The April 19 Student Revolution

Around the time we graduated, the April 19 Revolution broke out. Protesting the Liberal Party's rigged election, students occupied the residence of National Assembly Speaker Lee Ki-poong on the road at Seodaemun. Marching down the road at Gwanghwamun to occupy President Syngman Rhee's residence, young people were struck by police bullets and lost their lives — a tragedy we witnessed with our own eyes. It was later reported that the Lee Ki-poong family, who had gone into hiding at the presidential residence, all died in another tragedy: a family suicide with the pistol of the eldest son, a cadet at the Korea Military Academy. There were hours when I was swept along through the streets in the crowd, while my older brother gave emergency treatment to students felled by police gunfire. In the end, President Syngman Rhee stepped down with the single remark, "If the people wish it," and left for Hawaii. Martial-law commander Song Yo-chan stepped in to restore order, and after the governments of Yun Po-sun and Chang Myon, it all led to Park Chung-hee's May 16 military revolution — memories that are still fresh to me.

After I came to America to study, the way I looked back at my homeland gradually changed. From within a stable society, I could look with a somewhat cooler eye at Korea — where my parents were still living and which was going through a turbulent era — and at my divided homeland. My young eyes saw the struggles and cries of a desperately poor South Korea laying the cornerstone of a democratic society, and I could compare it with the North, under its thoroughgoing dictatorship, rapidly stabilizing. I could see that the prominent South Koreans who had chosen communist ideology and gone north after the Korean War were quietly purged one by one, and that only those who were devoted to Kim Il-sung's dictatorship survived.

A Letter to Kim Il-sung

After hearing the story of a friend who had come to study in America with me and who longed for his family in Hamgyeong Province in North Korea, I wanted to help him, and I wrote the following letter to Kim Il-sung and kept it. Many years later, it was published in the Chicago Korea Times on September 18, 1993.

"Chairman Kim Il-sung, hear me."
"I am a man looking for family in North Korea. When Germany and Japan, having started the Second World War, were bringing it to an end, three men — from America, the Soviet Union, and Britain — did a great wrong to our people on the Korean Peninsula. Just as they divided Germany into East and West, they should have divided Japan into North and South Japan — why did they chop the innocent Korean Peninsula in two? If it made me furious, how much more you must have agonized. After much thought you resolved to secure the promised help of Stalin and Mao Zedong and to achieve the unification of the peninsula, and I too admire your bold decision.

But with nothing but youthful courage and no understanding of the world situation, you crossed the 38th parallel on June 15, and millions of our compatriots lost their lives, and tens of thousands of young foreigners were sacrificed to defend freedom on this land. How many of our ancestors' relics were burned, how our people floundered in the poverty of war, and what a bitter tragedy you brought upon a nation whose families were split apart. Looking back, while we were fighting, Japan profited from the Korean War, did business with American money, and came to put on the airs of a rich country.

China, once called the sleeping lion, succeeded in Mao Zedong's revolution and now seems to be opening its doors and coming out into the world. In the not-too-distant future, China will become a nation that leads the world. For the sake of this coming future, it is urgent that South and North sit down together as soon as possible, find lost families, and extend love and warmth to one another. If you leave this world without doing it, be sure to tell Jong-il.

I fear how many families will die without seeing their parents and brothers because of the war you started. There must never again be war on this land, nor rule by another country. All the fine compatriots growing up in the next generation must live not for you or for me, but for their own lives and for the welfare of the world. Grant the wish of a man who wants to go, embrace his family, cry and laugh with them, tell them he has longed for them all his life, and be buried in the soil of his hometown. Great Leader! Do you hear the heart-wrenching song of your brothers searching for their families!" — so the article read.

In the hearts of Korean Americans, this cry of searching for family still echoes without end. Our compatriots in North Korea live without freedom, without seeing their families, in fear of public executions. We wait anxiously for them to be rescued into the free world as quickly as possible and to live in peace with us.

My First Visit Home

In the mid-1980s, when Korean Air opened a direct route between Seoul and LA, I set out on my first visit to my homeland since leaving it. The in-flight announcements were made in Korean, English, and Japanese, and the closing words were "Thank you for assistance," so I went to a flight attendant and asked her to change it to "Thank you for your corporation." I remember being relieved when, on the flight back to America, they said it the corrected way. While I was in Korea, my friends took me to the restaurant on the top floor of the 63 Building, the tallest building south of the river. They told me it was where President Park Chung-hee held lunch meetings. I asked my friends whether it was better to be an executive at a big corporation or the president of one's own business. My friends working as executives at Hyundai, Dong-A, and Daewoo answered, "We are candles in the wind." That was the reality of Korean companies, they said: even while you are still working, you are pushed out in your mid-forties. Here in America, they say that a professional's knowledge and skill reach their golden age between 45 and 55, and it was truly painful to see Korea casting aside the knowledge and experience of such precious talent.

A Korea No One Promoted

The Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver, Canada, exhibited cultures from countries around the world. Japan filled an entire large gallery, and many countries I had never heard of filled display cases in the same way, but Korea had an old fan and a pair of beoseon [traditional cotton socks] hidden in a small drawer in the corner of a room. If you went to a university's Asian studies website and looked up Korea, there was nothing but Kim Il-sung propaganda. In a history of China published in Britain, Goguryeo culture was presented as Chinese culture, and the Goguryeo tomb murals were explained as Chinese painting. Depending on the book, Korea was described as a buffer zone for wars between Japan and China, or between America and the Soviet Union — a country with neither history nor culture — and only the Korean War and Park Chung-hee's military revolution were mentioned.

Korea began to raise its head from the 1980s. During the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, we lost sleep night after night cheering for Korea. I cannot forget those overwhelming moments — how we wept buckets of tears every time Korea won gold in archery, boxing, wrestling, and judo and the national anthem played and the Taegukgi rose. It made me realize that the love of Korean expatriates for their homeland burns even hotter than people back home can understand. Korean women's archery, which began its run then, is still shining gold to this day. The 1988 Seoul Olympics, as IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch said, are said to have been the finest and most global Games in Olympic history in realizing the Olympic ideal. Korea, once reduced to ruins by the Korean War, transcended the barrier between the Eastern and Western (東西) blocs and brought both America and the Soviet Union (美蘇) to the same Games for the first time in 12 years, and it was said that this led Korea to establish diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and the countries of Eastern Europe.

They were judged a turning point that made Korea's existence known to the world and raised its international standing — an Olympics of culture, art, and peace that realized a worldwide love of humanity transcending politics, ideology, race, wealth, and religion. From that time on, Korea seems to have stepped out from the shadow of China and Japan and begun to show its own face to the world.

My Homeland, Filling My Heart with Pride

These days, when I visit Korea and climb Namsan in Seoul to look down on the Han River, I am deeply moved. Across the Hangang Bridge, now nearly a hundred years old, my heart lies down in the embrace of Gangnam, the young "new village" sweating at its work. Across the Jamsil Bridge is the '88 Olympic Park, where the eyes of the world once gathered; across the Hannam Bridge, the majesty of a new city where the heart of the IT industry beats; across the Banpo Bridge, the Seoul Arts Center where the Korean Wave grew up; across the Dongjak Bridge, the site of my alma mater and Gwanaksan; across the Wonhyo Bridge, 63 City, symbol of a turning point in modern Korean history, and the National Assembly; close beneath the feet of Namsan, the National Museum holding five thousand years of history; and at the mouth of the river, the international city of Incheon. The flowing Han River is my own living room, where the miracle of the world economy was wrought over half a century.

The Han River remembers. About five years after the armistice of the Korean War, I was busy studying for my university entrance exams. I was sitting on the Han River embankment at Heukseok-dong, reading a book. Suddenly it seemed I heard a voice speaking to me from beneath the ground. Just in front of where I sat, the tip of a black army boot was poking out a little. Without thinking, I kicked at it with my toe and dug. Out of the Chinese soldier's boot came the bones of toes. I was startled out of my wits, but I soon calmed myself, prayed briefly for that soul, and gently covered it again with earth. Thinking of how many of the tens of thousands killed when the Han River bridges fell and during the river-crossing operations might be lying beneath that ground, I ran home as if fleeing, my heart trembling.

How many lives of enemies and allies vanished in the smoke of battle on this land? While the Korean Peninsula groaned, didn't everyone survive only after passing the brink of death several times over? The years of living day to day, pushing through poverty on the empty land left by killing and shelling, were only half a century ago — so close you could touch it with your nose if you bent down. In the memories of the elders of this country, and of the veterans scattered around the world looking back on their remaining years, it is still as vivid before their eyes as if it were yesterday. Lives that survived by sheer will to live built their homes and rebuilt their hometowns. The Saemaul [New Village] Movement, Hyundai Motor, Samsung Electronics — didn't the many waves that now sweep the world begin on the Han River and become today's breakers on the Pacific?

The Hometown Where My Roots Lie

When I go back to my hometown, there are family, relatives, ancestral graves, and the neighbors I grew up with, and I see the roots from which I grew. The house steeped in the scent of my own body is filled with the fragrance of my parents, who raised my body and mind. Family is a bond tied by love, a bond that can always be mended when it breaks, a bond that shares one heart for as long as we live. Everyone has a dream, and the hometown of that dream is my home. Even when the functions of the human body stop, won't the soul go back to the hometown of its dreams and live forever along with the legends it has made? Isn't that, too, one of the forms eternal life takes for us? People die and disappear, but dreams are eternal.

My hometown is the Han River, the flowing river. It is hope rising and memory departing. Since primordial times — when, after the throes of sea and land churning and shaking together, mountains and valleys folded into ridges and rivers came to flow — our breath has made its nest on this land. When King Taejo of Joseon left Gaeseong, the capital of Goryeo, and moved the capital to Hanyang, Seoul was born, and it has come to today's Miracle on the Han River. It suffered through the Imjin War, the Japanese colonial period, and the Korean War like bouts of measles, but the sacrifices of the patriots who defended the nation laid the foundation, and the fierce spirit of the descendants who stood upon it shone out.

The Han River sweats and pours forth streams of milk, nurturing the wisdom of a remarkable people. Beyond Bugaksan, the Daedong River is still bound after more than half a century, but the freedom we have found swells our dreams with a longing for tomorrow, when we will always embrace our compatriots with the love of family and brothers.

When the brushwood gate of the old family home opens first, the face of the sun that wakes the darkness of last night's cold wind makes the heart leap at the sound of the dawn rooster flapping its wings. Rainbow colors of hope blaze high in the sky. By the will of the Jade Emperor who rules the mountains and seas, the first cry of a baby born of a dragon conception dream shakes heaven and earth. New sprouts pushing up through the cold snow of the whole world trace a year of three hundred sixty-five steps and go off to sow seeds in every corner of the globe. In a season when the solar system opens the inner roads of the vast universe and races into cyberspace, the clear insight of our technology leads the Earth, and the Korean Wave overflows across the five oceans and six continents. Raising our voices we sing — oh, the hymn of this radiant morning! Torch of Gwanaksan, be the vanguard of world peace.

Sports, My Lifelong Companion

When I was in graduate school at Minnesota, I carved out time with difficulty from working and studying, but I never forgot to make time for the sports I had enjoyed since childhood. In Minnesota, where winter lasts six months, I couldn't miss out on skiing and skating. When you come to learn judo in middle and high school, you first learn how to fall to the ground, and only then do you train in the techniques of throwing others. The skill of falling without getting hurt and getting back up seems to have helped me all my life. Because I could tumble on snow or ice without getting worn out and keep at it, I learned skiing and skating quickly. But I learned that once you reach a certain level, special techniques require instruction from an expert.

America is a stage where talented people from every country gather, so now and then I meet friends with extraordinary gifts. I found out that one of the friends I met while skating had been a player on his country's national hockey team. Hearing him talk about how he had lived his whole life on the ice since the age of five, I was truly impressed. Learning to ski, I fell without exception whenever I met moguls. Moguls are small mounds of snow that form naturally on steep slopes as many skiers pass over them, and they look like a graveyard. One Saturday afternoon I made time and practiced mogul skiing alone until it grew dark. After falling dozens of times, my body was bruised and I was hungry.

The ski resort had electric lights on so that people who worked during the day could exercise in the evening. I had taken off my skis and slung them over my shoulder to leave when I saw a skier riding the snow like a bird down the mogul slope. The snow his feet kicked up at each mogul scattered in the wind and, lit by the electric lights, showed a fantastic beauty. I waited at the bottom of the slope, caught hold of him, and explained my situation from beginning to end. Perhaps he took pity on me and my Korean-style English, because he took me up the slope on the lift. He went a little way down first and waited, motioning for me to come down. I passed two moguls and then fell and rolled in fine style. He explained that I had reached the level to learn mogul skiing but didn't know the knack, and told me to remember the following five things and conquer the moguls one at a time.

He explained in detail: first, always keep your shoulders and face pointed down the fall line as you descend; second, keep your weight always on the balls of your feet like a ballerina, repeating a bending and straightening posture; third, when you reach the crest of a mogul, lower your body, bring your feet together, and turn your skis 180 degrees to prepare for the next mogul; fourth, as you descend toward the crest of the next mogul, keep your skis on a diagonal across the slope and push hard against the snow below the mogul, finding the balance where your speed nearly stops on top of the next mogul; and fifth, control your breathing at each mogul and make a rhythm as you go down. Later, when I found out he was the head of the ski school at the resort, I remember going to his office to thank him again.

To Excel, Be Crazy About It

I remembered the words of my judo teacher when I was young: "To do something well, you have to be crazy about it." After that I went around with friends to the most difficult ski areas in Colorado and enjoyed them until I cracked a leg bone, but after I married I took my wife's advice and stopped skiing. At that time Korea had just one ski area, at Daegwallyeong. Recently, forty years later, when I took Korea's K-Shuttle to visit the facilities at the Pyeongchang ski area preparing for the Olympics four years away, I truly felt how far Korea had developed.

When my older brother, who had finished his doctorate in medicine, was on his way to an international medical conference in Rome, Italy, I took vacation and went with him. In Florence, the temple architecture of the Roman era and the sculptures of Leonardo seemed to show the pinnacle of European culture, and they moved me deeply as an architect. Touring the Colosseum of the Roman Empire in the city of Rome, I imagined the claws of the roaring, charging lions hidden behind its grandeur — Emperor Nero's persecution of the Christians.

I had gotten tickets to the Rome Opera House and was hurrying along. In the middle of my forced march to arrive on time, five young gypsies I didn't know blocked the street. At the moment they seemed to be trying to say something with gestures, someone behind me gripped my left elbow hard, and I shook him off and turned around. The instant I turned, I felt a hand brush my right pocket. In that instant my wallet had been taken from my right pocket. As they scattered and fled in all directions, I chased the thug who had been standing behind me, running right up close between the cars speeding along the busy street and crossing the road. It was a moment like filming a movie scene of a desperate fugitive and a pursuer risking his life.

The Gypsies of Rome

Suddenly a group of burly young men surrounded me, and everyone passing on the street stopped to watch me and them. The fleeing thug stopped behind a young woman, and with a smiling face that woman performed a magic trick, pulling my wallet out of the bra at her chest. It was as astonishing as watching a sleight of hand. The cash in the wallet was gone, but — should I call it luck? — the contents I really needed, like my credit cards and driver's license, were left intact. I held my wallet up high and waved it for all the onlookers to see. While the crowd that had been watching this Western shootout from the four corners of the big street clapped and shouted, the gypsy thugs vanished like smoke. It was an exciting experience I can't leave out of my Italian tour.

Back at my office in Ohio, I met the owner of an office building whose design my staff had just finished. Asking him to pay the design fee on time according to the contract, I shook his hand and he left. After we parted I looked at the contract again and felt that the building owner would be paying far too much, but even so I hurriedly left for Nashville, Tennessee. That is the home of American country music. It was a time when famous singers' songs were being recorded there, and it was a cultural city where country music giants like Elvis Presley and Dolly Parton lived.

Held Up at Gunpoint

Just as I was about to open the door of the car parked in the parking lot to go to lunch with the friend who had invited me, I heard a quiet voice behind me: "You too, hands up!" I turned around, and a gleaming, shining pistol was staring at me. My friend had already put his wallet on top of the car and was standing well off with both hands raised high.

I collected myself and recalled the money in my wallet. "I've got 38 dollars in my wallet — I'll give you 20, and will you let me keep the other 18 so my friend and I can have lunch?" I asked. The robber looked unexpectedly flustered. But he wasn't drunk or on drugs, and he was clear-headed enough to look me straight in the eye, and that gave me courage. The robber waved the gun and brought it close to my forehead, showing he was in a hurry. "Okay, okay!" I said, and slowly pulled my wallet out of my inside pocket with two fingers, held it in my hand, took out the money, and held it out. He stepped back and motioned for me to put the money on the hood of the car. Then, perhaps afraid I might throw a taekwondo kick, he motioned for me to step back. Suddenly a smile broke over his face, and nodding once as if to say thanks, he grabbed the money and ran off and disappeared.

In our country, poor after going through the Korean War, there were many beggars along the roads and pickpockets could be seen anywhere. Perhaps having gone through military training at Nonsan and serving as a medic between life and death had seasoned me to the ways of the world, so that I didn't panic when such things happened to me. I still wonder, and feel dizzy, at how all those terrible incidents happened at once that year. But I sometimes imagine to myself whether I could reach the level of that movie I once saw, where a robber breaks into a house and, without being startled, you calmly say, "You are the first guest to visit our home, and I'd like to treat you well," soothing the robber, talking with him, and even becoming friends.

Looking back now, it seems I live doing things I don't want to do because unavoidable circumstances leave me no choice. And in some cases there are many wrongs one commits without knowing it. Even while thinking I ought to return the extra money to the building owner, I let it go because I was short of the salaries I had to pay my staff that month. In America there's no chance to play jitgo-ttaeng or Go-Stop with hwatu cards, but I often played poker with friends. Even while playing, because I didn't want to lose, there were times I ended up taking a great deal of my friends' money. A friend looked at me and said, "You're a robber." When it was unavoidable, I clearly became a thief, and even committed what others would call robbery.

Theft and robbery are not just the deeds of those who are caught by the police and go to prison — how many sins follow me doggedly through my life, committed knowingly and unknowingly? Reading the newspaper, the ways of committing sins large and small seem to vary with the mood and trends of society. I often think that I must live repaying those sins by doing that much good, paying back and returning. Even while resolving to live rightly, how hard it is to truly live a right life — might we call life an endless personal challenge of taking and giving back?

Patriotism and Our National Strength

Since capitalist society is built on free competition, is it humanity's instinct for the struggle to survive that drives social progress? Is it through that ability that humanity became lord of all creation on Earth? When the Olympics come around, instinctive patriotism kicks in. It is a moment of burning aspiration to challenge the summit of the world with outstanding strength and skill honed for four years, and a great festival of humankind in which every country in the world takes part.

At the Vancouver Winter Olympics, a foul took the gold medal from our women's short-track skaters and China took it, and at the Sochi Olympics we also saw us win the gold back and China penalized for a foul. It is a competition of individual skill in which national athletes show the cutting edge of human ability while following order and rules, and a display of organization as several athletes form a team. Reach the top, and your country's flag rises, your anthem plays, and you shine in gold; fall behind, and you hang a silver or bronze medal around your neck.

A spectacle that began long ago in villages, with people running barefoot and wrestling bare-chested, grew steadily into competition between nations and has now spread into a worldwide show. The events have diversified, and economic backing plays its part as sports science is brought in through advances in clothing and equipment. Depending on the event, the difference between first and second place is so minute that it cannot be told apart by the human senses and must be judged by advanced machines, and the difference between third and fourth is almost nothing, yet third place receives a medal and stands on the podium while fourth must be content with the honor of having competed — which makes it all the more gripping.

When we were young, there were times when small-framed, physically weaker Asians competing against tall Western athletes looked like a contest between grown men and children. In Columbus, Ohio, the final round of a world high school baseball championship was held. The Korean and American players, who had beaten the Japanese and Brazilian teams respectively, reached the final. On the day Korea beat the American team in the final, led by pitcher Sun Dong-yeol, a younger alumnus of my high school, my whole family and our fellow Koreans cheered until we were hoarse. I remember as if it were the day before yesterday how everyone crowded into our small house, ate naengmyeon [cold noodles], and toasted the victory.

Amid the changes in the world economy over half a century, our country's young people have grown in stature too, and now they show off our rising national strength as if to say, "Put our competitiveness up anywhere and see." During the World Cup, the fervor of the Red Devils gathered in Seoul Plaza cheering passionately was our pride displayed outside the stadium.

Architectural Orders

History books say the Olympics originated about three thousand years ago at Olympia in Greece as a religious festival honoring the gods there, but considering that Greek stone sculpture derived from Indian wood carving, and that stone architecture too developed from the wooden architectural styles of East Asia, its origins seem to lie in Southeast Asia. Seeing the historical lineage in which the square capital (the "tray" at the head of a column) atop the round columns of our country's ancient architecture became the Greek Doric order, which later developed into the Ionic and Corinthian orders, my view of history differs. One can imagine that the roots of such religious festivals, like the Hwarang spirit of Silla, also lay somewhere in Southeast Asia. This can be understood when you consider that European history began after the Ice Age twenty thousand years ago, while the anthropology of Southeast Asia begins sixty thousand years ago.

Fair Competition Is the Engine of Growth

The thrilling excitement and emotion of watching a match must be our innate, instinctive competitive spirit. Before we were born, hundreds of millions of sperm scattered by our fathers raced desperately in our mothers' bodies, and we were born from that fierce competition in which the single sperm that arrived first was received into the embrace of the waiting egg. So we all came into the world wearing gold medals around our necks. Isn't that also why each and every life holds dignity and precious value just by existing in this world? And since living one's life is a fate of eating and being eaten, bearing young and passing on seed amid competition, how precious a life it is to be alive and to compete as a healthy being.

Born differently as man and woman, the man's path seems the harder one. Because a woman always seeks good seed to carry on capable descendants, a man is a creature who must fight until horns rise from his head like a bull's and his beak curves fiercely like an eagle's, proving he has the strongest seed in the struggle for survival, and only then await the woman's choice. So life itself is an Olympic competition. Fair competition is the engine of social and national development, and so the politics of the former Soviet Union — socialism, relying on the government rather than competing — collapsed. Winning a competition brings honor and material rewards, which provide motivation; the quality and quantity of production grow, and the nation and society grow together. Complacent labor unions that try to lean only on the government or on private institutions fall. Not only that, but now and then I see people who retire early, lose the challenge in their lives, and soon die.

When our generation, born in an underdeveloped country, immigrated to a developed one, it was because there were equal opportunities to compete that we could overcome the gaps of language and culture and each find our own place. When I see a Hyundai or a Kia on the road, I'm as glad as if I'd met a friend, and when I see a Samsung or LG TV on the walls of countries around the world, I'm as happy as if I'd seen family faces. When I first came to America, how I envied the way Japan's Sony electronics dominated the American market. Now, watching Samsung overtake Sony in Europe and all over the world, I am truly proud of our country.

The loneliness of struggling as a stranger in a foreign land and sobbing under the covers; the years of thinking of my parents back in my homeland, waking or sleeping, like a sunflower turned to the sun; of writhing with longing for my country and my people; the memories of my childhood hometown, rich with the scent of family and relatives — perhaps it's because these have never left me that I wait so eagerly for news of our athletes' Olympic medals. When the Taegukgi rises and the national anthem plays, the tears pour down.

Steve, the Homosexual

If you live in America, sooner or later you meet someone who is homosexual. Ellerbe Architects, where I started working around the time I finished graduate school, was one of the largest architectural design firms in America, with 550 employees. Steve, a single architect who had moved from another state shortly before I started, was working in a position senior to mine. One day Steve and I were assigned to design the same building; he was the design supervisor and my job was drawing the plans. He was very kind to me and often wanted to talk. He told me he had worked for three years as a civilian architect at a U.S. military base stationed in Korea.

He said that while working in Dongducheon, Korea, he had been very close to a Korean named Kim Dong-cheol, and that I resembled Kim Dong-cheol. I didn't know who Kim Dong-cheol was, and I could see something a little odd in Steve's behavior. Steve and I went together on a site visit to buildings in Chicago and ended up staying that night in the same hotel. After dinner at the hotel, he took me to a place to drink. It was a place where only homosexuals gathered to make friends, drink, and dance. There were no women — all of them were men.

Judo Saves Me from a Crisis

Even in college in Seoul I had tried to learn to drink, but perhaps it didn't suit my constitution, for I never became a drinker. The sight of men drinking and dancing with other men in their arms felt strange and gave me goosebumps. It was utterly against my nature. I even felt confused about who I was and where I was. But Steve was my supervisor, so I was careful for the sake of my job. And the fact that such a place existed in this world was truly astonishing and curious to me. Steve told me, as if confessing, that he had been in a homosexual relationship with Kim Dong-cheol. Pretending to drink and pretending to be drunk, I gently coaxed Steve, who kept asking me to dance, and brought him back to the hotel.

Just as I had locked my door and was about to fall asleep, Steve knocked on my door and came in wearing his pajamas. Then he took my hand, begging me earnestly to listen to him, and came toward me. I quickly moved away and asked him to leave the room. He lunged at me as if to force himself on me. At that moment my judo skills came out. Two men in pajamas went at it, but he tripped over my foot on the bed and tumbled onto the floor. I collected myself and calmly told him about the judo choking techniques. I explained that you stop breathing and lose consciousness. His face turned pale and he quietly left the room, and so I narrowly escaped the crisis of nearly becoming a homosexual.

The next day he asked me what dan I held in judo and complained that I had hurt his back, but I pretended not to know, and we laughed, finished our work as if nothing had happened, and returned to the head office. Americans seem to be more skilled than we are at keeping a straight face. Steve remained as kind and as faithful to his responsibilities as ever. I too kept my mouth tightly shut and never let anyone see the slightest sign, so we got along without incident. The surprising thing was that several homosexual employees among the staff began to catch my eye. I even saw cases where someone had a wife at home and a homosexual man outside. But because theirs was not a normal, stable way of life, I saw that Steve too left the company before two years were out.

Looking back, same-sex couples have persisted in human society for a long time. In villages with many widows there were "millstone couples," and in prisons and military life same-sex couples have endured as a way of escaping long loneliness. The living conditions of modern people have magnified each individual's solitude. Unable to quench the thirst for love with the opposite sex amid loneliness, living in companionship with someone of the same sex in a free atmosphere becomes easier with each passing day.

When you draw plans for a long time, your eyesight weakens and you end up seeing an eye doctor. The doctor told me my right eye was farsighted and my left eye nearsighted, which I found curious and surprising about myself. From then on I developed the habit of looking at my surroundings with one eye and then looking again with the other. Apparently while driving I looked at the driver next to me with one eye, closing and opening the other. He seemed to think I was winking at him, and started following my car. Realizing he was clearly a homosexual, I nearly had a traffic accident trying to shake him off. At the next traffic light I barely managed to lose him and escaped.

Homework for All of Humanity

Because of the explosion of the human population on Earth, the reality is that countless species of animals that have lived alongside humans for hundreds of millions of years are disappearing from this earth forever. This environment is bringing climate change to the Earth's surface, abnormal weather never seen before is appearing here and there, and ecological changes are constantly occurring in all of nature's life. Same-sex households adopt and raise other people's children, but because they don't bear children, it may also have the effect of slowing population growth. And won't the children who grow up, following the example of their parents' relationship, form same-sex couples again in turn?

Humanity on Earth has swelled like a balloon as far as it can and is now nearing a crisis where it only waits to burst. In this situation, the slowing of population growth due to the decline of marriage in developed countries, or policies like China's allowing each family only one child, can slow global population growth somewhat. But because they cannot curb population growth in other underdeveloped countries, humanity's destruction of the Earth's surface does not stop. Recently U.S. President Obama raised the legality of same-sex marriage, which has had a great impact on the morality of the family as we have upheld it until now. Mightn't the more abnormal families there are, like same-sex families, slow humanity's population growth a little?