Heewon Jung’s Slow Aging
Kim Rieun: Fast. Convenient. Streamlined. With just a few taps on their delivery app of choice, anyone can turn their evening into a one-person eating contest in the space of 30 minutes. And after an exhausting day, isn’t there something about getting the greasiest, most taste-explosiony food and scarfing it down that just perfectly hits the spot? It feels like you can indulge in this unbelievable option and simply supplement it with a handful of vitamins, then you’re good. But the basic principles of healthy living—eating nutritious food, getting enough sleep, and keeping active—tend to slip to the bottom of the priority list thanks to long work hours, stress, and everything that tempts us with instant dopamine hits. What if you want to age slowly, though? Heewon Jung, a doctor of geriatrics at Asan Medical Center in Seoul, has sparked a “slow aging” craze in Korea, speaking to a universal desire while challenging the cycle of nonstop acceleration.

Content, too, has to be fast, convenient, and available on demand. If it doesn’t grab people’s attention, it won’t survive in today’s media landscape, which is why Jung not only publishes books and makes TV appearances but also posts on X, including to share lunch ideas for an effective slow aging diet. His channel, Heewon Jung’s Slow Aging, features videos with attention-grabbing thumbnails and intriguing titles like “Eating Buldak Creamy Flat Glass Noodles vs. Just Fasting,” with comments underneath like, “I clicked on this video as fast as ultra-processed foods make us fat.” The channel offers slow aging recipes along with videos that set the record straight on common misconceptions, such as “Understanding Dieting” and “Setting the Record Straight on Fat,” grounded in studies and research, all wrapped up in a YouTube-friendly format.

Of course, when it comes to knowledge, everything must be vetted. The media landscape today is overflowing with a diverse assortment of information and viewpoints, and even evidence-based perspectives have to be presented with care. It’s up to the individual to decide what healthy living means to them and to make personal decisions about how to care for their body. You can see Jung’s approach in the video “What Sources Can We Trust When It Comes to Medicine and Health?” where he explains the different stages of research and the process behind how experts arrive at their recommendations, and provides a practical standard for how to judge medical information. In our rapidly accelerating world, where food and knowledge are consumed in an equal hurry, maybe what we really need is a guide on how to carefully chew over what we learn—not unlike a recipe that teaches you the best way to cook multigrain rice with lentils.

“Maria”
Bae Dongmi (CINE21 Reporter): Legendary opera singer Maria Callas hasn’t set foot on a stage in four and a half years. Her voice isn’t what it used to be, and she suffers from sleepless nights, popping sedatives haphazardly to get through the day. Plagued by hallucinations, she talks endlessly about a TV crew that’s supposedly coming to interview her in an hour, but her housekeeper knows it’s all a delusion. Only Callas remains blind to the truth, convinced a reporter is there holding a microphone up to the star to speak. Then, she begins to recount her journey and her music to a reporter who exists only in her mind—or perhaps to herself, and ultimately, the audience.

Directed by “Jackie” and “Spencer” filmmaker Pablo Larraín, “Maria” depicts the opera diva in the final week of her life in a blending of reality and fiction. The real-life Callas took to the sedative Mandrax in her later years, but in the world of the film, she takes it haphazardly and imagines a reporter sharing the name of the drug is interviewing her. As in his earlier works, Larraín mixes reality with fiction and uses a nonlinear narrative to explore his subject’s inner world. Some viewers may find the frequent shifts in perspective and film stock disorienting, but these choices may also be interpreted as a visual representation of the fragmented past, thoughts, and impulses drifting through one individual’s mind. But one thing holds all the chaotic fragments of the film together: Angelina Jolie in her portrayal of Callas. Jolie masterfully embodies a diva whose health has deteriorated beyond hope but who still exudes unparalleled confidence when it comes to her music. The way she fires off about how she doesn’t listen to her own albums because they’re too perfect, or how she chases away a fan who laments not getting a chance to finally see her because she canceled the performance, shows just how grand Callas was at her peak. Jolie is on exactly the same wavelength as the charismatic opera diva she portrays in “Maria,” and the movie shines for it.

“DAY6 3RD WORLD TOUR ‘FOREVER YOUNG’ FINALE in SEOUL”
Kim Hyojin (Music Columnist): There’s something extra enjoyable about being the same age as artists who write and perform their own music. It makes you to feel like you’re passing through the stages of life together. For me, DAY6 is one of those artists. When my awkward, young relationship was coming to an end in my early 20s, their song “Congratulations” helped me shake off any lingering feelings. When I hated myself, tracks like “hurt road” and “Marathon” were there to get me through each day. When I finally started to discover the joys in life, “Welcome to the Show” felt like an anthem for me to celebrate life itself. Sometimes it feels like you can hear an artist’s heart beating out into the world through their music, and in that sense, DAY6’s music has always worked its way seamlessly into this and that aspect of my life, with a heartbeat matching the rhythm of my own.

The heartbeat of their music thumps on for others just like me, giving their engine a jump when it just doesn’t want to start up again. No wonder we want to sing along to their songs when they’re onstage, sharing in that feeling of our hearts beating in sync. When what felt like a song you just sing to yourself is suddenly there for everyone to join in on, and when a tune that’s become a permanent fixture in your heart brings the present into perfect focus—that’s the experience people flock to concerts to feel and to resonate with. It’s why the “FOREVER YOUNG” world tour, which DAY6 kicked off in September, has been such a phenomenal success, and why it immediately drew in 90,000 more fans when the group returned to Korea.