"The Odyssey," the Christopher Nolan film released this summer, brings Homer's ancient epic — handed down for nearly 3,000 years — to the screen with a modern sensibility. Odysseus, the hero returning from the Trojan War, makes his way toward his homeland of Ithaca through countless trials and temptations. Waiting there are his wife, Penelope, and his son, Telemachus, who have long awaited his return. The Odyssey is a grand epic of gods and monsters, war and adventure, but at the heart of the story lies a fundamentally human aspiration: the return home. It is the long journey of a man who leaves a harsh battlefield, returns to his homeland, embraces his family and reclaims his place.
Thousands of years later, family remains an important starting point in our lives and a refuge we can return to with an easy heart. What has changed considerably from the past, however, is the shape of the family and the scene that greets us during the holidays, when homecomings are concentrated. Around this time, ahead of Chuseok, people exchange greetings such as, "Where are you going over the holiday?" — and it has become natural for many to head off to a travel destination rather than to the family home. Instead of a bustling holiday with relatives, some spend the time with close friends or with pets, another kind of family. Households that do not hold ancestral rites are no longer an unfamiliar sight. This does not mean family bonds have weakened. It means the ways of forming relationships and living life have become that much more diverse and abundant.
The reality of our society as reflected in national statistics also clearly bears out this structural change. Single-person households account for 36.6% of all ordinary households, making them the most common household type, and one- and two-person households together make up two out of every three homes. Multicultural households and, in a super-aged society, households of older adults living alone are also rising sharply. Along with changes in the size and form of the family, the very way people live together and care for one another is being fundamentally reshaped.
The more varied the face of society becomes, the more sophisticated the methods of understanding it must be. In a single person's life, income and jobs, housing and health, education and care never exist apart from one another. Looking only at fragmentary statistical figures makes it difficult to grasp the full complexity of each citizen's life. That is why we must accurately capture social change through national statistics while also organically connecting administrative data scattered across ministries, so that the background of that change and the realities of people's lives can be examined in three dimensions. If statistics are a map that charts our society's present coordinates, then connecting data is the insight to read, on that map, where people's lives are heading.
The core duty of the National Data Office is precisely this: to complete that map in ever finer detail and to clear a path so that living, breathing data reaches the policy front lines that need it, when they need it. Supporting the use of high-quality data that breaks down barriers between ministries — to identify new social problems early and to resolve issues affecting people's daily lives — is the very essence of data governance.
Just as Odysseus' long and arduous journey was ultimately bound for Ithaca, where his family waited, the destination of the journey taken by national statistics and data is always people. Statistics reflect the times honestly, and data warmly connects the precious lives scattered within them. This Chuseok, I hope that every family of our era, each living in its own shape, is captured without exception on the map that statistics provide, and that such data leads to more attentive policy and better lives.
