Islander 20

Faith 20 1

20

COVER DESIGN MINSUNG SON COVER ART TERRY LIM

Faith ISSUE 20 WINTER 2018

ISSUE 20

FOREWORD

Faith Restored Mr Earl

I have an interesting relationship with the concept of faith. When I hear the word my instinct is to say that I have none, as it is most often associated with religion - and I am not religious in the slightest. But the Oxford English Dictionary has a broader definition: complete tr ust or confidence in someone or something. By this measure I have a great deal of faith in a great many things, from my dog Rufus’s wagging tail putting a smile on my face when I get home, to the fact the sun will rise every morning.

Some things that we have faith in—like our parents’ unconditional love—feel like they’ve always been there; they are innate. Others, however, develop at different stages in our lives as experience moulds our perceptions of the norm. For me, an example of the latter is my absolute faith that I will be regularly amazed by the things that NLCS Jeju students achieve. It is easy to become accustomed to the extraordinary if it happens to you often enough. Things that are normal here

just don’t happen every day in most schools (certainly not in any that I have worked in). Our community is an anomaly, in the best possible way, and that is something of which we are rightly proud.

Almost a year and a half ago, I took a leap of faith and moved what Google Maps tells me is exactly 5,751 miles from home, to take up the role of Head of Sixth Form in a school on the other side of the world. Of course I had an idea of what this job and this school would have in store for me, but nothing could have prepared me for what was to come. Last year was the hardest, and at times most stressful, but ultimately most fulfilling year of my career up to that point. I got to know some phenomenal people, both students and staff, and the things I learned from them helped me get to where I am today, sitting at the desk of a Vice Principal. I, for one, think that my decision to take this particular leap of faith has been vindicated.

In my new role, I am ultimately

4

responsible for the quality of teaching and learning that happens here at NLCS Jeju. In putting together monitoring procedures, observations and all of the other machinations that go along with this kind of quality assurance, I found myself starting to lose confidence that we are focusing on the right things. I wondered whether there was too much emphasis on policy, procedure and grades. I feared that these things might be overshadowing what should be most important for our teachers: genuine passion for their subjects, and for teaching.

Then a member of staff, who shall remain nameless, sat down next to me in the staff room one morning and said “Rob, I felt so tired and stressed this morning.” I braced myself for a conversation about workload or the difficulty of dealing with a particular student or class. “Then I had a double period with my Year 9 boys, and now I feel so much better.”

Faith restored.

WINTER 2018

5

ISSUE 20

CONTENTS & CREW

008 026 047

RELIGION

ACADEMIC WRITING

SOCIETY

BIOGRAPHY

IB ART

FEATURE

104 110 124

CONTENT EDITORS

DESIGN/PHOTO EDITOR

SEUNGHO HAM

DAIN AHN

MINSUNG SON

BONNIE HYUN

RACHEL CHO

CLAIRE JO

RAPHAEL DILLON

WRITERS

TA E E U N K A N G

DOHYUN KIM

SOOBIN AHN

BYUNGHOON KO

GABRIELLA KIM

CHRISTINE BAE

DOHYUN KIM

SEUNGHEE KIM

E LY S I A B A E

E I L E E N K WA K

CLAIRE OH

JUDY BANG

HOEJAE KIM

HANNAH SEO

RYA N B A N G

JEONGHA KIM

SHUNTO SHIGETOMI

JINA CHOI

JUSANG KIM

MINSUNG SON

SM CHUNG

MINSOL KIM

DANIEL YOO

RAPHAEL DILLON

SOPHIA KIM

ADRIENNE YOON

JIHO HA

SUMIN KIM

JUNHO HA

SUNGHEE KIM

N AT H A N H A

R AY M O N D K I M

WINTER 2018

072 086 096

CURRENT AFFAIRS

HISTORY

MEDIA

FICTION

SCIENCE

SPORTS

128 142 150

TA R A K I M

TOM SEO

DESIGNER

B A R RY L E E

BUNNY SEOL

JAEHYUN SHIN

SEOBIN LEE

SARAH SEONG

STAFF

SUNGHYUN TOM LEE

CHAEYUN SHIN

MR. EARL

YA E J O O N L E E

JAMIE SOH

MS. KENNINGTON

ANGEL LI

MINSUNG SON

MR. MAHER

D AV I D L U

MINGYU SONG

MR. SANNEGADU

STEVE NA

BELLA XIAO

M S . PA L I WA L

D AV I D N O H

HYENA YEOM

E O J I N PA R K

ADRIENNE YOON

J A C K S U N G J I N PA R K

SEUNGWON YOO

J A S O N J O N G S U H PA R K

JENNA JEONGWON YU

L U N A PA R K R O H Y U N PA R K

PHOTOGRAPHER

Y O U N J O O K AT E R O H

JI HOON MICHAEL HAM

8

RELIGION

Learn about the conflicts between religions and how they have developed! The articles in this section provide information that provide a better understanding and in insight to the various types of religion as well as the history and origins of each one. At NLCS we aim to learn about different cultures, which will help us respect different religions and perspectives displayed by people.

Rachel Cho Year 13 Halla North Dohyun Kim Year 12 Halla East Dain Ahn Year 13 Halla North Claire Oh Year 13 Halla North

9

QUOTES ON

h it

a F

RAYMOND KIM YEAR 8 MULCHAT

"Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase" Martin Luther King Jr. "Without faith, nothing is possible. With it, nothing is impossible."

Mary M. Bethune "Be faithful in small things because in them your strength lies."

Mother Teresa "God will never give you anything you can't handle, so don't stress."

Kelly Clarkson "Faith is like WiFi. It’s invisible, but it has the power to connect you to what you need."

Anonymous "Some things have to be believed to be seen!"

Ralph Hodgson

10

"Just do it."

Nike "I know what I like and I like what I know."

Anonymous "Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark."

Rabindranath Tagore "Faith sees the invisible, believes the unbelievable, and receives the impossible."

Cornelia Ten Boom "Faith makes things possible, not easy."

Anonymous "Your faith can move mountains and your doubt can create them."

Jesus Christ "You can do a thing only if you have the belief that it can be done."

Anonymous "Believe what they wish."

Julius Caesar "Seeing is not believing; believing is seeing! You see things, not as they are, but as you are."

Eric Butterworth "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and it will be opened to you."

Jesus Christ "Mistaking as if you are believing is much worse than not believing," Raymond Kim

11

Nihilism Junho Ha Year 12 Halla North Adrienne Yoon Year 12 Halla East

12

Every single individual on the planet Earth has their own belief systems. We utilize these belief systems in order to define our personal sense of reality and to make sense of the world we are living in.

These belief systems may b e s e p a r a t e d i n t o t w o d i f f e re n t components: evidence-based or faithbased.

Science is a tool that human beings use to build evidence-based beliefs under the premise that the world can be completely understood by observation, experimentation, and prediction.

These also sit on the presumption that humans possess individual beliefs, and thus are capable of introducing bias in their interpretation of the world.

This is the reason why scientists stick to stating strict definitions of terms and conditions, as well as requiring evidence that is capable of being accepted and verified by others. This assures that the accepted results have been subjected to both trials and bias, and thus the conclusions that are produced are largely objective.

On the other hand, faith-based beliefs are mental constructs that lack evidence. This does not mean that their beliefs should be underrated or to be disregarded, but should be accepted as different from the scientific beliefs that are built based on evidence. It is

important to note that evidence does not justify all beliefs, but is just a single method that is used to build scientific beliefs. However, one may still be tempted to consider faith-based beliefs as somehow lesser in value because regardless of what each person believes, we all contemplate that our beliefs are the correct ones. It is this that actually causes all the discrepancies in our behaviors. For example, we are keen to defend our particular belief systems as being the only means by which one can experience truth, or reality.

Nihilism is the total opposite of the two beliefs - the general definition of nihilism is that all traditional morals and relations of authority are based on falsehood. In simple terms, it is a belief claiming that everything is baseless and has no value. Nihilism is often associated with extreme pessimism, as it denies the foundation of everything.

Although a novelist Ivan S . Tu r g e n e v w a s t h e o n e w h o popularized the term nihilism, it was Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, a German philosopher, who used it first. The earliest form of what can be classified as nihilism was derived from ancient skepticism. Friedrich Nietzsche is the philosopher most often associated with the concept of nihilism - in his book Will to Power, he wrote, “Every belief, every considering something

true is necessarily false because there is simply no true world.� In this book Nietzsche claimed that nihilism is the most destructive force in history which will cause crisis in humanity, as every meaning and purpose collapses according to it. His work reflecting his views on nihilism and the effects of it has inspired many other artists and philosophers to study the idea of nihilism in more depth - for instance, Oswald Spengler, a German historian, has proved that nihilism could lead to the collapse of civilization by examining the relation between nihilism and failed cultures. The works of numerous philosophers have enabled the development of the concept.

The four main types of nihilism are moral, metaphysical, cosmic, and existential. Moral nihilism is a view that nothing is morally correct or incorrect, and metaphysical or epistemological nihilism is the belief that all knowledge is possibly untrue or not capable of being confirmed as true.

The third type of nihilism is cosmic nihilism which argues that nothing is meaningful or of significance in a broader view. Existential nihilism is the idea that everything that exists means nothing. This particular type of nihilism was extended from the other three, taking the general idea that there is no meaning to life.

Faith-based beliefs are mental constructs that lack evidence.

13

An interview with a former Catholic

Bella Xiao Year 9 Sarah I interviewed a friend who used to be a Catholic, but is now an atheist. Five of the questions asked were about his life when he was a Catholic.

14

Q. Why did you believe in Catholicism at first?

Because I was raised that way, being taught to be a Catholic.

Q. How did your religion impact your life?

It was something nice to believe in while I was a very young kid. It comforted me when someone or something important to me was no longer with me. On the other hand, however, I was terrified by the stories in the Bible, and I hated going to church (on Sundays) and Bible classes (on Saturdays). Overall, I hated my religion despite the comfort I got, because it was something that was forced on me.

Q. Did you ever really get into your religion? If so, at what age?

I got really into it between 11 and 13, and got a feeling that I was speaking to Jesus and he was speaking back to me.

I thought that Jesus really could help me if I had problems.

Q. When did you figure out what your religion was really about?

At about 14, I started seeing things that do not match the quality of ‘the god.’ I would ask questions about Catholicism, but never got an answer that made sense.

Q. Back in your Catholic days, what one world would have described your religion best?

‘True,’ because I was told that it was true, and had to believe that it was true. Otherwise, I would go to hell.

The one and only question I asked him about when he started doubting about his faith was, ‘what made you lose your faith?’ He answered, “It started by doubting my own beliefs; I asked myself how I know that God

15

is true. As the time passed, I started looking for answers outside my religious circle, in places like science, which contradicts the stories in the Bible.” Shortly after, he reached a conclusion that the story of Noah’s ark is not real, which allowed him to confirm his doubt about his faith.

A naturalistic worldview, according to him, is a much sounder explanation of the things around him than a religious one. As a last question, I asked him how his life is now without Catholicism. He answered that it is “way, way, way better” because he doesn’t need to believe in what he knows is nonsense anymore, and he doesn’t waste his time on what he deem useless, like going to the church and bible classes, anymore. He values his life much more now, because there is only one life, and he knows that it will end eventually.

Religion, Power and Corruption Byung Hoon Ko Year 10 Noro

Do you believe in religion? If you do, how much money are you spending on it? Also, do you think that the leaders of the religious organizations are pure and they are deserved to be praised? And even if you don’t believe in religion, do you think that people who do believe in religion, are doing good deeds? Most people (whether they do believe in religion or not), think that religious people are doing good deeds to the society and are very kind.

That may be right, but certainly, not all religious people are good and kind.

Not just ordinary citizens that are bad, but actually some of the reverends are corrupted more than anyone.

Have you seen or heard about the movie “Spotlight” by Tom McCarthy?

It’s a movie about a team that is working in the newspaper “The Boston Globe”. This team researched the Boston church’s cases of sexual abuse in the mid-1990s. More than 130 people came forward with horrific

childhood tales about how former priest John J. Geoghan and other priests allegedly fondled or raped them during a three-decade spree through a half-dozen Greater Boston parishes.

Also, the people who got abused were mostly children. One was only 4 years old. John J. Geoghan wasn’t the only one; over 50% of the priests did the abusing.

Fur thermore, when this case happened, the church authority, the archbishop, moved the priests who committed these crimes to various other churches in the country, or sometimes overseas systematically and tried to cover up the cases. The main reason this happened is that as the church got richer and more powerful they thought that even if they did something wrong, no one could put the blame on them. And in Korea, there are some people who became a religionist because they don’t want to pay taxes. Also, there are cases where

16

some church leaders give their children a high position in the church and hand over their jobs when they retire, so their money and power may remain within the family.

This corruption happens all the time everywhere, not just in religions.

Why, in this day and age? Why don’t victims speak out? It’s because of the class difference in society. Now, some of you may be questioning yourself “this is not a class society! That ended long ago!” But actually, I think that the class society still exists. It’s about power and money these days rather than being born in a good family. Class society exists everywhere. Work, school, and even in the boarding house. In work, your boss has more power than you.

And in school and boarding house, the teachers and the older students have more power. Also, the class difference in power has a strong correlation with the “MeToo” movement that is sweeping this and many other countries

right now.

In India, there was a class system called “Caste”. It disappeared, but there are still many people who believe in it. Because of this class system, people who were born in a lower class had to work no matter what their abilities were. This system really crushed people's freedom. Not only for the Dalits (the lowest class). Even for the upper class, caste was ruining their lives. For example, because of the caste, the higher class couldn’t get married to a lower class. If they loved each other and got busted by their families, the lower class would get attacked by the higher class people. Some people think the class society is a good thing and it keeps the society in place. But, the class difference actually ruins a whole family, town, city, country and even the whole world. There’s a vivid example for this: In WWI, the governments assumed that the higher class people were always smarter than the lower class people.

So, they made them into high-ranking officers and generals and commanders.

But, the reality was that the soldiers at the front line had more experiences and knew more about the war. This proves that the class system has a negative impact on the world. Closer to home, you know what’s happening with the Korean Air owner’s family, with the nut rage and drink rage daughters and their mother.

This is the reality. People who are in a high class within the church are corrupting as they get more money and power. Should we trust in such people?

Do we need to give money to these people? I don’t think so. These people are not even humans treating people like that. But we consider them like they are some kind of god (or, to some people, a god’s messenger).

This article isn’t saying that you shouldn't believe in religion. It’s saying that there are some people that are using the power and money

17

and their fame in religion to engage in inappropriate behaviour, as in the Boston church incidents. And you might need to think about where your money is going. In the US, 1.2 trillion US dollars are collected every year according to Georgetown University's research.

It isn’t our duty to give the money that we earned to the church. We give them because we trust in them and we think that they make the world a better place. And many of them actually do. But some (and I’m talking very few now) they use the money and fame to do inappropriate stuff. But, unfortunately only a few, just a few rise to the surface and even now there might be a person using his/her fame to destroy someone’s life. So, we think that it’s the community’s job to reveal these horrid activities deep under water.

Religious Conflicts Judy Bang Year 8 Sarah Claire Jo Year 8 Sarah

In our lives, numerous conflicts happen, and religious conflict is certainly one of the main causes.

Religion existed from long time ago, since people sacrificed their properties to God, wishing that God will help with their problems. Sometimes it makes people rely on themselves; on the contrary, religion can sometimes cause people to fight, leading to terrorism which makes countless innocent people die. For instance, in the case of Christianity, there were religious wars such as the Crusades and the Thirty Years War. Christianity and Islam are the two most popular religions that people believe in. They both insist that their teachings derived from a divine revelation. This religious tension is revealed in the Crusades. Before the Crusades, Muslims are recorded as destroying the Christian holy place and graveyard of Yerusalem. Therefore, Christians decided to reclaim their possession. This resulted in numerous deaths, but it strengthened the Western

countries’ community spirit.

Moreover, the Thirty Years War between Catholics and the Protestants was one of the most destructive and longest conflicts in history. The conflict started in Europe between countries that advocated Protestantism. This war had 8 million deaths and it is the deadliest.

On the other hand, why are the countries fighting with each other when they themselves have negative consequences? There are lots of reasons for this question, but one of the reasons, in my opinion, is because religion cannot be tamed. Although Christians were pejorative and cruel in the past, most of the Christians reconciled and no longer have war between them. However, Muslims are not. According to President Obama, he claimed it will take some time to end the war.

The biggest problem for a religious fight is terrorism. On 2001, 11th of September at 8:45 am, an Islamic terrorist group called al-Qaeda bombed

18

the Twin Towers with a plane. This attack killed about 3000 people and injured over 6000 people. The terrorists hijacked 4 planes and had suicide attacks. The people inside the hijacked planes died and the people inside the Twin Towers died as well. This damage cost at least $10 billion. Therefore, after 9.11, the airport started to check our cases that we bring into the plane and it shouldn’t be able to cause a fire. Like 9.11, there were lots of terrorism like in France terror in the theater which happened recently.

In conclusion, for peace in the world, we can think of preventing religious conflicts. People can try to understand other’s religion and respect them because everyone has the right to express and claim their own idea.

When the religious conflicts never happen, there will be less fighting in the world and innocent people would not die. Lastly, religions can coexist together.

19

20

Faith: Buddha Seobin Lee Year 8 Jeoji

Personally I have no religion so I thought it would be an idea to find out what one of them involves. I picked buddha. Buddhism has spread over many countries and adopted a wide variety of beliefs. Buddha was popular in the period of the three states, from 18BC, which were Silla, Baekje, and Goguryeo.

Firstly, Goguryeo king Sosurim Proclamated in Goguryeo.

Buddhism was transmitted through Goguryeo, but the nobles who believed in traditional faith and enjoyed power refused to admit it because they rebelled against Buddhism. They thought if the king gets power they couldn’t be as wealthy as before.

In Baekje, the King Sedri accepted Buddhism for strengthening the kingship like Sosurim in Goguryeo.

Lastly, in Silla the Beobheung king accepted Buddhism 200 years after

21

Goguryeo and Baekje accepted it. And Buddhism continued until the Joseon dynasty. At Joseon, at first, they had free choice about their faith, but it changed to believe in only buddha because the king wanted to strengthen the kingship. Many people wanted to believe other religions. Most of the people who disagreed with a belief in buddha were Christian. They were against the law and believed Christianity. They kept the book that tells what you shouldn't do when you were in Christianity. So they still act that way as they were a Christian.The King didn’t stay calm he told his vassal to kill all the people who disagrees with him and trash, burn all the things that are related to Christianity. Lots of people was dead in that period.

Nowadays, people have their freedom to choose religion.

Pseudo-Religion Jamie Soh Year 8 Noro

Ps e u d o R e l i g i o n a . k . a C u l t is actually not a religion. Pseudo Religions are manipulators who causes crimes such as disguising themselves as religion. In usual, they use people’s religious blind spots and distract their family, make them slaves. Nowadays, it is playing a part all around the world, so that many people have been damaged by them.

To start off, it is usually the p ro f e s s o r w h o l e a d s t h e Ps e u d o Religion. The professor makes the people believe in himself and makes followers worship himself. They argue that they know the absolute truth about religion and they hide some parts of their religion from the outside to cause curiosity to outside people and make them want to be in the Pseudo Religion.

Next in order, the Pseudo Religion is very dangerous. If you fall into the Pseudo Religion, it is more likely to harm yourself or others around you, so when you are confronted with the Pseudo Religious believers, never think about common sense. No one can assure you that if you go in to the

22

place of the Pseudo Religion you may not be able to come out. As usual, people suffer fraud and lose almost all the money that they have got. They handle people like toys or consumables, camouflage like they are a yoga academy or psychotherapy academy and lure people in. If the person is very weak, they use that person more to make second and third harms and also, even though someone might be a strong mental person, they put them under huge pressure and stress in order to control them.

Furthermore, to protect yourself from the Pseudo Religion, you just need to say that you are going to call the police. They know that they are not doing right, so if you say you are going to call the police they will just let you go.

To conclude, believing Pseudo Religion is breaking faith. They use people’s religious blind spots and distract their family, hide like they are not a Pseudo Religion and make people fall into danger so don’t believe Pseudo Religion and protect yourself well.

Faith, Spirituality, Belief and Religion Tom Seo Year 8 Sarah

Faith, Spirituality, and Belief.

These terms are crucial components of religion.

Faith, defined in the philosophy of religion, means the explanation for religion. To explain, faith is the belief of every theory that cannot be explained scientifically. For example, faith can be the belief in an afterlife.

The main reason why religions arose was to explain what could not be proved by science or technology. This made religion very important for the believers and the populace. Over time, faith became increasingly important to religion.

Spirituality, compared to faith, means the quality of being concerned with the human spirit or soul as opposed to material or physical things.

Spirituality is the quality of believing spirit in humans so that it is also related to religion. However, the thing that makes spirituality different from faith is the difference between the concepts.

Faith is something to do with religion and spirituality is something to do with the spirit in religion. Therefore, faith is more a general concept compared to

23

faith.

Belief is the trust or acceptance in existence of something. Belief is something to do with the natural qualities of human-beings because it is obvious for humans to believe in something. Because of belief, it is possible for faith and spirituality to exist, and it is the rudiment of religions.

This concept is very important and crucial for everything that humans think because every thought springs from the concept of belief.

Religion is defined as the belief in and worship of a superhuman c o n t r o l l i n g p o w e r, e s p e c i a l l y a personal God or gods. Religion can be described as a format for spirituality and philosophy. People have religious faith from the concept and belief of the religion. It is related deeply to the other three concepts.

How Humans Came Out to the World Chaeyun Shin Year 8 Geomun Sophia Kim Year 8 Geomun

There are many living things in this world. We, humans are living on this planet. Have you ever thought about how did the first human came out?

Most of the people think in one of two ways. Creationism and evolutionism.

We can not know which is the more accurate statement, but you can see the evidence and think which statement is more correct. Someone thinks that Theory of Evolution is the way how human came out to the world. On the other hand, someone thinks that Theory of Creation is the way how human came out to the world.

Before to compare and contrast Creationism and Evolutionism, we need to look for the definition of them. Creationism is the belief that the universe and living organisms originate from specific acts of divine creation. Evolutionism is a belief in the evolution of organisms. To summarize those definitions, creationism is a

24

belief that humans formed without any process, evolutionism is the belief that humans formed with an logical process that can be proved by Darwin’s Theory of Evolution.

Any do you know about paradigm shift? Paradigm shift is basically a perspective shift. For example, in the past, people thought boys shouldn’t like pink. And now, we can see a lot of men wearing pink clothes and pink shoes.

People do not care about whether they wear pink or red, which is the case of paradigm shift.

To t a l k a b o u t e v i d e n c e o f Ev o l u t i o n , w e c a n l o o k a t t h e Biogeographical distribution. Living things in our planet changes the way they live depending on their environment. Someone suggests that Darwin’s Evolution is unscientific because it is not testable and falsifiable.

They believe that it can never be recreated.

25

26

ACADEMIC WRITING

Over the Summer break students from NLCS Jeju have been busy extending themselves with entries for various externally organized essay competitions. Already we know that the essay included here by EoJin Park has been shortlisted for the John Locke Essay prize in Economics while Minsung Son has won a prize in a competition for Young Diplomats. These are only a small selection of essays students from the school submitted to a range of competitions over the break. Soobin An and Younjoo Kate Roh were the first and second place prize winners in an internal competition run in school for places on the Standard Chartered Bank Future Leaders program. They won all expenses paid foreign trips to take part in the program, one during the Summer and one in December 2018. As part of her Economics studies, Tae-Eun Kang, who aspires to a career in journalism, composed a piece on the economy of Finland that her teachers thought was a very well-informed article for the general reader.

We hope you enjoy reading the very high-quality work students independently undertake outside their normal classroom activities.

Mr Maher

27

WHAT IS

EDUCATION?

ARE WE DOING IT

RIGHT?

28

Having grown up in Korea, I am fully aware of the importance of going to high school and having a university degree in order to be employed in the future since it is almost impossible to get a job unless we have a university degree. Including myself, I have seen many friends and adults studying extremely hard—presumably for about 12~16 hours, and sleeping for about 3~5 hours a day—to pass the national standardised test. They do not study that hard just to get a university degree, but to get into a renowned university or a respectable job. I have always questioned the true reason for having an education and whether it is the right thing to do. In order to explore this matter, I will be looking into the case of education in South Korea.

Consider how versatile education can be. Education can be vocational, spiritual, social, demonstrating the vast range of reasons justifying our continuous desire to be educated.

Economically speaking, vocational education, a type of education that helps develop one’s professionalism in a particular field, is considered as the most important type of education

because its outcome is most tangible and robust. As can be seen from research conducted by George Psacharopoulos and Harry Patrinos, the average annual return (8.8%) from education was higher than that of the US stock market (5.6%)(1), meaning it is better to invest in education rather than squandering money on the stock market. These figures exclude noneconomic benefits, and shows the additional earnings from each field.

In this sense, by looking at the above figures, gaining these returns would be the fundamental reason as to why an enormous amount of money is being injected into the education market.

These returns would also mean a higher flow of innovative ideas and technologies, which eventually lead to a higher profit.

In the field of economics, education is considered as a merit good which is desirable for consumers, under-provided in the market and has positive externalities—benefits to the third party such as contributions to the overall economy. Between 1995 and 2014, the OECD country’s government investment and private investment

29

ironic in that despite having the highest percentage of tertiary degree holders, its income mobility rate is much lower than the OECD average, has extremely low youth employment, and also has a high rate of NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training). The main cause of such phenomena should not be sought in the implementation of government policies, but the unreasonably high expectations of the Korean workforce who see themselves as a highly intelligent and capable enough to deserve a higher wage and a better position. Given that almost every young person wants to be employed in a highly paid and specialised job, despite vacancies, the high youth unemployment is perhaps an expected result. Even though their reality does not necessarily reflect a viable chance of being employed by conglomerates such as Samsung, LG, and Hyundai, most applicants tend to be stubborn in their wish to work in management or administration in such companies.

Such an enormous and concentrated inflow of labour into particular industries that offer high wages and social prestige, will ultimately lead to an educational inflation where even higher degrees— Masters and PhDs—are required. On the contrary, in fields where physical labour is required such as construction and plumbing, young workers are not willing to take those jobs, meaning

in the education market in OECD countries increased by 0.2% and 0.3% of GDP(2), respectively, presumably to maximise the positive externalities. As mentioned, considering that education is also desirable for the consumers, investing in education will undoubtedly be beneficial for individuals in the long run as far as modern Korean society is concerned.

From the perspective of individuals, unlike the intentions of educational institutions, what they are looking for is a better standard of living, guaranteed for a lifetime. In particular, for the low and middle-income group, it is no exaggeration that education is the chance of a lifetime to climb the social ladder, a crucial means to escape poverty. Presumably, this is what education is actually for— providing an equal opportunity for people to achieve a better standard of living in the future, regardless of their backgrounds, in a pursuit for social mobility, in other words. Korea enjoys the highest education mobility amongst OECD countries due to an intense demand for higher education.

Nevertheless, Korea is also where social mobility is especially rare for the lower 20% on the income scale, despite its population’s overwhelming interest in education, which not only distorts but misrepresents the true purpose of education.

The Korean economy is quite

30

31

there is a lack of labour supply for this particular sector. Likewise, as demonstrated by the imbalance of demand and supply in each industry sector shows, this excessive obsession with higher education could create a vicious cycle. As a result of this imbalance in the demand and supply of labour, the youth unemployment rate will increase which is not economically desirable due to allocative inefficiency.

Furthermore, considering the general economic structure, the number of positions of managers or administrators should be less than that of physical labourers. Nevertheless, there is a higher demand for the former over the latter which is another factor that contributes to the high youth unemployment rate. Then, the people who are falling behind in this collective race to the top are those from low-income families whose investments in education simply cannot meet the national average. This, in turn, is certainly not favourable for the economy as a whole since allocative efficiency will not be achieved.

While the original purpose of gaining an education is lost, further damages to the economy can also occur as this blind obsession with higher education continues. Korea is often characterised as a nation that priorities collective values, which ensures that

its individuals are constantly aware of the opinion of others. This type of social pressure exacerbates the already unrealistic expectations of job seekers, whose excessive pursuit of higher education will also intensify.

Specifically, there is yet another hardly solved economic problem that could arise as a result of the concentrated demand for higher education, an income polarisation— a widening of income inequality.

According to OECD data, 50% of children born to Korean managers or administrator’s children become a manager themselves, whereas only 25% of children born to families of physical labour’s become managers(3).

Of course, there could be a social cause to such data such as educational inheritance—the tendency of children of the highly-educated families to academically perform better than those children of the less-educated family, but the real problem is educational inflation. To elaborate, educational inflation creates a disadvantage for children from families of physical laborers with low-income in that it requires additional effort for them to invest the same money in education.

Then, those who are disadvantaged will be left with two choices, either quit school or take out a student loan

32

to continue their studies. In turn, this can exacerbate the current income polarisation as the disadvantaged will inevitably become less competitive or resort to spending most of their adult lives paying off their student loans. Hence, it seems plausible that such a high burden on education costs consequently aggravates the current income polarisation and the low birth rate in Korea.

Some may say Korea has achieved the purpose of education to a certain extent in that a higher number of students enjoy higher education and that the economy produces exceptionally qualified labour, and yet, there is plenty room for improvement.

Alongside with the exponential increase in real estate prices, the concentration of investment of higher education followed by educational inflation is detrimental to not only the people directly involved, but the economy as a whole, as manifest in chronic problems such as high youth unemployment and income polarisation. Even though it is widely known that income inequality and economic polarisation is a natural consequence in a capitalist society, a high degree of aforementioned problems is “useless for growth�(4) as Thomas Piketty once mentioned.

Furthermore, according to OECD

data, a 3% increase in Gini Coefficient leads to 0.35% decrease in economic global growth rate.(5) Considering educational inflation is a major problem that accelerates economic polarisation in Korea, it is crucial to reform the current education system to encourage youth employment in a wider variety of job sectors.

A v i r t u o u s c yc l e w i t h i n t h e domestic economy can only be achieved when education is carried out in an adequate, rational, balanced manner, and once this is achieved, the positive externalities can be equally distributed among economic participants. However, as seen from the case of Korea where investment in education is parochially concentrated on higher education, problems like educational inflation caused by income polarisation and youth unemployment will arise. Hence, it is essential to have adequate distribution of vocational education as well as middle and higher education. More responsibility now lies on the Korean government and its educational board to seek ways to efficiently control the demand and supply of high/middle schools and vocational education before the vicious cycle has its chance to accelerate.

33

Dealing With the Obstacles In Establishing Lasting Peace In the Korean Peninsula Daniel Minsung Son Year 12 Halla East

The essay question set for the 2018 5th Global Youth Diplomat Essay Contest was: During the third Inter-Korean Summit on April 27th, 2018, South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un announced the Panmunjom Declaration, which focuses on eliminating the risk of war and achieving complete denuclearization.

To s u c c e s s f ully im p le m e nt t h e declaration, President Moon urged the rest of the government to speed up the follow-up and promptly carry out the subsequent action.

Based on your analysis of the reasons why prompt and urgent responses are needed, discuss how you would deal with those obstacles in establishing lasting peace in Korean Peninsula.

The answer provided, which received the Embassy of India to the Republic of Korea Award and was written over Summer 2018 by Minsung Son, is as follows:

34

The spring of 2018 saw a monumental meeting between the leaders of the two Koreas, followed by the breakthrough Panmunjom Declaration in which both leaders pledged to make efforts to terminate the long-lasting Korean War and achieve the denuclearization of the war-prone peninsula. Many consider the agreement to have made a significant progress in the region’s peacemaking efforts, in that it marks the first time that a North Korean leader has documented his willingness to denuclearize on an official declaration.

After the summit, President Moon Jae-in requested government bodies to quickly start the implementation process of the agreements made in the summit. In particular, he made it clear that the National Assembly must ratify the declaration as soon as possible.

Taking prompt action regarding the declaration is paramount, given that it is the lack of such swift response that caused many agreements from former presidencies to fall apart without making progress. Consensuses from both the 2000 and 2007 summits, such as the agreement to halt military

hostility between each other, have been practically ignored by both parties as inter-Korean relations worsened over the years. Considering the seemingly innate volatility of this relationship, it is arguably very important to make tangible progress through prompt implementation before the momentum to do so is lost. Ratification from the National Assembly is especially significant in this sense, because it provides the implementation efforts with legal and political legitimacy, enabling them to be carried out more effectively and rapidly.

It must, however, be noted that obstacles are present in implementing the agreements, and further, achieving permanent peace. Major obstacles present in the current situation are twofold; the ineffectiveness of the current model of denuclearization and the reluctance of adjacent nations.

First and foremost, the so-called step-by-step process employed so far by the international community to achieve denuclearization has, at least with North Korea, proved to be greatly ineffective. The joint declaration adopted in the Six-Party

Talks in 2005—a typical example of this strategy in action—attempted to ‘reward’ each action taken by North Korea towards its denuclearization with according incentives. Despite its theoretical effectiveness, the declaration was directly violated not long since its adoption, when North Korea, completely disregarding the agreement, announced what was the first of its six nuclear experiments in 2006.

An attractive alternative to this failed strategy may be the ‘oneshot’ model, a version of which was effectively used in denuclearization negotiations with Iran. Under this model, there is no going back and for th with actions and re wards; instead, North Korea’s complete denuclearization is directly exchanged with its long-term economic and political stability. This solution may be more effective in that it does not allow the time for the denuclearization process to fall apart before its completion.

This alternative, ironically enough, is where the second obstacle arises.

For the aforementioned package deal to work, close cooperation between

35

countries involved is vital, provided that only the entire international community—not any one nation— can guarantee North Korea’s longterm security. However, nations such as China and Russia are evidently reluctant to achieve lasting peace in the Korean peninsula; China, in particular, has been unclear about its intentions regarding the situation in hand, and is not active in the denuclearization discussions currently taking place.

It is thought that these countries’ reluctance stems from the loss of leverage they will face in the regional security dialogue during and after North Korea’s denuclearization. They especially fear that the U.S. will expand its influence even further in East Asia when North Korea is denuclearized, thereby reducing theirs. The South Korean government has to play a key role to resolve this situation; it has to involve the reluctant nations in the negotiation process, giving them a fair say in the dialogue and leading the creation of a denuclearization plan that addresses their concerns.

Automation: A Red Herring Rachel Cho Year 13 Halla North

The Oxford Dictionary defines an automaton as “a moving mechanical device made in imitation of a human being.” While we cannot accurately foresee the technological advancements in automation production, a helpful p redi ct i on can be gleaned from Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation. Here, Baudrillard, predicts that automations will eventually develop sentience and autonomy as well as the capability to emote. Further, Baudrillard predicts that the ultimate stage of an automaton’s evolution is its identification as human. For the purposes of this essay, I will consider this final stage of sophistication for automaton function. Hence, the automatons I will consider in this essay are ones with attributes identical - not superior - to humans, and whose only difference with humans is their mode of production (i.e. their origin).

All societies have at their core a shared identity. Lacking this, a community will struggle to maintain cohesion or strive for a common goal.

This sense of communal awareness underlies each society’s uniqueness as well as its fitness to sur vive.

The following essay was submitted to The John Locke Institute Essay competition by Rachel Cho, Year 13, Halla North.

Question: Suppose that, in the future, we are able to build automatons which are physically indistinguishable from humans, even to the smallest detail. How would this change relationships between people?

Upon close inspection of this prompt, I reached an understanding that the automaton mentioned here is a red herring. The true question at stake is the following: can an alien, who is similar albeit non-identical, seamlessly integrate into a community while simultaneously preserving the pre-existing traditions of said society? This ‘alien’ can take many forms from an automaton - as mentioned in the prompt - to individuals of a different culture. In this piece, I shall henceforth discuss an automaton’s prospects for social integration with reference to how ‘alien’ individuals joined societies in the past.

36

Interpersonal relationships between members of such societies must, therefore, originate from this common identity. Hence, for an automaton to join human society with minimal resistance or interference to the existing human members, it must be able to assume said mutual identity.

Yet, in order for such a conflictless integration, automatons must overcome barriers such as human social identities stemming from ethnicity and ideology.

Can automaton interaction with humanity bypass and even preserve the latter’s emphasis on ethnicity?

Primordialists would argue that ethnicity is bound to create a schism between man and machine. Individuals such as Van den Berghe claim that nations and ethnic communities are “extensions of kinship units and are built up from the same nepotistic drives of inclusive fitness as smaller c l a m s a n d f a m i l i e s .” Ac c o rd i n g to this view, ethnicity rather than language or nationality forms the fabrics of community. This suggests that automatons - lacking a sense of ethnicity on par with humans - will fail

to fully integrate with humans, and a division between the two is inevitable.

Should this happen human behaviour is bound to change as humans, cognizant of machine’s lack of an ethnic affiliation, may isolate themselves into ethnic niches.

Multicultural communities such as Canada, however, present an alternative view. In this case, a nation’s sense of solidarity is not weakened but rather strengthened by its ethnic diversity.

Moreover, some even go so far to claim the flexibility of ethnic standards and beliefs. Elie Kedourie argues that through “philosophy, folklore and the rediscovery of ethnic history and culture”, a nation’s ideology develops and is easily malleable. Furthermore, “the myths, memories, traditions, and symbols of ethnic heritages and the ways in which a popular living past has been, and can be, rediscovered and reinterpreted by modern nationalist intelligentsias.” For instance, the various traditions that exist in modern Canadian societies have origins that trace back to immigrant communities that have preserved their ethno-cultural identity. The donair is a popular

37

cuisine prevalent in Canada that may appear to be of Middle Eastern origin due to its similarity to kebabs. Yet, the donair was developed in 1973 by Lebanese immigrants to Canada to whom lamb was not readily available and such beef and other meats were utilized to create a novel dish. Hence, despite its appearance, the donair symbolizes an inherently Canadian tradition introduced into mainstream Canadian culture by ‘aliens’ in the past. This also symbolizes the openness of a community to novel cultures, and it demonstrates the strength in diversity brought upon a society through multiculturalism. Similar predictions are, therefore, possible and reasonable with automatons. Hence, in this context, new traditions and ethnic standards can be invented by societies with automatons and humans in coexistence. Subsequently, for automatons to join yet preserve human social customs, it is not the factual details of said customs but rather their ability to participate in such practices that will govern their peaceful integration.

People thrive for their survival, and not only their survival as an individual, but also as a community. Slavery was one of the ways communities responded to the new culture. They feared to integrate as they thought it would destruct their culture. The

same applied to the Greeks. NonAthenians remained as slaves in the fear that they would destroy the culture of the community. Thus, the role of the slaves was limited to the economic supplier. However, although slavery was created for the economic prosperity of certain community, it could not last long, because it resorted into repression and internal conflicts.

As Peter Hunt asserts, according to the documents of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon, such social structure has torn cities apart rather than bolstering it. In this society, unlike the typical image of slaves being powerless, masters were insecure of the slave uprisings, as slaves became the group against Athenians and because slaves were the economic source that the whole nation was dependent on (all agricultural work was conducted by the slaves). If the slaves were the soldiers as well, and they were focused on the exterior threats, slave would not have revolted as much, but as Herodotus claims, the Greece fought for freedom, and it was impossible to involve slaves to fight for freedom.

This shows the slaves and Athens were completely separated from ideology as well and were incompatible to unite.

However, this system could not last long, as Thucydides claims, during the Peloponnesian War, Athens had to use slaves to fight the Spartans. Not

38

only for the hoplite battles with other Greek cities, but Athens needed 34,000 men in the navy to fight the Persians at Artemisium, however, they only had 8000 hoplites (citizen soldiers), and the casualties of the warfare far exceeded that of hoplite battles. “If 50 ships sank in a battle, up to 10,000 men could die” and “more than twice the at number of ships went down in the largest battles.” Consequently, the distinction of the slaves and Athenians were blurred. Thus, eventually, for the survival of the nation, slaves were integrated into the society. Not only in Athens, but in Sparta, the system could not last long as well. “The fall of Sparta and supremacy of Thebes was sealed as much by the establishment of Messene for Sparta’s rebellious helots as by the battle of Leuctra, which crippled Sparta’s army.“ This clearly shows that it is necessary to not treat the automaton the same as that of a machine as if they are slaves, but to give them equal rights, as it would be to the greater benefit of humans.

The importance of integration is highlighted in Spain as well. Isabella I of Spain was well known for setting the basis of political unification of Spain through her marriage to Ferdinand II by successfully overpowering the Muslims, who dominated Spain for 800 years, by “reconquista”, and beginning the overseas empire in the New World

by sponsoring Columbus. Her success is significant as her marriage with Ferdinand II shows the true integration of respecting the other culture entirely in his whole form. The fact that she ruled the nation jointly with Ferdinand II highlights this. However, during the process of reconquista, she exiles all the Jews and Muslims who refused to convert to Catholicism. However, when the Muslims ruled the majority of Spain, unlike Isabella I, Jews and Judaism was in fact saved by the Muslims who allowed Judaism to exit unlike previously when it was almost on the verge of extinction. This shows that true integration is not forcing one side to change and completely give up their existing culture. Humans should not be afraid of automaton having an impact in our lives as well.

To conclude, the situation where automatons that are physically indistinguishable from humans appearing in the future is not just a hypothetical situation. It is rather about the history of humans dealing with multiculturalism. It is about accepting those who are different in nationality, ethnicity, ideology, or religion and learning to co-exist with them. It is clear that the best way of reacting to the new culture is to respect it and truly integrate it.

39

Principles of Choice in Democracy and Cigarettes Soobin An Year 10 Geomun

40

The main pillar of a democracy, in comparison to other forms of political systems in the past such as feudalism, is that individuals are the key actor in their life. As such, citizens have the right to choose what they believe is appropriate for them. Such freedom should be protected as long as it does not harm others. Under this premise, the conclusion for the debate on banning cigarettes is simple. As long as smokers do not intrude on the rights of non-smokers, their freedom to smoke should be guaranteed.

The entire ban on smoking violates the principle of choice despite the fact that the choice to smoke does not always harm others. Ventilated smoking areas would be a good example of how smoking does not affect those who do not consent to being exposed to harmful chemicals. Considering the fact that smokers pay significant amounts of tax as a consequence of choosing to smoke, it would be reasonable for the government to provide areas in which citizens can enjoy their choice.

Bear in mind that this argument is not to support the absolute freedom of smokers. Many states have placed high taxes on cigarettes, designated

public area as no-smoking zones, and even banned the act of smoking in residential apartments. Such regulations on smoking should be supported, but no governments should have the right to ban cigarettes.

Proponents of banning cigarettes argue that the state must protect citizens’ wellbeing; in this case, health.

There are two simple responses to such a claim. For one, the role of a democratic government is not simply focused on protecting the health conditions of individuals. Rather, a state should prioritize the protection of free choice. If a government claims that smoking is bad for health and that health is important for ones’ life, such government is forcing a value decision upon citizens who do not fully agree. In no democratic state, or even a socialist one, has the government the right to make value decisions for its citizens.

Also, the notion that the government has the right to ban an unhealthy lifestyle choice is absurd.

If such claim is true, most forms of lifestyle choice, such as meat consumption and intensive outdoor activities, should also be banned. The

41

reason why is it not the case is because such decisions can be undertaken without harming others, and people can make an informed choice to prioritize something other than their physical wellbeing.

Assuming that there are enough principled arguments to support the ban on cigarettes, the effectiveness of such policy remains questionable.

Even if the law prohibits people from consuming cigarettes, smokers demand for cigarettes is unlikely to change due to its addictive nature.

Subsequently, such demand would lead to the creation of a black market, one that is more harmful than the status quo. The US have already witnessed such failure in the 1920s during the Prohibition Law. Despite the initial goal of reducing alcoholism in the US, the result of the prohibition was an increase in social problems due to the widespread black market.

The ban on smoking is neither respecting the free choice of citizens nor effective in achieving its intended purpose. Considering these aspects, a reasonable conclusion would be to limit cigarettes, not ban them.

Why We Should Ban Smoking Younjoo Kate Roh Year 10 Mulchat

Smoking has become ubiquitous with almost 1 in every 3 adults now being a smoker. However, smoking should be banned immediately. It has now come to a state where it is overly affecting the whole world, not only individuals, affecting health, social and economic aspects of all our lives.

Smoking affects the smoker’s health perniciously further affecting the population. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), the tobacco epidemic is one of the most severe public health threats the world has ever faced, killing more than 7 million people a year. Cancer. gov argues that “there are at least 250 harmful chemicals in tobacco and 69 can cause cancer.” Numerous research illustrates that smoking causes any kind of cancer. Furthermore, The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states that smokers are also at a greater risk of cardiovascular disease. Smoking damages blood vessels and can make them thicker and grow narrower which spawns a high heart rate, high blood pressure and strokes. Additionally, smoking is linked to respirator y diseases. Cigarettes cause lung disease by damaging the airways and the alveoli that are found in the lungs.

According to the CDC, smokers are 13 times more likely to die from COPD (lung disease) than nonsmokers. This house therefore believes that banning smoking saves lives.

Smoking impacts negatively on the health of innocent non-smokers.

Passive smoke is the smoke that pervade any enclosed space. There is absolutely no safe level regarding exposure to secondhand smoke. According to the WHO, passive smoke causes more than 890 000 premature deaths per year. For adults, passive smoke causes serious cardiovascular and respiratory diseases including coronary heart disease and lung cancer. For infants, it causes sudden death and for pregnant women it causes low birth weight which is extremely treacherous for a newborn baby. Air is what everyone needs to breathe in to sustain their life and every person has the right to have access to fresh air without the harmful odor of tobacco smoke. Some might suggest a counter argument that it is their freedom to smoke. However, it is society’s right to breathe clean air.

Smokers impose a significant economic burden on any government.

The CDC estimates that, in the United States, the government spends $300

42

billion annually on services related to smoking. About $156 billion was lost by workers being absent with smokerelated diseases and an additional $5.6 billion lost due to secondhand smoke exposure. Overall, cigarette smoking was reported to be responsible for 6 to 15% of national healthcare expenditure in high income countries.

This far exceeds the amount claimed by government from tax on cigarettes. So, governments spend huge sum of money on 20% (smokers) of the population.

If we ban smoking that money can be invested in services that are productive and beneficial to the whole population.

This house should ban smoking because it gives first-hand health conflicts to the smokers, impacts innocent non-smokers by second hand smoke, and it gives a significant economic burden to the government.

Every government’s duty is to protect their citizens and prohibiting smoking is one way to protect the citizen.

Damien Hirst, an artist, once said, “so smoking is the perfect way to commit suicide" therefore government should ban smoking before it goes to a point when it is irrevocable.

43

THE

SICK MAN OF EUROPE: FINLAND Tae-eun Kang Year 13 Halla North

The economy of Finland has been growing at a modest pace since 2012 but at times it has been close to zero. In recent years, Finland has been one of the slowest growing economies in EU and the government has been trying to fix the situation. According to the Bank of Finland, the growth outlook of Finland’s economy is unfortunately low even though the real economy is promising. There are several reasons why: 1. Finland is going to have another struggle with consumption and the employment rate since the percentage of their jobs at risk of significant change is relatively high as well as the percentage of jobs at high risk of automation. The OECD has suggested structural changes are required to increase flexibility and allow faster growth.

2. Finland’s inflation rate continues to rise. With inflation, domestic products would be relatively more expensive relative to foreign products.

Therefore, imports would increase and the domestic product would lose price competitiveness in the foreign market,

decreasing the export revenue.

3. Finland’s population is aging more rapidly than in most OECD countries, exerting growing pressure on public finances, pensions, health-care spending, and a shrinking workforce.

Finland has been hit hard by the global crisis, mainly through a sharp fall in exports, and the recovery is still hesitant. Bold action is needed to find new sources of growth, regain competitiveness, ensure sound public finances, and preserve the Finnish welfare model. The Bank of Finland suggests the reform undertaken today will lay the foundation for future prosperity and allow faster growth.

Furthermore, Finland is showing disappointing unemployment figures, which have risen from 6.2% to 9.5% by February of 2018. In 2014, the prime minister, Mr. Stubb, confessed they are facing structural unemployment as “Steve Jobs took the jobs”. The wide distribution of Apple products had created serious challenges for two very important Finnish industries: forestry and Nokia.

Due to the substitution of print media

44

by internet services, there is a reduction of demand for print paper. In addition, Nokia, previously the world’s biggest supplier of mobile phone and handsets, has failed to respond to the challenge presented by Apple’s iPhone and other smartphones. Even though it is just one company, Nokia’s decline has huge influence which overshadowed a small economy, causing 1/3 of the GDP decline and 1/5 reduction of total employment.

The government has initiated a policy program called the “ En t re p re n e u r s h i p Pa c k a g e” which aims to remove barriers to entrepreneurship and improve the overall business environment to tackle structural weaknesses. Their primary focus is to foster infant industry, opening the market to competition by cutting red tape and reduction of taxation of entrepreneurship. This policy would help the unemployment rate decrease by creating new firms which would employ people increasing overall consumption of goods, boosting domestic demand. Also, by providing incentives, the government is encouraging firms to contribute to new capital formation and research

& development that promotes technological innovations later.

However, with this policy, economists worry that the new rising market would be too reliant on government subsidy and question how to avoid inefficiency due to the dependence of industries on protection and subsidy, which will have to be phased out once the entrepreneurship has taken hold.

In addition, the government is investing to support the development in sectors where they see the most potential for growth. The “BCHD”.

That is B for bio-economy, C for clean technology, H for Healthcare and D for digitalization. This diversification would prevent one company like Nokia having enormous influence over the country’s economy. There exists a bright future in diversification and the growth of such industries since renewable energy technology has grown quickly making 3 billion Euro profit with the government’s investment aid program. Although Finland has specified four different industries, it is difficult to examine which ones have the potential to grow and it may be asked whether it is possible to come up with a fair method to choose which

to invest in. Also, further examination is required since government budget would continue to decrease with a tax support for investment.

To restore cost competitiveness, following five rounds of negotiations with trade unions, Finland has signed a Competitiveness Pact in May 2017.

The agreement reduced the unit labour costs by 4 percent and permanently increased the effective working time by 3 days per year. These measures will help improve the price competitiveness of Finnish companies, especially export industries, and they are comparable to effects of internal devaluation.

Furthermore, the Finnish economists agree that the Competitiveness Pact will help create 45,000 new jobs.

This aligns with the government’s aim to create 110,000 new jobs and raise the employment rate to 72% (Employment rate today – 68.5%).

Finland aims to catch up in cost competitiveness with Sweden by 2018 and Germany by 2020. Today, thanks to the companies’ focus on increasing capacity, competitiveness in the export market, the OP bank expects the GDP to grow by 2.3% by 2020. Even with massive benefits, the Finnish complain

45

t h at t h e government h as frozen wages to accomplish their objectives.

This has further impacted the weak income growth of Finnish households, decreasing the disposable monetary income in real terms.

Since Finland is a member of the Euro currency union, the country has lost the ability to conduct monetary policy in accordance with domestic needs, but rather follows the centrally decided Euro system monetary policy.

As a result, Finland struggles to deal with trade imbalances (due to lost price competitiveness) since they are not able to revalue the Euro. Participating in the Euro leaves internal devaluation as the only relevant option to respond to the loss of price competitiveness. Therefore, ordinary citizens carried a heavy debt burden with many enterprises going bust, unemployment soaring high.

Finland, the country known to be ‘PARAS’, is struggling in its economic growth and sustainability and waiting for the opportunity to come back.

46

SOCIETY

In a small society at NLCS Jeju and a larger world in which we are part of, we learn to understand, empathize, and share the diverse experiences we have. Prepare to read a series of insights on personal life to global affairs in this section of the Islander.

Gabriella Kim Year 13 Halla East Benjamin Ko Year 10 Noro Dohyun Kim Year 12 Halla East Adrienne Yoon Year 12 Halla East Dain Ahn Year 13 Halla North Hanna Seo Year 13 Halla East

47

Feminism Sunghee Kim Year 12 Halla East

m s i n

F

i em

48

Feminism means gender equality, but those who do not know what feminism means believe that feminists insist on the superiority of women. This might be because the word feminism sounds like the word feminine, which means “like a woman.� Unlike such false beliefs, feminism is a belief towards gender equality and the guarantee of equal human rights for women and men. The idea of feminism has recently been spreading throughout the world, and more women are standing up to advocate equal rights for everyone, regardless of gender.

Religion has long been one of the main factors in deciding the culture rooted in most countries. Some religions are based on the patriarchal phenomenon, and this has been providing women with numerous disadvantages. For instance, Confucianism is a very patriarchal theory; it is laid out that the

primary role of women is based around the home, where they should take care of the children and do housework.

Korea also believed in Confucianism during the Chosun dynasty, and certain elements of a patriarchal society still exist today. Feminists are the strong individuals who have been brave enough to express their opinions during the past few months and have taken direct action against such apparent injustice.

Korea has recently been debating about feminism and its persistence.

W i t h t h e s t a r t o f t h e # M e To o movement in Korea, many women are hoping to get better treatment as a human being. However, it should be noted that some ‘feminists’ are hinting at female superiority - this is the wrong approach towards feminism. However, regardless of whether it is right, this belief has given many the wrong recognition of feminism: feminists hate men. There is an ongoing debate on this matter, and the problem lies in the fact that while a certain group of people believes that men and women already have equal rights, others do not agree.

People who insist that men and women already have equal rights claim that they are treated equally in society and that they are all guaranteed basic human rights such as the right to vote.

However, it must be noted that what feminists are arguing for is different; they are asking to be treated equally, not differently.

Men are physically stronger than women; this is a mere biological superiority that men have, and this cannot be reiterated as it has been proven to be so. There is nothing wrong about this except that there is a potential problem where there are men who abuse their strength to harm women. The ratio of male to female sexual criminals was 120:1 as of 2017; this reflects how there is a greater tendency for men to sexually harass women (although the opposite does also take place) in terms of statistics.

Although numbers cannot prove the assertion that men are usually the ones

DO MEN EVALUATE WOMEN'S SEXUALITY? to commit sexual crimes because they are physically stronger, it does hint at a potential question: would the ratio change if men and women had equal strength in society and in terms of physical power?

D o m e n e v a l u a t e w o m e n’s sexuality? A direct quote from a man reads: “men are too instinctive and therefore cannot keep their patience of viewing women sexually.” This is an honest comment that could be used to evaluate how women are treated in society, but it is still true that it cannot reflect the whole of society. However, when we see trials in courts for sexual offenders, it is true that some claim that the victim was wearing clothes that were “too revealing,” for example, and that he could not resist himself. Some even go a step further to suggest that the woman was thoughtless and even sly. There have been some cases where the judge even asked the victim, “Why did you fail to resist the offender’s hands as he was trying to take your jeans off? Jeans are harder to take off than normal trousers; doesn’t this indicate that you agreed to this sexual relationship?” Korean society certainly tends to put the blame on the woman, even though she might have done nothing wrong - after all, isn’t it one’s freedom to wear anything one would like to wear?

Di f f e re n t t re a t m e n t t ow a rd s men and women can also be seen in headlines of newspapers and magazines.

Male celebrities are described as familiar and warm when they gain weight; on the other hand, female celebrities are described as fat and even

49

unprofessional, even though they are still thinner than the average female.

Such differences in expectation towards appearance seems unfair, making this an example of inequality which most people are not aware of.

Then, do women experience privileges because of their gender identity? They do, although these policies are very minor. For instance, women-only parking lots exist for pregnant women, who need more space when getting out of cars. In addition, some men insist that women should also serve in the military, just like all men. It is true that women are ‘unfairly’ advantaged by this policy, but let’s use reverse logic: why did the compulsory enlistment of all men happen in the first place? At the time, the stereotype that men are much stronger than women created a notion that they are obliged to protect all women. Hence, women were supposed to stay at home to look after the home and the children.

Had men and women achieved equal rights from the first place, the situation could have changed.

The different stereotypes and treatments toward women are very deeply rooted in Korea. For example, girls are expected to be clean, tidy, and be pretty. When girls cut their hair short, people’s first comment is that “You look like a boy.” What does the phrase “looks like a boy” actually mean? Is there a standard of being a boy and being a girl? Now, do you still think that men and women are treated equally in Korean society?

Should governments make it compulsary to reveal the management of church property?

Seungho Ham Year 10 Geomun

Christianity is one of the biggest religions in the world, having approximately 2.4 billion believers. Its rules are based on the Holy Bible and other numerous small bylaws that are made in several different communities.

Christians have a weekly assembly in the church that was established for the purpose of serving Jesus Christ. A church is usually managed by offerings given by believers and supporters and that money must be used in supporting priests and pastors in church and welfare ministries.

Recently, some of the elders from the Korean church switched from converting money from the offerings given by believers and abused church property... Even though the Holy Bible mention as “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake, he became poor so that you through his poverty might become rich� (2 Corinthians 8:9), one of the most striking features of this problem is laws that allow the church to hide management of church property. In this article, I argue that churches should open their property

50

management to the public to prevent abusing their property that has been given by numerous believers.

Let us start by considering the facts that already numerous elders and pastors have been arrested and convicted of converting church and community property. In 2016, an anonymous pastor was convicted of abusing church property. Also, in 2018, Korea’s YoHahn Kim, the Pastor who leads “Saesomanghuelloship” Church, was convicted of deceiving believers and lent 778,950,000 won without any right. In recent years, there had been an increasing interest in the church’s property management awakened by numerous crimes related to converting.

Ideally, church management should be clearly checked by believers and accountants to prevent illegal activities.

However, numerous elders and pastors advocate that management of church property does not need to open because management is completely opened to believers. Also, this is a cause for some confusion that if believers are not able to read or understand bookkeeping or reports using complicated economic

terms, managers of church property would able to abuse property because almost believers cannot understand their management process. In the case of Jinhong Kim Pastor’s convert, the judge cannot easily convict him because of unclear and vague reasons related to religion and it disturbs inference and verdicts with lack of evidence.

Thus, many people and believers agitate that the government enact a law that every church should open their property management to prevent abuse.

As similar to the examples above, already churches’ property management has become untrustworthy because of several crimes. Already several financial supporters and believers require some reform proposals to prevent crimes. For example, Seunglin Baek Pastor who established FL proposed several ways to manage church property well. Such as doing not consider pastoral as “work” in common companies that suitable salary is given but living expenses which cost of the pastoral, regular cycle of managers, formal audit and several other proposals to prevent corruption and crimes.

51

Already several churches opened their property management and made an order to use the offerings in suitable and righteous ways. For example, the church “NLCSseongancheple”, which managed in Jeju English Education town church clearly shows how they use the offerings, donating to unwed mothers’ children. This opens the process effectively and increases the credibility of the church. This open management will bring assurance and trust to believers and give them the confidence to donate much more than before the church opened their management.

To sum up, numerous believers and financial supporters agitate that the church should open their property management to prevent crimes. Already some elders or pastors had been convicted of stealing property collected by believers.

Therefore, the government should enact the law that the church should open their management to check their management and prevent crimes like YoHahn Kim and Seunglin Baek Pastor.

FAITH IN HUMANITY:

RESTORED Elysia Bae Year 10 Noro

A lot has been going on in the world that might make you sigh in despair. People all around the world experienced hardship. In 2016, there were major political issues that affected people on a global scale. During 2017, incidents of terrorism and homicide shocked everyone. However, there is a chance that some sort of flickering hope is left for humanity. There are countless incidents where people voluntarily help others just for the sake of it. At the end of this article, you could find yourself smiling at the fact you can still believe in humanity to do good.

If you witnessed someone having an asthma attack or in an accident, what would you do? The ‘orthodox answer’ would be to help them, but when they are strangers that you’ve never met before and if you’re in a hurry, the best way would be to avoid the situation.

However, there have been some cases where people took the initiative to offer help. For example, on a train ride to cities in Mumbai, a family became the target of robbery. Whilst the family was sleeping, someone had broken the

zipper of their bag and stolen all the money they brought on the ride. The family was being relocated to a city called Guwahati for a new job, and they had only covered a small distance of a 50 hour journey. They were out of food and needed to use money for further transportation. Thankfully, a man who sensed the family’s distress came forward and spoke to the family.

After a while, he grabbed his wallet and handed the family five hundred rupees (Indian currency). With utter relief, the family thanked the man who had given a large sum of money with no guarantee of reclaiming it.

There is no rule in helping. People who are more unfortunate than others can volunteer to help - they are not just people who need our help. For instance, a homeless man became a hero after jumping into the road to save a truck going out of the lane. It’s the cold truth that people avoid eye contact with homeless people so they don’t feel guilty about just going past them. However, this homeless man didn’t hesitate for a second when he was risking his life. He had started

52

running towards the wayward truck as soon as he knew something was wrong.

The truck was driving diagonally across 3 lanes of traffic and was about to crash into the median strip. The homeless man ran to the side of the truck, trying to push the vehicle back into position.

When that did not work, he went to the other side of the lane, and warned the oncoming cars of what was going on. Fortunately, before any of the cars crashed into him, the vehicles stopped.

The uncontrollable truck rolled across the median where the homeless man attempted to slow it down. By that time, other people in the crowd joined in to stop the truck. If it wasn’t for the homeless man who noticed the danger of the out-of-control truck and immediately acted upon the occurrence, there may have been a long chain of accidents with the oncoming traffic.

There are incidents like natural disasters that bring people together.

Whether it be a monsterous hurricane or a catastrophic tsunami, people around the world cooperate to help the victims of the disaster. When Hurricane

Harvey hit Houston, Texas in the USA, over 10,0000 people reached out to provide aid for the helpless victims. A photo taken of the never-ending line created by the people who were willing to help went viral on the internet.

The photographer Michael Berry added a caption which said, “This is Houston. Wanna know what this line is for? Food? Water? Housing? Nope.

These people are waiting in line TO VOLUNTEER”. Although there were equally as many people left homeless from the unexpected flooding, the fact that non-governmental organisations and neighbouring people came to assist them is heartwarming.

History suggests that people have been helping others since the start of the human race. A very important occasion was during WWII, when Nazis were forcing Jews to go to concentration camps. Many people obeyed Hitler’s rules and went even further by reporting their own family members when they did something against the Nazi’s command. However, in this chaotic time, a man called Nicholas Winton helped the children

escape this situation. He went to Prague during the European war where he was able to visit the concentration camps. After seeing the horrid reality, Winton searched a way to help the Jews and other prisoners of the camp. He had heard about the Kindertransport project, which was an effort that ultimately ended with approximately 10,000 children coming to Great Britain. Winton arranged a similar rescue operation in Czechoslovakia in March 1939. His efforts brought a total of 669 children safely back to Britain.

It seemed like Winton’s work was forgotten after the war, but when his wife found his scrapbook, he became famous. In 2002, he even received a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II for his services.

You are now fully aware of the events where people help others voluntarily. Still, we cannot avoid the question that arises; why? Why is it that tragedy brings people together?

The psychology behind unity after catastrophe is quite remarkable. As humans, we rely upon a defense mechanism known as ‘splitting’. Take

53

this for an example: former president Barack Obama denounced the perpetrators of the Boston Marathon Bombing as ‘evil’ and ‘cowardly’. These descriptions were contrasting to the ‘heroic’ responders who were the first ones to help the injured. We embody ourselves as the heroes while talking about the wrong-doers as evil. By doing so, one gets emotionally attached to a particular side and rejects the opposing side. Since human brains cannot stand ambiguity; for emotional comfort, people need to know what’s ‘black’ and what’s ‘white’. People are then able to unite for the same cause, thus creating a caring community with everyone helping each other.

These are the reasons why it’s too early to judge everyone in the world for being self-centred and egotistical. Who knows? Someone may restore your faith in humanity by helping you one day.

Or, even better -- you could be the one that provides aid when there are people in need.

Faith Schools Jeongha Kim Year 9 Jeoji

“England People Very Nice,” a play by Mr. Richard Bean, successfully depicts the lives of immigrants, such as the Muslims, the Jews, and the Irish.

As shown in the play, such social and cultural diversity is essential to achieve social equality. Schools try to promote social equality and give opportunities to every single student. They also respect the diversity of religious belief and faith. According to a survey conducted in 2011 in the UK, about one-third of the 20,000 state schools in England were faith schools. Of the one-third, 68% were Church of England schools and 30% were Roman Catholic schools. There were 42 Jewish, 12 Muslim, 3 Sikh and 1 Hindu faith schools. On the other hand, 90% of the children in Northern Ireland still go to religiously separated schools.

Meanwhile, there are only 9 faith schools in Korea.

While only 12% of the English are reported to attend church at a regular basis, they ironically want their children to go to faith schools - faith schools are usually well run, and many parents want their children to have religious faith. A further reason is that faith schools are usually offer free tuition due to the fact that the government supports them financially. Others want their children to take part in a rite of passage, a ceremony or event marking an important stage in someone's life.

For example, Christians go through

54

confirmation while Jewish children have a Bar Mitzvah between the age of 12 and 13. Faith schools naturally lead the children to participate in these events, familiarising them with the whole process.

The students in the faith schools do end up being confused by several factors in their education: for instance, while the Bible says that God created Earth, science claims a mysterious explosion that took place billions of years ago started the universe. A Jewish student once stated that the conflicting ideologies between the Bible and the theory evolution were often misleading: “there is no actual proof that God created Earth.”

Some faith schools indoctrinate and society fears that students are only offered one view of religion when schools are allowed to teach what they wish in Religious Education classes. As a result some governments, particularly in Europe, have had to start to put an emphasis on teaching the tolerant values of their society into which these faith schools were allowed to set up in the first place. Governments want to avoid offering the opportunity to radicalise students from an early age.

This is one of the debates the British regularly have regarding faith.

Bad Faith Jenna Yu Year 12 Jeoji

When people hear the word “faith”, they would usually associate their thoughts with religion. However today, I would like to introduce a rather philosophical concept related to faith, called “bad faith.”

Bad faith originated from the French term ‘mauvaise foi’, a term mostly used by the French existentialist philosophers Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre. This term describes the phenomenon where people feel pressured by society to act in a way that is different from themselves. To briefly introduce existentialism, it is a branch of philosophy where they believe philosophy begins with the human individual. The idea that everyone has the freedom to make choices to lead them towards the individual’s goal is a key concept in existentialism. If a person is acting in bad faith, that person would both be aware and unaware of the freedom they possess.

Sartre considers bad faith as an act where one is basically deceiving themselves to please society. As an example, he discusses a waiter who acts “waiter-esque” in his work, Essays in Existentialism. The waiter’s movements seem too coordinated, too accurate and too quick. His compliant behavior shows that he is playing the role of a waiter whose pure purpose is to be a waiter and serve others by being very eager to please the customers. Sartre states that although this waiter is

55

actually aware that those actions are not authentic, he is consciously deceiving himself. The waiter in such a situation is consciously denying his own freedom by using his freedom to actively ignore his denial.

De Beauvoir gives the examples of certain categories of people, whose personalities deny them their own freedom. The first category is “the Narcissist”. The Narcissist woman limits her own freedom by labeling herself as merely an object of desire.

“The Mystic” gives her freedom over to the absolute. Another, “The Woman in Love”, denies her own identity and instead willingly dedicates it to the person she is in love with. De Beauvoir also discusses “The Serious Man” who deliberately puts his freedom in the hands of some outside cause that he can’t control. In doing this, Serious Man had actively given up his freedom and instead decided to let unmanageable matters determine his fate.

In this article, I’ve explained the existential concept of “bad faith” and provided examples you might be able to recognize in real life. In order not to act in bad faith like the waiter did, I suggested you be self-aware and be more conscious of the freedom you have. Try to actively exercise such freedom in a way that will benefit others in the community you are a part of.

DIESEL GATE Do Hyun Kim Year 12 Halla North

However, during the experiment, the research team found out that the data they have collected did not match the amount of waste gas officially declared by Volkswagen. In April 2014, the research team reported that two models in particular, the 2012 Jetta and the 2013 Passat actually emitted much more waste gas than the amounts reported to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) and California Air Research Board (CARB). In response to the news, Volkswagen argued that the reason for the difference in the amount

After a long break since July 2016, Volkswagen resumed its business in South Korea. However, the public’s interest in Volkswagen are dying down. This is because of Dieselgate, an incident in which the amount of waste gas produced by Volkswagen was disclosed, which led to the loss of public faith for the company.

Dieselgate broke out from pure coincidence. In 2014, West Virginia University carried out an experiment to prove that German diesel cars passed the American waste gas production regulation standards.

56

of waste gas emitted may be because of a certain condition during the test process in which more waste gas is emitted, and offered a recall. However, USEPA and CARB asserted that Volkswagen’s recall would not resolve the fundamental issue and disproved the explanation given by Volkswagen.

Instead, the organisations focused on the reason those cars performed poorly, unlike what Volkswagen had declared. Furthermore, the United States announced that the sales of Volkswagen vehicles would be banned until the company elucidates the reason for vehicles producing more waste gas than the declared amounts and prove that such problems would not occur in 2016 models. Finally, Volkswagen confessed that they had inserted a software which orders vehicles to produce less nitrogen oxide during test driving, but to produce much more nitrogen oxide during normal driving situations in the ECU. Volkswagen had been manipulating data for more than seven years to improve vehicles’ performances and fuel efficiency. In order to boost such factors, the result must have been the increase in the amount of emitted nitrogen oxide. Through the manipulation, Volkswagen must have dreamt of selling more cars and becoming one of the most popular vehicle brands in the world. Since Volkswagen group owns not only Volkswagen, but also Skoda, Audi,

and Porsche, more vehicles have been blamed for such problems. Fortunately, by eliminating the software program, vehicles could emit less nitrogen oxide.

However, since the performance and fuel efficiency decreased by eliminating the software, customers complained about the the decrease in performance and fuel efficiency. Furthermore, the fact that Volkswagen vehicles had been emitting waste gas 40 times more than U.S. emission standards in the normal driving mode not only defamed the brand image but also lost the faith customers had in Volkswagen.

Volkswagen had to pay a huge cost as a result of dieselgate. 20 billion dollars disappeared in the value of stock. Various countries banned the sale of Volkswagen vehicles and required the company to make reparations. Martin Winkerkorn, the CEO of Volkswagen, resigned and 40 different models were discontinued in order to save money for the company. Due to financial insecurity, in order to compensate for the loss, Volkswagen fired 30,000 workers and VFL Wolfsburg, a football team sponsored by Volkswagen, had to trade off their players.

Three years has passed since dieselgate broke out. Volkswagen has slowly recovered, but still suffers from people’s distrust. They may have learnt their lesson that once faith is lost, it is hard to recover.

57

Faith in Electronic Communication Rohyun Park Year 8 Noro

T h e s e d a y s t h e re a re l o t s o f social media that helps us to communicate with each other very easily, and electronic communication hardware. We have faith in electronic communication because we trust communication companies with our personal information. However, this faith might not be smart.

To begin with there is a popular SNS called Facebook. As you know it’s really popular and has 2,190,000,000 users. The users have faith in Facebook to protect photographs, messages, and lots of personal information. However there is also a risk. The main risk is it can be easily hacked by someone because there are tons of users.

Another SNS called Instagram i s o w n e d b y Fa c e b o o k . I t h a s 800,000,000 users. We have faith in this SNS in photos that we put there, but the main risk is they can hack our personal image and put on fake news.

The third SNS is called Twitter and the users are 336,000,000. Lots of people use Twitter. For example we

58

can see Donald Trump using Twitter in the news. We have faith in Twitter in trustful messages, but people can hack your account and send it to other people which is not your idea.

Korean people use another SNS a lot which is KakaoTalk. We use this SNS for sending messages to other people, also we can put our stories and pictures on Kakao. We have faith in this SNS with our private messages.

However the risk is there, some people try to see our private conversations.

Finally the last SNS is called Youtube. These days Youtube is the most popular app. Also, a lot of people use Youtube to earn themselves money and we call those people Youtubers.

People have faith in Youtube’s safe videos. On the other hand the risk is people take videos in real life which are very dangerous and put it on Youtube.

To conclude users have faith in SNS with looking at our friends photo or news and social communities and the vital risk is users can easily hack by someone or act very dangerously.

59

We b e l i e ve i n l o t s o f t h i n g s throughout our life. We sometimes believe that the simple toss of a coin determines one’s faith. Sometimes people give over a lifetime choice to a pet or a coin toss. Some common beliefs include “a black cat is a sign of a unfortunate event” or ”I don’t have a girlfriend because I don’t want one.”

Have you ever wondered, what the strangest beliefs in the world are?

The first I will look at is scientology. Scientology is controversial due to its beliefs and you may be surprised to know that many famous celebrities believe it. Scientology was founded by L. Ron Hubbard, a science fiction writer. It seems obvious why scientology believes in aliens and thinks that the old aliens used hydrogen bombs and larva. They do not believe in any kind of medicine, only allowing mental therapies with electronic devices.

To talk more about these mental therapies, they speak about any matter, and discuss personal and private matters every time they have a session.

They are even required to speak about their personal life as a form of confession.

Moreover, Scientology believes in concentrating on children, almost

brainwashing the children to tell on their parents when their parents do something wrong against the rules of Scientology.

The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM), sometimes called the Pastafarians, are not a serious religion!

Actually, that’s the whole point of the religion. The FSM is a religion made just for the purpose of humour. The fact is that they do not have any rules and are open to any ideas. The fact that they take every Friday as a religious holiday, completely proves so. FSM is a religion from christianity but a spaghetti monster instead of a god. Yes. They believe the FSM is Jesus Christ’s real father. Most importantly, the FSM has one rule on its amendment.

Hate bad things, but good things are welcome. For example, lying is hated but honesty is welcomed.

We’ve looked at religions that are either similar, or share the basic ideals of that of Christianity. Let’s then look at the religion that directly opposes Christianity. The Nation of Yahweh (NY). The Nation of Yahweh is a religion that believes blacks are the ‘true Jews’ and belong in Israel.

The ‘white Jews’ that live there are considered devils by the NY and they are to be vanquished. An offshoot

60

of Black Hebrew Israelites, the NYs believe that Yahweh ben Yahweh is the true Son of God and was sent on a mission of Messianic proportions. The NYs are today considered to be a black supremacist racist group.

How about some strange beliefs that some celebrities have?

These are some few facts about the beliefs that some celebrities have: Rapper B.o.B and Tila Tequila both think the Earth is flat. In 2016, the rapper and the reality star both took to Twitter to share their flat Earth beliefs, and other conspiracy theories about everything from cloning, to government frequencies to Snapchat.

Who would've guessed nice guy Mark Ruffalo thinks 9/11 was an inside job? He states a lot of his theories on the subject, like "buildings don't fall down like that." He says there was no evidence at the scene, and the investigation is illegitimate because it only goes from “the moment the planes hit to the moment the buildings fell, and nothing before or nothing after.”

Alicia Silverstone is all about sharing her juices. She thinks you should spit food directly into your baby's mouth. She made many hearts flutter in the 90s, but today she's making our stomachs turn. Silverstone

Strange Beliefs Sumin Kim Year 10 Jeoji

believes in feeding in mama bird style, by chewing up it up and then barfing it into her child's mouth.

During the Live 8 Concert tour in 2005, Kanye made news when he made an outrageous statement. At a tour stop in Phillie, a tour which was about raising awareness for AIDS and world poverty, Kanye told the audience that not only was AIDS a "man-made disease", but the white people "placed it in Africa just like crack was placed in the black community to break up the Black Panthers.". He reiterated his belief in the 2005 track "Heard 'Em Say", with the lyric "And I know the government administered AIDS/ So I guess we just pray like the minister say."

We have looked at the various beliefs. Quite interesting right? Some of them look crazy, some of them look ridiculous, some of them seem to have no reason to believe in. I don’t know about you, but I was shocked to discover some of these strange beliefs. Although to me they appear to be strange the great thing about democracy is that we all have the opportunity to celebrate our beliefs without prejudice.

61

Creating Trustworthy Advertising Rohyun Park Year 8 Noro

62

If your company wants to make a good advertisement it has to come up with a great idea that can make give a sense of reliability to the customers.

Your company has to think cautiously when it makes an advertisement, because people are going to see the advertisement on the television. If customers don’t have faith in the product, they will think your product is poor. Eventually they’re not going to buy your product. Therefore this essay will investigate creating trustworthy advertising, giving some advice to the company who wants to make an advertisement.

To begin with, I think a company should test its product to show their product is trustworthy. For example, the company can show how safe the product is or how good it is for people. The company can make an advertisement which can show that products ability by testing it in the lab. For example, we can advertise a computer notebook with a hammer to crash it or use chemical water to show that the product is trustworthy and reliable. Therefore, if you see on the TV sometimes you want to buy a toy, notebook or computer that means the advertisement successfully caught your attention encouraging you to buy that product, and you think it’s safe and trustworthy. For example, some companies were very poor, but they become rich by making great advertisements that made customers

trust them.

The first thing that you have to do is you have to make an advertisement that can make your customers trust the product. You also can ask famous actors to advertise your product but the bad thing is you have to pay a lot to them because they are famous, so you have to give them money for advertising your product. Famous people have very rare techniques like convincing the customers, so people trust the famous. The reason why people want to buy Michael Jordan’s shoe is because they’re going to trust him because he was a great basketball player. Or the company can cast a famous expert from Samsung who is doing the engineering.

The expert will talk about ways your product is trustworthy. We can trust Samsung because they’re experts in electronic equipment. Famous people like this advertise so the customers have faith in your company.

The company has to listen to what the customer comments on your product. For example, the customer asks to add more options on your product or design. They could ask you to make it more simple,and they could ask you to put more decorations on your product. The reason why you have to listen to them is if you make your product using your own idea do you think people are going to buy it? You have to listen to customers and learn what they want. For example if you listen to your customers and make your

63

product just like what they said than it’s likely to sell more. So what I suggest to you is say that you listen to people and then advertise.

Most importantly, you have to make something that nobody has discovered. If you make something that nobody invented you can be the richest man in the world. For example, you can put fingerprint access option on the notebook to make customers log in more easily and all the people can buy your product. Or you can add something only offered by your product. For example, Apple made their own software specially for their computers so they became rich.If you convince them you are creative they might can trust you.

Obviously, you have to make sure that you didn’t copy someone’s advertisement, but if you copy someone’s advertisement people are not going to buy your product. The reason why they don’t buy your product is you’ve copied others and that's totally untrustworthy.

If you follow my advice your company can be rich and successful because you make your customers faith in your product. You should show know how safe it is and test it, get famous people to advertise it for you, listen to what customers say, discover a product that no one has yet discovered, and make sure that you don’t copy someone else.

F R I E N D S H I P :

H AV E FA I T H I N Y O U R F R I E N D S

People have many friends in their lives and they all differ in their own characteristics. Many people have many friends that are not very close with them, but there are crucial friends that are important in your life, like best friends. The bonds of friendship are important in life. Best friends help each other, by aiding them with what they have. Friends will be very kind to each other and can maybe work together. Some people show sympathy and empathy for each other. People

often have many friends so-called “best friends”. Many friendships in the younger ages do not last long into adulthood, but some do. Friendship is fragile until it has made its bond strong enough. Believe in friendship. Have faith in friendship. Friendship has possibilities that surpasses other faith.

It includes many things, like anger at each other. People split up with friends by various reasons. It can be by another friendship, girl/boy friend, big fight, travel, moving to a different

64

town, and other various reasons.

According to a Woman’s Day article, many people split up because of other friends and arguments. Also, they fight because of problems and disagreement.

When friends have faith in each other and they believe in each other, the friendship will get stronger. Some people lose all their friends after they grow up because they move away from their friends and in their adulthood, they go to work and move on, so they don’t have enough time to contact

Some only go to your side for a specific reason and leave you as soon as the reason is resolved.

their friends. But, fortunately, people gain more friends in their adulthood from various places, like their work, neighbors, and other non-work places.

People also have faith in their friends and they do many things with them!

Unfaithful friend (Fake friends) In life, there are many people you meet and some will truly believe you and go with you, but some only go to your side for a specific reason and leave as soon as the reason is resolved or disappeared. People who are drawn to you for a specific reason are all wanting that specific reason. For example, many people are drawn to money. They want money and persuade the person into giving it to them. They could take huge amounts of money. A TV show called The Man Who Crosses the Chart, in which things are ranked from 12 to 1, the charts of people who were unlucky after winning the lottery were reviewed, which showed that many people had friends and family going crazy for money. One person who had a taste for expensive things had a girlfriend who was with him for the money. She kept asking for 40,000,000 won for business and when the man noticed that she was only wanting his money, he broke up with her, but she was extremely angry and decided to drown her exboyfriend’s expensive car. Thankfully, her boyfriend was very cool with it, demanding no money and only calling for the end of their relationship. Like these, there are many strange and scary

people around the world so people should be more aware of their friends, if they are with you for your friendship or something they want.

Stages of Friendship There are stages of friendship like there are social ranks. You can think that some people are your closest friends, best friends, but actually, some people are just classmates or neighbors that you occasionally meet. According to “Stages of Friendship by Humans”, It is said that people can sometimes think that they are their best friend, but in reality they are not. There are several stages of friendship, and there are about 10 stages. Those 10 stages are: people you know the name of, people who you can talk with, people that can talk easily with you, people that you know well, friend, okay friends, good friends, very good friends, best friends, and soul mates. Many people don’t know the boundaries and no one can decide it. It is you who decides it. For the person you know the name of, you and the person have no relationship. For the person you can talk with, you can talk about things and your relationship has potential. For the person that you can talk with easily, your faith in that person is okay and the relationship is quite good. For a person that you know well, you can talk along and because you know the person well, the relationship can become better anytime. For friends, you have entered the zone and by this stage, you can

65

somewhat trust the person, but no one can decide the boundaries. According to “Friendship”, friends can be real or not and many people can act as a friend and then go on further to get his/her objective.

For okay friends, the relationship is yet to go further. It has more possibilities. For good friends you can go out and play, sit with them and do many more things. To develop deeper relationships, there are very good friends, best friends, and soul mates.

For very good friends, you and the friend are very friendly and there is a low chance of the friend being a fake friend. Best friends and soul mates.

These sections are almost the same, except soulmates almost have the same likes and hates and they just get along too well like a family.

Have Faith in your friends People should have more trust in their friends and believe in each other.

Friendship is fragile and can be broken very easily, so more faith means the friendship is deeper. Friends can help and with friends you can do lots of things. Friends are needed in life and to have faith in friends is crucial.

Friends can change many things and also have many positive effects in your life. Faith will be a tight bond that holds a good relationship. To have faith in your friends means you have a good relationship, one of the major reasons for success.

Jusang Kim Year 9 Geomun

d o G REALITY OF

Steve Na Year 10 Jeoji

than other animals. If a chimpanzee and a human were to be released in the wild and play a survival game, a human would probably be found dead first. Humans are disturbingly awful at protecting themselves in the wilderness.

So, how did humans become the dominant beings in the world?

Historian Yuval Harari says, in his best-selling book Sapiens, that “the secret lies in the sculpture�. In 1939, a particular sculpture was found inside a German cave. The sculpture, which is about 32,000 years old, has a human body and a lion head. This seeminglyordinary sculpture contains a huge secret of humanity: Homo sapiens is the first species in animal history that began to think of invisible fantasies.

How did the ability to believe in this invisible beings make mankind the ruler of the world? The physical abilities of individuals of Homo sapiens were really insignificant.

However, the unique social groups

Up to only 70,000 years ago, Homo sapiens was just another animal species that lived in harmony with other animals. They occupied only a small portion in the Earth's ecosystem, just as much as chimpanzees, lions, dogs, bugs, and dung beetles. Human influence on the planet was no different than that of any other animal species.

H o w e v e r, h u m a n s s u d d e n l y became the dominant species in the world. What happened? We tend to approach this mystery by discussing individual human abilities such as the size of the brain, the body that is capable of various movements, the ability to use tools, or the ability to use fire. These ideas sound sensible, but they are not enough to solve this mystery. Early Homo sapiens existing about 200,000 years ago had a brain that was bigger than that of a modern human, and humans used fire from 1.5 million years ago. Also, human’s ability to adapt to the wild is no better

66

of Homo sapiens worked together to form a small community where within members cooperated with each other.

If someone found a group of lions wandering far away while collecting strawberries, he/she would quickly run to his/her colleagues and say, "You can't go there because there are lions over the mountain". Even though his/ her colleagues could not instantly see the lions, they would imagine that there are lions on the other side of the mountain. This would have made them believe in unknown figures. This ability to believe in the invisible beings is so important because it creates God. Back in the days when medical knowledge was not as profound as we have now, there was a small belief that we could not see the sudden death of a relative by eating mushrooms, the deformed offspring of a mother's womb, the drought, the flood, all those mysterious things that did not exist.

Homo sapiens are social animals, but there were limits to the social scale they lived before God appeared. Their community was confined to blood relatives, and different communities considered each other as foes, but everything changed since the advent of God. If you believe in a supernatural God yourself, you have a sense of solidarity to cooperate with who share the same God. This logic applies the same to modern people. A Catholic believer is said to feel more confident and friendly towards another Catholic believer even when he/she is a stranger.

This is the same for all other religions.

The theory is in line with the theory in the book The Giant God written

by the cognitive scientist and religious scientist Ara Norenzayan. Here's what his book says.

There are many different religions in modern times, but their doctrines have something in common. They say it contains a message of authority that bad deeds are punished, and good deeds are rewarded. But not all religious gods that have existed in history have played such roles as moral teachers. In the early days, people used to pray to not die from flood or prevent themselves from getting bitten by wild animals. Of these, however, only the religions with God were able to flourish and survive.

Suppose an omnipotent God of religion is always monitoring the behavior of individuals of people.

Even if we don't know each other, if we believe in the same God, we have the opportunity to cooperate under the belief that God will not deceive us. So major religions that we can now observe are all pro-political religions that encourage human beings to behave morally and punish immoral acts.

The Bible: Verification 19: 9: "False testimony will be punished, and lying will be destroyed!"

Qu'Ran: The Noble Quran 3:61 "God bless the liar!"

So, what made us what we are is not genetic evolution, but cultural evolution - the birth of God. This difference was the definitive difference separating humans from all animals.

So it is right that God created the human being now.

And God is man-made.

67

Belief In Santa Seoyeon Lim Year 8 Jeoji

Every December 24th, children look for ward to receiving neatly wrapped presents the next morning.

The kids expect the white-bearded man in red to come and leave them presents while they are fast asleep, in the middle of the night. The jolly man's name is Saint Nicholas or Santa Claus. So who is ‘Santa', and what does he do?

Santa is a mythical figure that comes from the culture of Western Christians. In the myth, he rides a sleigh pulled by reindeers and drops the presents through the chimneys of the houses. He only grants wellbehaved children's Christmas wishes and doesn't for ones who are ‘bad'.

The look which people usually know, the red suit with a white trim, the puffy beard, and the jiggly belly, is a character made by Coca-Cola for advertisement. The origin of Santa is a real person, Saint Nicholas of Myra.

He was a Greek Christian bishop who lived in the 4th century. Different from the story which says Santa lives in the North Pole, the actual figure lived and died in Turkey. He was known to have been very religious from an early age, and he gave generous gifts to the poor and children of Christians. The myth of Santa came from here. Even though

68

it is based on a true person, everybody thinks of Santa as the magical figure rather than his real self. He is so famous, that almost everyone knows about him. Children like him so much, that some even worship him. He is a star among the kids.

Although many believe in it, the idea that the kids believe is questionable. It is unbelievable for ‘Santa Claus' to go around the whole world in one day, giving out gifts to every single house he sees. That's about 1.5 billion houses! Most of the houses nowadays don't even have chimneys, too. Also, the number of presents he has to carry would be boundless. It certainly would be amazingly difficult for him to hold tons and tons of things in his ‘flying' sleigh. There are lots of unimaginable things that are described in the ‘Story of Santa'. For these reasons, the person who puts the goods under the Christmas tree might not always be ‘Santa'. This is a myth that we can surely debunk.

According to research in the Journal of Cognition and Development in 2011, 83% of 5-year-old kids think that Santa is real. Also, 92.5% out of 161 parents in the United Kingdom thought their children believed in

Father Christmas until they were 8.

This shows that a large number of kids believe in Santa Claus. Kids live in the world of Santa and Rudolph, which is filled with fairy tales.

Parents from all around the world are facing their kids, who try extremely hard to see Santa in action. Some kids leave a camera, asking Santa to take a picture of himself. Others stay up until midnight to try and catch Santa putting presents under the tree. The ‘Tale of Santa' from parents starts weakening. As the kids grow up, they question more and more about the existence of Santa. But even when they do, Santa is still an amazing and fascinating person for them.

Well, Santa might be undefined, but there are good parts of the magic, which is believing in Santa when you are young. Fantasy is a normal thing, and it is healthy for kids to believe in it. A child psychiatrist, Dr Matthew Lorber says "I don't think it's a bad thing for kids to believe in the myth of someone trying to make people happy if they're behaving. Imagination is a normal part of development, and helps develop creative minds." Also, the tradition of Christmas guides children into good habits, such as writing to

69

Santa. It motivates the kids to have good behaviour, because of ‘Santa's good and bad list'. It engages the imagination and the spirit of giving.

Kids can grow healthy minds from a positive tale.

However, there are bad parts of it as well. The kids might develop a habit of doing good things for a reward, not because they are expected and right.

Also, the idea implies that if you do something bad, you are a bad person.

When parents try too hard to convince that Santa is real, it is indeed bad for their mental health. Despite the fact that most kids in the world believe in Santa, there are various advantages and disadvantages about it.

The enchanting story of Santa is still going on, and the memory of it would be all different for many people.

Good or bad, it is a priceless experience and something you will not be able to get back when you grow up. A famous writer, Roald Dahl says,"Those who don't believe in magic will never find it." Just like the quote, believing in Santa with a child-like innocence is the meaning of it. The important thing about it is, to be happy while you believe in it. It might leave you with good memories and recollections.

Faith: Santa Claus Luna Park Year 8 Jeoji

Sarah Seong Year 8 Jeoji

Do you believe in Santa Claus? Or when you were young, did you? Many young kids believe in Santa Claus.

What they believe is that Santa Claus comes to your house on Christmas eve midnight by the chimney or by the window. Then, Santa puts gifts into their socks hanging on the wall, or under the Christmas tree. But the important thing when you get a present is that Santa Claus only gives presents if they do good things for the whole year.

Giving a present to children from Santa Claus is a big act of faith between each other, which has lasted for decades.

Christmas is a Christian holiday which is honouring the birth of Jesus Christ. Christmas started millennia ago. It spread as a religious and secular celebration, incorporating many preChristian, pagan traditions into the festivities along the way. Nowadays, Christmas is a special holiday for families and friends to get together, play, and exchange gifts too. Christmas is a national holiday in many countries.

Most people know that 25th of December is Christmas, but there are different dates of Christmas depending on which religion you believe. For example, there are churches that celebrate Christmas on November

1 5 t h , Ja n u a r y 7 t h , o r 2 8 t h o f November.

If we go back through the history of Santa Claus, we can soon find out Santa Claus originated from St. Nicholas. He was a rich bishop who lived in Myra in the fourth century.

He was famous for giving presents to poor people. There is one famous story about St. Nicholas: a poor man had three daughters, but because he was so poor, he couldn’t afford money to have a marriage for his daughter. One night, St. Nicholas dropped a bag of gold into the chimney secretly. Then, he did the same for other daughter and was caught for the third time. Because, he didn’t want any attention from others, he begged of the poor man not to tell what he had done. However, as St. Nicholas did the same for other people too, the news soon got out. So, he became famous for his gold. This story of St. Nicholas made tales about Santa, that Santa puts presents for children by chimney at Christmas as a tradition.

WARNING: DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER, IF YOU BELIEVE IN SANTA CLAUS. Did you ever get a present from

70

Santa Claus? If you did get it, then it is actually your parents or people who act like Santa Claus, not an actual Santa.

This way that parents give the present to children on Christmas day is now a well-known custom and is how faith about Santa is still lasting until now.

People give presents to the children to give happiness and hope to them, and to protect children’s innocence.

However, even though it gives hopes to children, they are still fooling them.

And that causes more heartbreak as we get older and recognise that the man we imagine with a white beard and red clothes is a fake.

To conclude, even a strong faith like Santa Claus weakens and dissolves.

From this article, you will notice how strong the faith of Santa is and how that gets dissipated. If you did believe in Santa, it’s not a bad thing or foolish thing to do. It is just faith in something, for example, the religion, gods and of course Santa Claus. So, it really doesn’t matter if you believe in Santa or not. If you believe Santa, just believe it. You will notice later in life that Santa was not a real person.

Celebrations Together Around Religion Bunny Seol Year 10 Sarah

Some houses start to celebrate Christmas the day after Thanksgiving.

The handmade felt Advent calendars are hung up on these households, and the smell of the turkey soup and carols fill the house. A festival like Christmas is considered as tradition, and this tradition was made to develop the faith of God and spread the idea of generosity. On Christmas eve, the adults leave the presents for children in special stockings.

The next day, the parents then teach their children about the importance of generosity by mentioning Jesus.

Year by year they tried to teach children that giving gifts was God’s idea. The joy of generosity for both the giver and receiver originates in heaven.

They give because God gives. They never want to take lightly the cost of Christmas to God the Father or his Son, Jesus Christ, who, “though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich”. Each Christmas they ask themselves, Who can become “rich” through what the Lord has given us? How can we give so that others experience “progress and joy in the faith”? And then we give until we laugh for the joy of it all. Sometimes

71

the gifts come out of our savings, other times their budget gets shaved in creative ways. Bibles for overseas students, food for hungry families here and abroad, bills paid for someone in need, ministries that need special help at this time of year—Christmas is for giving! One Christmas when we were the “poor” someone slips them cash, explaining it was a tradition of theirs.

Recipients felt like millionaires and have made this act a special part of our own giving traditions. Indeed, it is more blessed to give than to receive.

Another tradition they cherish is recording our “progress and joy in the faith” in a holiday journal. Every Thanksgiving and Christmas people ask family members and visiting friends to record their thoughts in this much-cherished book. Some write what they are thankful for, others share a favorite gift or memory, little ones draw pictures, and they include a small snapshot when possible. This is a visual record of their “progress and joy in the faith.” Each year they bring it out, rejoicing over what God has done in the past and anticipating what new things he will do this holiday season.

72

CURRENT AFFAIRS Living in the Southernmost region of South Korea, isolated from the mainland, your focus on what is happening around the world might deviate. However, keeping updated with the news and current affairs is important as it can provide you a cosmopolitan mindset. The articles from this section will help you acquire the knowledge you need.

Hannah Seo Year 13 Halla East Claire Oh Year 13 Halla North Minsung Son Year 12 Halla East

73

Helping In Need Jason Jongsuh Park Year 10 Sarah

A charity campaign says every 10 seconds a child dies because of hunger.

Hunger is a condition in which a person, for a sustained period, is unable to eat sufficient food to meet basic nutritional needs. Today, 26 million Africans face star vation.

More than 15 million children in the East African countries of Ethiopia, Kenya, South Sudan, and Somalia are struggling to get enough food to eat, and an estimated 6.9 million of them are malnourished. So why are African people facing these kind of problems?

Poverty causes hunger. This is simply the case because they cannot afford to buy enough food, and nutrition to stay healthy. When you have a lack of money and you cannot afford food you will buy it elsewhere. However, in Africa, farming and starting an agriculture system is very challenging because there is a limited amount of area that has the correct requirement for farming. Furthermore, obtaining food is also a great risk for Africans because there is a high possibility there will not be a market nearby.

Africa is currently home to 1.2 billion people. In the past, the population of Africa grew by 30 million, yet it is

74

estimated that by the year 2050, annual increases will exceed 42 million people per year and the total population will be doubled to 2.4 billion. This means there will be 3.5 million people per month, or 80 additional people per minute. Currently, African governments are not able to cover the population with good quality of food.

There seems to be countless reasons for this emerging yet long-rooted problem.

Birth rates are seen to outnumber death rates by four to one. In less developed countries, citizens do not have appropriate protection and mostly cannot afford contraception. On average, an African women is recorded to have 4.5 children. Not only this, but in Africa, children cannot have an applicable education and consequently need to work in factories or farming lands.

Conflict is another reason why African countries suffer from starvation.

Eastern countries such as Sudan, Darfur, and Nigeria have faced war and terrorists. With these conditions it is not appropriate to carry on a normal lifestyle. Conflict occurs not only by war and terrorists but also by the village people. Aggressive people wants

more, not worrying the consequences, and uses their own way of achieving it.

Bad relationship with neighbours can also be a big impact on how they get and generate needs.

Natural diseases are a monstrous foe to farmers and regions experiencing p ov e r t y. E x t re m e We a t h e r h a v e stated that between 2000 and 2009 the number of natural disasters have tripled from 1980 to 1989. Disasters such as floods, tsunamis, droughts and other natural disasters can damage fragile infrastructures. As a result, communities can suffer widespread disease, shortages in food, water and basic necessities. The Philippines have faced a devastating typhoon in 2013 that affected fourteen million people to difficulties dealing with poverty.

This was because they were not ready for the typhoon and after it vandalized the community. The government was burdened by the cost to repair.

Local residents used unclean water, and were contacted to polluted air.

Crops were predicted to be affected by being polluted by unsafe substances.

Moreover, through natural disasters, people had to migrate for a better living environment. For example, Somalia

suffered from famine in 1980s which led to conflicts over goods which sent it into civil war in 1991. From this, almost a million people have migrated from Somalia to nearby countries in 2011.

Currently 501 million people, or 47 percent of the population of subSaharan Africa live on $1.90 a day or less, which a principal factor in causing widespread hunger. There are

75

numerous campaigns which help these people. Let’s refrain ourselves from only thinking of ourselves because we are satisfied with what we have; we should go a step further to think about people in need. Solve causes of hunger: poverty, population growth, conflict, environmental factors such as drought migration and climate change including malnutrition and spread of diseases.

Shutdown Policy Yae Joon Lee Year 8 Sarah

Do you know about the Shutdown Policy? This is a law from the Ministry of Gender Equality & Family. Students under the age of 16 in Korea can’t play games between 12 midnight and 6am. Students can not play games online such as Overwatch or League of Legends. The Ministry made this law to protect students right to sleep. This law has been in force since 2011.11.20. The Ministry said mobile phones and tablet PC have low addiction rates so they did not ban games on these platforms. It criticized the games is addictive just the same as drugs. On the other hand, lots of people pointed out lots of problems with this policy. Lots of people said that the game addiction problem is lack of parent care.

Parents have rights to decide whether students to play games or not. Also if both parents work they can’t take care of it. Also lots of students argue that they need some time to play. In Korea lots of students go to the academy just after school. They finish at the academy late night time. This engenders lots of negative effects on students mental health and to reduce their stress students usually spend some night time reducing stress. But the Ministry wants

76

them to sleep at night time for health.

Lots of students say it’s their parents job to look after their kids.

This law has a lot of negative consequences. Because lots of students make a game account with their parents registration number this makes this law useless. This law is very inefficient.

Student use their parents information to play more games.

Therefore, the Ministry of Gender Equality & Family decided to not use the shutdown policy any more. Instead of making it mandatory to not play games they decided to make student’s parents decide to let them play games or not. The reason why the Ministry decided to not use the shutdown policy is because the game companies’ resistance was aggressive towards the new change in the law. The Ministry stated that games are addictive like drugs, cigarettes and alcohol. On the other hand game companies, such as Nexon, Blizzard and Netmarble are stating that games is also a part of culture, lots of student stated that they are only able to play games at night.

The majority of students are too busy going to academies after school.

Students are playing games after

the academy which is actually time to sleep. As a result, the students want to reduce stresses and want to feel free from study by playing games. The Ministry didn’t even think about how students will feel nor about when they ban games the game companies suffer financially. So finally they decided to stop using the shutdown policy, with the Ministry changing the policy in 2016.

In my personal opinion I think we need to disable the shutdown policy.

Young students have parents to provide them with advice on whether games are addictive or not. Even if we ban the game by law students use parents ID and there are programs that can block and limit the time they can use computers. There was a fun story that made people laugh. There was a programmer who was very young and he was playing a game at the competition and he was teenager so his computer got shut down.

This law was dumb and didn’t do what they wanted it to do. Also the logic of the Ministry is if students don't play games they will sleep. But that not true. Ic this was the case then they

77

should also ban phone games but they only banned online computer games.

So I strongly support that we should abolish shutdown policy. Also some students who are professional gamers are young so they need some game practice. But when they block with the law it’s unfair. Also the other problem of this law is that the types of people they are banning playing games is too large. It should be more specific .

The Ministry should change the law immediately. Personally I think it is just a useless law. Because even if government bans, students can make a new account using the parents personal id so they can play. Even if they get shut down, they can play games.

Therefore, we should stop it. There is much better law to fix this law such as make every PC room close after a certain time. If they can’t go to the PC room the rate of teens playing game at night will decrease. The reason is that lots of teens are playing games at the PC room but if they are unable to go to the PC room then the rate of student who play games late at night, usually with their friends, will drop and so they will have much better quality of sleep.

Do You Believe or Not? Mingyu Song Former Year 11 Sarah

On 1 8 t h o f Ja n u a r y, 2 0 1 4 , o n e innocent 13 year old girl was sexually abused by one man. The man was not an habitual offender, a criminal, or the one who has a menacing appearance; he was just a father of her friend.

Something more shocking was, though he has committed such a dreadful crime, his punishment of 5 years in jail was commuted to 3 years in jail under the name of a consent between the girl’s parents and the criminal. In contrast, the awful memories in her mind will remain. Nowadays, there are numerous victims of the sexual assaults who would not be able to share their bad memories with anyone and who would be teased or insulted within the society ruthlessly just like the girl in the case discussed.

Revealing that you have been the victim of sexual abuse is still considered to be shameful in some cultures Therefore, many victims are reluctant to accuse the criminals since they feel afraid of the consequences of making an allegation.

Su r p r i s i n g l y, a m a j o r i t y o f t h e perpetrators who were caught by the me-too campaign were actors and celebrities who we are easily seen in

many movies and the TV dramas.

Furthermore, there were even some perpetrators who’ve formerly been considered as the role models of many people. Nevertheless, some of the actors deny their crimes and even insist the victims had accused them of indecent assault or rape in order achieve fame or money. Why is it that the ones who should be consoled are living with deep scars on their minds and are all too often afraid to speak out? The world is becoming a place where individual happiness is more important than faith or justice, and the me-too campaign is taking on a role of a kind of a shelter where the victims can hide from the shower of abuse in our society. ‘#Me too’,’#with you’ and ‘#I can say the truth’: the hashtags that victims of the sexual assaults often used within many SNS platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to notify that they have been sexually abused.

There are some disadvantages of the me-too campaigns since the me-too campaigns are unattributable. People can not check whether it is a truth or not. Donald Trump who is the current U.S President had said “People's lives are being shattered and destroyed

#MeToo 78

by a mere allegation. Some are true and some are false. Some are old and some are new. There is no recovery for someone falsely accused - life and career are gone. Is there no such thing any longer as Due Process?” Is is right to accuse someone of such a heinous crime without a fair trial?

It’s possible that the attackers are lying, and it’s also possible that the victims are lying about the crime. On the other hand, from a positive perspective, people are being enabled to talk about the crime they have been subjected to and seek to escape from the deep pits of prejudice and stereotyping.

There is a movie named “The greatest showman”, and in the movie, many people who have been socially discriminated by society are gathered up by one owner of a circus to perform in his circus. A woman who has a beard on her cheek, a man who has tattoos all over his face, and many other people who have been neglected by the society gathered up and perform the most beautiful show in the whole universe.

And, I think the me-too campaign has many similarities with this movie.

Women and men who could not accuse the criminal because of their lacking

confidence and self-esteem are stopping the action of hiding themselves and resolutely showing that they are victim of the sexual assaults.

Furthermore, in April 25th of 2018, one Chinese woman failed to accuse a professor of the Beijing University who had sexually abused her as the University stopped her from accusing him. Ever y post she has written was forcibly eliminated and she was blackmailed by the university. But then, she successfully wrote a post on the ethereum blockchain platform.

And, since every post written on the platform are inexpugnable, her sincere accusation towards the professor finally succeed and his crime was reported.

The profile of the me-too campaign has developed over time. It has proceeded in many ways and even the technologies in a new generation were applied in order to support the campaign. Some people might pretend that they have been sexually abused in order to benefit financially. Believing the victims or not is your choice and everyone should answer this question, ‘Do you believe or not?’

#WithYou 79

Losing Faith Bella Xiao Year 9 Sarah

One of the greatest philosophers of our time, Nietzsche, famously stated: “God is dead.� More seem to agree with this.

Most religious people think that faith is a virtue, but I disagree. I think people are losing their faith in the modern days. This essay will discuss the three main reasons for why people are losing their faith.

The first of these reasons is scientific progress. Take yourself back to 2000 years, imagine what your life would be like. Back then, if there was an earthquake or your crops failed, or even if your family was wiped out because of disease, people would think that they were being punished by an angry God. As time progressed, as people started to learn more about why things happened through science, we no longer needed God as an explanation. This is one of the biggest reason of why people start to lose their faith. Today, people are realizing that science and religious faith are incompatible. For example, the Bible states that the Earth is only 6000 thousands years old, but scientific explanation is that the Earth is 14.7 billion years old. How do you get accessed on this information?

Secondly, back in the old days, people could only go to the church to get access to information, and at that time, because there was no internet, there will be one answer to a question provided by the Church. Today, people

80

have access to the internet and there are more answers and different points of view just for one question. Imagine, in the old days if you want to know who is God, you could go to the church and ask the priests, they would tell you that the ‘God is the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost’. Nowadays if you search on internet about who is God, there will be many answers. Because people are able to access different sources, that will be one of the reasons of why people are losing faith.

Thirdly, a reason of why people lose faith is because of the terrorism from the different religion. People are increasingly becoming aware the cost of religious faith. Specifically will regard to the problem of radical Islamic terrorism.

These are all the reasons why people lose their faith and here is a real-life example of how Jessie Golem lost her faith.

Here is a real-life story of Jessie Golem experience as she lost her faith. Five years ago, there would be no way that Jessie Golem could ever conceive of herself of leaving the Christian faith.

Only a month later Jessie Golem had the courage to change her Facebook status and be public about her faith or lack thereof. She does not want to put anybody in a bad light. Since then, she has received a lot of mixed reactions from being honest about her faith.

81

For years, she had been terrified to tell anyone that she wasn't a Christian anymore because she was afraid of all the relationships she would lose and all the people that would distance themselves from her.

To Jessie Golem, it feels like there's a tremendous stigma in a lot of Christian circles about people leaving the church and the assumption that she is not a good person, or a Christians can’t be friends with because her views are now so different. She was scared of telling people. What she started to realize though, is that people had been distancing themselves because of her views for years already and that she didn't want those kinds of people in her life. She would rather be friends with people who would love her, regardless of her beliefs. And she is very happy and grateful to say that she does still have friends that are Christians, and their beliefs and views are very different, but that hasn't had an effect on their friendship. That was very big and important to her. Other people have chosen to distance themselves from her or let their friendship "fade away" or have told her they were disappointed in her or, even worse, call her a hypocrite or try and reconvert her. If people are that angry and insecure... there's not much Jessie Golem can do about it.

ISIS: Depravity Disguised as Faith Tara Kim Year 8 Jeoji

Have you ever heard of the term “ISIS”? I am sure you would have heard this term at least once in the past few years. ISIS, is a fundamentalist Islamic terrorist organization that is famous for harming those who believe in religions other than Islam in the name of faith, what it refers to as an Islamic jihad.

The history of ISIS goes back to 2004 when a terrorist organization known as ‘al Qaeda’ formed in Iraq. This group, led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, one of the founding members of al Qaeda, developed to become ISIS with the aim of creating the ideal Islamic state they call a caliphate, not hesitating to hide its identity as it goes as far as to perform public executions of not only civilians but also international diplomats. This shows that the ISIS wants to show out what they do. But at 2017 December 9th, the Iraq military publicly announced that ISIS has been eradicated.

Faith is defined as the complete trust or confidence in someone or something, and religious faith thus means a strong trust in a God or the doctrines of any particular religion (e.g. Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc.) Such faith is meant to provide a sort of assurance, a

comfort that they have a place to lean on, control their mind, and is known to have numerous positive effects.

Especially in the modern world, where globalization and internationalism have become widespread, it has become necessary to respect the faith of others in any religion. However, as unfortunate as it is, an individual’s faith, when it becomes too strong, may end up harming those around him or her who do not have the same faith, those the Islamic people consider heretics or sinners.

From 2006 to 2017, the ISIS has committed 143 terrorist attacks in 29 countries, killing more than 2000 people. The first terrorist attack occurred in the 7th of June, 2006, when a person was killed in the United States by a gunman from ISIS. Afterwards, it has resorted to acts such as the kidnapping of innocent civilians to threaten governments, indiscriminate shootings and more.

The targets are not specified, using essentially anyone as a means to their end. The ISIS terrorists even attacked the local police force, meaning public officials (and hence the government) were not an exception. In fact, a considerable number of the victims

82

were actually police officers.

The target of ISIS was to build the ideal Islamic country and proselytize to convert people to Islam. Proselytization is very common in any religion: as shown by the Catholic Jesuits of the 14th Century, the Christian religion is notably famous for actively spreading the teachings of the Gospel. However, much like the Crusades from the 11th to the 13th Century, ISIS resorts to violent ways in order to spread the teachings of the Koran (Quran), indiscriminately murdering those who don’t believe in the Islam faith. It has achieved its aim of spreading their faith, but not in a positive way.

Religion is indeed an important aspect of the lives of many. But religious freedom is also a fundamental aspect of today’s international society.

ISIS is forcing its religion and beliefs upon those who deny the Islamic faith, and, even though proselytization is legal, violence is not. The crimes which ISIS committed cannot and should not be forgiven; however, through this incident, the global community has perhaps learned a lesson and realized the importance of both faith and religious freedom.

83

SEVEN YEARS

O F

C I V I L

W A R :

NO MORE FAITH I N T H E W O R L D CHRISTINE BAE YEAR 12 HALLA NORTH

The continuous civil war in Syria and consequent political instability are pushing people out of the country.

Syrian people always live under a death threat. They always hear guns fired, people screaming in pain, bombs exploding. Not even government was approachable, and they didn’t have anything to do but watch innocent people die. Under this fatal situation, Syrian people leave their home and travel through a very deadly, watery,

long path not even knowing where they are going exactly. They are not sure about their futures but only with the motivation to find a better place to live.

The cause of this matter goes back to the independence of Syria. After the independence in 1946, Syria was ruled dominantly by the military. The Arab Socialist Ba’ath party took over the politics of Syria from the generals.

When Bashar al-Assad became the

84

president in 2000, he declared the democratic reform of the country. He inspired most of the Syrians, and they became flowering hopes of a peaceful nation. However, due to his lack of experience, he couldn’t make the right decisions in global politics. Due to his mistaken instincts during 911 terror, the relationship between Syria and the USA became very strained. Further, about one hundred thousand Iraq refugees flooded into Syria. However,

they couldn’t get good jobs, and some of them were depriving Syrians of jobs, so the dissatisfaction of Syrians was growing. Even western countries had negative views towards them so foreign trade was limited. Even worse, farming was not working out well. Therefore, farmers were broke, production of crops decreased, the price of crops increased, people were enraged, and many of them decided to choose to hold a gun rather than starve to death.

Human rights has been a serious issue in Syria. The right of free expression, assembly, and association were strictly censored by the governments. The country was under emergency rule (a situation in which a government is empowered to perform actions that it would normally not be permitted) from 1963 until 2011 and public gathering of five or more people was banned. Armed forces were issued sweeping powers of arrest and detention. Government organisations have harassed and imprisoned human rights activists and people who criticised the government were tortured while detained. Women and social minorities faced extreme discrimination in the public sector. A lot of Syrian Kurds (people born in or residing in Syria who are of Kurdish origin) were denied citizenship, and their offsprings were labelled as foreigners.

Under these inhumane conditions of the government, people started to rise up in March 2011. The protest began on 15 March 2011. The government reacts with gun fire instead of listening to those innocent people who are in search of peace and democracy in their country. The conflict between government and civilians grew more substantial, and it led to the rise of the Islamist groups. People’s fierce hostility towards not only the governments but also the world increases and they even started using violence, expressing their anger towards the world.

Syrians leave under these lifethreatening conditions they live under.

The civil war shows no sign of ending, and people continue to escape. They move far away to European destinations

regardless of the extreme danger because in countries around Syria refugees are not allowed to enter the labour market formally. Surrounding countries cannot give or get enough international aid to help the refugees to settle in the region.

Si n c e 2 0 1 1 , a l m o s t 4 2 9 , 0 0 0 Syrians have applied to live in Europe.

Now too many people are coming in at once. Although vast numbers of people have been asking for asylum, the number of people being given shelter is far lower. As refugees coming into the EU are numerous the voices against refugee hosting are increasing.

Rejection of refugees is not a reasonable solution to this unfortunate incident.

Our action of taking in those victims of the catastrophic humanitarian issue is vital. Even though the European Union take in Syrian refugees continuously, the number that such a union can take in is limited. Therefore an immediate solution to overcrowding of refugee population in specific regions and effective methods of assisting the refugees should be thought about.

Some sustainable economic and political solutions are needed. For a short term solution helping the refugees settle down quickly and helping them economically is required.

Also, adjustments to distributing refugees within the European Union countries is essential. Countries can open a labour market of 4D jobs or

essential labour jobs which is beneficial to both the refugees and the country’s economy. The government can educate the citizens about the prevention of possible discrimination. As there are many people with a negative perspective towards Syrian refugees, it is necessary to inform them that Syrian refugees are people that we have to help. EU can provide refugees with apt education such as bilingual school education or job training opportunities. Ratification of UN treaties would be necessary to encourage nations to submit the annual report of their management of this crisis. Lastly, there should be a new convention as 1951 convention is not suitable for the current period.

Long-term solutions to this crisis include the European Union’s attempt to help Syria bring peace. European countries cannot keep taking in refugees forever. They have limitation to their social and economic capacity.

EU should help bring peace to Syria with either peaceful method or armed force.

Imagine if we were in that situation. A situation without a ray of hope, a condition that makes us build hatred towards the world and a case where the faith in others collapses.

We must support the sufferers of c o n f r o n t a t i o n . No t o n l y i s t h e immediate response of EU needed, but also endless consideration and aid from all around the world is required.

Since 2011, almost

429,000

Syrians have applied to live in Europe.

85

86

HISTORY

Learn about the obscure but fascinating events in history, and the peculiar people that made such events take place!

The articles in this section provide a better understanding and an insight to the world we live in, and in NLCS we learn how to research deeply into historical agendas to expand our perspectives.

Gabriella Kim Year 13 Halla East Shunto Shigetomi Year 13 Halla East Adrienne Yoon Year 12 Halla East Daniel Yoo Year 13 Halla East Hannah Seo Year 13 Halla East Claire Oh Year 13 Halla East Rachel Cho Year 13 Halla East Sunghee Kim Year 13 Halla North

87

THE PERSECUTION OF NATIVE KOREAN SPIRITUALITY Raphael Dillon Year 12 Halla East

Whilst many associate Christianity and Buddhism with Korean spirituality, Korea has a deep religious history that predates even the foundation of such religions. Native Korean Shamanism, or 신교 (Shinkyo), emerged before the advent of writing systems; although the exact date cannot be identified, experts suggest that the practices have been taking place for thousands of years.

The practices were likely brought to Korea from Siberia, while Buddhism and Christianity were brought to Korea from China and Europe.

Despite the long tradition of Korean Shamanism the practice has been under attack ever since the introduction of Christianity. Due to the belief amongst Protestant practitioners that indigenous Korean beliefs are a form of Satanism, the two ideals have experienced constant conflict ever since the late Chosun dynasty, with missionaries attacking the Shamans and requesting the destruction of their sacred artifacts. In fact, the first ever Korean language newspaper, 독립신

88

문 (Tongnip Shinmun), intended to promote iconoclasm, an idea hostile to the very nature of traditional Korean folk religion. Hence, the final years of the Chosun dynasty were marked with frequent police brutality directed towards religious practitioners as well as the destruction of Shrines.

Un f o r t u n a t e l y, t h e Ja p a n e s e colonisation of Korea eventually led to the persecution of all religions; however, because Korean spirituality was regarded as a form of Korean nationalism, it was targeted at a greater extent compared to Christianity.

The Japanese took great efforts to ‘modernise and westernise’ their countr y and part of this process included secularisation. Eager to replace Korean religions with Shinto practices in the hope that it would lead to loyalty to the Japanese Emperor, the Japanese colonial government in Korea led a campaign against native beliefs.

Consequently, the colonial authorities pressurised the practitioners and spread rumours that 굿 (gut), or the healing

rituals, were unhygienic.

Despite the efforts to eliminate religion from Korea the Christian population in Korea grew significantly under the Japanese rule (from 165,000 practitioners in 1914 to 315,000 in 1934). There are many possible reasons for this: that Christianity was seen as a form of resistance to Japanese rule and that the Christians in Korea were very vocal in their opposition to Communism.

Perhaps many had hoped that the Korean government would be kinder to native Korean faith. However, neither Syngman Rhee nor Park Chung-hee, past South Korean presidents, expressed their tolerance towards such beliefs.

Park especially is infamous for his violent and aggressive attitude towards ‘superstition’. As a pious Buddhist, Park led a campaign known as the 미신 타 파 운동 (Misin Tapa Undong) against ancient Korean traditions; it involved harassing practitioners, destroying Zelkova trees, and suppressing local practices. According to sources such

as ‘Shamans, Nostalgias, and the IMF: South Korean Popular Religion in Motion’ by Laurel Kendall and ‘Healing Powers and Modernity: Traditional Medicine, Shamanism, and Science in Asian Societies’ by Geoffrey Samuel and Linda Connor, there are reports of gasoline being used by local authorities to commit arson against artifacts such as shrines, totem poles and cairns.

The persecution of Korean spirituality is an important lesson for the world regarding the dangers of government interference in the realms of faith and spirituality. Irrevocable damage was done to people whose only intention was to exercise their right to associate with a faith. Despite the resurgence of Shamanism in Korea during the 1990s the religion has yet to heal from the centuries of prosecution. The success of Buddhism and Christianity in Korea will always be shadowed by the violence that paved the way for these two religions.

89

미신 타파 운동

Did We Get Medicine Wrong In Times Past?

Sumin Kim Year 10 Jeoji

Do you want to read about the most grotesque treatments for diseases?

Then continue to read on. Many treatments throughout history were not only wrong, but disgusting as well.

Doctors in the past believed in these wrong medical faiths and practiced them to their patients and led the patients to death. These are few of these faiths throughout history: For thousands of years, doctors believed that sickness was merely a r e s u l t o f “ b a d b l o o d .” A s a consequence, some pursued a course of treatment known as Bloodletting.

This probably began with the ancient Sumerians and Egyptians, but it was not a common practice until the time of classical Greece and Rome.

Influential doctors like Hippocrates and Galen claimed that the human body was filled with four basic substances called “humors”—yellow bile, black bile, phlegm and blood— which need to be kept in balance to maintain proper health. With this in mind, patients with illnesses such as fever were often diagnosed with an overabundance of blood. To restore bodily harmony, their doctor would simply cut open a vein and drain some of the blood into a receptacle. In some cases, even leeches were used to suck the blood directly from the skin.

While it could easily result in accidental death from blood loss, phlebotomy was practiced well into the 19th century. Medieval doctors

90

prescribed blood draining as a treatment for everything from a sore throat to the plague, and even some barbers listed it as a service along with haircuts and shaves. The practice finally fell out of vogue after new research showed that it might be doing more harm than good. Leeching and controlled bloodletting are still used today as treatments for certain rare illnesses such as hemorrhoids and arthritis.

Another wrong treatment was the usage of mercury for illnesses.

Nowadays, mercury is notorious for its toxic properties, but it was once used as a common elixir and topical m e d i c i n e . T h e a n c i e n t Pe r s i a n s and Greeks considered it a useful ointment, and second-century Chinese alchemists prized liquid mercury, or “quicksilver,” and red mercury sulfide for their supposed ability to increase lifespan and vitality. Some healers even promised that by consuming noxious brews containing poisonous mercury, sulfur and arsenic, their patients would gain eternal life and be able to walk on water. One of the most famous victims of this false belief was the Chinese Emperor Qin Shi Huang, who died after taking mercury pills which were supposed to make him immortal.

From the Renaissance until the early 20th century, mercury was also used as a popular medicine for sexually transmitted diseases like syphilis.

While some accounts claimed that the

treatment using mercury was successful in fighting off the disease, patients often died from mercury poisoning.

In the middle ages, doctors used strange ways of treating patients which were extremely dangerous for the patients such as trepanning, which is a surgical procedure that involves the drilling or boring of a hole into the human skull. This hole exposes the outer membrane of the brain, which physicians use to think was the cause of an array of different health problems.

Doctors used this method in the Middle Ages to treat illnesses like epilepsy, migraines, and a variety of mental disorders. If you were suffering from depression, a little hole to the head was in order. Unfortunately, the hole to the head commonly exposed the brain to airborne germs, and it often proved fatal for patients.

The ancient Egyptians had an organized medical system with doctors who specialized in healing specific ailments. Nevertheless, the cures they prescribed were revolting. Lizard blood, dead mice, mud and moldy bread were all used as ointments and dressings, and women were sometimes dosed with horse saliva as a cure for the lack of desire for sexual activity. However, the most disgusting part is yet to come; Egyptian doctors used human and animal waste as a panacea for diseases and injuries. According to 1500 B.C.’s Ebers Papyrus, donkey, dog, gazelle and fly dung were all used to “heal” people

91

and it was believed that they had the ability to chase off bad spirits. These remedies occasionally led to other infections such as tetanus. However, research shows that they were not entirely ineffective, as the microflora in animal dung has the ability to cure some diseases.

If you are suffering persistent headaches, muscle cramps, or stomach aches, you might as well try out cannibal curing. In ancient times, your personal doctor may have prescribed an elixir that contains human flesh, blood or bone. This was called the “corpse medicine”, and it was a very common treatment for a long time. These cannibalistic medicine was thought to be magical. By taking the medicine, it was believed that one would become healthier as one has ingested part of the spirit of the dead body. In some cases, the patient would even attend public executions to get a cup of the fresh blood of the person killed for free.

Like this, there were many gruesome and faulty treatments of diseases throughout history, which lead many people to their deaths. Your cold and headache sure would be cured if you drink a cup of human blood mixed with mucus, right? We should be thankful for all the hard work of doctors and scientists- wouldn’t it be terrible having to drill holes into our foreheads?

Hitler's Faith Eleen Kwak Year 10 Geomun

Hitler’s ruthless actions towards Jews is well-known, yet his emphasis on his faith and belief in God is relatively ignored. Hitler believed that overpowering the Jews was what God wanted, repeatedly commenting that “I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator.”

H o w e v e r, t h e e x a c t n a t u r e of Hitler’s belief in God remains contested. Atheists insist that Hitler was a devout Christian, while Christians rebut that he was an atheist.

Some argue both theories are not true, that he was a pantheist. Others claim Hitler’s earnest belief was used to extend and legitimize his brutal actions, supposing that Hitler defended his attacks as “fighting for the Lord's work” to counter criticisms on the attack on non-Aryans.

Nazism, also known as National Socialism, was a movement led by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party.

Nazism was based on a system of

92

intense totalitarianism, nationalism and a dictatorial system. Its ideas and practices were extreme and the party insisted on carrying out antiintellectual and theoretical movements, coercively emphasizing dictatorship and its overarching powers over the society.

They had a racial and discriminative ideology to non-Germans, especially Jews.

Hitler’s belief in Nazism may be recognised in the Mein Kampf. Mein Kampf was a political manifesto or perhaps the bible of Nazism, written

by Hitler. Mein Kampf has since been evaluated as being illogical, repetitious and turgid by modern historians.

Despite its poor language, Hitler’s skilled instigation appealed to the dissatisfied values in Germany and proved to be successful.

I believe Hitler had a ‘twisted’ belief in God, yet developed an absolute faith in nationalism and Nazism.

93 Hitler's beliefs resulted in Kristallnacht.

FAITH IN YOUR NATION Hoejae Kim Year 10 Sarah

94

invasion will usually see patriotism as vital.

Patriotism is ver y impor tant because it helps people respect their country. There are patriotic soldiers who are ready to sacrifice for their nation, and thus it is important to show respect to them. Patriotism is important for South Korea, which has been continuously attacked by surrounding countries for a long time. Patriotism has also helped many countries protect themselves from other countries.

Some worldviews suggest a rejection of association with a specific c o u n t r y. No r m a l l y d e s c r i b e d a s ‘internationalism’, these viewpoints are found in a wide variety of politics from socialism to liberalism.

A nation is a community of people united based on language, territory and culture. The concept of nations has existed for thousands of years, and we have no reason to expect them to die out any time soon. Throughout history many people have sacrificed their lives for their nation, while other people have benefited from their nations in terms of wealth and honour. People are taught to be patriotic from a young age, especially in places like South Korea or certain parts of Europe where they have bad relationships with surrounding countries. I happen to be of the opinion that patriotism is essential in every nation. Patriotism unites people depending on nationalities, which is important as one man might not be strong but thousands of men united are far stronger. Nations that are at risk of

95

96

MEDIA

Everyday and everywhere, we are constantly surrounded by media, which not only offers us new information but reveals a new perspective to view our own culture. From movies to novels, from K-pop to trends in and out of Korea, the articles on this section will navigate through different media in the world we live in.

Daniel Yoo Year 13 Halla East Raphel Dillon Year 12 Halla East Minsung Son Year 12 Halla East

97

CAN WE COMPLETELY TRUST THE MASS MEDIA?

David Noh Year 9 Sarah 98

Every day, we gather information from the media via networks (a.k.a: Broadcasting station). Through media, people gather information about what is happening globally, nationally and locally (e.g. pollution, dust, UV rays, politicians, personalities and performers). People express their ideas, opinions and perspectives to discuss issues and convince other people with their own knowledge. Long time ago, news was simply spread by unregulated gossips. It was easily spoilt in the process of spreading the news by Chinese whispers. The media is becoming more pervasive in our lives with improved communication technology and development of services like social media, regulated television, radio and newspapers. However, is this different from replacing gossips with gossips?

So, what is mass media? Mass media is a diversified collection of media technologies that reach a large audience via mass communication.

Most people believe the news that comes out from the media. However, I think journalists and some people involved in mass media are in an environment where they can easily distort information. Distorted news could give adverse effects to people or society. Unfortunately, lots of fake news is broadcast. Journalists usually state that ‘fake news’ is mostly caused by external and internal factors. As ‘fake news’ is in various forms and caused by various factors, we can classify ‘fake news’ in three types.

Firstly, news can be biased as journalists have their own view on political, cultural, economical and social issues. We cannot state that all bias is ‘bad,’ but it can be untrue.

Experts usually criticize biased ‘fake news,’ because it can exercise enormous influence on people who need information such as students, teachers and businessmen. Most biased news are usually political news, because everyone has different perspectives about politics. According to The New York Times, more than 60% of people change or consolidate their political

We are living in an informational world; the spread of information is hard to keep up with. perspective using news. For example, in the 2016 presidential election in the United States, numerous media including newspapers and broadcasting companies expressed their own political perspectives. Undeniably, citizens were easily affected by this ‘news’. Think about what would happen if news media distorted the truth with their own perspective. It will bring a huge impact to bear on politics and slanted news could affect citizens and who they vote for in the election. Therefore, regulation of government exist to restrict ‘fake news.’ Furthermore, government is able to control the mass media for citizens. Actually, this regulation could make situation worse for citizens. We cannot criticize the regulation of government, the problem is the process of ‘checking’ can be also abuse by politicians. The movie ‘V for vendetta’ clearly reflects the current society in which media is distorted by government’s miscreance. In the movie, British government control mass media and suppress citizens for politicians’ gain.

Furthermore, ‘fake news’ can come from misusing data and error of media.

Most news consists of data to give information to people. The data usually convince people or help them to understand. To make data, journalists make average and use existing data that

99

comes from investigation. However, some news outlets misuse data and create error. Wrong data comes from senseless data choosing by journalists.

Data that comes from mass media is not reliable in some cases. It can be an error overall and people never know how, when and who about the data.

For example, in Korea lots of data is around about overall annual salary and its division into each category.

However, as youth unemployment increases it is hard to believe. Also, as data shows high overall annual salary of people, other people feel deprivation about their salary. In articles as data strongly convinces people, misused data can give adverse effects to society. The New York Times shown that ‘the truth of the data,’ it can also be controlled by government and to make reliability sometimes journalists distort data for their article.

In conclusion, we are living in a informational world, the spread of information is hard to keep up with. Mass media is developing with technology and people gather information from mass media.

However, awareness is a key to solve a ‘distorting’ and ‘untruth’ which can truly lead society to more perfect informational world.

From Heejin to Gowon: LOONA Nathan Ha Year 10 Sarah

On October 2, 2016, BlockBerry Creative announced that there will be an historical project that will change the K-Pop scene forever. The concept of the LOONA project is clear; every month, an extended play or a single would be released, whether as a subunit or a solo by one of the members taking part in the project. Lasting for 18 months, when completed, the project would see all twelve members make a debut in one girl group called LOONA. At the point of this announcement, the members were not disclosed to the public.

Between October and January 2017, four members were revealed: Haseul, Yeojin, Heejin and Hyunjin.

Their songs initially met lukewarm reactions with over 300,000 combined views on YouTube; this was certainly an impressive result for a rookie girl group. As of January 2018, Heejin’s music video for her single ‘ViVid’ has garnered over 1.9 million views. Yeojin has gathered over a million, while other members have reached around 600,000 to 900,000 views. Taking on this success, in March 2017, three revealed members (Haseul, Heejin and Hyunjin) and a new member named ViVi made a debut as the first spinoff unit called LOONA ⅓. Their song Love & Live was ranked in the tenth

place in the Gaon monthly charts, and 2900 physical copies of it were sold to date.

The second spinoff unit was released shortly after; Kim Lip, the first one to showcase to the general public as a member of LOONA’s second unit Odd Eye Circle, released Eclipse.

The song was produced by Cha Cha Malone, who, producing artists such as Jay Park and Rainbow, was then experiencing prolonged success. Kim Lip’s single, after being included in the NASA’s ‘solar eclipse playlist’ for its title, managed to capture the attention of many western K-Pop fans, and recorded over 2.3 million views. Jinsoul’s track Singing In The Rain followed and proved to be a great success. A Korean web magazine Idology even commented that the single might be the best of the year for a girl group. The final member, Choerry, garnered over 500,000 views in just a week.

No w a c o m p l e t e u n i t , O d d Eye Circle is branching out both internationally and domestically. Their first single, Girl Front, was produced

by Hayley Aitken and Ollipop, who produced songs for another prominent K-Pop group Red Velvet. It managed to gain a spot in the US iTunes K-Pop Chart, as well as in the Billboard World

100

Album Charts in which it was placed tenth. Including the repackage album Max & Match, an impressive 4,000 copies of the single were sold.

Between November 2017 and January 2018, three more members were revealed. One of them, Yves, reached number 13 in the iTunes K-Pop Charts, and gained over a million views in a month. The other one, Chuu, has reached number 5 in the same charts and gained a million views in two weeks. The third member Gowon, whose single is yet to be released, featured in a teaser photograph in January.

LOONA’s growth is evident inside and outside of Korea, and their place in the K-Pop scene is getting bigger.

Hopefully, they will make a successful debut as a complete group in June or July 2018.

The third member Gowon’s teaser photo was released during January, and her single is yet to be released. Their growth continuously spreads both domestically and internationally, and their place in K-Pop is becoming larger and stronger, and hopefully they’ll make a successful debut in June or July 2018.

101

Why Do People Believe In Conspiracy Theories?

Barry Lee Year 9 Mulchat

Faith, how can people have faith in even the most ludicrous ideas?

Most conspiracy theories seem hard to believe, such as the flat Earth theory, vaccines causing autism and so on.

They may seem like fringe beliefs championed by no one. However, the audience of these theories is much larger than you may have expected.

According to a 2013 national survey in America, 12 million people support the theory that world leaders are all lizards (Reptilians). According to an article from Time Magazine “Why Smart People Still Believe Conspiracy Theories�, at least 20% of the American population believes that there is a connection between vaccines and autism. Additionally, 37% believe that global warming is a hoax. What is the reason that these people religiously believe in such absurd theories?

Conspiracy theories and beliefs can be based on evidence but this is not often the case. As humans, our greatest ability is the power to find trustworthy connections and make common inferences based on the world around us. Sometimes this is taken too far and people attempt to create links between seemingly unrelated things.

One reason that people often believe in conspiracy theories is confirmation bias: this causes people to disregard facts that they perceive as threatening or that they do not

102

believe in. Our natural instincts cause us to put more trust in ideas that we already follow and agree with while ignoring information that contradicts our current beliefs. This means, in response to conflicting evidence or confrontation of their beliefs, a conspiracy theorist could just say that something is irrational or just create an ad-hoc explanation. As they ignore and try to hide information that goes against their beliefs, it may create an illusion that the theories are foolproof.

Confirmation bias is said to be found in generally anxious individuals as they could see their environment as threatening and untrustworthy. There could potentially be some crossover with conspiracy theories and people who struggle with disorders such as anxiety.

Another reason for believing in such theories is peer pressure.

According to an article, “Why people believe in conspiracy theories” by “theconversation.com”, we believe that our social status is more important than it ever was. We always compare our actions with others, hoping to fit in with the crowd. There are several examples of peer pressure being used to propagate dubious beliefs. An example of this is “Gaslighting”. Gaslighting is when someone tries to psychologically manipulate someone else’s perception of reality by denying their point of view

and subtly altering their environment until they start to question their choices and doubt their opinions. The effect of peer pressure was displayed in an experiment conducted in 1961, led by social psychologist Stanley Milgram and colleagues. The experiment was just a man staring up at the sky, 4% of people passing by decided to join in.

As time passed, more people started joining in. Soon enough, 15 people were looking up into the sky. If more people believe in an idea, it will be easier to accept something as true.

Social media has made spreading messages and ideas easier than it ever was. It gives everyone a platform, regardless of the merit of their ideas or of their social standing. In this sense it is a double edged sword: it allows the truth to be shared no matter how reviled the original source may be, but it also fosters the spread of falsehoods.

For conspiracy theorists the internet allows them to overcome their biggest obstacle: funding their platform. In real life it takes time and money to build a platform and it is easy for your opponents to knock you down. But the internet allows theorists to exclude their critics and create echo chambers where only their viewpoint is accepted, and the cost of supplying information to the masses is much lower. Infowars doesn’t need the budget of CNN to reach a similar sized audience (if their

103

claims are to be believed) for example.

On the internet, you may come across an article or statement about a conspiracy theory, and even though it might not be true, some people may believe it. The internet gives everyone a platform to express their opinion which allows false information to be propagated easily. For example, on social media sites such as Facebook, there is a flat-earther group with almost 100,000 members. On the internet, it is easier for people to communicate and conspire new ideas possibly leading to the creation of conspiracy theories.

Conspiracy theories such as the world leaders being reptilians and the earth being flat may seem far fetched, but there are several reasons as to why people turn to them, such as confirmation bias, gaslighting and peer pressure. Regardless of their plausibility, there will always be some people that believe in these absurd theories. No matter how much counter evidence you have, it is unlikely you will succeed in changing their mind because it is impossible to debate someone who doesn’t want to be convinced. Conspiracy theorists may have faith in their ideas, but they don’t approach debate in good faith, instead viewing any critique of their ideas as a critique of themselves and thus refusing to interact with opposing opinions.

104

BIOGRAPHY

“What you see in others is a reflection of yourself.” From antiquity to modernity, articles in this section will show us how our lives overlap and intertwine with others and provide us a new insight on our identity and lives through others’ stories of challenge, passion, and resistance.

Hanna Seo Year 13 Halla East Sunghee Kim Year 13 Halla East

105

GENOCIDE SURVIVOR TO TALK OF FAITH Bonnie Hyun Year 9 Geomun

Ilibagiza went home for Easter break in 1994. Ilibagiza’s life changed completely when her parents and two of her three brothers were murdered in the Rwandan genocide. Leonard Ukulikiyinkindi, hoping to protect his only daughter from rape and murder, told Ilibagiza to run to a local pastor’s house for protection. Ilibagiza and seven other women hid in the 3-4 foot bathroom. For the next 91 days, they huddled silently in a small room while the genocide raged outside. They could barely move and speak. They could hear the killers, slaughtering villagers.

Ilibagiza prayed the rosary as a way of releasing out her anger and resentment.

Ilibagiza said, “The power of God’s forgiveness has even taken root again in my country: faith is flourishing where once there was only hatred and death.

God’s love is truly working a miracle in Rwanda, “Faith has transformed my life, and it can transform yours. In fact, it is powerful enough to transform the

entire world.”

Mary Allen, who teaches middle school region at Regis Catholic Schools and is a member of Sacred Heart, has read Ilibagiza’s books and encouraged people to attend her presentation.

She said that she was so glad that she survived and wrote her book. When talking to Ilibagiza, another supporter told her that he wanted her to come to Wisconsin to share her story, and Ilibagiza agreed. The venue in River Falls was packed with supporting prayers. Organizers prayed for the same in Eau Claire. Overflow seating was held in St. Patrick’s cafeteria. Regis Catholic Schools also live streamed her presentation.

Ilibagiza, who was already fluent in Kinyarwanda and French, also learned English only by herself, using only the Bible and dictionary. About three months later, Ilibagiza heard that her entire family, except for brother Aimable, were dead. The website

106

History.com places the death toll at as many as 800,000 people, most of the Tutsi minority. Ilibagiza set about rebuilding her life after the violence ended. She worked for few years with the United Nations. In the U.S. she shared her story with co-workers, who were so impacted, they insisted she writes it down. And her best-seller, “Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust” was released in March 2006. Ilibagiza has also written other books, including “Rising From the Ashes of the Rwandan Genocide,” which was published in 2008. “Faith is a living thing that must be nurtured every day through prayer, kindness and acts of love,” “It will lead us through our darkest days and restore love and light to even the most troubled soul in the direst circumstances.”, these are the most famous quotes, that Ilibagiza wrote in “Led By Faith.”

107

Nick Vujicic

A man with a true growth mindset Jason Jongsuh Park Year 10 Sarah

There are many people in the world who are suffering from disability.

About 15% of the world’s population, have some form of disability. Between 110 million and 190 million adults have certain difficulties in functioning.

However, there are some people who overcome their disabled position and go further on. A Serbian-Australian motivational speaker, Nick Vujicic, is one of the greatest.

Ni c k Vu j i c i c w a s b o r n o n 4 December 1982, currently age 35. He has a rare disorder called phocomelia which is a syndrome which is the absence of his arms and legs. In his autobiography, he explains that his mother did not accept to hold him when he was born but soon accepted her child’s conditions. Vujicic has two small and deformed feet which he calls his ‘chicken drumstick’ because of their shape. The deformed feet had an operation which separates the toes so that he could use them as fingers to grab, turn pages, or complete any other functions which his fingers would normally do. Despite being bullied as a young age, his mother kept on motivating him to look forward.

In 2005, Vujicic founded an international non-profit organisation called Life Without Limbs. In 2007, he founded Attitude is Altitude, a secular motivational speaking company. At first he was ignored and

108

people underestimated the things he can achieve. The first speech he gave was when he was 19. He travelled all around the world, sharing his own experience and telling them his own story with millions, sometimes in stadiums filled to capacity speaking to a diverse group of people. Throughout the speeches, he became a world star.

Today, this man has accomplished more activities than what a normal person can do. He is an author, musician, actor and his hobbies include fishing, painting and swimming.

People would say that he would never accomplish these things because he doesn’t have an arm and leg to write, run or paint. Instead, Vujicic would find a way around and find his own way of doing it. Something that seemed like impossible with the conditions he faced. Astonishingly, he lives exactly the same life as everyone else with just an uncomfortable condition. In one of his speeches he even said “Having faith, beliefs, and convictions is a great thing, but your life is measured by the actions you take based upon them."

Vujicic who had the courage to carry on and had the belief he will one day succeed was like a catalyst which kept him going.

People tend to believe that when having a disability they have stagnating process. They do not develop easily and stay in the same position and status

Vujicic would find his own way of doing it.

as they are. They will not be able to marry, get a job, and get a life. It is one of the stereotypes people have.

People discriminate and avoid the odd one. To change the mind of these people and to encourage people being ignored Vujicic has visited 63 countries to give his inspirational speech. Not only giving speeches but he also wrote books and autobiographies to persuade people to look at different perspectives.

He wrote books to share his unique experiences such as ‘Life Without Limits’,’Unstoppable’ and many more.

From Nick Vujicic, we can learn from him and reflect on ourselves.

Vujicic is a strong man who spread his belief and thoughts about resilience and faith. Resilience is defined as the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties. When using Vujicic as an example, the difficulties he faced was with the disability he was dealing with. In the early time of his life he was underestimated with the ability and limits he can achieve. The action of others shrivelled him and may have led him to think of himself as to be of a lower status than others. However, he recovered quickly and was proud of himself. He did not give up his hope and tried harder than anyone else. He said that “I never give up because if I do, that is the moment I fail.” The positive greediness proved to the world that he was right. Not only resilience

but also complete trust or confidence in someone: faith. He had the faith, belief, trust and confidence that he can overcome the difficult conditions and live the life he dreamed. He had a big dream that he wanted to achieve and had an optimistic mind of the future.

The stor y of Nick Vujicic is incredible. He has achieved what some people called impossible. Before Vujicic enjoyed the glory of success and achievement he had some obstacles which hindered him and made him afraid to tackle. However, he did not complain and let his disability hold him back. Instead, he always smiled and never gave up. If we were in Vujicic’s shoes what would it be like for us? Of course, the difficulties would be a big burden on our shoulders but would we able to not make excuses for ourselves and find the easy way out?

The story of Nick Vujicic makes us look feeble.

Limits’,’Unstoppable’ and many more.

From Nick Vujicic, we can learn from him and reflect on ourselves.

Vujicic is a strong man who spread his belief and thoughts about resilience and faith. Resilience is defined as the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties. When using Vujicic as an example, the difficulties he faced was with the disability he was dealing with. In the early time of his life he

109

was underestimated with the ability and limits he can achieve. The action of others shrivelled him and may have led him to think of himself as to be of a lower status than others. However, he recovered quickly and was proud of himself. He did not give up his hope and tried harder than anyone else. He said that “I never give up because if I do, that is the moment I fail.” The positive greediness proved to the world that he was right. Not only resilience but also complete trust or confidence in someone: faith. He had the faith, belief, trust and confidence that he can overcome the difficult conditions and live the life he dreamed. He had a big dream that he wanted to achieve and had an optimistic mind of the future.

The stor y of Nick Vujicic is incredible. He has achieved what some people called impossible. Before Vujicic enjoyed the glory of success and achievement he had some obstacles which hindered him and made him afraid to tackle. However, he did not complain and let his disability hold him back. Instead, he always smiled and never gave up. If we were in Vujicic’s shoes what would it be like for us? Of course, the difficulties would be a big burden on our shoulders but would we able to not make excuses for ourselves and find the easy way out?

The story of Nick Vujicic makes us look feeble.

110

IB ART

In this section of The Islander you can relive the highlights of a superb Year 13 Visual Arts Exhibition held last May to celebrate the outstanding work of the graduating class of 2018.

The quality of the work richly deserved the very high grades awarded to students and have helped them on their way to their chosen areas of further study. Thanks go to Ms. Kennington for photographing the work for us.

111

Identity Dismantling II Jongwon Lee

112

Modernist Waste Yubin Kim

113

Anonymous Pierrot Najung Lee

114

Really Terry Lim

115

Balanced Existance II Taeho Park

116

Balanced Existance II Taeho Park

117

Internal Exaggeration of a World Unknown III Seojin Choi

118

Home Chloe Yoon

119

Paradise Yeon Park

120

Hallucination Sunmin Park

121

Untitled Gloria Yeomyoung Choi

122

Untitled Hanjun Cho

123

124

FEATURES

As a school that values high quality education as well as the inclusion and harmony of all cultures, NLCS has recently introduced a new language policy. This will not only broaden the students’ knowledge and perspective about other countries and cultures, but also help them greatly in their upcoming interviews for universities. The school community strongly believes that the students will benefit from the policy.

Shunto Shigetomi Year 13 Halla East

125

New English Policy Jina Choi Year 10 Sarah

On Thursday the 18th of April 2018, the senior school students of NLCS were heading off to a somewhat special assembly held in PAC. Some were wondering why we were having such an awkward assembly on a Thursday, but most of the students knew what was going on: the new ‘English Policy’ was going to be announced.

As I was looking for a seat to sit in the PAC, I could hear many debates going on amongst the students about this policy. Some were saying it is a complete disaster while others, mostly members of staff, claimed it would benefit the students, but whatever their opinions were they were mostly in Korean.

Mr Miles hurriedly silenced the students down, and began his speech - an explanation of the English policy.

Since I basically knew everything about it, I decided to count how many steps Mr Miles step back and forth - back and forth, back and forth, back and...forth. He continued to mention how the policy could lead to us, the students, to a better, brighter future: Ivy league universities, A* in our GCSEs, 45s in our IB and many other things that gradually caught my attention. It sure was very convincing; I mean, who wouldn’t want to get

126

admitted into such universities - it’s basically our future guaranteed (for the most part, at least).

But the question was, will speaking English actually improve our lives and our futures?

Speaking from a single student’s point of view, I first thought that this policy was going to be considerably annoying, but somewhere in my mind I seem to have convinced myself that it would benefit us to some extent, and it would be safe for me to assume that it was what most people thought as well.

Not trying to blame anyone for this, but because no one around me spoke English I felt much more comfortable communicating in Korean. As a result, I was indeed losing my accent, my pronunciation deteriorating and my vocabulary worsening. It was about when the New English Policy was first launched when I started realizing that I had lost all of what I previously had.

Nonetheless, with this policy launched, the fact that it was ‘compulsory’ rather than ‘recommended’ was what made me go along.

Again, speaking from a student’s point of view, this policy is still very much annoying. It has already been a few months since speaking English became compulsory, but I keep forgetting to

do this - a habit I must fix. Perhaps as a deterrent from speaking any language other than English, the school implemented the ‘Language Point’ system, a punitive measure that would haunt us until we graduate.

I believe that this is the greatest problem in this newly launched policy.

It is a fact that teachers are giving out language points as soon as they notice a student utter even a single word in Korean. Even though I lived a large portion of my life abroad, where English was the mother tongue for most people, I got used to speaking Korean once I came to this school.

Regardless of me liking this policy and considering it beneficial, I believe that it is also the school’s obligation to incentivize and encourage the students to speak English rather than branding us as a sort of ‘traitor’ or ‘delinquent’.

Nevertheless, there are many aspects of the English policy that I agree with.

Mrs. Moananu, a past English teacher of NLCS, stated that "It is important to use English in the school context to avoid excluding people". She believes that because our school is an ‘international’ school, with a plethora of students and teachers who do not speak Korean, it would be rude and even discriminatory to speak in a

127

language that people are unable to understand. Furthermore, she believes that speaking English would lead to less bullying and a stronger sense of unity amongst students.

For many people such as myself, they would certainly have felt the deterioration of their English once they interacted with the students of this school. Whenever I have talked about this with my peers over the one and a half years of my stay at this school, I hear them repeat this same phrase: “My English is getting worse...”

I, thus, came to ask myself: what is the point of coming to an international school when students do not know how to speak English?

To sum up this long essay, I just want to emphasize few things about this “English Policy” to those who are reading this particular article. By the time that this article is published, the policy would have settled in. In fact, the newly formed language committee are working on providing greater incentives to both the lower and higher year groups alike. However the one message I would like you readers to keep in mind is that speaking English is indeed the right thing to do.

128

FICTION

At NLCS we not only encourage students to write argumentative essays that illustrate their opinions, but we also attempt to constantly inspire them to write creative pieces where they can write stories and poems.

Gabriella Kim Year 13 Halla East Dain Ahn Year 13 Halla North Hanna Seo Year 13 Halla East

129

Hyena Yeom Year 10 Mulchat

James and Lily 130

Chapter One It was a bright, sunny morning in Coral Mountain, the place I have called my home for fifteen years.

The birds were chirping cheerfully as usual, and the village people were heading their way up the mountain trail called Hanouka, to collect any fresh acorns or berries. I could see rabbits and mountain deer gliding up the trails of our mountain, and young children around the age of five to six thrashing their bodies across the grass in enthusiasm. I love to watch all of these things; waking up everyday at five in the morning and watching how the village goes around has become my duty, of sorts - a task that even my father the village chief trusts me to do.

Coral Mountain has been my hometown since when I was born in 1868. I have three brothers and two sisters, and I am the second youngest out of them. My mother is the head nurse of our village, called pharmacist in our native language, and my dad, like I said, is our village chief, or takeudo. It’s not that my dad really

showed his capability or strength as a village chief, but it has been passed down to him from generation to generation. My grandfather had been the previous chief, and before that my great grandfather, and so on. And so, my father emphasizes the fact that his sons must continue on passing the heritage. I often get irritated and somewhat frustrated at the fact that my father never jokes or even lightly mentions that his daughters could be chief later on. It was as if his sons were designated for the position in the first place, and his daughters, including myself, were out of the picture. He just expected us to faithfully commit to our roles as wives later on when we get older and eventually have a family.

It’s not that living as a girl is boring; there are so many things I can do with my friends that would be seen as weird if I was a boy. First, I can play hide and seek with my friends. Coral Mountain is very tall and vast, and so there are many hideouts and traps; it’s easy to blend in with trees or plants in

131

some areas, and some have very tricky holes where an outsider would have no idea that you are there. Second, I can go fishing in the nearby lake. It’s called Kiki Lake, and I can rest there sometimes for hours without anyone bothering me. I sometimes go there alone, or with my friends. The thing that’s so special about Kiki Lake is that it has a mysterious, greenish, sparkly aura. Most lakes in Coral Mountain are clear blue, but Kiki Lake has an emerald color and its atmosphere is misty, which makes it extra special.

Living as a girl in Coral Mountain is full of adventure and delight. I just wish that this phase of life could continue forever..

But at that moment...

Chapter Two It was dark, without a twitch, not even the slightest noise of a caterpillar moving across the ground. I had just woken up, and about to start my daily morning patrol as usual.

Just then, my sister crawled out of our bed and ran towards me. She checked to see if anyone was looking, and whispered, “I have something to show you.” She signaled to me to be quiet, and I could sense right away that this was something dangerous. My sister Angela has the ability to catch

signs of something suspicious. Just in case, I took my little dagger, and my sister her pocket knife, since anything could happen.

I followed my sister up to the part where the small rows of trees divided our town; she signaled to me to follow her quietly. I followed her into a very narrow trail that had rows and rows of trees in between. She paused at the middle spot, where we could have a clear view of who was coming and going. Just then we heard a gunshot.

Chapter Three We heard a banging. It was as loud as a trumpet being smashed down into pieces. People were running and shouting from all directions; men came down carrying weapons and women were completely frantic, crying for help. I found Sandria, my friend, who shouted, “The Toski tribe attacked our village! We’re at war!” She then ran off to find her brothers and sisters. I couldn’t think of anything momentarily.

My head was spinning, random ideas popping out of my mind: “What if my parents are already dead?”, “What will happen if our tribe loses this war?”, “Will I even be able to survive?”. I had so many other questions that no one could give an answer just then. But one thing was for sure: I had to protect my family and make sure we got out of this war, alive and unhurt.

I ran to my house instinctively, ignoring all the shouts, cries and wails coming from my neighbours. I did not pause even for one second; I was too afraid that I would not be able to find my family. I finally reached my house, but I could not find anyone. Frantic, I ran into our living room, but I could

132

only find pieces of broken furniture and household items. I yelled “Mom! Dad! Sakura! Kara! Tamil!”, but no-one answered me. Just in case my brothers and sisters were hiding in our secret spots, I checked every one of them: the little gap between our cupboard and table, behind the closet where there was a dark space to blend in, and beneath our two-story bed. But they were not there. I was alone in a empty house, and outdoors was of complete chaos.

I still told myself that my family might be alive. I found Papista, a friend of my father, and asked him, “Papista, have you seen my parents, or any of my sisters or brothers?” Papista looked at me with a grave expression saying, “Your mother and father were both shot by the enemy, and your sisters and brothers were captured and killed too.” I could not believe what I was hearing; I felt like the whole world was tumbling down in seconds. My head was dizzy, everything became unclear and misty, and I felt I was being thrown down into the bottom of the earth.

Chapter Four

There were guns everywhere. We were totally surrounded by them; there was no way out. But my sister insisted that we try to escape through the greens.

“We have to find our parents!” she hissed under her breath and added “If you will stay here like a coward, I will go alone.” She started to run through the grass, and I had no choice but to follow her.

Just then I spotted a man who was

pointing a gun towards our direction.

I yelled at my sister to duck, but she ignored me, and the bullet crossed her shoulder. The wound drew scarlet blood, and my sister collapsed to the ground. I was so astonished at what I had just witnessed, that I could not rise from my position. I knew I had a mission to find my parents, to save them, but I went completely numb from seeing my sister’s body.

Chapter Five

“Wake up! Wake up!”

Someone was shouting at me, shaking my body all over. I slowly opened my eyes, and I found a boy who was staring at me with round eyes. He was obviously in relief that I had gained consciousness. I stared back at him saying, “Who are you? Where am I?”. He answered, “I’m James and we are in Coral Mountain. Do you come from here?” My memory slowly started to come back, and I recalled everything that had happened; that

a war happened in our village, and my parents and sisters and brothers were all dead. Then I looked back at this unfamiliar boy, and started to say, “...” but he stopped me and said impatiently, “Yes, I’m from the other side, as you might say, but my entire family is dead. We have no choice to be friends to survive.” I was so glad that this boy was alive. I smiled at him and said, “Thank you.” At least I would have a companion and someone I could trust.

133

Truth Town Angel Li Year 8 Geomun

134

There was a small town called Truth Town. The people were all so poor there, and that was normal. There was a popular saying: “A good name is better than riches.” They was just the way they thought.

To have a good name was to be honest. Nobody could tell lies. A god had placed such a spell on Truth Town, because the mayor had lied to him.

After that, all the people there had lost the ability to tell lies, and nobody even knew what a lie was. That was the town’s specialty, and all of them were proud of this.

One day, Sammy went to the shop with her mom as normal, and found a grimy boy sitting on the ground. The thing was, she hadn’t met him before.

She thought, “He must be an outsider.

I should remind him that he can’t go in our town.” She squatted down to say, “Hey, are you OK?” The boy raised his head, and Sammy could see his dark blue eyes.

They made her heart pound faster than before. “W…...water……” He said, in a weak voice and suddenly, he fainted.

Sammy was really surprised. She wanted to call the police, but she knew if the mayor knew a stranger had come to this town, he may send him packing.

However, her heart was pounding so hard…… After a minute of struggling, she finally decided to take him home for a few weeks. “I will tell the mayor

when he’s OK,” Sammy said to her family members. They nodded but wanted Sammy to remember her promise.

Three weeks later, the boy, whose name was Ken, had become a lot better, so it was time for Sammy to keep her promise. However, Ken didn’t want to leave. This town was the most interesting place he’d known. Also, if he became a member of it, he may find the treasures there! He had already got an idea when he found out about Sammy’s feeling for him. Ken made use of her.

He chose a good location to tell Sammy that he fell in love with her the first time he saw her, and that he doesn’t want to leave there because of her. Sammy believed what he said and promised that she would make him stay. However, it was a problem that Sammy couldn’t solve - she didn’t know how to lie.

Ken’s plan wasn’t successful. He had to think about how to make Sammy lie. He tried everything, but still, Sammy couldn’t tell the lie to the mayor. After many times, she really did it. She told the mayor what Ken said, and of course, the mayor believed it.

However, after Sammy told the lie, she wasn’t like herself anymore. She found a new place, a completely new place.

She understood how wonderful a lie was and how regretful she was.

135

Sammy didn’t know, when lying became second nature, she would never feel regret.

As the days passed, Ken and Sammy became partners in lying. They sold medicine made from dog urine, telling everyone that it was useful.

Everyone else just believed them because they thought there were no lies. They two got a lot of money for lying, so they became the richest family in the town. They both didn’t think of the consequences.

One day, somebody knocked on their door and told them that mayor died after drinking the medicine they made. Also, many people felt worse when they drunk it. That flustered Sammy, but Ken keep lying that there was no problem with their medicine.

When he finished saying that, a group of people ran to them and shouted for a refund. At that time, Sammy felt scared, and she wanted to tell everyone that they were lying. However, she also knew that they would be punished, so she kept quiet. Ken was clever, and he understood that they could no longer live there. He persuaded the people to retreat and he packed their bags.

Sammy thought there would be no lie again after they left the town.

The thing she didn’t know is that there’s another poor outlier behind the market……

Did I Imagine All This In a Virtual Reality Game?

Minsol Kim Former Year 10 Noro

Once again, I wiped off the ice crystals in my palm one last time and clutched the sword nervously. My left hand was already getting ready to replace my grip to my right hand, constantly opening and closing, making sure the senses of its fingertips stay alive.

My only remaining comrade grabs my empty hand inside his armpit, giving me the last warmth left in his body. His foot has already gone black, and the bluish-green hue of his flesh is much closer to his heart than yesterday morning when I last checked him. My sixth sense tells me that once the foul colour reached his heart, he would die.

I pray towards the grey void knowing that somebody is listening to my voice.

I once again pray to return to the same

place tomorrow like I have the last six days. For the first few days, my survival felt like a miracle granted by my prayer, allowing me to fight once again. Now that it's been a week, it just feels like a daily routine that I shall not miss.

Fighting alone, each day feels like the last day of my life. I thought I would die faster than my one last comrade -but now that it's been a week since I fought alone, groundless confidence surrounds me, in belief that the god will protect me against my enemies.

Having believed that I will die earlier than my comrade, I always felt guilty for not being able to celebrate his last minutes together, or hold a funeral.

This new revelation, which suddenly hit me, gave me both relief and guilt.

It meant I could protect him until his

136

last minute but it was something that I didn’t deserve.

Laying a foot on the first step of the ladder is the hardest job here.

Knowing that my life is in great peril once I reach the top of the ladder, it isn’t an easy decision to make. This is probably the one thing I will never get used to, no matter how many times I try. I see a plain open yard ahead of me once I reach the top. The sun has not yet completely risen, but it still shines brightly towards me. I run towards the great void filled with layers of mist.

The first one I make eye contact with is the one I’m fighting that day.

Cutting through the wind, I run towards the great emptiness. As I run further, the blurry image of an armed soldier starts to form shape, color, then

movement. Suddenly, I’m standing in front of my enemy close enough to see a bead of cold sweat running down his face.

Tr y i n g t o p u t o n t h e m o s t menacing expression on my face, I unsheathe the sword and adjust my grip several times. Breathing in, I raise my sword, getting ready to swing.

Then the blurred image of a smiling figure started to form in front of me, his benevolent face contradicting the disastrous scene I was in. His lenient smile was warmer than the cold backdrop, warming myself and the atmosphere around it. Instinctively, I knew it was the god who had been looking towards me. Scripture of all the sermons had been proven, and years of prayers and contribution had finally came to bear fruit. It turns out god really does help desperate people with his supernatural powers. I had finally achieved spiritual enlightenment.

Wi t h m y g o d a t m y b a c k , I knew nobody could kill me. Baseless confidence surged within me which gave me bravery to start the fight. I charged at the enemy of mine with the hooked blade upheld, going to his foreswing and following it with a backswing. He dodged the first and

met the second with his broadsword.

This time the blade sliced the fabric of his shirt at his midsection. It missed the flesh behind it by perhaps a centimeter. He staggered back with a lurch. I swung once again but his broadsword missed, not getting close enough to even touch the fabric. The opponent managed another smirk, this time at the spryness of his dodge. I had to admit it was impressive, but the smug look on my sight only made me angrier. Assuring my victory, I took the fight by treating the opponent of mine as a pushover. I deliberately put off the fight, purposely dodging instead of attacking.

In fury, my opponent charged towards me without a hitch, swinging its broadsword thrice consecutively.

The first two missed badly, but the third, a backswing off the one before it, cut through my flesh. The heavy broadsword ate through solar plexus easily as air. My legs felt weak, then lost control as I dropped to one knee.

I tried to stand, but my wound felled me again, flooding the snow-covered ground. A substantial amount of blood was running its course through the spaces between snow crystals. The wound was bad enough to kill me in

137

a few seconds. With the last strength left in my body, I slided it towards the figure of god so see him for the one last time. The lenient grin had suddenly disappeared completely out of sight, and had subtly changed to an unpleasant fleer. As my consciousness faded out, the figure of my god was flattening down, like a hissing skydancer.

In that moment, I realized that god is a figure that people had created for their mental confort. People had made this delusional figure out of desperation and hope, and with it gained vast numbers of supporters, its influence to the individuals also increasing exponentially. The image of the delusional god figure shriveling was stuck in my head, and no room was left even for phantasmagoria. Losing faith isn’t a pleasant experience but it is an inevitable realization. Children are often filled with disappointment when they find out that Father Christmas doesn’t exist. As an adult, losing faith in God entails greater despair.

My opponent’s eyes were full of awe, but were directed towards nothing. As my eyes gently closed, I felt sorry for his faith that would be lost someday soon.

Santaism Tom Lee Year 10 Jeoji

It was the 24th of December and Jason was sitting quietly on the cold floor in front of the Christmas tree; he tried, in vain, to keep his eyes open. Jason had been waiting for three hours with a camera for no one other than Santa Claus himself.

White snowflakes were falling outside, and Jason’s parents were sound asleep in their bedroom upstairs. The lights on the Christmas tree were glowing bright yellow, creating a sense of warmth. As the colour of the lights slowly changed to different tones of red, the atmosphere of the living room transformed with it, becoming quieter and warmer. The warmth made Jason’s eyelids heavy, as if a large African elephant was pushing down on them; his parents had told him that it was the largest animal on Earth, with large ears and a long nose. They had also told Jason that Santa Claus was secretly watching Jason every day, in case he was being naughty.

However, when Jason told his friends and other adults the same story about Santa Claus, the one and only response he received from them was

138

laughter. They either told Jason that he was not “mature” enough, or that he was too imaginative, often lost in his own thoughts. At first, Jason didn’t know what the word “mature” meant.

According to the hefty dictionary that his father referred to frequently, “mature” apparently indicated “being like an adult and being able to live independently.”

Jason did not want to be mature.

Being adult meant that he would become just like everyone else who laughed at him. He feared that he would lose his own memory of Santa Claus and would laugh at innocent children. When he told this to his parents, they told him that although it is impossible to stay as a child forever, Jason could simply make the choice of not becoming a selfish person.

While his gentle mother told Jason that Santa Claus is a mascot to celebrate Christmas as a holiday, as do jack-o’lanterns for Halloween, his father told him that Santa Claus disappears when people become adults. They both told him that he was becoming an adult, and this confusion was just a part of

the process. Jason asked them about the difference between a child and an adult; after all, aren’t they just the same individuals? His parents thought for a long time and came up with an answer involving thousands of complicated words. Jason, a nine-year-old boy, couldn’t understand. His parents, becoming tired of all the questions, wanted to know the reason behind all the inquiries. Jason told them the entire story: his belief that Santa Claus really exists and how other people laughed and treated him as if he were a baby.

They paused for a minute and said that it was unacceptable for adults to laugh at others for their personal beliefs; however, the tone implied their doubt towards Jason’s faith that Santa Claus really existed. To Jason, this was a huge disappointment; he had thought that his parents would believe him and tell him to follow his own faith. Furiously, he told them that he would keep on believing in Santa Claus and would prove to them that he really exists. His parents seemed startled at first, but they eventually sighed and gave him a camera to take a picture of Santa Claus

139

as evidence. They promised him that when they saw a picture of the real Santa Claus, they would believe Jason.

So, as promised, Jason sat in front of the large Christmas tree, holding a large, heavy digital camera. As he did not want to return to his parents without any photographs to prove the existence of Santa Claus, Jason was determined to stay up through the night. It seemed that giving up on Santa Claus would mean that he would disappear from Jason’s life.

Jason did not want to become a stubborn and “mature” person; he just wanted to be himself. He wanted to tell them that the adults were wrong and that childhood ideas were right.

He especially wanted to show the photographs to the teachers and friends who had laughed at him.

The next day, his parents found Jason, asleep, underneath the Christmas tree. He had a thin but warm smile on his face. After taking Jason to his warm bed and letting him sleep, they took the camera and looked at the photographs from last night…

T H E O N E T H A T H E L P E D Elysia Bae Year 10 Noro I stopped caring for years. The last time I found myself surrounded by others seemed like million years from now. The memories I thought I’d cherish, the feelings I thought I’d hold dear, even the moments that made me cry were fading away. They were nothing.

My mum stopped trying to get me to make more friends. She knew what I had gone through. At first, it was hard to go around school on my own.

But as time passed, that life soon grew comfortable. It occurred to me that I could live without friends.

One day, when I was coming home from school, I saw a truck parked next to our house. It was filled with furniture and boxes yet to be opened.

I guessed that there was another house moving in. Nonchalantly, I shook my head and headed into my house.

During dinner, Mum informed me that we were having new neighbours.

They were a family of four, called the Coltons. They had a son around my age and a daughter who was only four years old. Although Mum didn’t try to show it so much, I got the feeling that

she wanted me to go over and meet them. I sighed internally.

The next morning, I sauntered out to the dewy garden. Sun hadn’t come up yet; it was just me and the quiet air.

Or so I thought. On the other side of the fence, which divided our garden from the newcomers’, stood a boy. He seemed to have been looking at me intently and when I turned around, his face broke into a big grin. I couldn’t ignore the friendly wave; I walked over to where he was standing.

“Hi, I’m Max”, he said, still smiling.

“Harper.” Just because I went over didn’t mean I wanted to be nice.

The boy, Max, extended his arm.

He was waiting for me to shake his hand. “I’m your new neighbour. Do you wanna be friends?”

His eyes shined bright.

I don’t recall what happened next. I thought I zoned out. Perhaps it was my reflexes that took me over, or my brain telling me that this situation could potentially lead to disaster. It didn’t really matter, because when I snapped back into reality, I was inside my

140

141

house again, leaning against the door, breathing heavily.

After calming myself down, I drew the curtains back the tiniest bit and peaked out. Max was still there. He didn’t look annoyed or angry - a bit bored, that was all. It seemed like I was the one that was about to die from embarrassment. I decided that this was enough human interaction for today.

A part of me hoped that Max enrolled at my school. Then there would have at least been someone I knew in school who liked me. But when that didn’t happen, I was just relieved that I could continue my quiet life.

When I reached home, I was greeted by a familiar figure who was most definitely not my Mum. Max was standing in his side of the garden. I was marching straight towards the front door when he called me.

“I’ve been waiting for you since morning”, he shouted.

“I understand if you don’t want to be my friend, but-” “I didn’t run away because I didn’t want you as my friend”, I sighed, moving up to him.

His eyes were full of life, now that I told him so. “Then you want to be my friend?”

I nodded, thinking about what I just got myself into. I swore to myself that I would never rely on anyone for the rest of my life, but here I was, promising someone that I’d be their friend.

“Why do you want me as your

friend, anyway?” I enquired.

If I was going to be his buddy, I wanted to know the reasons so I could stop myself from hurting myself if he wanted to use me for his advantage.

Feeling uneasy, I waited for his answer.

“I haven’t been so good at making them. So when I see the chance, I try to grab it”, Max laughed. Even though I scanned his face for hidden meanings behind his smile, I couldn’t find any.

Or maybe I just didn’t want to see.

These magical days continued for a while. Having a friend was so much better than I remembered. I was able to tell Max about my day - his parents were teachers, meaning that he was being homeschooled. He would respond to my stories as if I had told him the most fascinating tales of all time.

Max and I told each other our secrets, embarrassing moments in life, and so much more. There was nothing we didn’t know about one another.

Almost nothing. There was one little secret which I was keeping quiet.

“Why don’t you like going to school? I’d love to meet other kids and be their friend. You don’t get to talk to a lot of new people when you’re being homeschooled.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

I turned my head to face the rusty fence gates next to where I was standing. As much as I acted like I was fine and told myself to forget about it, I just couldn’t. Not daring to see what his response was, I kept my head down.

“Sure. You can talk about it when

142

you’re feeling up to it. I’ll listen.”

There were no words to explain how relieved and delighted I was to hear that from Max. Most people, thinking that questioning me was the equivalent to helping me, forced me to tell them what happened. This was most definitely not helping; it felt like I was being interrogated.

I truly wished that there could be a day I was able to tell Max what had happened without finding myself tearing up at the end of the conversation.

We saw the autumn leaves dance their way down to the ground. Then sugar-white snow gently wrapped the earth. Max and I were still there when flowers first started to show off their colourful buds. As the sun kissed plants grew even greener, our friendship developed into something golden as the summer sun.

“What story do you have for me today?” Max shouted, standing on the other side of the fence, waiting for me to come back from school like always.

“I haven’t got something exciting-” I saw his face fall immediately. Smiling, I continued. “But, I think I can tell you something else. I don’t know if you remember, I promised you that I’ll tell you what happened between me and my friends, when I’m feeling better about it.”

Max looked up. “Really? You’re ready?” He sounded worried.

Nodding my head, I sat down on the warm grass.

“When I just started out middle school, I became friends with three

girls very quickly. I had always been quiet, so making three friends was like a miracle to me. We did everything together. There was no fighting between us; there was a real connection. Then things changed.” My heart beat faster.

When I didn’t continue speaking for a while, Max leaned over the fence.

“Are you okay?” he asked. After taking a deep breath, I looked up and smiled.

“Yeah”, I replied. “Things changed when I overheard the girls talking about me. They said I was easy to play around with, someone they only kept as their friend for the sake of getting me to do things for them.” While I spoke, I felt my eyes stinging.

“I didn’t know what to do, but I wasn’t brave enough to confront them.

They called me a nobody. That was my breaking point. All that faith I put in them, shattered into a million pieces.

There wasn’t anyone in the world I could lean on.” I paused for a moment to suppress the overwhelming sea of emotions.

“From that day on, I swore to myself that I would never make another friend. I couldn’t bear the sadness again. Yet,” I stood up and met Max’s gaze, “meeting you changed my mind. I want to put faith in friendship just once more.” My eyes glistened with joy.

“I’m just glad that you’re over that now. It’s an honour to be the one that helped you.” He grinned as the sun shined behind him like a halo.

Right then, my life - with its ups and downs - seemed complete at last.

143

144

SCIENCE

Science has developed alongside human history, and now has become an integral part of our everyday lives. Science broadens our perspectives; it takes us from past to present, from the microscopics to the universe. The articles in this section will navigate through diverse problems of the world we live in and offer scientific solutions for them.

Sunghee Kim Year 13 Halla East

145

IN AN ATTEMPT TO PROVE THAT SCIENCE IS

FALLIBLE SM Chung Year 9 Sarah

Failure can perhaps be considered the very opposite of what science should strive for. Even if science is the most reliable source of knowledge in the modern world, it is awkward having no evidence to support a phenomenon or one’s hypothesis. Religion, by contrast, is based fundamentally on personal faith. Despite the overwhelming lack of empirical evidence, it can still be safely regarded as a sort of ‘virtue’. Both the belief in a God or an unexplained set of physical laws may perhaps be part of a huge ensemble of the undiscovered universe. However, what if the laws we once considered “absolute” and “universal” are in fact false? Can science really prove the mechanisms, the reason, and ultimately the purpose of our existence?

I believe that science is fallible as it requires too many predictions and assumptions to provide a single explanation.

In 1894, scientist Albert Michelson predicted that there were no discoveries left to be made in physics. There was no doubt that they would continue to make progress, but it did appear that the calculations and theories were accurate enough that nothing s u b s t a n t i a l w o u l d o c c u r. T h e n , everything changed. About a decade after the prediction, in 1905, an unknown man working as a patent clerk in Switzerland published the

four most influential scientific articles ever written by anyone. It answered questions they didn’t even realize what they had, and it introduced many new ideas. It also completely warped the view of space, time, mass and energy which had later go on to provide the foundation for many of the revolutionary ideas formulated during more than the next half century. Within a year, Albert Einstein had mostly shifted the understanding of the universe.

However, when Einstein finalized the Theory of General Relativity it disproved a lot of Newton’s work. It visualized more pictures of what was going on. But, there were many other scientists saying that Newton’s laws are more highly usable and relevant to most scientific concepts. Is this the result what our society finalized? We cannot reach to the full understanding of the universe, lives and nature ever.

There are so many predictions coming out as technology develops. But, the answer keeps changing and the path is turning. Science can be described not as accurate, but as approximate. Some laws were made by intelligent scientists, like gravitation laws. However, I think that those laws are based on some of the predictions that humans can understand. That’s why it later was proved wrong by Albert Einstein.

Therefore, scientific predictions failed,

146

because it is taking so long to prove our beings.

In addition, science is not trustworthy. They make up their own words because they cannot prove their works. It is hard to overstate just how brilliant an idea Charles Darwin's Theor y of Evolution by Natural Selection was and continues to be. But, it was fantastically mistaken. Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, as taught at school, is a biological explanation of how creatures have supposedly evolved or developed progressively through natural selection and variation over eons of time. Then, to prove his theory, we also need to have evidence.

A fossil is the preserved remains of a living thing. The fossil records around the earth extends an average of one mile deep. Scientists collect fossils of what are deemed the earliest type of complex creatures. Although, no previous ancestors of the mammals have been found. Darwin himself said he could give no satisfactory answer as to why no fossils had been discovered.

Today’s scientists are none the wiser and searching for stupid answers. If after almost two centuries of digging beneath all the world’s continents, no previous ancestor of the first hard bodied creature has been found, how then did the ubiquitous trilobite evolve? In addition, Darwin’s evolution theory is already broken by Albert

Einstein. Einstein managed to use the ‘thermodynamic principle’. It is the first law, also known as Law of Conservation of Energy, stating that energy cannot be created or destroyed in an isolated system. This absolutely breaks ‘Bigbang theory’ and the whole beginnings of evolution. This is part of the reason it is harder to take on more faith to believe in evolution than any other religions.

Science cannot prove anything even including our information about where we came from. They only make up words what scientists want, because they are fallible.

Finally, science provides so many errors and misleads many people into danger. The best example might b e t o d a y’s m e d i c a l t e c h n o l o g y.

A recent study of more than one million medication errors reported

to a national database between 2003 and 2010 found that 6 percent were related to the computerized prescribing system. This simply means humans technology let us down. Also, many doctors are so foolish. It has recently reported in 2013, that a doctor gave one teenager a 39 fold overdose of a common antibiotic. The initial glitch was innocent enough: a doctor failed to recognize that a screen was set on “milligrams per kilogram” rather than just “milligrams”. This wasn’t a computer error, it was a human error. The error involved alerts that were ignored by both physicians and pharmacists. It caused a grand mal seizure that sent the boy to the I.C.U. and nearly killed him. In one month, the electronic monitors in our five intensive care units, which

147

track things like heart rate and oxygen level, produced more than 2.5 million alerts. It’s no wonder that health care providers have grown numb to them.

So, the unanticipated consequences of health information technology are of particular interest today. Also, technology provides benefits to patients, but it also brings significant risks that can threaten patient safety.

For example, the FDA reports many incidents in which defibrillators failed to work properly. Often, they didn’t discharge during resuscitation attempts for preventable reasons, such as depleted batteries. To make sure that defibrillators are ready at a moment’s notice, hospitals must perform regular preventive maintenance and conditions. The medical technology is to cure people, not to be threatened.

Artificial Intelligence Ryan Bang Year 8 Sarah

Artificial intelligence [AI] is intelligence demonstrated by machines, in contrast to the natural intelligence d i s p l a ye d by h u m a n s a n d o t h e r animals. Can you imagine AI robots controlling us? Do you think AI robots can be same as humans? Or even stronger?

AI is used in many avenues of life. Humans have been attempting to improve AI for a very long time. In the future, AI might control the world and cause bigger problems. Who knows? In the future, do you think AI robots and human can respect each other? If so, how much will this rely on humanity only using AI in good faith?

There are lots of good reasons for developing AI technology. Humans can relax with AI by letting the robots do the work, help you with your individual time, and AI can answer your questions by searching the answer online surprisingly fast.. Even though AI technology is helpful, there are some consequences which we have to acknowledge.

148

Nobody is sure about what will happen in the future with AI, but they might be stronger than humans when they can think for themselves. Also, they might have a war by attacking people, but humans are too late to fix the situation. These robots might be kind for an entire life or maybe attack us. For example, In the future, militaries will use robots to fight.

Even though Artificial intelligence is developed, there is some limitations which can only be covered by humans.

For example, AI lacks creativity. since computers just work along the codes which humans have inputted into their CPU. For example, they can’t make human feel 100% satisfaction, hence people will want a more upgraded ve r s i o n t o g e t t o t h e m a x i m u m satisfaction But do you think you will be satisfactory when you can get the level of the AI robot you want? I don’t think so. You will want a better thing since you are a human, which requires more even though you reach your goal.

149

150

SPORTS

Remember the catharsis and excitement when playing your favorite sport? Sports is indeed an enjoyable pastime, but it is also a global phenomenon and an international business that we are all inevitably linked into. The articles in this section will guide you to the wonders and controversy in sports.

Gabriella Kim Year 13 Halla East Dohyun Kim Year 12 Halla North Daniel Yoo Year 13 Halla East

151

s c i p m ly

Faith in Yourself at the

O

Raymond Kim Year 8 Mulchat

152

In Rio Summer Olympics, 2016, Sang Young Park, 21, performed an unbelievable miracle of reversal with a trust in himself. This is the start of the story.

Sang Young Park is a well known talented fencer and plays epee, which is one of the three types of fencing styles. He wasn’t born into a rich family and had to borrow the fencing equipment from the elders in the sports academy as one set of fencing kit costs approximately $1500. Despite his concerns about whether or not he would be able to afford to take up fencing, he decided to use this initial setback as an obstacle that he would overcome. As the result, when he was in the middle school, he won 8 gold medals from the national boys’ fencing game. By competing against more people and practicing much harder, he became part of Korea’s national fencing team for the Rio Summer Olympics 2016 for male fencing games.

In the Olympics, Park continued winning matches as he had done previously and was eagerly looking towards the final. As he won more games, his position got closer and closer to the final… and at last, he did.

He actually made it to the final.

As the final match started, a lot of people came into the stadium to support each of the athletes; Sang Young Park (Korea) and Géza Imre (Hungary). With hope for the first epee - single men games’ gold medal for Korea, people settled down into their seats in anticipation. At the start of the games, there was a lot of attacking and defending between the two athletes so it wasn’t clear who would be the

winner. But soon, Imre started to rush up towards the gold medal and suddenly the score became 10-14. Park was losing the game by 4 points, while Imre was in a position where he could win the game by a single point (15 points = winning). Most of the people who were watching this game thought that there will be absolutely no chance of Park winning this game.

Both players were exhausted, but especially Park. He would have been feeling very pressured because one single mistake would lead him to becoming 2nd place in this situation.

While having a break, the words rang through the stadium; “You can do it”. Listening to this encouragement, he frequently told himself “I can do it!”. Believing in himself, he turned on the engine. He rushed up until the points came up to 14 - 14 (one point towards the gold medal). The stadium was full of silence. As the last-pointgame started, Park trusted himself and risked making a shot for the final point.

With a beeping sound, the light came on Park’s side. Park won the game. He threw his helmet, rushed to the edge, slid towards the crowds and shouted, “I did it!”

The story of 'Garlic Girls' Many people say that the story of the Garlic girls is one of the most miraculous stories as if it would happen in only movies or books. This is the story of the Garlic Girls Team Kim, also known as the Garlic Girls, were born in Gyeongbuk Province, which is well known for the garlic (it’s the reason why people call them ‘Garlic Girls’). Luckily, their

school was located close to the only curling stadium in Korea, which gave their school a chance to set up ‘curling’ as one of its afterschool activities. As a result of the activity, Eun Jung Kim and Young Mi Kim started to play curling together. Kyung Ae Kim, who is Young Mi Kim’s older sister, went to watch her sister playing curling and decided to join her team. Sun Young Kim also started to play curling with the others after being encouraged by the words that Kyung Ae Kim had written on the board; ‘Looking for someone who is interested in curling’. This made a curling team of four.

The Garlic Girls were very successful and they beat Canada, Switzerland, Britain, China, Sweden, USA, OAR and, Denmark in the Olympics.

Du r i n g t h e f i n a l m a t c h , t h e audience didn’t stop cheering. They claimed “you can do it!” and also shouted out the names of each individual players in Team Kim. Garlic Girls kept on winning the games with this support and went on to the finals.

Though they lost to Sweden during the final game, Team Kim wore their silver medals with pride. They had tried their best during the final match and earned a wonderful result as their prize.

Many people say that curling is like chess on ice and the only difference is that it needs great teamwork. People also say that one of the reasons why the Garlic Girls received such a superb result from the Olympics may be because of their excellent teamwork (the team consists of siblings and old friends.) and their faith in themselves.

With such huge support, I thought there's nothing we can't do.

Garlic Girls 153

Is Overconfidence Helpful?

Seung Won Yoo Year 9 Mulchat

Although it may not seem to be true, people will do better if they do not believe in themselves. Everyone will know Park Tae Hwan, the best swimmer in Korea. Despite his success in the Olympics, his coach, Roh MinSang, once claimed that Park had lost everything because he had great belief in himself. Roh’s comment was authenticated when Park accidentally, or perhaps purposefully, doped in the 2016 Rio olympic.

Overconfidence might deceive people, frequently resulting in hazardous consequences. A group of scientists, directed by Noh Gyu Sik, conducted an experiment in 2016, where they divided the volunteers into two groups according to their academic capabilities; the top ten students according to their high school ranking were placed in one group, with the ‘less capable’ group in the other. The psychiatrists gave both groups a list of vocabularies to memorise; they then recorded the number of words the subjects could memorise after a certain time period. Surprisingly, the average number of vocabularies memorised by the two groups were similar. However, the sole difference between the groups was that the students with ‘higher capabilities’ accurately predicted the number of words they would memorise, while the ‘incompetent’ group over-estimated themselves.

Hence, it can be concluded that people

154

who are overconfident are highly likely to find it academically challenging.

On the other hand, confidence can motivate people to bring success. For example, Muhammad Ali and Usain Bolt, both of whom are successful athletes, have claimed that they were always confident and had belief in themselves. Since they were fully prepared to confront and overcome any obstacles that would follow in their career, both Ali and Bolt were confident and had belief in themselves.

Furthermore, overconfidence can easily overcome failures and ignore naysayers. Thomas Edison is one example; it is a well-known fact that he failed more than 1,000 times, whereupon he finally invented the light bulb. He had ignored the opinions of criticisers, who doubted Edison’s success by persuading the inventor to give up. However, people today ask themselves: what would have happened if the light bulb had not been invented?

We can not even dare to imagine a world when we have to sleep as soon as it reaches sunset.

To conclude, this essay stated p o s i t i ve a n d n e g a t i ve e f f e c t s o f overconfidence. Overconfidence can deceive people and make people t a k e h a z a r d o u s w a y. H o w e v e r overconfidence is easy to overcome failures and motivate people to bring success. It is your choice to have over confidence or not.

155

When everyone said “it is going to be impossible” paralympic athletes replied “I’m possible”. Disabilities, people feel pity for those who have disabilities and people believe that disabled people can not do what normal people can, especially sports.

H o w e v e r, p a r a l y m p i c a t h l e t e s overcame their disabilities and they have broken people’s prejudicial thoughts. Paralympics. For most people paralympics is a very unfamiliar topic - paralympics isn’t it simply Olympic games for disabled people? There are two types of paralympics: summer and winter. Pyeongchang paralympics have ended successfully and now Tokyo paralympics are coming up in two years time. So what makes the paralympic athletes so great?

“When I was 20 years old, I had a car accident and I became a paraplegia from the accident. I inevitably broke up with my fiance and I stayed in my house for ten years. It was so harsh, I cried almost every night and for two years in hospital I denied all the facts including that I became a disabled woman.” This is what Min Ja Bang, wheelchair curling player has said during her interview. She is now one of the best wheelchair curling players in the world. Not only is she a great paralympian , she is a person who

overcame her physical and mental limitations and that’s what makes her special and unique. When she became a paraplegia she had wanted to quit everything and give up on her life ー she did, for the first 10 years. However she believed in herself and overcame her disability. Now she is someone who is not shameful because of her disability, but a “national representative” who is proud of what she’s overcome. People cheer for her now and they support her because she broke people’s prejudicial opinion and she is now representing the nation.

Shin Eui Hyun was the first winter paralympic gold medalist from the Republic of Korea. He used to be an ordinary man; after finishing his national military service, he planned to work in a company. However, a day before his university graduation, he got hit by a truck and had to have both his legs amputated.He was shocked by the fact that he couldn’t walk anymore and stayed in his house for 3 years, drinking alcohol. Then he met a wheelchair basketball player that changed his life forever. He was inspired by him and played Para ice hockey during 2012, and wheelchair cycling at the 2014 paralympics. Finally, he decided to be a skier where he got his gold medal.

This was the first paralympic gold

156

medal given in front of his family and 50 million citizens of South Korea.

He showed his unwavering faith towards sports and he overcame many difficulties. “ Yo u’r e n o t d i s a b l e d b y t h e disabilities you have, you are able by the abilities you have”, Oscar Pistorius.

Would you believe if someone told you that an amputee runner competed in a race in the Olympics? Oscar Pistorius was the first amputee runner to compete in the actual Olympic games..

He was born with fibular hemimelia in both legs. When he was 11 months old, his legs were amputated halfway between his knees and ankles. Despite his legs, at school he played a lot of sports. Rugby and water polo were his favourites. He noticed that disabled people, people with two legs, can also compete and play such sports, and he also found out that he was very talented at sports. Soon he becomes a sprinter in the paralympic games and his results were exceptionally good.

However, he wasn’t satisfied with the results and achievements he had.

Pistorius decided to compete in the 2012 London Olympic Games and he made it to semifinals competing with normal athletes. Despite the poor decisions he made later in his life, he still provides inspiration for other para

OVERCOMING DISABILITIES athletes.

People often say, that disabled people aren’t able to do what normal people can. Many people with disabilities think that they cannot run or do any sports that others can. The true meaning behind the Olympics is world peace and the world coming together regarding irrespective of gender, race and age. The reason that these athletes could succeed was because they had faith; they believed that they could do sports. These athletes have practiced for a long time as well as fighting against their difficulties.

Moreover, the majority of paralympic athletes got their disabilities after they were born, usually by accident. They needed to overcome the trauma which is not an easy thing to do. That is what makes them such great role models.

What is the true meaning of paralympics? The word paralympics contains the greek word ‘para’ which means next to something, or in a same level. This tells us that paralympics are held right after the olympics but is also an indication that there is no difference between the Olympics and Paralympics. The athletes from both competitions are equal. Paralympics also contains the idea of hope and that disabled people can do anything if they try.

Jack Sungjin Park Year 10 Mulchat 157

158

How Does Faith Work In Sports?

Jiho Ha Year 10 Sarah

Record breaking, personal care, chemistry within teamwork, earning money, playing as a hobby and so on; people play sports for various reasons.

However, one of the biggest reason behind players playing sports was players having faith in the sports. To quote an extremely successful NBA player, Jeremy Lin; “faith, family, academics, and then sports was the order of priorities in my family. My parents really stuck to these principles when raising me and my two brothers.

As long as we took care of everything, they let us play as much basketball as we wanted�. Even though he started his career as an undrafted Asian boy, faith has led Jeremy to fit in the NBA with massive success.

While a lot of players are successful supported by their faith, some athletes have fallen from the highest strikes by the loss of faith. From twice being the all time NBA all star, scoring an average 28.9 points, Isaiah Thomas was reduced to a player being forced traded for three times the bench player. During a short two years how could Thomas change so much? Summer 2017, Boston Celtics old coach, Danny Ainge, called Thomas and delivered the message that he was traded to Cleveland. That was a start of the blurry belief in his faith. Boston was his home. Thomas had improved a lot while playing for the Boston Celtics and Boston was the

159

place for Thomas to shine. However, the sudden trade for Isaiah Thomas brought a large impact to him and his teammates. It wasn’t only Thomas that was bitter and furious. The Boston fans were also mournful of the trade.

The pressure was a heavy weight on Thomas as he moved to Cleveland.

While playing with the best player in the NBA, Lebron James, he felt big pressure which pushed him to a bench player. Moreover, he was pulling one of the worst numbers in his score sheet, 14.7 points per game. Average playing time was only 25.2 minutes per game he was clearly on a slump. As time passed, the faith of his teammates got worse which brought intolerance towards Isaiah Thomas at Cleveland.

After a big fight between Thomas and Lebron, Cleveland have made Thomas the subject of another forced trade with LA Lakers. He was kept as a bench player at Lakers. As time passed it only brought more and more disregard towards faith.

It is clearly shown that faith do control sports. It is not always that faith would produce good consequence however, believing in faith would change a lot in an athlete towards their sports. Teamwork, believing in themselves, and so on are depending on faith and it is shown that faith are important within sports. Do you think faith could impact in our daily life?

The End of NC Dinos and Kyung-Moon Kim Do Hyun Kim Year 12 Halla North

NC Dinos has announced the abdication of Kyong-Moon Kim. Instead, Young-Jun You, a general manager of Dinos, has been appointed as a head coach of the team. Despite marking the bottom in the league, the decision was unexpected because Kim brought the club’s prime time during the last four years. However, soon after, Kim had a strong conflict with the executives due to three incidents, leading to finishing the eight years of partnership between Kim and the Dinos.

The first incident between Kim and the Dinos executives sprung from the players’ wage negotiations.

During the winter, Kim had requested the executives consider the players’ contributions, particularly those who led the team to advance to the playoff.

However, the Dinos executives kept

160

their rigid negotiation attitude, barely considering the players’ contributions last season. As a result, the club strongly confronted a number of players and was on the verge of requesting the KBO for an arbitration.

It had a chilling effect on the players and players lost loyalty to the team.

The second incident concerned the right-handed pitcher Logan Verrett.

During the medical test, the fact that Verrett’s body condition was not perfect is revealed. As the Dinos struggled at the last months of the season due to Jeff Manship’s elbow injury, Kim requested the executives to withdraw from the contract. Unlike Kim, the executives believed Verrett’s issue was negligible and pushed ahead the contract.

However, despite a decent start, Verrett performed frustratingly. His random command increased his number of

pitches, resulting in a decrease in the number of innings he finished.

Finally, Kim asked the executives to bring in a new player, but executives told him to utilize Verrett and they were not considering scouting a new player. However, Kim relegated him to the minor league and announced that he would not utilize him during the rest of the season. Also, at this point, Kim expressed his discontent with the club’s non-cooperative attitude and insufficient support. This announcement of Kim that he would not call Verrett up again in the season aggravated their relationship a lot so much so that it would never recover.

The third incident occurred during the match against KT wiz, 20th May. Kim left Jin-Sung Kim, the relief pitcher, for two innings even though he gave away 11 runs. Public opinion

161

criticized Kim harshly and fans sent faxes filled with anger to the Dinos office. These worsened the atmosphere towards Kim and provided an appropriate opportunity for the Dinos executives to announce the abdication of Kim. Since NC Dinos has been established, the club has rapidly developed and improved. The team advanced to the postseason in the second season in the KBO and ended up as a runner-up in the fourth season in the KBO. Kim, who was appointed as a first manager in the Dinos franchise history, was at the centre of the sensation. However, due to the disharmony between newly appointed CEO and Kim, the relationship of Kim and the Dinos ended up tragically.

R B

L E I P Z I G David Lu Year 9 Jeoji

RB Leipzig is undoubtedly the most fantastic fairytale in not only German football, but it might also be something which will be considered as an investment success, but there is a lot more to it than that.

In 2009, Red Bull purchased the Oberliga club SSV Markranstädt as the base of RB Leipzig and in its first season it played in the Oberliga and not the Kreisliga because it “borrowed” the team of SSV Markranstädt which played in the Oberliga.

The company has also considered many other options before investing in Leipzig. It made contacts with famous clubs such as TSV 1860 Munich, Fortuna Düsseldorf and FC St. Pauli, known for its left-leaning supporters.

The deal was not executed since FC St. Pauli’s fans protested when Red Bull purchased the club SV Austria Salzburg and renamed it Red Bull Salzburg. The company originally came close to purchasing the club BSG Chemie Leipzig who were the East

German Football League champions.

But because it was playing in the 4th tier league the Deutscher Fußball Bund (DFB, the German Football Association) prevented the investment.

Red Bull then found a team in a village east of Leipzig named SSV Markranstädt and purchased its playing rights for about 100,000 euros.

SSV Markranstädt was renamed into Rasenballsport Leipzig which means Lawn Ball Sports Leipzig. Red Bull did not put it’s name in the team name because DFB will not allow that.

But the abbreviation of Rasenballsport is RB, which is also the abbreviation of Red Bull! However, DFB does not have any regulation about club crest, therefore, RB Leipzig’s crest contained the Red Bull logo. It looked almost identical to other clubs under Red Bull, such as Red Bull Salzburg and New York Red Bull.

Red Bull was also ver y smart getting around the 50+1 rule of the DFB, which means that the clubs

162

members must hold the majority of its voting rights if it wants to compete in the Bundesliga, a rule set up to prevent external investors taking control of the club. Borussia Dortmund, one of the best club in the Bundesliga, has 300000 members, and the annual cost of voting right only cost a mere 30 euros. But RB Leipzig has only a handful of members and its standards of membership qualification is extremely high and RB Leipzig can decide to disallow any membership application without giving any reasons.

The team was promoted in its first season and was nicknamed the “Bayern of Oberliga” due to the team’s outstanding performance. It was promoted to the Regionalliga and, in its second season in the league, became champions of the Regionalliga. And then again, promotion to the 3rd Liga just after three seasons, second in the league. It might be too crazy if I tell you again that they were promoted just in their next season, being the runner-

ups of the third Liga. But what makes it one of the greatest fairy tales in football is that they finished second in their next two seasons consecutively in the 2nd Bundesliga and the Bundesliga, the highest league of German football and qualified for the UEFA Champions League for the first time. Not bad for a club which, up to this day, only have a history of 9 years. Though it got knocked out in the group phase, it reached the quarter-finals of the UEFA Europa League, knocked out by Marseille, the eventual finalist.

The secrets to Leipzig’s success is not only because of the team but also about how the club was run. Unlike Chinese and Middle Eastern investors who splash out cash for players, Red Bull did not quite do the same thing. It promoted youth development as a core part of the club, also scouting around Europe for young players with huge abilities. Between RB Leipzig and its unofficial sister club Red Bull Salzburg, there have been a lot of free and low-

163

cost transfers, with Salzburg giving up a lot of its brightest young talents to RB Leipzig. With notable Austrian international stars Marcel Sabitzer, Konrad Laimer and Stefan Ilsanker, French center back Dayot Upamecano, Hungarian keeper Péter Gulásci and the soon-to-be Liverpool midfield genius, Naby Keïta. The club’s transfer record to this day is the playmaker Kevin Kampl, who cost RB Leipzig 20 million EUR from Bayer Leverkusen in the summer transfer window of 2017. But it’s outgoing transfer record is triple this value, potentially rising higher this summer if it accepts the bid from Barcelona and Man Utd for Dayot Upamecano which may rise up to 87 million EUR, showing how well the club is run and its effective system of signing young players and investing heavily in the youth academy.

But what makes it the most hated

club in Germany is that its ownership of Red Bull is too extreme. It is not the only club in Germany to be owned by a company, Volkswagen owns 100% of Vfl Wolfsburg and Bayer owns 100% of Bayer 04. But Red Bull have invested extremely heavily in other sports, such as Formula One and biking. German football always suited the community interest and it is the only league in the classic top five leagues (Premier League, La Liga, Serie A and Ligue Un) of Europe which have a transfer record less than 40 million pounds with its record signing Julian Draxler from Schalke to Wolfsburg valued at only 38.7 million pounds in the 2015/16 season, which the club finished in the quarterfinals of the Champions League, beating Real Madrid 2-0 before they got knocked out. Red Bull is a large company with enormous financial power, which meant that they can buy

164

superstars to bolster the team.

But Red Bull opted for a different way of running the club. It's transfer expenditure in a single transfer window never went over 50 million euros. That lead to poor expectations from fans as they do not expect a team which does not spend much to achieve good results in both domestic and continental c o m p e t i t i o n s , h ow e v e r, L e i p z i g proved doubters wrong by qualifying for European competition in two successive seasons.

They play a fast, attacking and exciting football, and it focuses on dominating the transition phases, employing a counter-press when the other team has the ball in their half. An interception will lead to Yussof Poulsen, Marcel Sabitzer or Emil Forsberg getting the ball to Timo Werner or taking on the chances themselves.

These players have been on the

radar of Europe's top clubs now, interests of Timo Werner and Emil Forsberg have been flying on the internet. Their transfer fee is expected to be 80 million EUR and 50 million EUR respectively. They are both products from Leipzig's system of signing promising young players from smaller (or bigger) clubs for a small fee. They will deliver performances which will be much more than their price. The club then sells the players when they mature and their ability becomes known to the people and repeat the process to keep the club a high performing but profit-making organization.

RB Leipzig defied the way football clubs work, it showed that a team which does not input an extraordinary amount of money can achieve extraordinary results.

165

A Man Who Changed America Jack Sungjin Park Year 10 Mulchat

The United States of America has four main sports leagues: the Major League Baseball (MLB) , the National Football League (NFL), the National Basketball Association (NBA), and the National Hockey League (NHL). In all of these four leagues, there is one player who changed the entire nation.

He is Jackie Robinson, the first African American baseball player to play in the MLB and one of the earliest African American players in the four major sport leagues. So, why is he such an important person?

Jackie Robinson had his debut on April 15, 1947 in the Brooklyn Dodgers, which made him the first African American man to play in the MLB. At the time, there were two baseball leagues in the US: the MLB and the Negro League Baseball (NLB).

Major League Baseball was only for the white players and the Negro League Baseball was for players of different races. However, the front office of the Brooklyn Dodgers decided that bringing good African American players to their team was beneficial. So they found a good player in the NLB, and that was Robinson. He had good contact skills and was very fast. So,

166

the Dodgers decided to sign a contract with him, and that is the story of Jackie Robinson.

Despite his successful contract with the Dodgers, he had more challenges to overcome; arguably, the biggest and the hardest challenge was racism. As mentioned, the MLB was the league for the white people before Robinson’s signing, and for MLB fans, it was hard to accept the fact that an African American was playing in their league.

In his debut game Robinson got lots of ‘boos,’ not only from the opponent team Boston Braves, but also from a few Dodgers fans. Moreover, Ben Chapman, a former baseball player for the New York Yankees and the former manager for the Philadelphia Phillies, shouted racist epithets in an unsportsmanlike manner, opposing Robinson’s presence in a Major League team based on his race.

That was not it; lots of pitchers intentionally threw the ball at his face, and, while running around the bases, the players kicked his leg. Although Jackie Robinson had a hard time playing in the MLB, he still had lots of people supporting him. This included individuals such as hs teammate and

manager Leo Durocher, a future MLB Hall Of Famer Harold Henry "Pee Wee" Reese and his wife Rachael Robinson. Jackie Robinson often admitted that without his teammates and his wife, he would never have succeeded as a MLB player.

As the first African American MLB player, his baseball career was absolutely fantastic. He was selected to the All-Star team 6 times (1949–1954), and was honoured as the World Series champions (1955), National League MVP (1949), MLB Rookie of the Year (1947), NL batting champion (1949), and two-time NL stolen base leader (1947, 1949). Furthermore, his jersey number 42 was retired by all MLB team after his retirement. His achievements in baseball led lots of managers, scouters and players to think that African Americans could also be good at baseball and to change their stereotypes.

After Robinson, Curt Roberts (1954-1956), Ernie Banks (19531971), Bob Trice (1953-1955), Willie Mays (1951-1973), Sam “The Jet” Jethroe (1950-1954), Monte Irvin (1949-1956), Willard “Home Run” Brown (1947), Hank Thompson

167

(1947-1956), Larry Doby (1947-1959) had their debut in the MLB, and as of 2018, about 27% of major league players are African American.

Not only did Robinson change the history of baseball, but also he changed the how many people saw African Americans. The role model of Martin Luther King Jr, an American Baptist minister and activist who became the most visible spokesperson and leader in the civil rights movement, was Jackie Robinson; Robinson inspired Martin Luther King Jr to lead the civil rights movement which helped African Americans to be able to vote and be treated with fundamental human rights.

Many people today continue to be inspired by Jackie Robinson Jr, and the MLB has announced that they will honor Robinson on April 15 as "Jackie Robinson Day". On this day all players wear the same uniform with number 42 on it. He is recognised not only by baseball fans, but also by Americans as well as people around the world. If Jackie Robinson was not born then it would have been way harder for other African Americans to play in the MLB. He is the real ‘hero’.