Recently I came across “Snows of Kilimanjaro,” a collection of English poems by a Korean-American poet, Yearn Hong Choi. The title intrigued me because I very much admire Ernest Hemingway’s short story, “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.” In the epitaph of the celebrated story, Hemingway wrote, “Kilimanjaro is a snow-covered mountain 19,710 feet high, and is said to be the highest mountain in Africa. Its western summit is called the Masai “Ngàje Ngà

When German poet Anton Schnack wrote the celebrated essay “Things That Make Us Sad” last century, he referred to sentimental, melancholic objects such as a small dead bird found in the garden, drizzling autumn rain and indecipherable graffiti in a desolate castle. He also mentioned old letters from a deceased father that read, “My son, you gave me so many sleepless nights.” In 2020, a plethora of things make us sad in Korea, too. Unfortunately, however, we do not have th

When you receive a card that says RSVP, which stands for the French “repondez s’il vous plait,” it means you must reply immediately whether you accept or decline the invitation. The same thing goes for emails and text messages, even though there is no RSVP attached. Since it all depends on the person -- we cannot stereotype people. However, it is undeniable that older Koreans are notorious for not responding to emails or text messages. The only problem is that older people fr

Sometimes outsiders can see what insiders cannot; that is why foreigners’ perspectives are often illuminating. Recently, foreign commentators have expressed concern and puzzlement about the policies and performances of some of our Korean ministries. First, many have raised a question about the necessity of the Ministry of Unification. We know that the Ministry’s primary task is to prepare for the unification of the Korean Peninsula and deal with matters related to North Korea. In

We tend to think that movies are merely a form of entertainment, but this is only partially true. In fact, a film is an excellent cultural text and an important social document. Furthermore, a film is a valuable text through which we can learn about life and the world. It that sense, movies are like audiovisual books that we enjoy watching and reading, through which we become not only well informed and knowledgeable, but also enlightened and refined. Films also drench our souls with mesmerizin

We tend to believe we are doing the right thing when our intentions are good. Often enough, however, we realize in retrospect that we were wrong at the time despite our good intentions. This is especially true for those who insist that they are doing something for a Grand Cause or for the Greater Good. Those who become obsessed with these righteous visions may not hesitate to sacrifice smaller causes or lesser goods in the name of the ideology they blindly worship. Those self-righteous people ma

In 1964, Leslie Fiedler, a distinguished American literary critic, announced the advent of the Age of the New Mutants. In his monumental essay, “The New Mutants,” Fielder envisioned the American youth of the 1960s as new mutants who cut off their attachments to mainstream culture and created a new image of America marked by diversity and multiplicity. Indeed, these “New Mutants” of counterculture radically altered the conservative terrain of American society and remade

In the famous fairy tale “Red Riding Hood,” a girl goes on an errand to bring food to her sickly grandmother who lives in the woods. Aware of this, the Big Bad Wolf rushes ahead to her grandmother’s house, devours the grandmother and dons her clothes, then waits for the girl whose nickname is Red Riding Hood in disguise. When she arrives, the wolf swallows her too, and falls asleep. Just in time, a woodcutter comes to the rescue. He cuts open the belly of the wolf and takes out

Recently, a BBC reporter, Laura Bicker, wrote via Twitter, “Prosecution in South Korea are asking for an 18-month sentence for a man who stole 18 eggs because he was hungry.” This was the same amount of prison time, the reporter observed, that the court sentenced for the operator of Welcome to Video, the world’s largest-known darknet child pornography site. She also reported that the Seoul High Court said no to the appeal from the US for his extradition to face charges in the

Recently, a friend sent me a succinct but powerful essay written by Lee Jung-woong, a former TBC producer, on the topic, “What is America to us?” The friend who thoughtfully sent me this essay wrote that she read it many times and every time she read it, she felt ashamed of not being grateful enough to the American soldiers who died for us during the Korean War. While reading the heart-rending essay, I, too, felt ashamed. Based on the testimony of the late Gen. Chae Mying-shin, Lee

The other day, I came across the 2009 HBO film, “Taking Chance.” Watching the movie based on a true story, I spent a riveting hour and 17 minutes, deeply moved by the way how Americans treat their fallen soldiers in war. It occurred to me that we should learn from the movie how to honor our soldiers killed in action. The movie unfolds the story of Lt. Col. Michael Strobl, a US Marine Corps officer who volunteers to escort the body of PFC Chance Phelps, who died in the Iraq War, bac

On June 25, 2020, Korea commemorates the 70th anniversary of the Korea War. It means that the babies who were born in 1950 when the war broke out are now 70 years old. It is sad to think that those who went through the atrocities of the war are now old and fade away, making the Korean War “a forgotten war.” Nevertheless, we should be faithful to the memory of the conflict that devastated the Korean Peninsula for three years. The war destroyed virtually everything in our already des

The above title is a riff and parody on Tennessee Williams’ famous play, “Suddenly Last Summer.” In this Southern Gothic play, Violet’s son, Sebastian, had died in Europe the previous summer under dubious circumstances. Since her niece, Catherine, knows the dark secret that led Sebastian to his death, Violet tries to erase Catherine’s memory by asking a doctor to perform a lobotomy on her to protect her son’s reputation. Recently, I came across an intriguing

A crisis is mounting between the United States and China, and South Korea has found herself suddenly caught in the crossfire of the two superpowers. Now under relentless pressure, the Korean government faces a sobering reality in which the answer to the question “Which side are you on?” will bring decisive or even dire consequences. Such a situation is not new to the Korean people; we were also stuck in the crossfire between China and Japan in the 19th century. Back then, Korea cou

We need government to run the country for us and represent us in the international community. Unfortunately, however, we often find our government overbearing and oppressive. Sometimes we suffer heavy taxes and other times, tyrannical rule. That is why “governance” has always been a major concern of political scientists. Thomas Paine aptly pointed out the issue, saying, “Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.”

We are now living in the era of artificial intelligence. In fact, AI is everywhere already, in our smartphones, laptops, and cars. What many commentators have hailed as the “fourth industrial revolution,” too, includes AI. As AI is fast becoming part of our everyday lives, we would do well to reflect on its upsides and downsides. An American television drama, “Person of Interest,” well illustrates many of the merits and problems of the AI era. The drama centers on a re

The global pandemic called COVID-19 is now ruthlessly invading the world, devastating all the infected nations and still causing untold numbers of deaths. Humans cannot but shudder at this never-before-seen deadly virus that attacks and kills them callously. Meanwhile, the lethal coronavirus has radically changed our society in many ways. For example, we are now living in an inhumane society where people are suspicious of one another and shun the warmth of human touch because we cannot be sure

Amid the ever-widening spread of the novel coronavirus, we realize things that we normally would not. For example, we realize we should be grateful to doctors, nurses and health care workers who are willing to take the risk of contagion in order to save their patients from a dangerous virus. Our gratitude should also go to police officers and ambulance staff, who have to respond to emergencies and whose daily assignments expose them to the contagious virus as well. We should be especially grat

Recently on Netflix, I came across an American political thriller drama entitled “Designated Survivor.” The riveting drama mesmerized me instantly by tackling the recurrent theme in American films and literature: “What is America?” “Designated Survivor” also explores, “What makes a great leader?” The drama was so intriguing that 10 million viewers watched its first episode premiere in 2016. The drama series begins as an explosion destroys the Ca

I was a modernist when I wrote my MA thesis on literary modernism. Later, however, when I decided to write my doctoral dissertation on postmodernism at the State University of New York at Buffalo, I converted to a postmodernist. Postmodern perspectives helped me rightly perceive the elusive and complex reality I was facing every day. Furthermore, postmodern perceptions that acknowledged the blurry boundary between fact and fiction, or highbrow culture and middlebrow culture fascinated me. When