How do you captivate an audience in a short time at a civil society seminar? A three-minute speech may be short, but it can leave a strong impression. Here are some effective speech preparation methods and examples that emphasize key messages and stimulate emotions.

 

Topic – Let’s create a planet where we can breathe through the wind of nature

Hello, everyone.
Thank you very much for your interest in and support of the environment.
I am heartened by the interest many people have in the environment.
To be honest, even if an environmental activist shouts at the top of his lungs, people will only practice for a few days and then go back to the same old routine.
So I was very frustrated and even despairing, but I came back to the same old routine and decided to promote it again.
I changed my strategy. They will persuade you through brainwashing, not through advertising.
Now, everyone knows that Africa is a land without cold.
Some humans were born in a land without cold.
Have you ever heard this?
There is a saying that humans who used to live on all fours walked on their two feet to find fresh air away from the hot surface of the earth.
Interesting, isn’t it?
Can modern people live without air conditioning?
In the case of housing complexes, if the house is directly supported by the rooftop, the house that has been heated up from the morning will burn brightly until evening.
Then we turn on the air conditioner.
The refrigerant Freon gas is the main culprit in global warming.
Global warming is accelerating, and refrigerators and air conditioners are selling like hotcakes.
While the air from the air conditioner cools the house, the hot air will be doubled and go out to the outdoor unit.
The outdoor unit sweats and the heat warms the streets, and we turn on the air conditioner again, and the outdoor unit warms the streets again.
It’s an infinite loop.
There is only one way.
Just break one link.
“But it’s hot, I can’t give up.” I ask those who say this.
If this repetition continues, it will bring us twice the heat in a few years.
The situation is heading towards the worst.
Wouldn’t it be correct to stop here? Summer is a hot season.
It would be right to spend the hot season in the heat.
If there is no air conditioner, it would be so natural to try to endure the heat.
Having an air conditioner will change your expectations of room temperature.
A house that can go without air conditioning is a house that thinks about the future.
Let’s prove that we are wise people who live with the future in mind.
Let’s create a planet where we can breathe in natural wind, not artificial wind.
Thank you for listening.
I wish your family and future well. Thank you.

 

 

Theme – Respect for the Elderly

There is a proverb that says, “Everything goes back to the way it should be.”
It is an idiom that means that everything eventually goes back to the right way.
These days, the internet has been abuzz with videos of elderly people being assaulted on the subway.
It was a situation that would have made everyone angry, with a young man in his early twenties swearing and kicking an older man who was much older than him.
After watching the video, I was reminded of the idiom “the end justifies the means.”
Like the idiom, I wonder how they would feel about their actions in their youth if they were old and assaulted by a young person.
Especially since the young people who caused the controversy also have their own parents or grandparents.
I think about the elderly man who was insulted on the subway on his way home.
I don’t know what he was thinking as he trudged along.
He must have been thinking about his youth, realizing the changes in the world, and feeling bitter that he had gone out to experience the humiliation of today.
And it must be a bitter feeling.
Perhaps they may have wiped away tears of bitterness of old age, realizing once again that they are powerless and sickly old people.
The current elderly people are those who have lived through turbulent times such as war and the period of severe food shortages.
The strength to endure the difficult times must have been their families, and it is because they have overcome many years of hardship that there is economic growth today.
Even if you take a test on the Korean War in a history book, listen to a lecture on the Gwangju Uprising, and study the December 12 Incident, it is nothing more than rote memorization.
Even though those who have actually experienced it are still alive today, most of what they learn is forgotten and most of what they don’t know is unknown.
South Korea is expected to become an ultra-aged society with a super-high proportion of elderly people reaching 23.1% by 2026, as the aging of the population is progressing the fastest in the world.
It seems that it is time for the government, civic groups, and our society as a whole to once again work hard to spread the movement for respecting the elderly and the culture of filial piety, and strive to become a truly advanced welfare state.
I hope everyone will keep in mind that the elderly are a self-portrait of the young.
I hope that there will be more young intellectuals who are more respectful and considerate.

 

 

Theme – Labor Exploitation

A place where young people are concentrated.
Gangnam-il Dae, Daehak-ro area, Hongdae area.
Even as the darkness deepens, the bright, dazzling light lets you know what time it is.
The young people who had been hiding in every corner during the day come pouring out in droves as the darkness deepens.
I hang out with friends and lovers, drinking and having fun.
There is another case.
There must be a young man out working.
He wears an apron and carries three trays in his right and left hands as he runs around.
They are young people entertaining young people.
But there is no need to be sad about it.
This is because I am another face of the young people who are gathered here in groups of three or four.
All young people in this world work part-time.
They are wonderful people with independent selves.
They try to escape from their parents’ control and experience society, encounter bitterness, and even develop hostility.
Even though the part-time jobs started out in a good way, there are more and more cases where teenagers are suffering from their employers’ clever exploitation of wages, violation of human rights, and inhuman treatment.
In the event of theft or loss of money or goods, the employer may deduct the amount from the part-time worker’s wages.
They are the relatively weak and work at a bar for 5,000 won an hour, tears in their eyes.
This repetitive work of taking orders, filling them, and taking orders again can be done by most people, so there are plenty of people who can do this job instead of me.
I cannot speak up for myself.
Then, adults should step up.
Even though there are a lot of side effects, the relevant ministries are not paying attention to this and are ignoring the damage done to the part-time workers.
Human rights abuses against part-time workers, such as labor exploitation, verbal abuse, assault, and sexual harassment, should be eradicated from the workplace.
What kind of scenery can we show to them who have just stepped into society with excitement?
Shouldn’t we come together to prevent them from feeling disillusioned and humiliated?

 

 

Theme – Social Responsibility

While the Internet was abuzz with a female college student’s remarks that “short men are losers” and “you should be at least 180 cm tall,” one incident was forgotten.
There was a case in which a 17-year-old teenager had a 15-year-old junior kid do the job for him and tried to burn his parents and sister to death. The father survived, but the mother and sister died. The police said the motive was that he wanted to live in Gangnam with the insurance money.
Perhaps because another impulsive outburst has occurred, Korean society is not showing any signs of being surprised by this absurd and shocking incident.
In the face of this terrible social pathology, which is not even serious enough to be called serious, neither the education sector, nor the religious sector, nor the media sector is taking any action.
There is no discussion, no search, and no action.
There is nothing more bizarre than not being surprised by bizarre things, and this also reflects a society that only commits crimes and does not take responsibility.
The phrase “less than 180 cm is a loser” is a hot topic for almost all men, but do they easily forget the terrible crimes committed by teenagers because they believe that they have nothing to do with them?
However, in today’s Korean society, the fact that “loser” means a loser who cannot fulfill his desire to live in Gangnam has become as clear a truth as the fact that “good” looks and “good” specs are a means to make money.
Today, the call for Korean youth to live as masters of money, not slaves to it, has become more of a formalistic platitude than a call to honor their parents of the past.
We must blame the materialism that seems to reach the sky, but that is not the only reason.
Tolstoy asked, “When is the time that is most precious to you?” and answered, “Right now.” There is no one who cannot understand this simple truth.
However, for teenagers who are deprived of today due to the demands of entering a top university and building a good resume, and for members who live in the absence of a social safety net and are deprived of today again due to anxiety about their future, it is very difficult to expect them to be sincere in their relationships and in their existence today.
When teenagers fall into momentary impulses, the older generation frees themselves from today while dreaming of a future of material success.
For example, many shop tenants in Korea do not view the Yongsan massacre as their own business.
There are other reasons, but in today’s situation, it is not easy to look at social reality with the eyes of a successful person who has made a lot of money, rather than looking at social reality from the perspective of the future.
Just as people who buy lottery tickets dream of winning the lottery and get intoxicated with the idea of what they would be like if they won, forgetting the hardships of today, today I am a poor tenant of a shopping mall, but I have the expectation that I will become a successful businessman in the future.
So, I betray my present self through a future self that is not very likely to come true.
We have become accustomed to living in a society that cannot be faithful to the most precious present.
From the perspective of “the most precious now,” we are already “losers.”
If we are not sincere in our existence once we are born and in the relationships we form, aren’t we losers?
If it is true that he killed his parents and sister because he wanted to live in Gangnam, aren’t we, the contemporaries of such a society, already failed social beings?
In a society where existence is undermined and relationships are destroyed, we may have lost the true encounters that make people human.
Thank you for listening.

 

 

Theme – Cheap and good things

It is said that ‘cheap things are not good’.
Cheap means poor quality.
Biji-tteok is made by mixing rice flour or wheat flour with the leftover bean curd residue, called biji, and then frying it like bindaetteok.
Bija-tteok is a food that shows the poverty of the times when there was a lack of food, and it is also a rice cake. The saying “cheap is bija-tteok” contains the sorrows of the poor who had to choose cheap food because they had no money.
At that time, it was made of cheap ingredients, so both the seller and the buyer agreed that it was cheap and tasteless.
It was sold as “bija-tteok,” and people bought it thinking it was “bija-tteok.”
So, the commerce of the time when people had to eat “bija-tteok,” which was sold cheaply because it was made of cheap ingredients, was rather honest.
These days, the meaning of the phrase “cheap is a bad deal” has changed.
It has a strong connotation of being deceived.
Similar products are often displayed with only the price different.
Consumers are starting to get confused.
No one calls it a bean cake, but it has a different price tag.
This is the aftereffect of globalization.
Capital flows freely, but labor is still trapped behind borders.
The dollar has the same value everywhere, but the value of labor varies from country to country.
The same clothes have different prices depending on which country’s workers made them.
So the country of origin label has become the only explanation for the price.
It is a social phenomenon that treats workers in low-wage countries as “bean curd” even though their skills are not inferior.
“There is no such thing as cheap and good.”
The situation of low-wage workers in the Bangladesh garment factories seems to be shouting this out to the citizens of the so-called well-off countries.
Nearly 40% of the total population earns less than $1 a day, and Bangladeshi workers who earn $40 a month are furious.
They accuse the cheap clothes displayed in discount stores in developed countries of being made with the tears of low-wage workers in developing countries, and accuse those who seek cheap and good things of being hypocrites.
Isn’t the Bangladesh worker crisis a case where clothing and distribution companies concealed the plight of workers and the global community turned a blind eye?
Nowadays, it is not as honest as it was when we used to sell cheap rice cakes.
It is common to hide and turn a blind eye to each other.
I can assert that there is no such thing as cheap and good.
As a consumer, it may seem natural to look for something cheap and good, but it is one-sided.
To do so, someone will have to get sick.
I would like to encourage people to shop like they are voting.
Consume as a citizen, not as a consumer.
Is there a smarter way to do this?
Thank you for listening.

 

 

Topic – Luxury City

The phrase “fostering one’s city into a luxury city” is popping up like mushrooms after a rain.
It is believed that the term “luxury city” first appeared around five to six years ago.
Nowadays, most cities, both large and small, have declared themselves to be luxury cities.
Regardless of the actual level of the city, it is an era in which luxury cities are overflowing across the country.
The word “luxury” is familiar to us and is used for clothes, bags, and shoes.
A masterpiece is a work of art that is of the highest quality, in which both function and beauty are in harmony.
Another symbolic meaning inherent in luxury goods is craftsmanship.
No matter how great a product mass-produced in a factory is, it is not considered a luxury item because it does not contain the sweat and passion of the craftsman.
This is probably why Italy, which has long been a cottage industry, has more luxury goods than other countries.
The phrase we use to advertise our luxury city is a luxury city with the best museums, the best shopping streets, the best apartment complexes, and the best bicycle paths. There are countless slogans that contain concepts of a similar degree.
A luxury city is not one that improves a specific part of the city or has good social infrastructure.
Furthermore, it is also problematic to overemphasize design.
In fact, the term “luxury city” is hard to find anywhere in the world, and it can be thought of as a high-quality city in a broad sense.
However, the common way to consider and benchmark major cities in developed countries as luxury cities is to directly import some prominent designs.
It is similar to the logic that a few eye-catching designs can make a city a luxury city, just as wearing luxury clothes and decorating with jewelry makes a person feel like a luxury person.
Florence, Italy, which has written one of the most brilliant pages in European history, has countless gems.
The true value of Florence is all the more meaningful because it aimed to create the most ideal city based on the humanistic ideas pursued during the Renaissance.
The design itself was not the goal, but was used as a tool for society to realize a higher level of value.
Camillo Sitte, one of the pioneers of modern urban planning, emphasized that urban planning is the highest form of art.
We must stay away from the fragmented theory of luxury cities.
This is because the possibility of transforming a city into a masterpiece in an easy way is slim.

 

 

Topic – Cultural awareness

What is the most painful experience you have had? For me, the experience of being betrayed by a person comes to mind first. Is there any experience as bitter as the emotional wounds that people feel? What is a well-off society? First and foremost, I think that people’s relationships must be built properly.
A society that respects the person even if the person is poor, and a society where I can live with dignity and confidence even if I am poor. How about that? Just thinking about it makes my heart swell. If respect for human beings is always inherent, people will not be evaluated by material things. If all of these things, such as cheating people and trying to deceive people, started with money, it would be too sad if material things made people violent and manipulated them.
The OECD’s description of the ‘community’ can be summarized as ‘the quality of help from outside’. In such a society, the main players who cannot trust each other and help each other are not human beings but material things. People who are not part of such a society are ignored, and so the members of society ignore human relationships and pursue material things at all costs.
Meeting people, forming relationships. All of them are inseparable from material things. We need to eat, drink tea, drink alcohol, and enjoy leisure together. If you think about it, it would be easy to accumulate material things if you were alone. But we are social beings, so we cannot do that. Let’s think about a person who lives alone as the sole master of the universe while keeping up with others. Wasn’t the reason why that person acted that way because of other people? The idea of gathering people after accumulating material things, rather than being ignored because of living alone. That is not an ordinary human relationship.
I think that there must be a certain level of cultural awareness among the people in order to not be ignored even if we live without it and to not lose our own sense of existence. In a society where people have to be suspicious of whether those who approach them while risking their lives to make a fortune are hiding a devil’s trap, I think that no matter how high the national income is, the members of the society cannot live well. A society that is okay with being poor will allow the entire cycle of childbirth, child-rearing, education, marriage, employment, and old age to go smoothly to some extent.

 

 

Topic – Rapid Development

It is becoming increasingly difficult to keep up with the world.
I just bought a new cell phone, but I’m worried about having to change it again.
Even if I change it, I’m worried.
“A better mobile phone will come out soon…” This thought crosses my mind.
I’m afraid that my pocket money will be gone in no time as I try to keep up with the pace of change in the world.
When the words ‘informatization’ and ‘digitization’ were coined, I thought it was just the way things were, but now I feel like they’ve become almost synonymous.
When digital cameras were all the rage, they seemed to be the representative products that led the way in information technology.
With a flood of products with various functions and colors and greatly improved performance, they became like electronic products that are thrown away after a few years.
However, their convenience ushered in an era in which 50 million people take pictures.
It seemed that digital cameras were on the decline after mobile phone cameras soon demonstrated functions that were no less than those of commercial cameras.
For this reason, asking whether there is a camera has become an empty question.
The proliferation of cameras has also destroyed the domain of professionals.
Amateur photographers, who are taking pictures with DSLRs, have forced professional photographers to further specialize and subdivide their fields to prevent amateurs from getting close to them.
The ever-evolving digital cameras are also demanding changes from us.
Our society is still a fast-flowing stream.
When others are moving fast, I get anxious if I’m the only one standing still.
This phenomenon sometimes feels like a price we have to pay to live on this land.
There is no way to eliminate the stress caused by the benefits of civilization.
The only way to deal with it is to be a little insensitive to change.
I applaud the development of South Korea, but I am secretly afraid that the rapid development will be a poison.
We have grown so fast, but the side effects of fast growth have been significant.

 

 

Topic – Wearing fur

Fur looks gorgeous and makes you feel like a diva. It makes you feel like you’ll be gorgeous and feel like a diva if you wear it. I don’t know if that’s the reason. Because of this charm, there are still many fur lovers around me. It’s so warm that I wear it, and I wear it out of a competitive spirit, thinking, “If you can wear it, why can’t I?” Like the Louis Vuitton bag that everyone has, fur has become a must-have item that everyone should have at least one of.
Perhaps because of this, the demand for fur is decreasing in other developed countries, but the demand for fur in Korea has been increasing for several years. The erroneous custom of making assumptions about who will receive a fur at a wedding, and then thinking, “I should receive one too,” is also contributing to the increase in demand for fur. Some friends even say that they should receive a fur as a token of appreciation for raising their son and sending him off to get married. I, too, feel uncomfortable when I see fur clothes, but at the same time, I am attracted to their glamour and want to try them on.
A show was held the other day. There was a fur show and a protest against the fur show. When I used to see fur, I thought it must be expensive and warm, and I thought I would look like a booty boy if I wore one. But I changed my mind. It was a bit shocking to learn that a single fur coat contains 60 to 80 minks and 15 to 20 foxes.
If you wear a fur coat, you’re wearing 70 mink carcasses and 20 fox carcasses. I didn’t normally have a terrible love for animals, but the sheer number of them was actually unsettling. I get scared when I dream of those animals attacking me in droves.
As I lost interest in wearing fur, I also nodded in agreement with the animal rights groups’ claim that “we should not kill animals for our own tastes or fashion, not for survival.” I also feel a sense of self-reproach for why fashion is threatening the survival of animals. If animals are threatened simply because humans are more advanced than animals, aren’t we too cruel to be advanced animals? Considering that animals are also God’s creations, isn’t this another way of animal abuse?
I don’t think that loving animals enough to bring in and raise abandoned dogs is terrible. However, I plan to express my feelings for animals by not wearing fur. The idea that I, too, need a fur coat will eventually increase the demand for fur, and if that is the case, aren’t they preparing to kill foxes and mink?

 

 

Topic – Social systems need to change

Universities are one of the places where attempts to eliminate uncertainty are most fiercely fought. But what if I told you that a university diploma is no longer as effective as it used to be in reducing future uncertainty? You would nod your head in agreement a hundred times. Just like a gate that everyone must pass through, so is a university. All Koreans must go through college to make a living.
When you think about what you can do in Korea with a high school diploma, it is difficult to come up with a clear answer. Also, when you hear the story of a high school graduate, you first wonder what the story is behind it. Suddenly, you transform into a person with a story. This is the current state of Korea.
This is also true of the reality of American universities. They seem to be twins of ours. Would you believe that even if you graduate from a prestigious university such as an Ivy League university, you are not guaranteed a job? It costs more than $250,000 to graduate from most private universities, and parents and students are left with a mountain of debt after graduation. The American university bureaucracy has become bloated, and despite the high level of criticism, it is lecturers who fill the positions vacated by professors who are taking sabbaticals. Despite these problems, the university industry in the United States and South Korea as a whole is thriving. We are afraid in this game where we do not know who will succeed and who will win.
However, if we think about it in reverse, fairness and integrity are possible only when there is uncertainty.
In order to achieve fairness and integrity, we need legal mechanisms to support this, as well as slogans, declarations, and movements. Equally important is recognizing the value of the tension that comes from uncertainty and restoring the uncertainty that has been undermined by vested interests. I agree that the university’s doors should be made higher. Colleges with insufficient enrollment should be abolished.
A university that is not for everyone, but for someone. I hope that this university is open to everyone, not just the children of the upper class. Why don’t we select students based on their talents and their future, rather than simply judging them based on their grades? A university that does not look at students who have not been admitted with pity, but with the understanding that it was simply a choice made by the individual student. If the overall social system is not changed, students’ depression caused by infinite competition and entrance exam stress will continue.
Thank you for listening.