World’s Strangest Competition: South Korea Holds Its 10th Annual Space-Out Competition

Can you sit down for 90 minutes doing absolutely nothing? South Korea holds a competition annually where participants compete to do nothing. The contestants sit down for 90 minutes without checking their phones or falling asleep. South Korea held its 10th annual Space-Out competition on May 12, 2024. The competition has been happening since 2014 and this year’s had more participants with the Seoul Metropolitan Government including 10 more teams.

This year’s Space-Out competition marked the 10th anniversary. A total of 77 teams consisting of 117 participants took part in the competition. The event was held at Jamsu Bridge, Banpo Hangang Park. This was a remarkable turnout after about 2,800 teams that had initially applied. The winner of this year’s Space-Out competition was Kwon So-ah, a freelance broadcaster. She was crowned the winner from audience votes and the most stable heart rate.

The rules of this game are pretty straightforward - sit down and do nothing. All participants need to remain still for 90 minutes. Falling asleep or checking your phone gets you disqualified. Contestants are also prohibited from singing, laughing, chatting, dancing, or taking unauthorized beverages.

Participants can ask for water, massage, or fanned using colored cards. For instance, a blue card means you need water, a yellow card means you need to be cooled down, and a red card means you need a massage.

This is a competition for people from a wide range of professions. Some wore uniforms that reflected their jobs during the competition. Others exprresed their personality by wearing watermelon costumes, sauna outfits, and prison uniforms.

The winner of this competition is chosen based on the most stable heart rate and votes from the audience watching. the heart rate of the contestants is checked every 15 minutes. The contestant with the most stable or decreasing heart rate gets the highest scores. The champion of the competition gets a certificate and a trophy while the second and third positions get a certificate.

Space-Out competition was founded in 2014 by Woopsyang, a visual artist in Korea. The motivation behind creating this event was to promote the importance of ‘doing nothing’ in today’s demanding society. The artist had also suffered severe burnout and hence came up with the idea of creating space to pause everything in our busy routines ‘space out’.

People are glued to their smartphones from morning until night, leaving no real downtime. The constant influx of information in our stress-filled, competitive world prompted me to organize this competition as a means for people to find a moment of rest,

Woopsyang

South Korea is known for the longest working hours in the world. Despite the 52-hour weekly work limit that was introduced in 2018, workers still experience exhaustion and overwork. The government had suggested lengthening the maximum weekly working time to 69 hours in 2023, but this didn't work.

Additionally, students in South Korea go through stress with long study hours. According to a government survey in 2022 that targeted people aged 19 to 34 years one in every three young people experiences burnout. The results of the burnout are as follows:

• Career anxiety: 37.6%;
• Work overload: 21.1%;
• Work scepticism: 14.0%;
• Work-life imbalance: 12.4%

The Space-out competition aims to help people take a break from all that. Today, the competition has gained a global reach. Woopsyang vision is to create an international spacing-out day where the whole world will momentarily pause and do nothing even if it's for a shorter period. I look forward to that day, after all, who doesn't want to rest and alleviate stress?