Mark Peterson is associate professor of Korean, Asian and Near Eastern languages at Brigham Young University in Utah.
First of all, congratulations, to Han Kang and Korea as well. The prize goes to an individual, but the nation shares in the recognition. This is the second Nobel Prize for Korea. The first was the peace prize awarded to Kim Dae-jung for his efforts to attain peace with North Korea. My question is, where are the other Nobel Prizes?
The point to be made is that there are no low class names.
In the last few weeks, I posted a video about problematic Korean surnames, and in the process, I learned more about a subject I thought I already knew well.
Recently I met an old friend, Bruce Snow, who arrived in Korea a month before me in 1965. We talked of old times in Korea and recalled the perilous night in January 1968, when our house and the neighborhood in Cheongun-dong was shook by gunfire and night-time flares that lit up the night sky like it was day. It was the North Korean raid on the Blue House on Jan. 21, 1968.
My experience in Korea began almost 59 years ago — in November. Arriving one month ahead of me in October was my good friend, Bruce Snow. Recently, I met him and we had the chance to reminisce about the Korea of 1965.
The Lake in the Woods, or “Sup sogui Hosu” in Korean, is the name of the “village” that comes alive every summer for students learning Korean in a residential immersion context in the Minnesota North Words. All of the 14 language villages hosted by Concordia Language Villages since 1961 under the auspices of Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, carry the name “Lake in the Woods” in each of the target languages (Arabic is “The Oasis” — lakes are in short supply in the Arabic-speaking world).
Recently on my YouTube channel, I recorded an interview with a "K-pop” Korean language student. I was asked by the National Institute of Korean Language to make a video to investigate the way the Korean language is being studied and learned by Americans.
Recently, one of my colleagues discovered a recording of my graduate school advisor, Edward W. Wagner, on a 1985 KBS program. He was interviewed about his work and the development of the Korean program at Harvard. I was so, so delighted to watch the video and see a younger, vibrant professor and friend. My last memory of him was when I visited him at the senior care center when he was deep in the throes of Alzheimer's. Now, to see him as a young sixty-year-old, a man just a little older than the man who taught me Korean history in graduate seminars, brought back a flood of happy memories.
One of the projects I’m working on these days is a documentary film about a Utah National Guard battalion that fought several major battles in the Korean War and yet returned home miraculously with no fatalities. I’ve written about the 213 Field Artillery Battalion here before, but today, I thought I’d bring you up-to-date on what we are finding in our background research for the film.