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Opinion

Columnists

Sun, July 12, 2020 | 09:54

Improving Korean education

I'm really hesitant to give my opinion on the Korean education system, but on the heels of my article last week about the Harvard admission policy, perhaps I can venture to offer my humble opinions in hopes of improving an already excellent educational system.

2020-07-05 17:20

How to get into Harvard

Personally, my experience at Harvard, a master's degree and a Ph.D., has helped me in many ways to open doors to opportunities along the way. But it has been interesting to me that the word “Harvard” is met with such awe, particularly in Korea. Korea has an understanding of both hierarchy and the value of education, and Seoul National University is often assumed to be the best university in Korea, and Harvard is assumed to be the best university in the world. This may or may not be the case, but I have seen the reaction from many in Korea when the word “Harvard” is heard.

2020-06-28 17:50

American sijo movement

Last week I wrote about the sijo contest hosted online by the Sejong Cultural Society based in Chicago. And I've heard rumors of another sijo contest being organized in Southern California. This gives me hope that the “sijo movement” that I've been waiting for is getting off the ground! The response from the article last week was welcoming, so I've decided to write a little more about the winners in the contest.

2020-06-21 17:04

American 'sijo'

I have set up a research foundation, the Frog Outside the Well Research Center, where I work on three areas - and only three areas - where I have some degree of expertise. They are: traditional Confucian practice, the re-evaluation of Korean history, and encouraging the writing of “sijo” in Korean and English.

2020-06-14 18:05

Need for new history

When I first arrived in Korea, in November 1965, Korea was a very poor country. It had hardly begun to recover from the Korean War that had ended 12 years earlier. Per capita annual income was $125. South Korea in those days was much poorer than North Korea and was one of the absolute poorest countries in the world. Korea had been victimized by Japan and by the catastrophe of the war. The history of Korea that I started to learn then was a story of victimization - told in terms of the many depravations Korea had suffered at the hands, or swords, of foreign invaders. It was a poverty-stricken...

2020-06-05 17:04

12 pillars of peaceful Korean history

As I look back at my 10 plus articles arguing that we should look at the peaceful and stable tradition of Korea, it occurs to me that there are two more items I should cover. I'll call these the “twelve pillars” of the peaceful and stable strain within the narrative of Korean history, to which “no religious wars” and “a remarkable ability to recover from wars” should be added.

2020-05-31 18:07

Singular Korean surnames

When I came to understand that surnames in Korea were unlike those in other countries - a high concentration of the population having one of only a few names - it occurred to me that this was indeed a measure of what I had been looking at in other perspectives.

2020-05-24 17:35

Gwangju after 40 years

On Saturday I was asked to serve as a judge for the May 18th commemoration student speech contest in English, for middle and high school students of Gwangju. As a judge I was not prepared for the power of the speeches that I heard.

2020-05-21 17:14

Korean names as measure of peace (part 1)

This is No. 10 or the last in my series of articles advocating that Korea was a remarkably peaceful and stable place historically. And perhaps this is the most compelling one.

2020-05-17 18:10

I can't write everything I would like to write about Korean slavery in one article, but here my purpose is to refer to Korean slavery as the ninth item on my list of top ten arguments showing Korea's history as a peaceful and stable country. When I read studies of slavery from an international perspective, and discovered that Korea has the longest, unbroken chain of slave-holding in the world, it was a real eye-opener. Because if there was never a break in the chain of slave-holding in Korea, it meant that there was never sufficient chaos to disrupt the ruling class who were the slave owners.

2020-05-10 16:42

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