Science Debates

Overview#

Between 2023 and 2025 I competed in a handful of science debate competitions — Seoul city preliminaries and school-wide rounds. These aren’t coding projects, but they scratch the same itch as everything else on this page: pick something I don’t fully understand, dig into it, and try to make a case.

Here’s each topic, what I argued, and how it went.

2023 — Turkey earthquake (Seoul city preliminary)#

I dug into the scale and causes of the 2023 Turkey–Syria earthquake, then tried to draw out what it actually means for earthquake preparedness back in Korea.

2023 — Fukushima wastewater discharge#

This one was all over the news at the time, so I worked through the actual science behind the treated-water release — separating what the data said from the controversy around it — and presented on it.

2024 — AI regulation (school competition)#

Topic: Should AI regulation come before technological development?

My position: Yes. AI doesn’t actually “think” — it pattern-matches. Developers can’t predict misuse. Training data can leak private info. Without rules first, you get deepfakes, hiring bias (Amazon’s scrapped recruiting AI), and Samsung banning ChatGPT after an internal leak.

Won silver (은상) in the grade 2 category.

2024 — The Anthropocene (Seoul city preliminary)#

Topic: What marker substance best defines the Anthropocene?

Compared candidates (including plutonium from nuclear tests) and argued carbon-14 is the most appropriate — nuclear testing in the 1950s spiked atmospheric C-14, and industrial emissions shifted the ratio enough to distinguish the Anthropocene from the Holocene.

2025 — Ecological overshoot day (school competition)#

Topic: How to delay Earth’s ecological overshoot day.

I argued for leaning harder into solar power, and backed it with projections on how shifting the energy mix could push the overshoot date later in the year.