My student Sunny, who has a characteristically sunny disposition to match her English nickname, ran into my classroom and, using a red marker, wrote on the whiteboard the phrase shown in the picture below.
2098년 지구 멸망
2098: end of the world
Her writing that wasn’t intended to be a reaction to the phrase Sally had written earlier (as part of an effort to give herself prompts for a speech she was working on), “When you get all that new homework,” but the conjunction proved humorous.
I’m not at all sure why Sunny thinks the world will end in 2098 – it’s some local pop culture reference, clearly – a movie or TV show or webtoon that the kids are all soaking up. She took the time to explain that it didn’t matter to her personally, because she would be dead by then. I asked her if she really thought so, and she said confidently that she would only live to age 83 – which, given her birthyear is 2003, puts her demise a decade and a half before the deadline.