28 Special Column

SPECIAL COLUMN Graduate Institute of Ferrous Teehnology. POSTECH

Professor and Mrs. HosfordD vii/ageA//he Yang- ong

The GenerallyHappy butSometimesDifficult Lifeof an OldRepatriateProfessor

Prof. Chongmin Kim

Malerials Meehanies LabGIFT'. POSTECH

Iwould like 10 stan by thanking Ms. Ye Jin Lee forgiving me this unexpecteo opportunity. Right away Iaeeepted her invitation to contribute ,m ,mide to GIFT'

Newsletter. beeause this offered me a unique means tocomplete my 'Hello'. even though it st:.u1eomore th:.ula yearago, to the good people of GIFT'. I gave her roughly theabove title over our first phone conversation. But, Iimmc't!iately realize't! ~le gravity of the l'lSk. bc'Cause ~le title

is loaded with such heavy words 'lS 'happy'. 'difficult', 'old','repatriate', and 'pro lessor' .

Till July of hst year, I had been a happy retiree for a Y"'If,husilyengaged in such at.:tivities a~ attending graduate sch(x)!full-time in English literature and riding motorcycles. inaddition to spending more time with grandchildren andcatching up with old friends. In the previous year. 2009. Iretired from General Motors Rese'lfch Lahoratories. Onething I give myself credit for is that. whe~l\ Immy workersdo not prepare themselves for their life after retirement, Imethodically conditioned myself Ii" it staning from 2004,the year when my English literature phase began. Myneighbor. a child psychl}-analyst. commented, "Ah. you areHying to h",,1 your mind by yourself' Good luck!" A glxxlliiend of mine said, "Why do you keep exploring new waysto suffer!" I read a lot amI wrote a lot. including fictions.poeuy, even plays. As I retired. I set up a rough plan ~lat Iw,uned to write creatively for the lilliowing ~,iny years. Dr.\Vada. who had been my sensei figure throughout myprofessional C'!fCCr.blessed me by saying. "Do not call it'retirement'l Consider it the next phase of your life! Aperson like you must never stop ",iting. and I ~link you willreach your pe<1kas a writer in fifteen Y"'IfS:'

11,e serious pkm above halted abll.lptly when I got ,m e-mailIrom Prof. Barlat one day during a visit of my mother inSeoul in July of 2010. only two days before my retum toDetroit. We made the best use of what available time we had,md met at ~le Seoul KTX station ~,e following day. It didnot take much time for me to accept his offer. I \vasimmediately fascinated by the risks and delicacies of thea'Signment. I ~lOUghtcorrectly ~,at, in this job, I would haveto learn the Imx1em Korea. her l~mguage. her music. ;llld herpeople and societal culture. Moreover. I had to conduclmyself adc'tJuately bo~l 'lS ,m Americ,", and as a Korean. ,mdboth as a man who spent a company career at GeneralMotors ,",d as a professor. Unlike a stable employment overm,",y ye<IfS,in this new assil,,'llment I thought it undesirahleto make either too much contributioll or too little. to be toogo(x1 or too avcmge. W1(j act t(X) young or hx) Diu. In mywhole prol""ional Iii". I had never deelined an opportunitywhich containe'" interesting challenges and risks. One factor

that decisively pushed me to take this olkr was that thiswould give me the once-in-my-lifetime opponunity to liveclose to my mother. After leaving Korea forty years ago. Ihad never lived with or close to my mother, even though Iwas her eldest SOIL My mother said atx)Ut my reluming toKorea. "In my S(l-some ye,1fSof life. I have never dreamedthat such a (g<Xld) thing would happen to me!" t was alsocmious about what adjustments my wit" of thiny-sevenye;.rrswould have to make in order to live in Poh~mg. Korea.In ~le States, we had been a team who complementc't! eachother in all maners of life; there was no such division aswom,m's duty ,md m'lIl's duty. To make tI,;s p,"l of~,e storyshan, my wife has so impressively trdllsfonned herself into aKorc~mpmfessor's wife that I am concemoo her tr.msitionback to ,m Americ,", wife will be difficult.

I have had to m,lke many cultumI adjusunents. Sometimes itwas as simple as understanding the difference betweenKorean 'L1I' and English 'yes'. It took me many weeks.however. to be convinced that a student's .L1I' conveys theattitude of 'I will do my best: where<ls 'yes' promises theresult, 'I will deliver the result as agreed'. Other adjustmentstook longer. For example, alier a couple of months in Korea.my wil" ,md I concurred that. whereas it t,lkes about thillyminutes of knowing each other before Americans starttalking ahout their personal lives. it takes Koreans a lotlonger. a"i much as scycml months before they stm1 confidingin us. In scientific language. Koreans arc delta-functions.while Americans arc Gaussi~Ul functions.

We had to adjust our old ears to the phonetics of modemKorean language, which is different from the standardlanguage spoken forty years ago .. A . used to be close to 'j'.but, to my ear. it sounds eloser to 'z' these days, especiallywhen sfX,ken by young people. I read once that dentists inEurope could tell if a patient was an American by theposition of the lower jaw in relation to the upper. What thedental industry in America has created over the past fewdecades is the lower jaw to move forw~mJ. It seems to methat the same has happened in Korea. When the lower jaw ismoved li,rw,"u, it bc-comes mO'l: natural to sJ1<"1k'z', insteadof 'j'; you may uy it. I have also noticed, espc-cially in songs,thaI. whereas people spoke Korean with hreaks between

Special Column 29

G,.duatelnstitute of Ferrous Technology. POSTECH SPECIAL COLUMN

worus forty YC<lfSago. they make the breaks often betweensyllables these days. I lirst hypothesized that this was allinfluences Irmn Ule all-popular Ametican language. but havesince modified ulis to include influx of clements from thelanguages of Jcon-L1lli1d Kyeong-Sang Provinces.

I was immediately hooked by the survival program. 'y.e7rc? cj-' (I am a singer). It showed me so much about thediversity and the depth of the world of popular songs inKorea: the composers. the singers. the businesses behindall these: it showed me so much about the Koreanlanguage, too: it showed me so much about the tastes andstandards of the general public too. The songs I liked mostincluded ''iJ{}' (Empty glass) by lac-bum Vim. the duct(the name escapes me) which Yun-A Kim sang with amale vocalist. Abracadabra. again by Yun-A Kim. andHinari. by Bum-Sao Kim. But. m)' taste for songs isclearly different from that of the general public. hecauscnone of these songs received above-median votes. At first.I was disturbed that the top vote-getters were screamingsongs which made the audience shed tears. In the States.no one goes to concerts to cry. However. I saw recentlyon TV a couple of young Caucasian womcn saying thatthey liked K-Pops because. unlike Western songs whichare usually light-hcarted songs heard in bars. K-Pop songscome from the depth of the singer's heart. It !:lScinatedme why rap. which is past its peak popularity in theStates. is still a rage in Korea. It fascinated me that theballad fonn is so popular in Korea. ll,en. recently. I cameto the stunning realization that Pansori. the most excellenttraditional Korean music. is basically a ballad and rap.

My daily life has gone through substarltial changes. all good.My bvotite foods in the States included hamburgers. thespiciest fricd chicken wings. and pizza. and I prefelTcdKentucky Hownon and beer Ii,r drinking oCGlSions. Alier Istopped playing the timc- and money-consuming game ofgolf. my hodily exercise had ht.'Cnfar hclow adequate. Here.weekend visits to local temples. always situated high ,mddeep in the mountains. and villages have wonderfullypmvided needed exercise. My diet went thlUUgh a profoundchange. and Poh~U1gf(xxls. such as . ¥l:;;tJ;«1 ;R' amI '.!I~-G-~l'.with a lot of vegetables. trimmed my previouslyoverweight txxIy by 5 kg! I was happy to rediscover soju.dongdongju and makgulli. and since coming to Korea lastyear. I have never had a sip of Ametican liquors. With allthis. other statistics of my healUl. like hlood pressure. seembetter th,m ever.

Some of the cultural adjustmcnts were interesting hut.more often than not. with some difficulty. One wasadmitting and acting my age. In the States. I could go tomy favorite neighborhood har. engage in conversationwith strangers of all ages. and even playa game of pool.never noticing the age gap. As a graduate student ofEnglish literature in the States. I could engage in longdiscussion with students in a classroom. a lihrary, or anearby har. These sorts of social gathering had animportant side benefit. It was a precious chance J(lf me asa fiction wtiter to observe how young people of hothsexes feci. think and live. I could not dream of findingsuch occasions in Korea. I miss the professors in theEnglish Department. Wayne State University. in Detroit.Michigan. They welcomed me and watched me reading.wtiting and becoming mature as a student and man. Theygently introduced me into next-level literature when I wasready.

In my early ye,",; '" a comp,my marl. ,m older Korean ftiendadvised mc nevcr to tell a KOfC<mjokc in English. After the

passage of m,my Y"'"'. I ht.'CaIne talkative and liberally toldmy jokes. In my early months at GIFT. although thesituations did not need me to apologize or regret. I feltshmply that I should be carcful WiUljokes. For most jokes inUle St,tes and Great Btiwin. the source of humor comes fromself-deprecation. that is. making fun of the speaker himself.Watching television in Korea. on Uleother hand. it sccms thatpeople laugh at the expense of a third pa,ty or even thesecond party. I vividly remember Ule bewilden"I look on the!:lce of someone at GIFr when I told my self-deprecatinghumor. I will never repeat Ule same mistake.

A strange thing happened during the Koreanil.ation of myhrain. For ahout J(llIr months. after a couple of months ofliving here. I found my hrain in a semi-paralysis and hadno desire to read literature written in English. JamesJoyce and Charles Dickens. to whom I used to likenmyself so much. seemed like distant stars. I ttied to pickup Homer. but his Iliad seemed even farther. like astrangc galaxy in a parallel univcrse. Only a month ago. Istarted recovering from this agonizing numbness. I amnow reading short stoties by John Updike. and his stotiesbrings back the senses and meaning of homc in the States.The human mind is remarkable for its ahility to findhealing ways.

Ah. so much for my prohlems with English and Korean!I must not forget to tell about my craz)' and wonderfuljourncy into the French language. Soon atter I came toPohang. I wanted to find something unusual to do. inorder to maintain my formcr 'wild and crazy guy' image.I thought about learning the Gyeong-Sang Provincelanguage (Note that I did not usc the word. dialect. here.out of my respect to the proud people of the province').Hut. I did not think they would be happy to sec a Seoulperson speaking their language and trying to break intotheir world without permission. Even under the bestimaginable scenario. the situation \\'ould be quitcawkward. So. I decided to leam the safer French languageinstead. and m)' c~l1ing daughter sent me a study hook.She said. when I complete the hook. I woulc1 be ready togo to the next. intennediate levcl. I regarded leaming theFrench language as crazy as. or even crazicr than. riding amotorcycle. 1 also want to say that the motivation to team

French has little to do with the fact that Prof. Barlat is aFrenchman or the fact that my tirst love affair more thanfOlly years ago was with a French literature major. As apart of the leaming cxperience. I also wished to sing atleast one French song at least once. because it itself wassuch a crazy. potentially embarrassing idca. I !Camed LcsFeuilles Mortes and La Mer. The fonner is a lovely.somewhat sad. song. and I sang it once at an MML outingwith all kinds of wrong pronunciation and once againrecently with Prof. Harlat at an MML palty at Hu-Cheon-Seong Chinese restaurJnt on December 21. The latter. asunny song. t<lUnd an eagerly willing Icad vocalist. Prof.Barlat: he and I sang that song six times already! We sangthe song at the last MT at Yeong-Nam Alps. at Oo-Mi-Hyang. at a sam-gyeop-sal place in Hyo-Ja Market. at abeef pot place in E-Dong. and at a Wa-Har. The latest wasat the recent faculty party in Gyeong-Ju. There. wereceived some claps but no encore requests: this mayindicate the high artistic standard of professors in Korea.

Maybe G,xI created His mankind to be ambivalent. to behumble and proud at the same time. It did not take longt.x me to give up le~Lnlingmodem Korean. But, my uglypride can never die and I have written a lot in Korean tomy friends on our internet hlog. I find special satisfactionin poetry. Some readers may have noticed that Icontributcd an English translation to thc lovely Koreanpoem by POSTECH Facility Head. Mr. Soo-Gil Kwon. inthe spring timc. I had the greatest pleasure discovering anexcellent poet. the late Mr. Gwang-llyup Kim. whohappenec1 to be an uncle of Mr. lIyun-Jin Kim. of MML.His poetic language. full of Jejudo dialect. is stunning andheautiful. and he expetimented with so much creativityand energy. I did an English translation of his mostfamous poem. shown below. TIle poem shows sentimentsof a bygone time. and the Ii,ct that I love it tells somethingahout me. I wonder if this poem appeals to the present-day young generations. I \\-'onder if there will he Koreanpeople who will love this poem a century from now.\\'hat fascinates me is that. written in English. the poemsecms to take on a timeless charactcr of a SOil. That is. thepoem will generate the same leeling to readers a couple ofcenturies later. Where docs it come from" Arc alllanguages like English in this sense?

30 Special Column

SPECIAL COLUMN Gradua.alns.i.u.a of Ferrous Technology, POSTECH

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wonderful reception from POSTECH stalI, including Prof.Kyoo- Young Kim. Therefore. to me the appointment atGIfT contained an element of redemption and J:lce-saving.Small world Fate Whatever, I am so j(JItunate to have knownthese gentlemen and scholars.

Facing your beauty,I'm overwhelmed with thanks,I ponder the meaning of it all

Again, again and again

Melancholy streetWandering aimless, my feet,

Attracted to fireplace's warmth?Where I stopped, appeared your face!

Far as my ryes reach,More beautiful than a painting or poem!

For whom are you meant,Possibly for me?

From afar and from nearStill young, yet kind,No hint of haughtinessOr nervous fragility

Suddenly brightens the world!As if in waiting, your greeting face

Elegant and mysteriousYour beauty defies my words

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It pains me tltat I have to leave tlle wondertiJl life in Poh,mgand retum to my home in the States some day. I have toreturn to my live grrmdchildren. because my first goal in lifehas been to be a good grandfather. My memory ofgrandfathers is minimal. My children have been deeplycurious about my father. but their cxposure to him wasminimal. Therefore, if I fail to spend enough time v.ith mygmndchildren. my Kim family will be grandfather-less forthree or more generations in succession. an unthinkablesituation for a good fmnily. What will my life be like afterreturning to the States? The dellliis do not worry me: I willsimply plunge myself into the anns of liiendly p<.'ople.like Idid in Pohang.

be had and I will fondly remember the students and they, me.I have been seriously aware of my personal chamcter as aprofessor. because in this regard. I could not help beingessentially American. I have observed and even askedaround how professors operate in Korea. Some nurturestudents to be independent. while some micro-manage. Ifound out. On the students' side. some want to beindependent, while some want.s to be instructed what andhow to do from world-<:Iass professors. Stephen Spielberg,tlle fmnous movie director. publicly thanked his parents forIe:lving him alone to own his young. growing years. One ofmy children once said to me, "It would've been e<Lsierforme. if you would've been like other Korean parents andscolded mld punished me when I misbehaved or did not dowell at school. It was so hard for me to see you mld momsuffering in silence," One significant revelation I had a monthago was about the professor-student relationship betweenProf. William Hosford and me. I was in the hardest period ofmy life as a full-time employee, a full-time student mld a full-time daddy. and had exhausted my last calorie after Icompleted all expeliments. and my weight reached an all-time low of 57 kg with a 26-size waist (Years later. thesenumbers swelled to 75 and 34'). I had to recover for a yearbefore starting to write. It must have been so painful for myadvisor, the kind William Hosford. to see me in thatagoniljng state in the final stage of doctomte work. Yet, hewaited in silence. with faith. I admit that there can be amultitude of different teacher-student relationship. But. I amfinn in my' belief that thesis students must be nllltured tomature to individuals mostly on their own. like SpielbergW,LS.I have never tll,mked Professor Hosford face-to-face.mld he would be embarrassed if I did. Several years alier Igraduated. at a party I told Mrs. Peggy Hosford a1x,ut thehardship I endured during my thesis work. She smiled andsaid to me, "Chongmin. don't even mention hardship in frontof me. When Bill was a graduate student, he ,md I had fourchildren in four years. I loved reading 1xlOks.but there wasjust no time for that'" By the way. I don't think I everthanked my dear wife for nevcr nagging how I wa" doing inmy gmduate school work: if I did. I would be embaJmssed.In the same spirit. I wish GIFT students would cut down ontheir sentimental words of acknowledgements in their theses.I have read more than half dozen theses at GIFT. ,md theacknowledgcment" were all so good and often so moving tothe point of hringing tears. But. remember that the theses arepublic documents, ,md the writers must control how muchthey want to tell the world about personal loves andemotions.

N~uing the end of this essay. I recall one evening in a hotelin Monroeville, Pennsylvania. earlier this year. I was drivingback tram my son's new home in New Jersey. ,md it W<LSaconvenient ovemight stop on the way to Michigan. Thereww.; ~Ul e-mail fromProf.Kw~U1s(x) Chung of SL-'oulNationalUniversity. requesting me to illU1Xlucethe keynote speaker.Dr. Sung-Ho Park of POSCO. at his upcoming NUMISheetconference. It then dawned on me that Monroeville andneamy Pittsburgh connected me. Professor Rrrlat, Dr. Parkand Professor Chung. in a way which seems more like a t~ltcthml an accident. In the early 1980' s. I met Dr. Park. tllen agraduate student, at a conference in Pittsburgh. We toured thecity and had ,m evening of dining and drinking. Ever since, Itmcked his rise in POSCO ,md we even collaborated on aproject one time. In tlle mid-80s. Dr. Chung mld Dr. Barlatwere office mates at the ALCOA re,;e,lfCh laboratories. Thecompany hosted a lavish week-long celebration at a golfresort for its IOO,h anniversary. and the invitation to GMRe,;e,lfCh ended up on me. only because my IxJSses knew Iwa~ not afraid to discuss metallurgy and computer sciencetogether. Dr. Chung l(llInd me at tlle golf course. by pureaccident. When GM Research assigned mc to crcate arese<u'Chcollalxm,tion tlle ye,rr GM W<LSacquiring then Dae-Wr:x>Motors. it was the GM Research vice president whopicked Dr. Chung' s pmposal. even tllOUghI strongly wishedthat there be a collalxlrative agreement witll POSTECII, aswell. I felt so sorry that it did not happen. after such a

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where Q!'3nge flowers blossomeda plX'm of GW~9-Hyup Ki~

At the village of my youth, orange flowers blossomed white.To the orange blossom petals, blue waters wavt"d and wavt"d,

Gliding over the seawas a lone connector steamboat

Like orange blossom petals fallen on a wooden porch,My silvery-haired grandma slumbers

As my youth also desiresblissful dozing,Even the bah-bah song of the connector steamboatDescendsto my village on the wings of sragulls.

Orange blossom, falling with connector's bah-bah songOrange blos.o:;ompetals have tears to shed,The sorrow of orange blossom petals

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I wish to show a poem which I wrote recently, because itssentiment shares certain feelings I have towards GIFr.The poem could use a little explanation. On the third ofDecember, my closest friends and I, all five of us.gathered in a non-descript restaurant in Seoul. We werethe only clients that night. The business owner, a beautifuland pleasant woman in her 40' s. showed up and chattedwith us. She said her home town was Yeong-Ju. Thatreminded me of a beautiful prose written by Mr. Soon-W(Xl Choi, a fonner director of the National Museum ofKorea, about the famous temple building known as M(xl-Ryang-Soo-Jeon. a part of the Bu-Suk-Sa Temple inYeong-Ju. I had converted a portion of it into poem formseveral years ago. For my friends this time, I made extrarevisions in order that it be for the lady, not for thebuilding. I trust that no one related to Mr. Choi wouldhlame me for horrowing from his essay withoutpermission, because Mr. Choi would have certainlyallowed me to do so considering the hard work I did inmy high-school years eleaning up the mess leti by himand my father after lengthy partying.

Finally, I wish to talk more about the professor-studentrelationship in Korea. It may also be related to the specialsocial status that professors are given in Korea. Initially I feltquite uncomfortable whenever I was addressed as aprofessor. but now I am used to it. I was very aware e:rrly onof the long-Ia"ing professor-student relationship in Koreaand had to think deeply ahout what should be my role.Compounding this. because of my age, quite understmldablystudents tended to want to keep some respectable distancefmm me. Dr. Erik Pavlina a wonderful American who spenta year at MML as a post-<!oc, beautifully summed up my ageproblem. "Chongmin, I am really shocked that the (Korean)students seem to he afraid of you. I simply don'tunderstand'" I do not know a solution to this problem, and Ido not want to even uy to find one. As always. I remainfaithful that, in g<Xldtime, enough positive interactions will