Category: AP or Double Enrollment
Winner: Hoonsung Lee
Namdaemun Street, located in the center of Seoul, is known for its bustling fish markets. But on one June afternoon, it became the battleground for two very different communities. On one side of the street, rainbow flags waved proudly as people came together to celebrate diversity at the Seoul Pride Parade. On the other, a wave of Christian protesters twice the size of the pride participants – held up signs that read “‘Homosexuality is a sin” or “Come back to Jesus” and sang hymns with the fervor of a Sunday service.
I know this scene all too well, because I’ve stood on both sides of the street.
As a child, I was raised in a Christian household. Every Sunday, I would sit through sermons that emphasized the importance of living according to the Bible, and the message that homosexuality was a sin was repeated frequently. I didn’t understand at the time that I was part of a movement actively opposing a group of people who were simply asking for the right to live freely. I was supportive anti-LGBTQ protests, not because I understood what was going on or what was at stake, but because the church made it sound like a fun event.
As I grew older and spent my summers in the U.S., I met people who didn`t fit into two narow categories I was taught as a child. I made firiends who were part of the LGBTQ community, and I started to see the world in a different way. I heard stories of discrimination and reject-stories that directly contradicted the images that I was given. I went to pride parades and leared that the event wasn’t the manipulation of the devil.
I don’t have a straightforward answer for how to bridge the divide between the two commuities. But I believe that it statts with empathy. It starts with recognizing that the people on both sides of the street are driven by deeply held beliefs, shaped by their environments. The protesters across from the pride parade aren’t evil – they’re scared. And the people in the parade aren’t dangerous-they’re hopeful.
Category: Grade 11-12 Honors
Winner: Haeun Choi
“Unfiltered Vision”
In a society overflowing with information, I find myself seeking news from every direction. I hear about current events from my parents, daily news reports, social media posts on the internet and even the answers generated by AI.
Yet, these days it seems like the information I receive is already colored by others’ opinions and thoughts. Information becomes distorted as the press and broadcasting companies prioritize views and likes over factual accuracy. AI often generates biased information due to their hallucinations or misinterpretation of data. Even my parents would filter iformation through their personal perspectives when they share about current events.
The world has become one where I have to make an effort myself to hear a truthful voice.
In this photograph, the paper represents one’s point of view in society. The paper filled with a variety of colors and biased messeges create a sense of stereotypes covering one’s own view of the world. The girl attempts to cover the whole paper with white paint, striving to create her own voice in the world.
Category: Grade 11-12 On-level
Winner: Soyun Lee
“The First Class”
A late midnight, in the tranquil apartment
My room lights up lonely
My eyes get closed continuously
Is this meaningfiul, is this effectful?
I do my best, but that’s not enough
All of my friends, they study so tough
Such a fierce life
With so much a force on me
How can I bear this for one more year?
I scream in my mind, saying
“No more rankings,
No more competing”
Korea is known as a country with fierce academic fervor and high academic competitiveness. As a person who used to be a Korean public school student until 8th grade, and who has an older brother who experienced entrance examinations in Korea, I realized significant problems in the field of education in Korea.
Therefore, I wanted to describe the harsh life of Korean public school students to reveal the dark side of the Korean education system through a poem. Korea is the only country which operates a grading system called relative evaluation. Different from absolute evaluation, relative evaluation grades students using percentage. Even if you get an A, it is still possible to get a B or C if there are many people who got a high score. Since there is a class system to separate students by their grades, only those who are in the top 0 to 4 percent can be in the group of the first class.
Due to this cruel system, Korean students tend to study hard and competitively, to have a higher grade than their friends. Since this system requires high memorization ability, teenagers are vulnerable to lose their creativity and convergence skills. I hope the K orean government will provide an absolute evaluation system like other countries for a peaceful educational atmosphere and for a more confident mindset of students.
Category: Grade 9-10 Honors
Winner: Yuju Shin
The topic behind my art is mental health awareness. I realized that mental health is a problem among teenagers nowadays, but sometimes, mental health problems are not approached as a serious problem. I believe that everyone, at least once in their life, has struggled mentally before, and sometimes had difficulties coping with them. When people experience this, they tend to see themselves weirdly, and they could feel embarrassed sharing about these issues because they perceive that they are the only ones with these problems. With this poster, I want people to acknowledge that they are not the only ones struggling with these problems, and it is natural for them to feel stressed and face difficulties. I designed a poster that includes a girl, and the factors that makes her feel uneasy. The examples portrayed are relationship problems with both her peers and the person she likes, with her parents, and with academics. I found these to be the most common problems that teenagers face and struggle with, so I decided to portray it as a part of her brain and describe the story behind it. In the relationship category, she confesses to a boy, but she gets rejected. In the friendship category, she is struggling because people are talking about her related to something that she has never done before. In the parents category., it is talking about her hiding her emotions in front of her parents. Lastly in the academics category. it shows how she is struggling academically, while her friends are catching up well with their classes. I made it look like she is slightly smiling because usually. mental health problems are hard to catch from a third-person perspective. It is difficult to directly be able to indicate whether the specific person has mental health problems or not. With mental health problems, I believe that it is best to honestly go through what the person actually feels internally, which is why I included the caption asking ‘Are you REALLY okay.” Sometimes it could be difficult for the person to reveal that they are struggling mentally. but I want people to know that it is okay to have those problems. and having those problems doesn’t make them a weird person. I believe that it is a natwral problem that could occur, and people around them should be more aware and understanding of these issues.
Category: Grade 9-10 On-level
Winner: Junwoo Lee
“True Intelligence”
Simple curiosity lights up the final destination
The far end exists as hallucination
Ceaseless imagination that shapes the delusion,
is taken as a derivative of reality
Fellow scholars, flowing along with the gradient
Ponder, study for gain of knowledge only as ingredient
Wonder, meaning to study
Further, knowledge for sturdiness
Swimming shallowly over the ocean
To the Island of Honorees
Tears dropped from infant’s eyes announce the race
No where, No reason, No awareness
Bring your question down to the fundamentals
To study, true pursuit of knowledge
Not as rivalry of assernblage
Universal goal of knowledge,
Can only be unified through synergy
The poem True Intelligence” is inspired by Einstein’s renowned phrase: “The true inteligence is not knowledge, but imagination.” I was always stuck, drowning in deep thoughts, whenever I faced the quote that was hung over the wall of the classroom. I often wondered, what is “to study” a substitute for? I personally love science and mathematics, but I still haven’t found out when, why I began studying. Contradictingly, we, as students, all goal for college while we do not know where we are arriving. Since the 21st century, people just follow something that they are used to; not quite giving a try. Modern values and its ease in transfer, resulted in fixed thought.
For the first part of the poem, I wanted to point out the curiosity, eager for the discovery of unknown knowledge. There are many scientists and college students who find their passion in natural science. However, reality doesn’t always follow the passion, they often struggle with the harsh employment and environment where they work. Thus, the first paragraph of the poem ends by taking the derivative of reality meaning that the reality and pure pursuit of knowledge cannot coexist together unless one of each is a coefficient.
“Fellow scholars, flowing along with the gradient” I wanted to input the idea of concentration gradient in order to compare mimicking of people to someone else. Fellow students, without the awareness of what they are studying for, aim for college just because the others do so. Currently college isn’t the institution for learning, but routine for certification. Another view I suggest for this behavior is that students usually do not know what the goal is for. They just go to college for a vague fear of the future.
I finalized the poem that gives meaning to study. Scholars are for human species common goal, survival ultimately. However studying may seem to require knowledge as a competition or tires you with sort of people using it to brag their superiority, it utterly is pure curiosity. We must remember what a scholar is, not as boring, not as meaningless, but your willingness to achieve something. Don’t desire to be someone, be a scholar of yourself.
