The Debate
In an election campaign, there was no event more important than the televised debate.
Because a strong performance could win you votes?
Not at all. Hardly anyone watched the Election Commission's broadcast debates. Even races for metropolitan mayor drew lackluster ratings — never mind a municipal debate airing on regional cable.
And yet it still mattered.
Because the moment you fumbled, votes bled out of you in real time.
Win it and you gained nothing; lose it and, for reasons no one could quite explain, you were thoroughly fucked.
Candidates generally dreaded the debate, which was why so many chose to sit it out and swallow the fine. The cost of a no-show was at least measurable. The damage from a live, on-air meltdown was impossible to predict — and if you were ahead in the polls, you had every reason not to show up at all.
But my rival, polling twice my numbers, didn't stay home. Quite the opposite.
"Candidate Min. Why do you look so rough? Not sleeping well these days? Heh heh."
He'd come sharpened for the kill. No doubt he meant to detonate the military service issue he'd spent so long building up — egging on civic groups, reporters, even National Assembly members from his own party.
Instead of answering, I held Pyeon Seongyeop's gaze for a moment. Then, making a show of swallowing my irritation, I tried to talk him down.
"Candidate Pyeon Seongyeop. I have a fair idea of what you're trying to do here, but I'd advise you to stop."
"Is that a threat?"
"I'm simply telling you that dragging it into the public square will do neither of us any good. Frankly, under this administration the President, the Prime Minister, and the party chairman are all exempt from service — so why bother..."
"Feel free to say that on the debate stage, Candidate Min. I'm sure the audience will find it deeply relatable."
"......"
"May the best man win."
With a slap on my shoulder, Pyeon Seongyeop headed for his seat. Moments later, the debate began.
"Hello, viewers. I am Im Changnam, professor of Media & Visual Studies at Hanjin University, moderating today's Maesan Mayoral Candidate Debate on behalf of the Election Broadcasting Debate Commission. This forum is a meaningful opportunity to examine who is truly fit to lead Maesan City through the next four years."
The moderator was a sitting professor at Hanjin University, Maesan's one and only comprehensive university. To me, he was a professor from my alma mater — I'd even taken a general education elective under the man, back in the day.
"And now, let us formally begin the Maesan Mayoral Candidate Debate. First, we will hear opening statements from each candidate."
The early stretch of the debate went... relatively smoothly. Opening statements. Then the round of shared questions. The first question, as if it went without saying, was about the semiconductor something-or-other.
"Governance isn't done with words — it's done with experience and connections! Together with the Together Democratic Party assemblymen I've known since my days as a Gyeonggi provincial councilor, I will build the network that slots Maesan City squarely into the southern Gyeonggi semiconductor cluster!"
"What Maesan needs isn't backslapping cronyism — getting drunk with national politicians and playing big brother, little brother — but data-driven administration tailored to the government's evaluation scorecards. We will build a supporting R&D complex just fifteen minutes from the system semiconductor cluster..."
Honestly, the topic meant next to nothing. The answers were more or less preordained anyway; all you had to do was memorize, or read aloud, the script some staffer had written for you. The only real difference was that I, unlike Pyeon Seongyeop, had neither money nor manpower, so I'd written mine myself.
For a while after that, things flowed along the same way.
"Thank you for your answers. Now, on to the next shared question."
The GTX-C rail extension. Improving livability in the aging city center. The founding of a children's hospital, and so on. Important projects, every one of them — the daily lives of 250,000 Maesan citizens hung on them, and transportation above all was critical. Presumably someone watching at that very moment was listening closely to whatever poured out of my mouth and Pyeon Seongyeop's, weighing and judging us on it. The opinions of those people mattered, of course.
But the bait that could actually shift the race lay elsewhere. At long last, the cross-examination round arrived.
"Next is the segment on verifying the moral character and fitness of our candidates. ...Recently, the military service record of People's Choice candidate Min Seojun has become a topic of heated discussion among local civic groups, the press, and on social media. Candidate Min — despite being a healthy man in his thirties, you received a Grade 5 wartime labor service classification, and you chose to process the detailed grounds as 'confidential.' Would you care to clarify the matter here today?"
With the moderator's words, the air in the studio slowly sank. In truth, I'd helped it along myself. From the moment the word 'character' left the moderator's mouth, I had slipped into my performance — fidgeting aimlessly with my papers, drawing a long, deep breath and letting my distress show.
"Mr. Moderator? ...My service record was lawfully designated confidential under Election Commission regulations. I would appreciate it if we could move on to the next question."
Not that those bastards were about to let it slide just because I'd put up a wall. On the contrary — as though they'd been waiting for exactly this, the pressure came crashing down.
"Oh come now, Candidate Min Seojun! If a perfectly healthy young man didn't serve in the military, all he has to do is stand tall and tell us why!"
"Candidate Min Seojun? As Together Democratic Party candidate Pyeon Seongyeop has pointed out, a candidate for public office's military record is the single most essential measure of his fitness, tied directly to his view of the state. If you continue to insist on confidentiality, public suspicion may only deepen. Are you truly comfortable with that?"
"You heard him. Answer!"
Why didn't you serve, huh? Reveal your grounds for exemption.
When I gave no answer, Pyeon Seongyeop's side began brandishing the very documents they'd brought with them.
"Now, everyone. Take a good look at this. Those are photographs of Candidate Min Seojun."
A commemorative shot of me crossing the finish line of a half marathon last year. A picture of me playing jokgu — a kind of foot volleyball — at a People's Choice party training seminar. And on and on.
So that was their angle — needling me over why a man this healthy had skipped the army.
In fairness, the actual criteria for a wartime labor classification were stricter than anyone would guess — a harsh era in which you couldn't slip into that status without a severe intellectual disability or the loss of multiple fingers and toes. And it was true that I was healthy now. Waving photographs around like that was juvenile, but effective — if I had, as Pyeon Seongyeop expected, dodged the draft through some shady trick.
"Candidate Min Seojun! Explain yourself, and quickly! Did you evade service through connections, or did you feign illness and cheat the system? How on earth does a young man who never even served intend to answer for the safety of Maesan's citizens?"
"There was no trick. If there had been, how would I have earned my party's nomination?"
"Heh! And we're simply meant to trust the People's Choice vetting process?"
"With all due respect, your party's vetting is worse."
"Look at this! The one who owes an explanation here isn't me — it's Candidate Min Seojun!"
Right about now felt like the moment to spring my trap.
And then a stray question surfaced in my mind. Were my parents watching this debate, too? The people who had threatened me into giving up part of my liver, then come to their bedridden son's hospital bedside to gloat about his "legal military exemption"... I still couldn't fathom what went on inside their heads. Why they had to go that far.
"Fine... All right. If that is what you want, then I will tell you the truth."
Even so, I hoped they would watch this debate no matter what. Because I was certain my family would hate what I was about to do.
Watch it. Please, watch it. With that silent prayer, I slowly drew out a document. A medical certificate for military service purposes, issued by a hospital designated by the Military Manpower Administration.
"In my first year of university, I had part of my liver surgically removed and donated it to a member of my family. I was then lawfully classified Grade 5 — wartime labor service — by the military draft board. The document in my hand at this very moment is the proof."
Pyeon Seongyeop's face began to flush red, bit by bit. Thankfully, he was not enough of an idiot to challenge the document's authenticity with some line like "That's nothing but a scrap of unverified paper." He had surely grasped by now that something had come unstuck. He was probably also wondering about my real motive for insisting on keeping the exemption grounds confidential.
But it was already too late.
"At the time, my younger sister was dying of acute liver failure."
"Candidate Min, one moment—"
"It happened because my mother, claiming it was all for the sake of my golf-playing sister, had her take green tea extract and herbal medicine together. When I raced to the hospital, my sister was already on the brink of hepatic coma. I took the tests without understanding a thing... and then I was on the operating table as well. Her life... yes. Her life had to be saved, after all."
Having said that much, I bowed my head and held a bitter smile on my lips. Flustered voices immediately rang in my ears. Shall we continue the initiative debate? This is a conspiracy! Everyone, please calm down.
If I ended it there, I'd break even at best. But I still had words left to say.
"The reason I did not disclose this in advance is that I feared too deeply for the wounds it would inflict on my family. To the voters, I offer my sincere apologies."
"......?"
"In all the time since I gave away my organ, I have never once heard a word of thanks. Even now, standing in this election, I have received no encouragement or help from my family whatsoever... and yet I still call them family. I did not want to pick at their painful wounds."
An explanation that I simply hadn't wanted to drag into the light the ugly history of a mother who had very nearly killed her daughter with "supplements," and the sheer shamelessness of a sister who took her brother's liver and then froze him out.
Ending things there wouldn't have been a bad outcome at all. But then the moderator handed me an assist nobody had asked for.
"The precise verification of the facts behind Candidate Min Seojun's explanation will be left as a matter to be examined later, through objective fact-checking by media organizations once this debate has concluded. Now then, moving on to Candidate Pyeon Seongyeop's initiative debate..."
How gracious of him to tell the entire audience that the fact-checking wasn't finished yet. It was a standard wrap-up line, but I had no intention of permitting any wrap-up. Timing was everything.
I shot to my feet.
"Mr. Moderator! Did you just say the facts still need verifying?"
"Er... Candidate Min Seojun?"
"Is there truly any need to borrow the power of the press?"
I shed my red campaign jacket and set about undoing the buttons at the hem of my shirt. The moderator belatedly sputtered about broadcast regulations and moved to stop me. Sorry, but stripping off a shirt mid-debate was not, in fact, a violation of the Public Official Election Act.
"I kept it hidden because I feared my family might hear ugly words — because I dreaded people saying that a son who gave away his very liver has entered this race, yet his cold-hearted parents won't so much as lift a finger for his campaign. If hiding it was wrong of me — then yes. Right here, right now, I will show you the evidence."
I wrenched the shirt open. What I bared was a gruesome, inverted L-shaped surgical scar, carving down from my solar plexus and across my abdomen.
"Candidate Pyeon Seongyeop. Satisfied now?"
I felt no shame whatsoever. Because I was a pitiful man who had struggled with everything he had to protect his family's honor — and, backed into a corner, had been left with no choice but to cut open his own belly.