When I was in age of 12 I went to Canada with my family under the goal of education. I had horrible adating period for about 6 months in which I had no friends. But after I adjusted to the Canadian way of life, I enjoyed it and just before I left Canada, I thought I was mentally a Canadian too.

The same happened when I came back to Korea. Since I was living the Canadian life, I couldn’t adjust to the Korean way of things. Korean were all about education, success, money, time and all these very important but somehow stressful things.

It’s been more than 4 years since I came to Korea now, but mentally I am not adjusted. 

I have (luckily) got into public school that is one of the top 10 high school in Korea(thanks to little English I know). It was hard enough preparing to get into this school but what came after it is worse.

The thing is that these people who come to this school are like studying muchine. They just study eat sleep wake up and repeat over again. I pictured it before I came in but to actually feel it, it was frightening. Now because of these study muchines, it’s no wonder that I can’t get good enough GPA.

However that’s why I started to ignore subjects that I had no interest in and started to concentrate on certain subjects that had something to do with me and my future. I thought this was normal, but I guess it was just me. Not only my colleagues but also my homeroom teacher started worrying about me.

What the hell? They pity me because I know what I will do in future and study according to it? Most of these kids don’t know what they are going to do and they study just so they can stop worrying about their future! I should pity them! They are wasting their golden period as teen, studying something that they will never again remember nor useful!

Being under such hard pressure reminded me of a story.

There was a monkey, he travelled on his own, and some how he got himself into village of one-eyed monkeys. Although he was normal monkey with two eyes, he was a abnormal being there. So he took one of his eye out. After few years, he started travelling again, and he got himself into the old village where he used to live, where two-eyed monkey was normal, but it was already too late for regrets.

I learnt from this story to never change youself just because the society says so, it is more important that you have your own standards. 

I know that being the two-eyed monkey in this one-eyed village is going to be tough(or maybe I’m the one-eyed in the two-eyed village). But I know that if I live to my standards, I will have my day.

Few days has passed since the final exam ended with scar in my heart. Although there weren’t any satisfactory in the result I have been soothing myself with melo-movies from China and Japan.

While I was watching those movies, I thought that Korean melo-movies had a lot to learn from them. You see, the Korean melo-movie industry have been going downhill recently. The most successful Korean melo was “Christmas in August” and that was published 10 years ago.

The point that the Korean directors have to learn from these movies from abroad is the “twist”. The problem that keeps people from watching Korean melo is that they are too cheesy. The reason for that it, is that all these melo movies tries impress audience with the love affair itself. What I mean is that they try to make you cry seeing these couples not being able to successfully complete their love.  So they naturally depend on star power.  Which also relates to the reason why actors and actress dream to shoot a melo film.

Contrasting, movies that I have been watching, those from Japan and China were not about the love itself but the story behind it. And that hidden story has a twist that not only surprises the audience but also make them weep.

I hope that Korean melo industry can somehow learn from these foreign movies and provide Koreans with better designed movie.

The new president of South Korea, Lee Myung Bak is going through a public examination.

This examination is testing Lee if he is a good enough president or not.

The hot potato is how he is dealing with the FTA right now. The problem with the FTA is the part about the cow. Koreans think that Lee is letting America export mad cows into Korea.

I may be toughly criticized for my belief but I personally advocate Lee and most of his political moves. He is pursuing his goal of “economic improvement” but the people are not willing to  sacrifice something that Lee is about to make.

I hope Lee would compromise well and win the public support back.

 I have just received the first grade card of my high school. I did not expect to get high scores since the test of my school is known to be tricky. But I could not just give up the GPA so I decided to concentrate on few subjects that I do have a shot at.  I had to get at least a B+ on 3 subjects including English (since I have studied abroad at Canada)

 As you can realize, from the gloomy title and so that I was not be able to achieve anything. I thought that I did not screw the English, but I did. I am freaking out of this moment to see the report card…. Of course this is only the first test out of 4 I take this year, but with this kind of results, making my mental anxious, I think I have to control my habbits and schedules.

That’s why I made my mind to quit watching baseball. I think I watched too many baseball in test term. It will take a lot of will power for me to achieve this, the power which I lack. May be that’s why I am watching baseball as of this moment too……damn

one of the hot potatoes of Korea as of this moment is the FTA. More specifically the part about importing American cow. The nickname for American cow is crazy cows. This name was given to them because of the mad cow disease.

The obvious reason why Korean citizens oppose to bringing “crazy cows” to their table is obviously becuase it is lethal to eat a cow that has been found to be on mad cow disease.

Moreover the thing that bothers Koreans is that the Korean government is giving up the people’s health so that they could achieve the goal of economic development.

My opinion about the government importing the American cow is positive. Of course if we do start buying them the risks of mad cow disease is present and of course it will danger the farmers of Korea, but there are a lot more benefits to FTA than just buying cows.

With the profit the government makes, they will have to strongly support the Korean farmers and since the government announced that they will stop importing American cows if they are found to be with mad cow disease, it’s not a bad dicision to wait and see for the Korean people.

Recently(starting from may 8th to may 12th) I went to China.  I went there because  my parents attended a math conference held at Chinese university of petroleum(what a name huh?). However I was excited to go to the country that every media was praising the potential about. I wanted to see the recent capitalism-turned socialism country.  However in my first visit to China(Beijing) somethings that shocked me was gap and organization and the people.

 First the gap. The gap means the gap between the rich and poor and main cities and other areas. I felt that since China has been focusing their goal at economical development, they could not well-devide the profits made. So there are huge gaps between rich and poor.  There are also large gap between the main parts of the country and the rest of the country. I might be making a haste generalization error since I have only been to Beijing and I’m writting this, but when I went to the downtown parts of Beijing (namely the place where there’s Tiannemen Square) it was so cleans and well organized that I was shocked thinking that China already out-developed Korea. However when I came to the hotel, which wasn’t far off, I was shocked as well. It was nothing like that I have seen at the downtown. There weren’t much of control and it was dirty too. It was a shock, in both good and bad ways. I think that this is inevitable because China has developed too fast and it is certain thing that there had to be gaps. Korea has gone through it and I believe China will pull this off just like us.

 Second the organization. I already mentioned the shock that I received from the Beijing downtown from the passage above so I won’t go deep about this. The thing that I want to mention about organization is the fact that I saw so many police. China has not adapted the capitalism fully yet so there were a lot of police on the streets of Beijing controlling the city.

Third the people. When I went to Japan I felt that Japanese are already civilians of advanced country. Most of the people that I met there had certain amount education and they do answer with kindness when they are asked by strangers but there are boundaries between you and them, you can almost feel it . But when I went to Beijing, I felt as if they were treating me as one of them( they might not have known the fact that I am a foreigner but still). They didn’t seem like best educated but you can feel their warm heart when you talk to them.

It has not been long since China adapted capitalism and earned reputation of being one of the strongest countries, and they have done it so fast that they are suffering from by-product of development. Although I have been shocked from few bad sides of China I cannot rebut the fact that China is one of the most potent countries. I hope China develops positively and help Asia and also Korea develop as well.

I have been busy with my school work and other stuff so I was lazy with my blog…. if anybody  have been visiting my blog(which I doubt so) I want to inform that I will be doing my blogs more frequently than I have been las few months..

I have a really big problem with my new high school. My new high school is called “Busan International High school” and it’s like the private schools of America, only that it’s funded by the government. The thing that I have such a problem with is the strictness of relationship between seniors and freshmen(and women). What I mean by strictness is that those seniors expect us to treat them as if they are god, and us(juniors) certainly do have problem with it. If this was something that teachers knew nothing about and would punished them if they do find out, I would be ignoring them even if they had a weapon on their position(except lethal weapons though, if they got something lethal, I’d kneel if I had to lol). However, as you can infer this thing is already well known to teachers as well. The thing that most surprised me was something I call “the OT”.

OT, stands for orientation. What happened at the OT was that the school summoned every freshmen to our school for 1day sleep before the school season started(we live in dormitory during the semesters).  When all the parents left, we were told to come to student hall for a OT. Few teachers came up on the stage and explained about dormitory rules, school rules and stuff and after some guy was finished he said

“teachers! let’s go grab something to drink for few minutes!”

I instinctingly felt something was not right. After all the teachers were out to catch “drink” those seniors who were standing at sides(there were like 20) all just started screaming things like

“Put your head down you friggin’ fools!”

“close your eyes!”

“straghten your goddamn spines!”

I just knew that they were hear to scare the hell out of us so we could be obedient through out the school years.

However that’s how my first experience of my new school BIHS(Busan International High School) started.

I now know that those seniors that were trying to scare us weren’t that bad and they are actually more caring about us. I just hope that I could go through this tough junior year though….lol

The most controversial pledge that Lee has campaigned is from education. It’s that he is going to make schools do classes in English. From what I hear they are even going to make Korean class into Enlgish…..What the hell!!!! I personally advocate Lee and most of his stuff but sometimes he seems to be too damn liberal! And his political party is conservative!!! I don’t know but it’s seems to me that if Lee pulls off everything he campaignes, it’ll be either very good or very bad….

The icon of Korea is burnt down in the middle of Seoul. The icon that I’m talking about is the Soong Rae Gate also known as South Gate. The South Gate is the most famous cultural asset of Korea, it was always on commercials and postcards and photos, but now all that is left of it is ashes.

The thing that became controversial is how government treated it.

The only thing that was protecting the gate was two fire extinguishers. It is unbelievable that they opened the gate for people to visit without any preparation at all. And those stupid politicians are arguing that it wasn’t their fault! The last thing I want to do is see politicians face on the television….