In TEN THOUSAND DREAMS, a 15-minute choral composition, Sungsil Ryu departs from South Korea’s historical lack of natural resources and asks how that shaped the country’s social imagination. Growing up at a time when globalization was promoted as a national imperative, the artist witnessed how human potential became a substitute for what the land itself could not provide. People were encouraged to dream expansively, become global talents, leave, and return transformed. This collective aspiration was exerted through education, media, and internalised social expectations.

Suspended in mid-air, static scissor lifts form the stage. Atop them stand twelve protagonists appearing as ghostly dummies, while three songs, composed by music producer HWI, fill the space. Each track centers a different archetype: a child urged to travel the world and return magnificently; a skeleton pushed to run and dream boldly at the age of ninety-five; and a girl walking an endless flat road, carrying a task left unfinished for five hundred years. Together, they form a generational triptych. Although each figure is different, all are subjected to the same relentless demand to dream, produce, and move forward.

The Korean lyrics weave together the vocabulary of a demanding era, with references to global citizenship, national development, brand names, Western names, and the passing of time, exposing a capitalist obsession with constant growth and expansion. With children’s voices naïvely singing about diversity and freedom, the melodic line cynically evokes an uplifting sense of hope and innocence.