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Showing posts from August, 2014

2014-08-30 TrailBlasian Book Launch

I was delighted to join yesterday’s TrailBlasian Book Launch Party. Here's the book! http://www.trailblasian.com/ Thanks so much to Melissa Watkins and Kenya Evans for inviting me. It isn’t easy to share the stage with others when the focus is on your own book. But they did invite me, and they didn’t make me feel like a trespasser. www.patreon.com/fsi21 Melissa knows about my activities, so she invited me to talk about them 1) to recruit volunteers and 2) raise money from the raffle (and, as it turned out, a “pass around a hat, make a donation”). In addition to that, there were many cool moments at yesterday’s book launch discussion:

2749 is going to be a hell of a year in Korea

Headline: Koreans 'to Become Extinct in 2750' My observation: 2749 is going to be one hell of a year! * Fights about who let that happen * Numerous investigations and hearings by the National Assembly about which political party is to blame * Calls for the president to resign to take responsibility * Protests by the handful of Koreans remaining against the other handful of Koreans remaining * Conspiracy theories about Japan plotting since 1910 when it colonized Korea to cause Koreans to go extinct, etc... 2-7-4-9, Party Over, Oops, Out of Time! http://vimeo.com/100003364

2014-08-17 My Korean Teacher!

Yes, it is true, I now have a private tutor! We are both busy people, but will do our best to meet a certain number of times per week (which  I won't mention, because no matter which number I mention, some will say, "that not enough"). Anyway, she is nice enough to take the time to come see me. Although she admitted at the session where we met a few weeks ago that she will use me as one of her guinea pigs.^^ She has an incredible story, which I won't tell, but it is really interesting that she is now willing to take the time to teach me. I have four other teachers I will meet occasionally, but of course, as soon as I decided to study Korean more seriously, some huge unanticipated projects popped up/re-emerged. I will never have 17 teachers like my colleague Yeonmi Park has, but I will meet at least one or two teachers regularly... It was a great moment--we had five people eager to study Korean, and five South Koreans eager to teach them, as volunteers. I post this at

You can't save the world (Korea Times, August 13, 2014)

You can't save the world By Casey Lartigue, Jr. Last year after I gave a speech at a high school in Seoul, one of the students earnestly asked me during the question-and-answer session: “How can we save the world?” My response, in short: The world doesn’t want to be saved. You’re likely to get shot in the process. Instead, why not focus on doing something practical to help even one person in your neighborhood, community or school? I wish I had also quoted Henry David Thoreau: “If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life." Cynical, perhaps, but I think I wasn’t harsh enough. A lot of people in South Korea ― and I mean, from the age of 8 to 48 ― have been swept away with, “my dream is to work at the United Nations.” Others read translations of speeches by the current U.S. president, looking for clues about how they can save the world. Back in 2008, it seemed to many people that B