※ This is part of a fictional letter series inspired by reader correspondence.
※ All personal details have been anonymized and adapted.
Dear Saltnfire,
Hello. My child will soon be taking the national college entrance exam. (SAT Exam) I hope the exam goes well and they can enter a good university, but I am concerned about which major they should choose. Just because a field looks promising now does not mean it will be stable in the future. For example, the programming boom was only a few years ago, yet now we hear about mass layoffs.
I see that you run a pub, write, and study foreign languages. It seems you have diverse experience, so I’d like to hear your advice. What kind of major would you recommend for a young person today?
From,
A reader in Korea
Dear Bro,
Career counseling is not my professional field, but I will answer. A college major should not be chosen based on trends or vague dreams. It is, in the end, a decision about how one will make a living. I have studied and worked in many different fields, and I spent years wandering in the grey zone between ideals and survival. From that, I learned a few things.
1. Why do we go to college?
Most 17–18 year olds do not clearly know what each major teaches, nor do they know what they truly want. At that age, eating good food and hanging out with friends is the most fun thing in the world.
So we need to first ask: What is the function of college?
| Field of Study | What the University Provides | Post-Graduation Survival Rate |
|---|---|---|
| Engineering / Medicine / Accounting / Law School / Specialized Technical Professions | Practical skills → immediate entry into the market | High |
| Languages / Trade / Diplomacy | Communication and negotiation ability | Medium (depends on experience) |
| Humanities / Philosophy / Arts / Pure Mathematics | Thinking framework / sense of perspective | Low (only a small number sustain themselves) |
College is a place that teaches both skills for survival and abilities for thought. One student learns a technical craft to support their life; another swims in a sea of symbols and abstract reasoning. Skills sustain life. Thought gives life depth. If the family cannot provide financial stability, then learning practical skills is the priority.
(1) Secure the survival base first.
If your child does not yet know what they want to do, choose a field where survival probability is high. South Korea does not have strong competitiveness in software, patents, design, or brand IP. But it does have strong manufacturing competitiveness:
- Higher quality than China
- Lower cost than Germany
- More open industrial structure than Japan
The country runs on things like: ships, semiconductors, phones, automotive parts, power plants, and B2B industrial equipment.
So: Mechanical / Electrical / Hardware Engineering = strong employment base + international mobility + flexible career paths. They can later become engineers, technical consultants, or even move into specialized fields like patent law. On the other hand:
- Chemical engineering and biotech have limited domestic R&D investment and narrow career pipelines.
- Medicine and nursing are stable in demand, but extremely competitive to enter.
And it does not have to be a four-year university. Technical colleges, apprenticeships, military training schools can actually be more efficient, with lower cost and faster entry into real work.
Meanwhile in the US, value creation is driven by the dollar’s global trust + intangible assets. So hardware struggles there. But in Korea, it is the opposite: fields unrelated to manufacturing have low income stability. Software is a promising field, but the global market is captured by the US and Israel. In Korea, software mostly plays a supporting role for hardware companies. Unless one has exceptional talent in software, hardware tracks are generally safer.
(2) Continue learning English.
Living abroad taught me something simple: You cannot rely on Google Translate or GPT for real-time communication in non-English environments. The speech and text recognition of these systems simply is not reliable outside English. And no one waits for you to say: “Hold on, let me open GPT.” GPT increases efficiency significantly when reading or writing documents, but to evaluate the output, one must still understand English.
English maintains:
- International mobility
- Negotiation power
- The ability to choose where and how to live
These are not small things.
(3) Meaning comes after survival.
Humanities, philosophy, art, mathematics — these are about forming thought, proving ideas, and expressing meaning. They are not directly tied to making a living. If you dive into pure thought without survival secured, sooner or later you encounter the realization:
“Ah… none of this helps me live.”
Survival is more important than meaning. While I have a genuine love for the humanities, immersing oneself in them can often blur one’s sense of reality and breed a kind of pessimism. There are many things I would love to explore — Gnosticism, independent biblical studies, and more — but for now I hold myself back and keep my focus on what matters most: surviving and building toward concrete goals.
(4) What about humanities majors?
Humanities have meaning, but not much market value. Historically, humanities were the discipline of kings. They existed to add emotional intelligence and refinement after power and stability were already secured. Studying humanities today does not automatically make someone good at organizing, leadership, or relationships. Humanity major is a system of symbols, not a system of practice. If someone has a strong interior world and aesthetic sensibility, then studying classics and later becoming a writer or creator can work.
But if not, then public service, state-run infrastructure, and procedural organizations are the correct path. In Korea, a college diploma still functions as a signal of discipline and intelligence, and public-sector work aligns with that. Large companies like Samsung or Hyundai are basically similar in function to civil service. The work is administrative and procedural.
2. Can we find meaning in work?
This is slightly separate from choosing a major, but worth considering. Marx pointed out that in capitalism, labor becomes separated from life itself, causing alienation. Modern ideas like leadership training, motivation theory, corporate culture, HR systems, even paid vacation policies, all exist as attempts to resolve this alienation.
But in my view, work that we do simply to survive rarely carries “existential meaning.” Meaning is not something grand. Meaning is:
- the feeling of not being bored,
- the sense of being alive,
- the absorption where time passes without noticing.
Meaning does not come from the “results” of the job. It comes from the feeling that I can grasp and work with the world through the task itself. When that feeling is present, a human being can exist as themselves.
In the past, work was inherited from parents and done together with extended families and villages. Labor and life were interwoven, so people did not long for individual existential meaning. Concepts like solidarity proposed by Durkheim or Tocqueville were ultimately nostalgia for old forms of communal work. It seems like doctors or lawyers should feel meaning in their work since those jobs are prestigious and socially valuable. But that is not necessarily true.
I once knew a senior surgeon. From the outside, one might imagine him thinking, “I am a doctor, I save lives.” But he told me:
If work were truly fulfilling, why would I need video games?
He earned a lot, had pride and social respect—but almost no autonomy. The responsibility was heavy, procedures strict, and relationships inside the profession required constant attention. Guild communities, professional pride, cooperative work—all of that is good. But from my experience, for work to feel meaningful, the process must be endurable.
I use three criteria:
(1) Can I fix what I believe is a problem?
(2) If I create something, will the market recognize its value?
(3) Can I use what I gain here in other contexts, outside this organization?
If these are met, the difficulty of work transforms into a sense of accomplishment and comfort. This is not abstract theory. These are the ways we relate to the world.
For example, when I improved my Medovnik recipe and increased production capacity, I stayed in the shop for several days. That work satisfied all (1)-(3). But learning how to make Stollen(Famous German Bread) did not satisfy (2) or (3). If I had done it purely to survive, it would have been empty and boring(=Meaningless) Many artisans fall into this trap: deep skill, but little market resonance.
On the other hand, in a corporate job, I was fixing problems defined by management, and the results were only valid inside the company culture. So it felt pointless. Running the pub engaged all (1)-(3), so even though it was hard, I could bear it and enjoy it. But inflation and rising costs were forces outside my control—so meaning eroded. Teaching your child to earn money and buy what they want is good. But teaching them to structure work in a way that supports meaning is better.
3. Conclusion
Choosing a major is really choosing:
How do I want to engage with the world?
- Technical fields: handling the world with the body
- Language: describing the world
- Humanities: interpreting the world
The order is always:
Survival → Language → Meaning
If I were 18 again, I would choose based on this:
- In Korea, choose an engineering major connected to manufacturing (higher survival).
- Study English continuously.
- You don’t need to dive into heavy philosophy yet. Light reading on blogs and platforms is enough.
- Humanities have weak market value. If you have a strong personal worldview and style, choose a major that provides expressive form; otherwise, work in the public or infrastructure sector.
- Money and prestige matter, but meaning comes from whether the process of work is endurable.
Based on this framework, I would choose Architectural Engineering. Even if the construction market fluctuates, Korea has world-class capability, and the skills are globally transferable. It also allows for expansion into interior design, building diagnostics, or engineering consulting. And the day-to-day work process is bearable. I hope your child performs well on the exam and chooses a major they will not regret.
Sincerely,
from saltnfire.net
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