“As many people have experienced, difficult problems are often worked on by a sleep committee overnight and then solved in the morning.”
John Steinbeck, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, said this through the character Pona in “Sweet Thursday.” Steinbeck likened the miraculous phenomenon of solving problems while a certain part of the brain is awake while sleeping to the activities of a ‘sleep committee’ unknown to the person concerned. Perhaps Steinbeck had such experiences more often than the average person.
There have been relatively many cases shared in the scientific community where sleep has solved difficult problems. The most famous story is that the molecular structure of benzene came to mind in a dream.
‘Dream’ of expanding a dangerous road with constant congestion for 30 years
However, even in fields other than science, we can come across solutions in dreams, like someone making a revelation. Seongdong-gu Mayor Jeong Won-oh recently revealed such an experience. In an essay he contributed to the newspaper, Mayor Jeong said, “In my dream, the clue to the solution was put together like a puzzle, and based on that hint, I was eventually able to secure the budget and start digging for the first time in 30 years.” (‘I do my best’, Korea Economic Daily, November 25, 2025)
The challenge for those 30 years was the narrow two-lane road from Geumho Station to the Geumnam Market intersection. There was no sidewalk on about 110m of this road, which was called ‘market road’. It was dangerous because cars and people were tangled together, and it was a bottleneck that was always congested.
Road expansion was a high-order equation. It was difficult to find a way to widen the road, and securing a budget of tens of billions of won and persuading merchants located in the area targeted for expansion were not easy. A hint to this difficult problem was given in a dream, and eventually the narrow section was expanded to three lanes with sidewalks and opened on March 30, 2022.
The molecular structure of benzene came to mind in a German chemist’s dream.
Case studies from the scientific community are also worth referencing. The scientist who discovered the secret of benzene was Friedrich August Kekule, a 19th century German chemist. Even after thinking about the molecular structure of benzene for a long time, he could not find an answer. One day, Kekule fell asleep by the fire and had a dream in which he saw a snake twirling around with its tail bitten. Taking a hint from this, he came up with a hexagonal benzene ring.
Kim Sang-hyeon, a professor in the Department of Mathematics at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science, encountered in a dream the answer to a problem he had been wrestling with during his doctoral course. Professor Kim recalled that one summer day, “in my dream, hexagons, curved surfaces, and alphabet variables came to mind like pictures.” (JoongAng Ilbo, 23.08.03.) He said, “I got up right away and wrote it down in my notebook,” and “I didn’t know if it was right, but I couldn’t find anything wrong right away.” He soon fell asleep again and woke up a while later to check it out with a clear mind. The ‘dreamy’ picture was exactly the curved surface he had been looking for for a long time. He was able to write a doctoral thesis.
Long-term concentration and earnestness produce inspiration.
The inspiration that comes to a sleeping brain is not a coincidence. It is a fortune that can only be encountered through long-term, earnest concentration and efforts to find the answer.
District Mayor Jeong Won-oh said, “I believe that the answer appeared even in a dream due to repeated worries and earnestness.” He explained that he was so absorbed that he “meeted countless experts, looked at drawings all night long, and redrawed the route dozens of times in my head.”
Professor Sanghyun Kim also suggested immersion as a prerequisite. The title of the essay is ‘Dream of Immersion’. He summarized his efforts at the time, saying, “As a doctoral student, I came to the lab every day and struggled with just one problem.”
If you focus highly on finding a solution for a long period of time, your brain will suddenly find the answer. The answer may come to mind while coming down the stairs, someone’s words may be a hint, or, as the focus of this article, it may appear in a dream.
The brain is active in multiple layers… Pay attention to your subconscious mind
Much research has been done on the fact that sleep relieves mental and physical fatigue and regenerates the body. In contrast, the phenomenon that some parts of the brain are active even while we sleep, and in fact display greater abilities than when our eyes are open, has not yet been studied. This is because such experiences occur unexpectedly in some people, and the results are limited to being known only afterward.
I believe that this article is meaningful even to the extent of organizing concepts. In The Conquest of Happiness, British mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell explained the phenomenon of a highly concentrated brain finding and suggesting solutions without our being conscious of it, as the function of ‘unconsciousness.’ However, it seems more appropriate to classify this as ‘subconscious’ rather than ‘unconscious’. This is because the answer is sought based on a solution command given to the brain in advance by our strong will.
““Focus your thoughts and then tell your brain to proceed from the bottom.”
Our brain is multilayered. The basic activity is done consciously on the surface, and underneath, tasks previously given to the brain by Nuri are being carried out without our being conscious of it. The ‘spontaneous retrieval’ phenomenon we commonly experience shows such activity. This is a phenomenon in which a previously searched word suddenly comes to mind without any conscious effort.
How do we get our subconscious to work even when we are not conscious of it, even while we sleep? “It involves concentrating your mind on something for hours, even days, and then telling your brain to work on that task from the ground up,” Russell explained.
We all face problems big and small. The level of difficulty may be too high. However, this does not mean that we should give up. If you take your time and struggle with it persistently, inspiration may appear in your dreams late at night.
