Professor Kim Kyung-il explains that stress and loneliness both stem from people and relationships, but they are resolved in different ways. Loneliness is not solved simply by meeting lots of people; you need to use your time alone meaningfully and be able to marvel at your own growth. Stress should be handled not by vowing "I won't get stressed," but through small, concrete actions that reclaim a sense of control and by taking care of your body.
1. Korea's Stress and Japan's Loneliness
Professor Kim shares the idea that psychological research distinguishes Korea as a relatively stress-centered society and Japan as a society that feels loneliness more acutely. Of course, this does not mean Koreans never feel lonely or that Japanese people never feel stress. It means the two countries differ in the proportion and cultural shape of the psychological difficulties they experience.
He explains that Japan developed over a long period as a culture in which internal order and discipline were paramount, and as a result there is a strong tendency to avoid intruding on other people's territory. Korea, by contrast, adapted through a history of foreign invasions and rapid change, becoming a society where quick, proactive adaptability mattered more than internal discipline. So while Japanese culture places great importance on "not crossing the line," Korea developed a culture of actively involving oneself in other people's affairs.
"In Japan, internal order and discipline are extremely important. People don't cross the line. They don't meddle in other people's business."
"Korean culture crosses lines all the time. We even joke that we're a 'nation of meddlers.'"
The professor also notes recent indicators showing Korea's life expectancy overtaking Japan's. Since Koreans have long seen Japan as the quintessential long-lived nation, this is a surprising shift, and he says part of the reason can be inferred from the difference between stress and loneliness.
Psychologically, stress can be managed to some degree even when it is hard, as long as you receive social support and find ways to cope. Loneliness, however, arises when there is no one around or relationships have been severed, so escaping that state is itself much harder. The more severe the loneliness, the more it can harm health and lifespan, and he points out that some places, like the UK, even address loneliness at the government level.
"Being lonely is scarier than stress."
"Stress can be managed as you cope and social support comes in, but loneliness is truly hard to manage and hard to get out of. Why? Because there's no one around you."
2. Know Your Social Energy Instead of Just Meeting More People
Many people ask whether solving loneliness means actively meeting lots of people. The professor says he cannot simply answer "yes" or "no." For some people meeting others helps, but for others it only increases fatigue and burden, making relationships even harder.
He compares this to alcohol tolerance. Drinking within your limit can bring enjoyment or social benefit, but going past it causes problems. Relationships are the same: you need to know how many new people you can meet in a week or a month.
"If I'm lonely, I have to know how many people I can meet in a month or a week before I can decide on meeting people next."
Professor Kim says he comes out as introverted on personality tests. He addresses the misconception that introverts dislike people or are shy with strangers. Introversion does not mean being unable to meet people; it is closer to meaning your limit on how often and how much energy you can spend meeting people enjoyably and productively is different.
He says he does not share a meal or engage deeply with strangers more than twice a week. At the first meeting he can be lively enough and make a good impression, but by the second his social energy is depleted and his fatigue starts to show.
"Because I don't have much social energy."
"It's best to think of sociability as the capacity of a fuel tank."
Especially from middle age onward, knowing the "tank capacity" of your sociability becomes important. In adolescence or young adulthood, people will more or less understand if you are tired or make mistakes, but at an age when maturity is expected, treating people inconsistently can hurt relationships. So you must figure out the density of relationships you can sustain without overextending yourself in order to prevent social burnout.
"Once you reach middle age, you should be able to answer and state the capacity of your sociability."
It can also be risky to concentrate all your emotional expectations on a few very close friends for the sake of eliminating loneliness. If you grow distant from one of them, the sense of betrayal and loss can become overwhelming. The professor advises being grateful for loose and diverse relationships as much as close ones. Neighbors you exchange light greetings with, acquaintances from hobby groups, and friends working in other fields can all become an important safety net in life.
3. How to Tell Loneliness from Solitude
To the question "Do I really have to overcome loneliness? Can't I just enjoy it instead?" the professor explains the difference between loneliness and solitude, something philosophers have long pondered.
Solitude is a state in which your thoughts keep flowing while you are alone, and you fill the time by reflecting on your life. Loneliness, by contrast, is closer to a state in which even your thinking stops amid the feeling of being abandoned. That is why, he says, psychology can describe loneliness as "something you suffer" and solitude as "something you enjoy."
"Solitude is continuing to think during your own time alone. Loneliness is a state where you've been abandoned alone, with no thoughts—where thinking has stopped."
Enjoying solitude does not mean forcing yourself to endure being alone. It is the ability to know what to do when you are alone and how to use that time meaningfully. Reading, hobbies, cultural activities, exercise, and leisure activities are not just ways to kill time; they form the foundation that lets you fill your time alone on your own. 😊
"If you can't spend your time alone meaningfully, you end up unable to bear the loneliness and fleeing into bad relationships—the worst vicious cycle."
If you grab onto any relationship because you cannot bear loneliness, you are more likely to fight, be used, or be disappointed in that relationship. Then, after getting hurt, you cut off the relationship and retreat into loneliness again, and the vicious cycle repeats. So rather than choosing relationships to avoid loneliness, you must become someone who can comfortably bear time alone in order to build healthy relationships.
Still, some people remain lonely no matter how many hobbies they take up. Here the professor mentions the life of struggling for recognition that is strong in Korean society. This is a way of living in which you can only confirm the meaning of your existence by receiving others' recognition and praise.
"It means my existence only has meaning if someone else recognizes me."
Recognition from others is not bad in itself. Everyone wants to be praised and respected. The problem is when you entrust your identity and the value of your life solely to other people's evaluations. Borrowing a phrase from Dr. Kim Jung-woon, the professor puts it more simply: "a society desperate for other people's admiration."
"Not a life desperate for others' admiration, but a life in which I have something to admire about myself."
So if hobbies and leisure become a competition to show off to others, they will not resolve loneliness. What matters is the experience of growth: learning things you did not know and discovering a self that is a little better than before. Activities that let you marvel at yourself—"Wow, I can do this too"—are a more fundamental solution than hobbies pursued to win a competition.
4. An Unexpected Foundation for Reducing Loneliness: Sleep
As a surprising way to overcome loneliness, the professor offers sleeping well. Psychological research shows that people who do not sleep well tend to feel loneliness more intensely. Studies have continued on whether lonely people sleep poorly or whether poor sleep makes people lonely, but he explains that it is at least clear that sleep deprivation is strongly linked to loneliness.
"People who don't sleep well are more likely to be lonely. So you need to sleep well to avoid being lonely."
Sleep is not merely lying in bed; it is a skill and a competency that involves learning the environment and habits needed to sleep well. The professor points out that lying there aimlessly because you can't fall asleep is like staring blankly at a book and complaining that nothing sinks in. To sleep well, you need to examine your sleep habits, know what disrupts your sleep, and make a consistent effort.
"Sleeping properly, and knowing what I need to do to sleep well, is a very important skill and competency."
The key point is not to interpret loneliness solely as a matter of the mind, but to approach it through your physiological and physical state as well. When you are tired and short on sleep, meeting people, spending time alone, and handling emotions can all become much more overwhelming.
5. The Core of Stress Is Loss of Control
The professor says few pieces of advice are as unhelpful as "Don't get stressed." Stress is not something you eliminate through willpower; it is something you must first understand and then handle.
Stress has many dictionary definitions, but he explains that its core is the negative emotions that arise when you feel you have lost control. What matters here is not only that the emotions are negative, but that you feel you have no power or choice to change the situation.
"Stress is basically an umbrella term for the negative emotions I feel when I've lost control."
"If you have control, you feel less stress even when you go through something quite hard. If you have almost no control, you feel stress strongly."
The reason it is so stressful when a boss ignores you or says something insulting at work is that it is hard to push back immediately and hard to change the situation as you wish. The professor offers an absurd thought experiment. If poking a doll bearing your boss's name with a thumbtack actually made your boss feel pain, then no matter how nasty their words, you would feel you had complete control, and your stress would drop dramatically.
This example is not a recommendation to seek actual revenge; it is a metaphor to show that the core of stress lies in a sense of helplessness rather than the other person's attack itself.
That said, simply telling someone "take control" is also far too abstract. So he recommends that when you feel stressed, you move into a small, concrete situation you can control. For example, walk down a side street, a back road, or a nearby neighborhood alley you don't usually take. It is a small change, but you get to choose where to go, how far to walk, and what to look at.
"Whenever I'm stressed, I suggest to myself that we take a small, concrete path together."
"Right there—a side street, a back road, an alley in the next neighborhood I've never walked."
Trying to solve big stress with a big change can actually be dangerous. If someone exhausted by work problems suddenly sets off backpacking alone through Europe, they may lose even more control amid an unfamiliar language and environment, and their stress may explode. Therefore, recovering from stress requires these three things together:
- Change: Step away from the current stressful environment for a while.
- Control: Do something you can choose and regulate yourself.
- Small, concrete action: Use a low-burden method you can carry out right away.
"For stress, all three—change, control, and something small and concrete—have to be in place together."
There is also no universal solution that works for every kind of stress. For some stress walking is effective, while in other situations conversation, sleep, or a good meal may help more. Ultimately what you need is a personal stress database—your own recovery know-how, built by recording and learning about your reactions.
6. Care for Stress Like a Physical Wound
The professor explains that the brain does not process physical pain and social pain completely separately. The brain regions activated when you break a bone or injure your body overlap substantially with those activated when you suffer from rejection or insult in a relationship.
"At the hardware level, our brain doesn't draw much of a distinction between the pain of broken bones and torn flesh and the pain we go through because of people."
So it is inappropriate to view stress as something that happens because "your mental strength is weak" and to try to overcome it through the mind alone. Just as you would eat well, sleep well, loosen up your body, and support blood circulation after a physical injury, you should recover from stress by taking care of your body.
"It's the same when you're stressed. You eat well, sleep well, and unwind well, like someone who's been physically hurt."
Caution is also needed with the habit of relieving stress with alcohol. Alcohol is fundamentally a depressant; at first it seems to relieve tension, but at the same time it loosens the brakes on your emotions and speech. So if you drink with coworkers while angry, you may pour out excessive resentment and complaints on the spot, and then suffer secondary stress the next day, wondering, "Why did I do that?"
"First of all, you need to understand that alcohol is a depressant."
If you do drink after being stressed by work, he advises that it is better to meet someone who doesn't know much about your workplace. Drinking with coworkers can make everyone's emotions run hotter, but explaining things to someone in an entirely different line of work leads you to organize the situation more objectively on your own.
The professor says that to relieve stress from the university, he goes to see a friend who runs an auto repair shop. That friend has nothing to do with the university organization, so he doesn't really know terms like "university president" or "academic calendar." The professor says that in the process of explaining the situation step by step, he sometimes bursts out laughing and ends up reconsidering the other side's position and his own share of responsibility.
"Even if I'm upset with the university president, he'll ask, 'What's a president?' And right there I crack up."
"They must have had their reasons. Ah, right. I bear some of the responsibility too."
In this way, to handle stress it is important to build, in ordinary times, a diverse and loose network of relationships that is not confined to your workplace or family. That way, when problems arise, there are people who can offer a different perspective and a different atmosphere.
7. Don't Take It Out on the People Closest to You
A habit to be especially careful of under stress is taking your anger out on someone who feels like an easy target. This happens most readily with family, partners, old friends, or kind coworkers who seem likely to understand you.
The professor points out that people commonly use the word "pushover" for foolish people, but in reality they often treat people who are smart yet good-natured as pushovers. Because the other person seems unlikely to fight back or likely to put up with it, they pour their anger and stress onto that person.
"There are quite a lot of cases where people mistake someone who is smart yet good-natured for a pushover—which, in the end, means they themselves are the ones thinking foolishly."
But if you keep repeating this habit, the good people are the first to leave you. Hurting those close to you to relieve stress gradually devastates your network of relationships and deepens your loneliness.
"Because if I mainly take my stress out on people I see as pushovers, the good people are the first to leave me."
The professor says that if only bad people remain around you, you should consider the possibility that it's not because only such people were there from the start, but because you yourself pushed the good people away. It is a warning that the way you relieve stress can ultimately determine the quality of your relationships and even your own loneliness.
8. The Less Time You Have, the More You Should Prepare Small Recovery Actions
To people who say "I don't have time to relieve stress," the professor poses a somewhat playful but realistic question.
"Then how did you manage to go to the bathroom?"
Even with just enough time to go to the bathroom, you may not fully relieve stress, but you can signal to your brain, "I'm taking care of myself right now, and I'm trying to get out of this stress." What matters is not a long vacation or a grand plan, but finding small recovery actions you can do within the time currently available to you.
"Stress is never relieved by big methods or long stretches of time."
Professor Kim says he prepares different recovery methods depending on how much time he has.
- When he has 30 minutes, he eats kalguksu (knife-cut noodle soup). He can't explain exactly why, but for him kalguksu is a food that puts his mind at ease.
- When he has 5 minutes, he massages or kneads his body.
- When he has only 1 minute, he takes 5–10 deep breaths.
- He pulls out different methods to match the length of time—5 minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, and so on.
"For me, kalguksu is a food that cleanses the soul."
"Because my brain has an associative memory of feeling a sense of relaxation every time I eat kalguksu."
Repeating these small actions makes the brain feel it has not been neglected. Instead of being completely overwhelmed by stress and giving up, you can build a cooperative relationship between yourself and your brain.
"Hey, Kim Kyung-il, you really do put in the effort. I like that. I'll do my best too. I won't give up in the face of stress."
9. Closing: How You Care for Yourself Changes Your Relationships and Your Life
The core message of this video is not to treat loneliness and stress as mere "weakness of mind." Loneliness can be eased through the ability to fill time alone with growth and meaning, and through diverse connections rather than clinging only to close relationships.
Rather than vowing to eliminate stress, you should handle it through small, concrete actions you can control. Eating well, sleeping well, loosening up your body, sorting out your emotions within safe relationships, and preparing your own recovery methods matched to the amount of time you have are, in the end, the most realistic solutions.