Call of mountain At 10 a.m. on Nov. 3, a special funeral service took place at Seoul National University Hospital for Park Young-seok, one of the world's best and greatest mountaineers Korea has ever produced, and for his two fellow veteran climbers. It was observe..
Free as a bird ``Free as a bird" is a phrase I like to murmur to myself whenever I see a bird flying in the sky.
Going to a concert Those who know that I renew my subscription to the KBS Symphony Orchestra every year and receive its program every month by mail may well presume that I have a very fine ear, ardent love and deep appreciation for classical music.
What are you doing? For some period immediately after my retirement from university I had to confront an uncomfortable question: "What are you doing? It came to me with a new sound and meaning.
For the Last Time Enveloped with special emotion, recollection and pathos, I am currently reading a book for the very last time. It is a collection of English essays, entitled, ``The English Familiar Essay," edited by William F. Bryan and Ronald S. Crane, professors..
Parting With Readers Digest This morning, to my mild surprise, I realized that I have not read ``Reader's Digest" for quite a long time. Hurriedly, I checked the pile of old issues in the corner of my study and discovered that I have not received a copy in more than six month..
Lady Chatterleys Lover For the first time in a long while, one day last week I went to downtown Seoul and dropped in at the Kyobo Book Center. Walking to the place after getting off the subway train at City Hall I got confused by the sea-change that has been made to the ..
The Little Mermaid On returning home from a weeklong sightseeing trip to four Northern European countries this summer, including Denmark, what I felt like doing first, and actually did, was to take my anthology of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales from the booksh..
A Tale of Two Magazines As a long and faithful reader and subscriber of two internationally famous weekly news magazines, ``Time'' and ``Newsweek'', I find myself having become somewhat critical and choosy about reading them recently.
From Need to Choice Although I have thrown away several of them, I still have four fountain pens in store at home. Each one has its own sentimental value for me.
Niagara Falls: A Recollection The tragic news February 12 of an airplane crash that killed all 49 people on board, mostly commuters, including five crew members near Clarence, New York, was a great sorrow and shock for many.
Splendor in the Grass Late one night, I turned on the TV and tuned to one of the satellite channels to find quite unexpectedly that an old Hollywood movie, ``Splendor in the Grass,'' was being run.
In Memory of Writer Pi There was a gathering of about two hundred people before a modest grave at the Moran Cemetery Park on the outskirts of Seoul on May 25.
A Grandfathers Blues One of the most important jobs, nay, duties still assigned to me in the house these days is to take care of my six-year-old grandson. The care of the boy ought to belong to his mother, I think, but as most of the women do nowadays she works and the..
After Reading Anna Karenina I've recently finished reading an English translation of ``Anna Karenina,'' a lengthy 19th-century Russian novel by Leo Tolstoy, and afterwards felt as if I had had a weighty burden removed from my back.
Vincent Van Gogh I am not an expert nor a professional in the arts, especially on Western paintings, but for me the "Voyage into the Myth," the first major exhibition of Vincent Van Gogh's works at the City Museum of Fine Arts in Seoul (November 24, 2007 through Ma..
What We Should Be Grateful For With the election of a new president the sounds and furors of the presidential campaign have been buried in the loud thrill of the victors and in the silent agony of the losers, and with the rise of the New Year's sun, people are slowly waking up f..
