complication that he landed in DSP instead. Whether luck , destiny, hard work or its combinations Kim Hyun Joong is now here , brighter than any star in the firmament –dared to defy society now can only look back and show what he had accomplished . Looking at his resume ,what does one say ? It is quite exemplary, as he has a thick resume and more is coming to fill it in. They make you ask the inevitable question: could he have accomplished all these if he was society’s good boy?
But how many people reach their goals using alternative routes, the uncertain avenues? How many arrive there without wasting any time, learning what has to be learned along the way and making it? That is why people who make it against the odds become legends .They become sensations. They become the story that needed to be told. And retold. Are they presenting a different mold of success if it can be called that way? Is being “bad” now the in thing to do to succeed?
There are many ways to succeed; the unorthodox one may have to be patented, as they are unique. A future or another Kim Hyun Joong cannot repeat the same formula . It must be reinvented to suit his circumstances. But the Kim Hyun Joong for now understood that there were also repercussions of defying conventions. He admitted that the label being a dropout followed him everywhere. Did he not cynically ask though realistically that society wants diploma? So he compromised and returned to school, and eventually got his diploma. Now, educational institutions have already recognized students come from different situations and have adjusted accordingly.
So what is the moral of the story if ever there is one? Those “bad” boys really go everywhere? Is this the path of the young, the brave and the restless? Kim Hyun Joong pursued that path and made it to Korean entertainment. But he has also broken through the glass wall as he is now a hallyu star of global entertainment. One time, in an interview, he did some reflecting on what he has done so far. He mused that his contemporaries are only now finding their jobs while he has been working all these time. Hyun Joong was being modest. He loved what he is doing, besides earning hefty sums to enjoy creature comfort and provide for the important people in his life. He has become a philanthropist as well, the “bad “boy gives back to society and pays his dues.
Hyun Joong as the genius in Playful Kiss complained of difficulties memorizing the formulas, we can only say in jest, these were taught in school; he must have been absent then, strumming his guitar somewhere.
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