My reflection and interpretation of Lim Sol Ah’s <My Best Life>, the bitterest coming-of-age in a long time

From the winner of 4th Munhak Dongne (Literary Community) College Novel Category in 2015, poet, author, and activist Lim Sol Ah’s semi-autobiography “My Best Life” caught me off guard with more-than-feisty girls’ experience through adolescen …

“The most personal is the most creative.” — Martin Scorsese, Bong Joon-ho

When Director Lee Isaac Chung dropped Youn Yuh-jung the script for Minari through a friend of Youn, the South Korean actress called her friend after reading a few pages of Isaac’s work. “Is this a real story?” Her friend said “Yes,” and hence the audience is blessed to see the Best Ensemble family in a movie.

The Small Giant

The scale of the production was as simple as it could be. That includes the budget, shooting duration (25 days), and the number of actors in the 1-hour-and-56-minute movie. Yet it’s the…

This is my personal, big why appreciating IU as a person.

How I came across was IU was purely by chance. It was my choice though that I paid closer attention to the (nation) little sister’s work in My Mister. It was surreal for me to dig deeper into Korean pop culture through her eyes. I surprised myself for loving her work as an artist and most of the time as a human being. …

The theme for International Women’s Day (IWD) 2021 is Choose to Challenge. A social-media-friendly hashtag #choosetochallenge has been widely used. The citizens of the world who are (presumably) socially-conscious are encouraged to use this hashtag to “celebrate women”.

While looking at celebrations of powerful and well-known women, I wonder how many women have fallen through the cracks of appreciation? Can we ask the right questions to discover their presence in our everyday society?

Have we come to appreciate the women who gave their lives to us? …

Thank you for the 3R's proposal. It's true that what we are looking at will be based primarily on humanity; if we succeed in maintaining the virtue while harnessing the power of AI, we can expect so many opportunities. Just wondering about your thoughts on how lower and middle-income countries (LMIC) and their governments can work this out? I believe when jobs are displaced, many of these countries will be affected as the "production" lines are usually in these countries - to supply for the developed nations. And what do you think about the ethics in AI? Would you say we need to "relearn" about how ethics can be "practically" used in AI and other futuristic implementation? I'm planning a post-doc in that area and hope to get your kind inputs on that if possible. :) Thanks and stay safe!

Hi Patsy, thanks so much for reading it and raising this question. Indeed, I absolutely agree with you that Chinese especially those from People's Republic of China care a lot about education and many have sent their children abroad to pursue better education if lacking the opportunities to enter top universities in the country. I think the difference raised by Min Jin Lee relates a lot to the history of Korea (both South and North) when they fought in the wars and how their geographical context makes Korea being "pressured" by the mega power nations surrounding them. As for China, I am unable to give a very comprehensive explanation on that but I would argue that the situation would be even more complex - history, economy, political factors etc.

May I know what should I do if I would like to publish this on Fourth Wave? :)

I am not going to lie: I did not finish watching SKY Castle before I wrote this, and have yet to read Pachinko. Last year, as a matter of curiosity, I started watching SKY Castle and left it at the 6th episode. Reason: It was too “cutthroat” and gave me a sense of extremity. Too often in the drama, I was perplexed by how far the parents of young children could go: competing to enroll their children into the top universities in Korea and snatching away their childhood. (Trust me: The traumas are far more intense than what I’ve written…