New fad in South Korea for dose of nostalgia from old school transcripts

SEOUL – Obtaining and sharing one’s old school transcripts on social media is a new fad in South Korea, amid a retro craze among the younger generation.

According to the Ministry of Education, 2.85 million school transcripts were issued between July and September 2023, 6.1 times the number issued during the same period in 2022.

While requests for transcripts are typically made for practical purposes such as job or college applications, this sudden surge is primarily attributed to a different motivation: a curiosity about rediscovering one’s own past through old school records.

School transcripts in South Korea have a section for the homeroom teacher to leave a short comment about each student. These comments offer a hint of how a particular child was perceived by teachers as a student and are a unique insight into one’s childhood.

Childhood records, a few clicks away

The rise of this trend was facilitated by the convenience of online transcript issuance.

With just a few clicks at Government24, a civil service portal, any high-school-leavers in South Korea from 2003 can have their records issued online.

Those who were high-school-leavers before 2003 must visit their old school or regional education or administrative offices to request physical issuance of their transcripts. School records are preserved for 50 years.

According to school transcripts, teachers saw this reporter as “polite”, someone who “read a lot of books” and as “fluent in English”. Apart from English proficiency, these attributes are among the most frequently used descriptions in teachers’ comments in transcripts.

But some transcripts for celebrities have distinct characteristics, perhaps indicating that they possessed unusual qualities from an early age.

For example, the sixth-grade teacher of K-pop icon IU wrote that she was kind and “well aware of the physical and psychological changes that boys and girls in puberty go through”.

Actor and singer Bae Suzy was praised by her middle-school teachers as someone who “excelled in singing”, adding that her efforts and talents made for bright prospects for her ambitions.

Earlier in October, another K-pop star, Hyeri, joined the fad by sharing her middle-school transcripts on YouTube. The records showed that she dreamed of becoming a doctor, then a teacher, then a flight attendant, but her talent and hobby was dancing throughout all three years.

“It’s been 10 years since I’ve looked at the transcript... It’s really amazing that a person’s characteristics are reflected in such young days,” she said in the video.

Looking up one’s school transcript is among the latest of the retro-themed fads in South Korea in recent years.

Retro recent past

While the retro craze has been going on for a while, 28-year-old Park Yu-ri recently got into it when she saw items and content from her own childhood, specifically the 2000s, featured in the mainstream media.

She said she had found previous fads for content from the 1980s and 1990s fun, but was never really nostalgic about them. “But now things that were popular when I was little – the clothing, the hair, the songs – are back in style, which reminds me of when I was young,” she said.

Like Ms Park, many South Koreans in their 20s and early 30s are fuelling the revival of fashion, culture and accessories from the turn of the 21st century, commonly called “Y2K” in the country, referring to the year 2000. Fond memories of the early 2000s are also at the heart of the nostalgic trend.

Among Ms Park’s favourite retro content is the Hwang Eun-jeong series on YouTube channel Beautyfool, depicting the life of a 15-year-old girl in the 2000s – which overlaps with Ms Park’s own childhood. The channel has garnered more than 760,000 subscribers in less than two years.

Another popular YouTube series is 05 Is Back, from the Psick University channel, which includes videos based on funny situations involving those obsessed with trends and the fashions of 2005. It remains among the channel’s best-known content, prompting SBS television’s popular variety show, Running Man, to parody it.

Local scholars say the challenging realities faced by young people in South Korea now is driving their desire to look back, rather than ahead.

Clinical psychologist Jo Yeon-ju of Taean-gun Health Medical said an economic slump can play a part in nostalgia. In a recent interview with the local media, she said that in a crisis, “people tend to seek a sanctuary to soothe their troubled minds. In times of economic hardship, they tend to miss the times when they were full of hopes and dreams... The retro trend seems to reappear whenever economic crisis looms”.

Psychology and psychotherapy professor Lim Myung-ho of Dankook University said the people consuming retro content wish to feel “the sense of fulfilment and self-confidence through experiencing pleasant and fun things in one’s past”.

“Many young people today feel anxiety over issues such as housing, jobs and marriage, leading them to reminisce over the past,” he said. THE KOREA HERALD/ASIA NEWS NETWORK