Final Letter

A short story about a Korean high school student who, through the constant pressures from both his parents and the academic culture of South Korea, suffers from continuously deteriorating mental health.

Woo Min, the perfect, straight-A student admired by his classmates, had suffered through an unimaginable amount of verbal and physical abuse from his parents and had been sent to hundreds of academic academies, all due to Korean academic expectations. However, through all this suffering, Woo Min finally gets an acceptance letter from the best university in South Korea: Seoul National University. It is the dream university for every single student in South Korea, which is the reason behind such high academic expectations. Feeling all kinds of emotions, from relief to anger, Woo Min makes the ultimate decision and starts writing a letter to his parents.

The themes include parental expectations and pressure, mental health and despair, and a brief critique of the cultural and societal norms, especially in South Korea