A few months ago, one of my students in the English department told me that her friends in the Business Administration department kept asking her “Why do you study literature?” or “What is the use of literature?” Since then I have been pondering anew the ‘use’ or rather the ‘value’ of literature. But the best answers for this question have already been provided, not surprisingly, by writers and poets. For example, George Eliot, renowned nineteenth century novelist, declares that “the greatest benefit we owe to the artist . . . is the extension of our sympathies.” The Romantic poet P. B. Shelly also emphasizes that literature enables us to understand and sympathize with other human beings. Rather than remain imprisoned in one’s own limited self, one can expand and enrich that self by incorporating other people’s experiences and values. Literature can thus be considered ‘useful’ in helping us enhance our sympathies and thereby understand the perspectives of other human beings. Indeed, literature--like all true art--helps us know what it means to be human.  At the time when I had the conversation with my student, this country was in political turmoil over the issue of importing American beef, and concerned citizens were taking part in candlelight demonstrations. President Lee was elected on his promise of a “new leap forwards” in Korea’s economic development. Yet in opening the domestic market to beef from the US, he seemed to see only the hypothetical economic benefits. The president, who had majored in Business Administration and built his career as a CEO before trying his hand at politics, evidently viewed the situation only in terms of profit and practicality. This must have blinded him to the complexity of human desires involved. The ensuing candlelight vigils could be attributed in part to the president’s failure to understand that, besides the purely economic, there are other, and more important, values and meanings at stake such as human dignity, national pride, and the right to live a healthy and happy life. I believe this dismal political failure could also be due to the fact that the government was filled with only economics-oriented personnel (5 of 6 presidential secretaries had an educational background in economics). Their incapacity to assess subtle, delicate, extremely complicated, and even capricious human desires may have brought such a huge conflict between citizens and government. The understanding of human beings and their desires is precisely what literature, as well as the humanities in general, aims at.  At this point, I want to tell students at this school to read many good works of literature. Literature will provide them with deep insight into human nature, which will help them immensely in whatever future career they choose.