Ode to Love

Dear Love,

I don’t know how long it has been since from the last time I called your name. It’s been too long that I can’t remember. Because you are so famous and seems like everyone around the world knows you a lot, I merely had a chance to talk with you. Of course, it was also my fault to have lazy relationship with you. I also was afraid to be caught by anyone while talking to you. It’s not that I am ashamed of being a friend of you; I was afraid of prejudices people will have after hearing our relationship that the man like me would ever get to be a friend of you; it seem odd even for me. I seem quite cold, ruthless and rough, you know. On the other hand, you are the perfect opposite of me. I too sometimes wonder how a man like me could have been a friend of you.

I think I met you first when I was in fifth grade of elementary school. Before then, I heard about you indirectly by hearing other people talking about you. Back then, you were told to be quite romantic, cool, and awesome. In fact, that was the reason why I never reached you before: I thought only handsome boys and beautiful girls were allowed to be friends of you. I knew myself a lot, and I knew that I don’t fulfill those requirements to be your friend. But suddenly, you came to me without a knock. I remember it was a girl in my class who introduced you to me. You girls came to me so fast that I couldn’t even blink my eyes, but also you girls vanished within a second. That sure made me to wonder a lot about you, and it didn’t take long for me to know that your first name is “lonely”.

Ever since then I searched for you so eagerly, but you never even showed your shadow. Now that I try to walk away, you show up your faces. Ah, you complicated one!

Maybe you came to me now to hear my explanation about hiding your existence from my people. Well, as I said before, I am too shy and you are too famous to be revealed. I thought confronting you in front of everyone would hurt both of us. Seems like not satisfied about my explanation, huh?

OK! I admit that I was too selfish. I was so selfish that I didn’t reveal you because I didn’t want to get hurt. But please know that the concern of making you hurt was also the reason for my hesitation to reveal your existence.

Now answer my question. Why do you always easily fall into people who smile at me? That makes me really hard to find you. Please just don’t hang around a lot. Please just stick to one place. Also, please be clear at least to me. In case of revealing you, I must at least know where you are. But having you as a friend throughout several years, I realized that you don’t really be clear to me. I am afraid that someday I might lose you. Of course I will be searching for you whether I want or not, but let’s go easy way. I don’t want to wander around in vain desperately searching for you.

Wow, I never thought I would write a long letter to you like this one. By this letter I think I came one step more close to you. Next time, I hope I can see you eyes to eyes. I’ll buy you full dinner including dessert! Let us see soon!

Your true friend,

Paul JunSuk Lee

Reading Journal #3- The Body

     죽음. Death. I think it sounds more horrifying in Korean than in English. When I was about 6 years old, I lost my materal grandmother. From then, I'd seen my materal grandfather passed away, and about a year ago, my paternal grandfather left us. As I grow up, I know that I'll face a lot more deaths of belovings, and gradually I would get used to it, but it is still harsh for me to face beloving one's death. And it was most dreadful when I saw my grandmother passing away; that was the first death I saw. I remember myself pulling the coverlet up to my head and hid myself from the world at that night. Emotions within that action were complicated, but mostly consisted of sadness, fear, and spiritless doubt about living a life.
But from then, as I grew older, I became somewhat curious about life, death, and afterlife. I faced them in school and tend to think about them rationally.
I think this process is common in most cases when we face mysterious things. We first fear them, get away from them, but some time after, we feel curious and try to contact them. That's how you get used to the things.
     This novella "The Body" and movie "Stand By Me" are excelllent pieces that portrays those processes. The story is basically of four young boys having a one-night journey to see the dead body. If this was all, I might not recommend this pieces to others, but there are more than this. Both of them tend to focus on the relationship and conversation of the boys rather than the journey itself. For instance, Gordie and Chris having a talk at the night reveals prejudiced and ruthless society for a kid in poor-white family. In the conversation, Chris says "what if other guys like ~~~ stole milk money?" and this tells that different attitude of adults have discriminated him and made him to 'act that way'.
     In addition, the movie carries about messages about children problems. The four main characters all carry problems within their family. For instance, Gordie, the narrator, is described as an unwanted child from his family and nobody tend to pay attention to him under the shadow of Gordie's brother Dennis's death. Teddy is a son of ex-soldier who fought at Normandy, who now became insane and burns Teddy's one ear. Vern is a kid having his brother bullying him. Since this novella is analized as the piece inspired by Stephen King the writer's childhood, it is actually interesting that he had put those maltreated kids. Also the narrator in the story Gordie resembles Stephen King much since he is the one who dreams of becoming a writer and who actually does.
     'Stud City', a metafiction inserted in the novella is quite interesting since it is actually a small work of Stephen when he was at college. Him as a collegeman, still the theme and the main character's description are pretty much same: aboutmaltreated child. This fact also ensured my opinion that this theme is closely related and based on the writer's childhood.
     The ending (I'm not going to tell this specifically because it can be a spoiler) of this story is quite odd. It's not happy ending, and it's not tragedy at all. Although some sad situations happen to him, the story is not describing those with sadness. It just lists. And from this ending, I remembered what the movie said while having another metaficion "Lard Ass Hogan". "What do you expect?" Because it was not sad nor happy, it seemed realistic. For our real life, what we say to be sad to us sometimes are not sad incidents to others and when time erodes memories, it became just one of dull incidents and you become sympathetic. When the main character Gordie described these sad incidents, I felt similarly. Yes, you cannot expect things to be in certain manner in our life. And this story really became realistic because of this aspect.


     Overall, this story was very touching. It's not that it is sad, but it's like you have something in your heart after you read it. Some lessons? Our sympathy from realistic features? I don't know how to describe this appropriately, so just watch! :P

Imagining myself 40 years later…

(For this writing I tried the autobiography format)

Though 5 years passed, still I can clearly remember the shivering I had when I went up to the stage in front of every Korean and have my inaugural ceremony as the President of Korea. Thinking of that day, I feel little ashamed about my tears, but in some parts I’m proud of them. Some have criticized me for sharing tears in front of everyone because these could lead other countries to underestimate Korea, but would it be wrong to share some tears since citizens of Korea had given me such acceptance and recognition towards me? Thus I decided to not to be shameful about my tears since this could, in some extent, mean that I’m shameful to be accepted by Koreans.

     Recalling the past, there’s another moment that I couldn’t resist to think; the day that I ordered coup over my country. Some who hadn’t lived for recent 10 years may ask me “why did you order coup over your country since you are the president?” To those foreigners I’d say that the ability as the President of Korea was very limited to fix the corruptions that were spoiling the whole country. Whenever I tried to fix those, they were blocked by the Congress. It was not the problem only within the Congress, but also the problem related to all establishments. Thus, I felt necessity for a hero within this country’s politics, and if there were no one to dream of, I decided to be that ‘hero’ who could sacrifice all of his possessions to fix this corruption.

     Considering the past, it wasn’t possible for anyone to grow up in Korea to an influential person without having some corruptions such as illegal lobbying. So I decided to go abroad and strengthen the power with money. I went to America and there I established a company working on statistics. For most graphs and statistics, they lacked the reliability: they were dangerous to trust. This was because most of statistics on people were made up with only few people participating who could be argued about their representativeness about the whole group. Thus, I thought, “what if there is an online statistic website that allows people to have poll? This system will make more people to participate in the poll than offline and make the graph more reliable.” This idea penetrated people’s demand of 100% accurate statistic and I came up with a lot of money. With this money, I came to Korea and made my allies who would devote their lives to fix corruptions. The money was used to protect me and my allies from economical hardship that Korean establishments ordered. Successfully, citizens of Korea gradually came up to believe me and won in prudential election. I am very thankful of those people who believed my sincerity and voted for me. Seeing them face to face in the inaugural ceremony, my resolution became firm and promised myself I will kill myself if the day comes for me to betray those people.

* I really wanted to go further talking about what I will really do after becoming the president of Korea, but time doesn't let me to write more now........:( I will try to write those after the exam. Even though I know they will not be graded, I really want to write them!)

TED Review:The line between life and not-life

from: http://www.ted.com/talks/martin_hanczyc_the_line_between_life_and_not_life.html

For many years, I have lucidly denounced the evolution theory. It was not because I was being pious and thought this theory was blasphemy. It was rather because I thought this theory was not logical.

To prove the evolution theory, I thought there has to be an explanation for evolution from non-living things to living things, and I saw no explanation. It was left like enigma more than the Bible. For me to trust the evolution theory it was inevitable for someone to teach me this link.

And here I found this TED video. It was from Martin Hanczyc. I found this video very laudable since it came to prove the evolution link from non-living things to living things. This video started from telling that the boundary between non-living things and living things became very obscure by illustrating virus as an example. Then he gave the requirements for living things: body, metabolism, and inheritable information. Then with only few (non living) chemicals, he makes "protocells" which behave like a living organism. These "protocells" meet 2 of 3 requirements for a living thing: body and metabolism. Although these  "protocells" he illustrates cannot reproduce itself, they use environmental energy and move around. Some merged itself with another and some tend to exclude itself from others. What was most fascinating was that they tend to move to the area where they could absorb more energy and tended to stay there. Although there were no brains within them and they were just a chunk of few chemicals, it was flagrant for me that they acted in the way they could live more.

This video engendered my perspective toward the evolution theory. The content was very innovative and its presentation style was very relevant considering that it contained a lot of visual effects that satisfied me as a viewer. At the end, Martin left this video with levity in thinking of evolution theory and tried to put much gravity on how this foundation can be used in searching for another living things in the space, but I felt big gravity of this video on the evolution theory. The abstract explanation about the evolution stage was now authentic. Hypothetical explanation of the theory was now came to the ground in my sight. Although the terms in the video were very esoteric to understand, I acclaim this video to be very exemplary.

Podcast Review- Let's not be intimidated!

If you know the podcast, and if you have downloaded any of podcast and saw the ranking, I guess that this podcast I'm going to review about isn't totally new. It is "I Am a Ggomsu(나는 꼼수다)", which is no.1 podcast in the whole world.

For people who don't know the podcast, I feel necessity of telling what a podcast is. According to the definition of Wikipedia, a podcast is a series of digital media files that are released episodically and often downloaded through web syndication. So, basically it's homemade video or sound file that is uploaded and downloaded on the Internet.

To understand the boom of "I Am a Ggomsu", you have to understand what is going on Korea and what this podcast is about. "I Am a Ggomsu" is a podcast made by four lampooning leaders who want to praise the highness of Mr. President of Korea. They say that this podcast is dedicated to President Lee of Korea. Of course, all of these are sarcastically said. "Ggomsu" in their title means a trick in Korea, so its name can be translated as "I Am a Trick".  What they do in their podcast is that they reveal tricks and allegations President Lee Myung Bak had committed for his well-being. The four members of this podcast is composed of Kim Ou-Joon, a journalist, Chung Bong-ju, an ex-member of the Congress, Choo Chin-woo, a muckraking reporter who is often called "Satan's reporter" (He got this name after muckraking the corrupted churches), and Kim Yong-min, a critic and a formal radio commentator. Other than criticizing Mr. President, they criticize corruptions happening in Korean politics. So beneath the boom of "I Am a Ggomsu", there lies people's anger in nowadays' politics.

For the past few years, citizens of Korea had suffered from economic and social problems. And people now realized that all of those problems had came from the corruption of politics. But President Lee had controlled mass-media including major TV stations(KBS, SBS, MBC) and major newspapers(Chosun, Joongang, Donga) in order to hide his commitments and to cool down critical voices towards him. When people posted or uploaded a writing that criticized about certain people or certain issue (usually related to them), they were accused of spreading rumors. So people slowly became intimidated about the government and hid their voices and angers inside. 

To those people, "I Am a Ggomsu" was a revolutionary voice speaking for them.  "I Am a Ggomsu" revealed Mr. Lee's commitments which allowed people who only had general hatred without specific reasons to be enlightened. By watching them speaking imprecations of politics, people relieved stress. Many young citizens are now turning their eyes towards politics and feeling anger about the corruptions of the politics. It now became the symbol of bravery and truth. 

<"Shut Up and Do Politics"  published by  Kim Ou-Joon: one of the bestsellers in Korea right now>


They use phrases such as It is possible to conjecture ... ,” “There is enough circumstantial evidence to suggest ... ” and their favorite: “Of course, we don’t believe that His Highness would have committed such a nefarious deed.” People laugh at those phrases but at the same time feel sad since those phrases are one of their techniques to avoid accusations. It seems that their phrases are saying "Yes, Korea is rotten like this. When it's not an assumption, they get accused."


For this podcast, I will give my scores like below:

Even this podcast contains very heavy issue to talk, four members of   "I Am a Ggomsu" explains about problems well and make fun of those problems well. They sublimate even the very deepest and most bitter parts of Korea with a bunch of big laughter. Their format is just banal, four member talking to each other. However, they sometimes invites politicians to have debates or light talks about issues, and they seem to carry well  considering the fact that there aren't any professional PDs or MCs.


   (All out of 5)
What I have discontent in length is that it is too long. Of course, political issues are not the issues that can be said quickly, but I want this podcast to be shorter. It is about 2-3hours per one episode now, and my opinion is that it is too long for common man like me to listen to.


However, because of long length, it contains quite profound information. Some issues like BBK are really hard to understand for people since it is quite complicated, but  "I Am a Ggomsu" carries those issues well since it has enough hours to talk about it very deeply.


I gave the lowest grade to manner. This is because this podcast contains a lot of slangs and imprecations. In the aspect of manner in the speech, this podcast has very low quality. However, those imprecations and tough expressions make listeners to feel sympathy well and grasp the gravity of the case. It also relieves people's stress since people's anger was accumulated inside their heart because of harsh conditions. Educational value was degrade with same reason as manner.


For social value, I couldn't grade the value of this podcast, so I gave as many as I could. This podcast contains a lot of meanings: symbol of light in the dark, bravery, righteousness, freedom of speech, etc. When people were scared and freedom of speech was limited by government, this podcast came out like a light in the dark. People were enlightened, not afraid of the government anymore to speak out loud his/her own voice, and showed the power of common man. It led a political enlightenment for Koreans. It showed by the by-election of the mayor of Seoul in 2011 that it was citizens that politicians should be afraid of, not the opposite. Considering the boom of  "I Am a Ggomsu", I'd say I couldn't grade this with limited maximum; its social value in my opinion is infinite.

 "I Am a Ggomsu" has now became itself a myth, a symbol, and a power of common man. It raised people's spirit and enlightened people to act in politics. The result of the  "I Am a Ggomsu" boom will occur next year, in general election of the Congress and presidential election.  I'd like to end this review with Kim Ou-Joon's favorite phrase: "Let's not be intimidated!"

 <From the left, Chung Bong-ju, Choo Chin-woo, Kim Ou-Joon. Hugging each other after the by-election of the mayor of Seoul>

Describing my self within 3 words. [Mr.Moon's]

I see my self as a hungry man. I suffered from hunger long enough. At first, I longed for food. When starvation got long enough, I had heartburn that ached so much. When it got worse, I forgot what it would taste like to eat food. Finally, you become a person who doesn't know what do eat, how to eat, how to taste. Insufficiency at first made me a fool at last who doesn't know what to claim, what to desire. Portraying my self as a sky, I color it with grey blue. Polluted by people, grey blue is not blue anymore. It always wants to get recognized as blue, but once grey blue cannot get redeemed. In social issues, I respond rather like the ocean than the land to the change in temperature. I get steamed gradually and release the heat to others continuously. Once my philosophy establishes, no one can easily break with sword nor with pen. It only breaks with wave of truthfulness.

Reading Journal #2 -

After reading 30pages of "The Body" by Stephen King

First thing that I noticed while reading "The Body" is that there are lots of descriptions about child's problems. For instance, Teddy in the story gets child abuse from his dad, almost losing the hearing of both ears by his father who push him still to the hot stove. The narrator, Gordie, is also the one who thinks that he himself is an unwanted son of his parents. Vern is the child who is relative dumb compared to other kids in his age; there even comes out the description that Vern has failed in his class. All of those descriptions immediately made me ask how the childhood of Stephen King was.
In about 30pages from the start, there comes out a story made by Gordie. It is a story within the story. It talks about a narrator who has trouble within his family and who feels that he is being alone, separate from his dad and his new stepmother, Virginia. It is actually quite similar to Gordie's own story. So this story within the story works as the reflection of Gordie's life and how he thinks about himself and his surroundings. (Being elaborate, it is quite interesting that his new stepmother's name is chosen to be Virginia(having its origin from virgin), when she is a character who is described to be a whore who attracts both his father and his older brother.)
The story is getting warmed up as it reveals boys' goals to go adventure to see the dead body. More elaborate journal will come out as I get deep into the story! (I hope!)