'The Community 2' Leah and Luna: "Understanding each other's circumstances broadened our world"

Interview with Luna and Leah of "The Community 2"

Belonging to a group changed their sense of right and wrong
"Someone has to trust first to break the cycle of distrust"
"Understanding each other matters more than winning or losing"

Park Seseung (left), winner of Wavve's survival reality show "The Community 2: The Invisible Hand," and fellow contestant Shin Hyewon, a JTBC reporter, met in Yeouido, Seoul, on the 20th. Courtesy of Wavve.

"I thought only the group I belonged to was good."

Park Seseung (Luna), the ultimate winner of Wavve's reality show "The Community 2: The Invisible Hand," said this in an interview held in Yeouido, Seoul, on October 20. He said that other contestants' choices looked different when he was part of a group and when he was left alone. Shin Hyewon (Leah) looked back on the moments when she was torn between winning and the principles she had set for herself.

"The Community 2" is a social experiment-style survival show in which contestants with different values form groups over eight nights and nine days and compete for survival and prize money. Park Seseung, who was a mole for the Gold Team, became the White Team's first leader, and Shin Hyewon later led the White Team. In the end, Park Seseung, the last remaining member of the Gold Team, exercised his right to attack and took home about 75 million won. Shin Hyewon survived until the final episode.

At first, Park Seseung focused on surviving and entertaining viewers. But as he grew closer to his White Team teammates, he chose people over his own interests. "Once I actually got into the game, I realized I was someone who really loved people," he said. "In the end, the human being Park Seseung came out. I grew fond of my teammates and followed my heart."

Things changed after he returned to the Gold Team. Left alone, he began reflecting on the sense of belonging he had enjoyed until then. "I realized I had been like a greenhouse plant, sheltered in a stable group. I didn't know how to endure the pressure of feeling that every group except mine was hostile," Park Seseung said. At the time, the other group's choices felt like violence, but after watching the show, he came to understand that they, too, had their own judgments and reasons.

He also realized that belonging to a group can change even one's standards for judging right and wrong. "In an individual game, I feel guilty when I pursue only my own interests. But when I'm part of a group, I think I'm doing it for the person next to me, so it feels like the right thing to do," Park Seseung said.

Park Seseung, winner of Wavve's survival variety show "The Community 2: The Invisible Hand," met in Yeouido, Seoul, on the 20th. Courtesy of Wavve.

For Shin Hyewon, "the common good" was also a question without an easy answer. "Where do I end and my group or community begin? It seems instinctive to feel more affection and responsibility toward people close to us," she said. On the show, the contestants repeatedly had to make choices involving principles and outcomes, as well as individual ability and social structures.

Shin Hyewon, a JTBC reporter who has covered politics and current affairs, initially expected her values to be close to meritocracy. Reporting is also a profession where people face daily deadlines and are evaluated on their performance. But whether rewards based on ability alone can resolve every contradiction in society was a separate question. "Every day, I saw how my words and actions didn't match," she admitted.

Conversations with people she would not normally have had the chance to meet also prompted her to reflect on herself. "These days, it's easy for people to reinforce only their own opinions within the communities they belong to and the algorithms they encounter. Here, I had to listen all the way through to people whose views differed from mine," Shin Hyewon said. "As I listened, there were things I could understand." Even when they were off camera, the contestants continued talking and learned about one another's upbringings and circumstances.

After becoming the White Team's leader, Shin Hyewon decided to offer what she had first in order to earn the team's trust. That was why she gave the Red Team 10 lives. "People won't trust you just because you tell them to. I thought I had to show how much I was willing to give up of what I had in order to get a response," she explained.

She followed the same principle when it came to issuing jewels for the final time. Shin Hyewon could have increased the prize money by issuing additional jewels, but she set the amount to zero. She had watched distrust grow between the groups through war and negotiations. "The show ends, but I thought that in our lives, someone has to show trust first. That's the only way to break the chain of anxiety. I wanted to end things by upholding trust, at least in the final moments," she said.

Shin Hyewon, a JTBC reporter and the final survivor of Wavve's survival reality show "The Community 2: The Invisible Hand," met in Yeouido, Seoul, on the 20th. Courtesy of Wavve.

Shin Hyewon picked the moment after winning the war when she said, "We won. But I feel like I'm going to throw up," as the most honest one. "Winning mattered, and I had been pursuing it, but I wondered whether this was the kind of victory I wanted. I also wanted the process to be beautiful," she said. 

 

"I don't think this program divides people into good and bad. Everyone is just doing their best where they are. I hope viewers will also see people struggling because they have broken their own principles. That's what most closely resembles the real lives we live."

We asked the two contestants again what victory meant to them. Park Seseung replied, "What matters more than whom you pushed down to get ahead is how much wider each person's world has become." Shin Hyewon used whether she could accept her own choices as her standard. "If you've thought things through and struggled, and then made a play you can accept and justify to yourself, that in itself is a victory," she said.

Park Seseung said he wanted to uphold in real life what he had learned on the show. "Even if it's hard to change your choices, if you listen to what other people have to say and put yourself in their shoes, maybe you can at least think, 'I can see how that might be the case.'"

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.