Hong’s Cave

The World According to Hong

Surveilling MinJokSaGwan HakGyo?

June 23rd, 2004 · No Comments · Rants

We were watching some Korean TV programs recorded on the ReplayTV off of a local station, and there was a segment about MinJokSaGwan GoDeungHakGyo in HoengSeong, KangWon-do.
It looked like a specialized high school and from the name I thought it was one of those government funded elite schools (well, “MinJok” (race, nation, people, etc.) sounded [...]

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Quality of a Leader

March 12th, 2004 · No Comments · Rants

Something happened in Korea that will be recorded in Korean history.
President Roh Moo-Hyun was impeached by the opposition party parliament members for election fraud, corruption and incompetence. The matter is sent to the Constitutional Court to be decided whether the result of the impeachment vote would stand. For now, his presidential power has [...]

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The Things to Come for the Music Industry?

February 22nd, 2003 · No Comments · Music · Rants

I saw an article titled “Pop Stars Learn to Live with Pirates” on International Herald Tribune. This article is about how the musicians and the record labels have to adapt in order to survive in China, where “95 percent of music sales” is through piracy.
It is a very interesting and fairly well-written story on [...]

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Would This Be the Year?

December 10th, 2002 · No Comments · Misc

I read this article today.
There has always been anti-U.S. resentment in Korea since 1980. You can say it’s a love-hate thingy. Some part of the population (maybe most, unconsciously) felt the need of the U.S. military presence. However, some resented having a foreign military effectively controlling one’s own army. This is [...]

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How to Say “We Are Human beings too. You Can’t Hit Us Like That!” in Korean…

November 26th, 2002 · No Comments · Rants

This is a bit embarrassing. No, a lot.
This newspaper article (in Korean) talks about a Korean language instruction booklet that has been circulating on the Internet. This Korean language book was made about two years ago by a Vietnamese company who exports labor outside Vietnam. Almost all the Vietnamese workers in Korea [...]

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Overcoming the Early Bird Phobia and Etc.

June 18th, 2002 · No Comments · Misc

One of the things I recently rediscovered, after moving to a new home last month, was that I can actually wake up before 9 a.m. everyday and get by with less than 7 hours of sleep. :p
Yeah, what’s so surprising about it, you might say. I feel like I’ve been on this shifted daily schedule [...]

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Deceptiveness of Progress

March 14th, 2002 · No Comments · Books · Reviews

GaJeongDokBon (Family Reader) by Yi, ManGyu (my great grandfather, i.e., my mother’s mother’s father)Mom gave me the book, GaJeongDokBon because it was written by her grandfather. I wasn’t really interested in it: it sounded old and outdated. But somehow, I decided to give it a try because he had an interesting life (or rather the [...]

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Fooling Oneself

June 23rd, 2001 · No Comments · Misc

On a personal reflection…
I don’t have much accents in my English even though I spent the most of my first 24 years in Korea. This often puts people around me and myself in a bit awkward (?) place.
For example, at a wedding reception of one of my friends recently in Seattle, I was talking to [...]

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Conservatists vs. Liberals

June 11th, 2001 · No Comments · Random Thoughts

Getting into a bit of a political mood, I guess. Just some of the things I noticed recently.
The definition of conservatists and liberals seem to be relative concepts that differ among places and times. While reading some of the message boards on The Motley Fool, I began to learn what the current American society seems [...]

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