Somebody Fix the Copy Machine
The Weight of This Place
A certain cognitive dissonance defines my temporary stint in Seoul as a child. Seoul was a place where the sheer number of tall apartment buildings made their own concrete mountains, while a taller green serenity hummed in the background from every angle. Mountains cover 75 percent of the peninsula, though the detached image of the outdoors runs in stark contrast to South Korea’s general eagerness to succeed within the global system. Even as a child, I felt a stress to achieve in the fluorescent streets of Seoul, a mental cacophony that was assuaged by chong, the quintessentially Korean expression for human-to-human affinity.
Every Sunday, the family debate dealt with the pros and cons of using the remainder of the precious weekend to go out and hike. And when we did, boy was it an ordeal. In many ways, outdoor activity in Korea eagerly subscribed to the forces of capitalism. The hustle and bustle of the outside was allowed to seep in. Technical gear—moisture-wicking apparel, hiking poles, and sun protection, to name a few things—was a requirement, not a luxury, for hikes that lasted at most five hours and were half an hour away from home. Food and beverages—and portable gas stoves for especially ambitious trips—were divided evenly among the family’s small daypacks. We depleted the stock by eating or sharing everything before we’re even halfway there.
Mandatory Reading
In 1995, scholar George Lipsitz wrote about a “possessive investment in whiteness.” Against whiteness everything else is othered: “As the unmarked category against which difference is constructed, whiteness never has to speak its name, never has to acknowledge its role as an organizing principle in social and cultural relations.” I read this text in Spanish 126, a class called “Performing Latinidad.” Before this class, I felt uncomfortably queasy, uncomfortably radical saying “whiteness.”
At Harvard, there is a whiteness in which we possessively invest. There is a cultural hierarchy, and we have all been in the thick of the woods for a while, climbing towards the snowcap that is whiteness. The climb, whether consciously or subconsciously, is in the way that I choose to dress, the way that I talk, and the communities with which I associate (or perhaps more importantly, do not associate) on campus. It is in the way that I force myself to take seriously the politicians and dignitaries that filter through our campus in the form of white liberalism. It is in the way that I network with them at the reception after the talk. It is floating generally in the air, in the nonchalance and the lack of sufficient anger at what has been happening at Mizzou and Yale. We are all helplessly possessiveness of our pieces of whiteness, because they are the cards you need to succeed at the game given its current rules.
Our Outdoors, Your Reasons
My ideas bank seems to go bankrupt every time I sit down to write a column on a Wednesday night. But a quick walk usually fixes the problem—whether that is walking to class at a slightly more leisurely pace than my signature half-jog or taking 10 minutes to circle a Winthrop courtyard.
This week, however, nothing could bail out my bankruptcy. I took a walk (it was nasty outside), bought time by giving my room its monthly clean (tomorrow it’ll swing back to equilibrium), and grabbed friends to ask for ideas (didn’t work, thanks for nothing). My semesterly brain clog has finally arrived and it is time to go back to the woods. And while the woods are on my mind, why not kill two birds with one stone by pulling an inevitable Nicholas Kristof and preach the outdoors gospel?
On Bernie Supporters
The sky cried for several hours on the night of May 23, 2009. Surely this is a self-centered way of describing things, because in South Korea, where former president Roh Moo-Hyun had just committed suicide, it was morning and the weather was okay. But all of the details of that night—the way that the Korean radio blared on about the cliff and his suicide note, my parents’ disbelief, and the consoling “tap tap tap” of the rain on the window—hold so much more significance in retrospect. I did not know at that time that the person who had passed away would be my political idol.
Ever since that rainy night, Roh has become an obsession of sorts for me. Perhaps it is because he was the person who made my mother an excited and independent political actor in my eyes. For a girl who usually can’t remember anything, I hold an incredibly crisp memory of my mother declaring her intention to support Roh in 2002, against the conservative political tendencies of my father and her sisters. On slow nights, I often browse through old YouTube clips of Roh’s speeches and documentaries that have been produced since his death. I tear up when I replay inspirational moments from his speeches, and I laugh at viral videos that stitch his words together into satirical rap songs. To date, I have written over 70 pages of academic work on his election and his presidential tenure.