Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

The monsoon rains of July turns into the sweltering heat of August, and the life of everyone began to progress again after going through half of laid-back summer vacations amid definite signs of lethargic slowness. For some, it is already a season of tearful goodbyes, and for some, the tears of separation are also mixed with anxiety, and hope, for the somewhat unknown, yet exciting future. The same faces and personalities, so familiar after what seems like an eternity of constant interaction, begin to disappear one by one, without any promise of future reunions... People speak of their "best friends forever," they speak of love that last forever, and they vow to never leave others behind or alone. Unfortunately for all of us who chose to spend different parts of our lives at different corners of the Earth with completely different groups of people, such so-called promises can be nothing beyond empty words. We have have to go. We just have to. New chapters of our lives aw...

The existence of Hollywood as a global cultural product is nothing new. With ample use of special effects, combat scenes, explosions, beautiful people, they seek to bombard people with adrenaline rush at every turn. They are saturated with universal values: the good triumphs over evil, true love survives all adversities, and that general perverted craving (among people of every background) for seeing unending violence unfolding before their eyes at a safe distance away. Combining all those elements, plus all of cash for marketing, Hollywood has tapped into the consumer market of people around the globe. And as far as cravings for simple violence and romance goes, the recently released Transformers 3 could not have been more perfect. Shown with the complementary motion chairs and 3-D glasses in the most high-tech rendition of motion picture technology to date, the movie promised to wow all the senses of the audience. And after watching the midnight show in Seoul, I have absolutely...

Many an intellectual out there tend to argue how the ability to form complex yet efficient organizations gave human beings the ability to efficiently execute complex projects. The ability to divide up work to different specialized tasks shared among many people is the pinnacle of human institutional achievement; it is the one thing, perhaps alongside the ability to communicate complex ideas linguistically, that set human beings apart from mere animals out there. And modern society, with new technologies and new demands propping out everyday, has taken that gift of organization to a whole new level. Every few people one meet in life would form an organization, whether it is non-profit or a small business, carrying out incomprehensibly small projects with extremely vague and dubious purposes. And every few people that one meets in an organization would have some sort of rank, denoting the place within the command structure just as complex as the web of organizations out there. Certainl...

Another weekend and another train trip back to Seoul. Sitting at the bench on the platform of Chuncheon Station, waiting for the next train to the metropolis, I am becoming more and more anxious to whether these trips are becoming some sort of emotional escapist behaviors out of the real Korea that I was so excited to see and live within . Chuncheon, for me and as well as all students and teachers, has become a place we are forced to be during the weekends. To be perfectly honest, I, among all people, have been struggling to find my social place within the enclosed environment that is our camp . As Korean continues to entrench its position as the official language of the camp , those who are struggling with understanding of the language, whether it be the foreign teachers or some students who grew up outside Korea, have been feeling the continued spiral toward social isolation. And what the most irritating in the situation is just how little effort the Korean staff, who, supposedl...

With this week drawing to a close, the isolated boot camp at Chuncheon has officially passed its "1/4 completed" mark. As the students began to get accustomed to the study environment, schedule, and the routines of daily life here in the camp, we all have began to shift attention to things that are much more conventional in any social environment. As the same group of people interact everyday, they are bound of get to know each other deeply, and with the knowledge, a whole new level of communication beyond "Lets play" and "Lets study" sprout among the populace. And with the increased communication comes increased drama. The stories of who likes who, who hates who abound, and precisely because no one has anything else going on in their lives besides studying/preparing for the SATs, such "exciting" rumors spread like wildfire, often leading to intricate subtleties in relationship among individuals and social subgroups. Well on the surface ever...

Being an English teacher to an isolated group of English-speaking, foreign-raised Korean kids can easily deceive a person into believing the optimistic international nature of Korean society. While it is tempting to consider a country as mono-ethnic and mono-cultural as South Korea into a single block (or worse, as part of the greater Oriental "cultural group" ), the fact is, with greater exposure of the country to the outside world, those who are directly experienced in associating with foreigners in general have developed a unique sense of identity away from the general population. Admittedly, in terms of overall demographics of the country, the foreign-experienced ones has to be a tiny minority, often defined by high-end white collar jobs and privileged lifestyles. Unfortunately, for most foreigners living in Korea, these so-called "elitists," who are the only ones the foreigners really interact with, have inadvertently, in the eyes of the foreigners, the ...

"But, see, you are old and you don't understand what we are talking about..." the eager female student inadvertently blurts out as we hold up a random conversation during a short break from class. To be honest, over the last two weeks, I have been getting way too many of these sorts of comments that I should really feel absolutely indifferent to them...but unfortunately, even now, each time I hear them, I cannot help but twitch a little bit on the inside from the slight, painful emotional shock... "You get older, but the kids stay the same age..." I always respond to people who ask me why I just do not be a full-time teacher in the lucrative private education industry. I am currently in it not primarily for the career, or the money (although that is also important for my next step at grad school ), but because I can actually meet people (students and other staff members alike) and be friends with them. It becomes much harder as I age and the generation gap w...

...so the self-introduction of our male Korean staff went as we went for a handshake on the first day of my arrival in Chuncheon...fortunately or unfortunately, that phrase (meaning, "Sorry, but I don't speak English") has been the defining "tone" of our now 3-day-old SAT camp here in Chuncheon. Somehow feeling confident in my Korean ability more than in their own English abilities, the Korean staff has somehow now became completely alright with speaking in Korean to me 24-7, going so far as to admitting that they wish to learn to speak English...in Korean. Ambiguous comprehensions and struggling in even the simplest conversations, as much as seemingly endless preparations for classes, has become the norm. Sandwiched by a Korean-Canadian colleague with fluent Korean and an African-American colleague who no one will expect to know any Korean, I am bearing the blunt of this inherent "only Korean spoken outside of class" policy. Perhaps I was wrong to ...