중앙데일리

Apologies and Arrogance

The origin of doing penance, at Canossa in 1077, was a controversy between the papacy and the Holy Roman Empire. The power struggle between the two parties resulted in the excommunication of Heinrich IV, the German king and Holy Roman emperor, by Pope Gregory VII. So one cold winter's day, the king is said to have visited the castle of Canossa in Northern Italy where the pope was staying. Standing in the snow for three days to do penance, he fina…

Mar 31,2001
The Great Return of Django Park

A "macaroni western" is unfolding in Korea. More on this later, but first some background. In a small American village close to the Mexican boarder, a man wearing a long coat appears in the middle of a heavy sandstorm. Dragging a coffin, his machine gun inside, the man's eyes were filled with revenge and anger. This is how the movie "Django," by Italian director Sergio Corbucci, filmed in 1966, begins. Like most Westerns, the plot is somewhat …

Mar 30,2001
[FOUNTAIN]The Poetic Side of an Industrialist

Poets gathered in a small school building by the sea after the students left for their summer vacation. In this seaside retreat, about 300 poets and aspiring poets spent four days and three nights together. A robust old man in his 70s visited the school. Just like the other poets, the old man wore a white short-sleeved T-shirt － as other poets did － and sang a song in front of all the poets at the school. That old man who sang his heartfelt so…

Mar 28,2001
The Poetic Side of an Industrialist

Poets gathered in a small school building by the sea after the students left for their summer vacation. In this seaside retreat, about 300 poets and aspiring poets spent four days and three nights together. A robust old man in his 70s visited the school. Just like the other poets, the old man wore a white short-sleeved T-shirt － as other poets did － and sang a song in front of all the poets at the school. That old man who sang his heartfelt so…

Mar 28,2001
[FOUNTAIN] Great Hall of Knowledge Rebuilt

What was the first university in human history, where celebrated ancient scholars, including the geometer Euclid, the physicist Archimedes, the mathematician Heron, the geographer Eratosthenes and astronomer Ptolemy, as well as the librarian Kallimachos, studied and taught? The answer is the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the great library of Alexandria, built in Egypt's northern port city of Alexandria in around the 3d century B.C. The library o…

Mar 27,2001
A New Cold War Begins?

Bernard Baruch, an American political figure, used the term, "cold war" for the first time. In 1947, Mr. Baruch was the U.S. representative to the UN Atomic Energy Commission and used the term in a speech referring to the Truman Doctrine. "Let us not be deceived - today we are in the midst of a cold war," said Mr. Baruch, then a presidential advisor to President Harry Truman. An American journalist, Walter Lippman, later quoted this term in the t…

Mar 26,2001
Lesson From Hyundai's Founder

When an influential figure dies, we often feel solemn, as if reading the last page of a long historical novel. Depending on the quality of the deceased, we sometimes rethink the meaning of his or her life and sink into grief. The death of an influential person is often described as the setting of the sun or the collapse of a gigantic tree. When the sun sets, it takes away the light which brightened the world, and when a great tree falls, it ta…

Mar 24,2001
[FOUNTAIN] Time to Adopt a No-Abuse Rule

Koreans are unusually stingy with compliments to others. Even when our children come back from school with a test mark of 100, we have nothing more to say than "Good job," or "Good boy." On the other hand, Germans use every possible expression to compliment their children in the same situation. Sometimes it sounds like making much ado about nothing, but the child listening to the compliment would feel very satisfied. Not only Germany, but …

Mar 22,2001
Meeting the Crisis Point Unafraid

Crisis, an English word, was derived from the Greek word, krinein, which means to decide, to discern, to separate. Krinein was once used as a medical term meaning a sudden paroxysmal intensification of symptoms in the course of a disease. At this time, a doctor had to determine the patient's possibility of recovery. If he determined that the patient had no chance to survive, then the patient would undergo a procedure to separate him from life. Co…

Mar 22,2001
[FOUNTAIN] Daseok and 'Seeds'

"It seems that I was meant to meet you at Osan school," said Yu Yeong-mo (1890 - 1981), then the principal of the Osan School to his beloved student Ham Sok-hon (1901 - 1989). This year is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Mr. Ham, a famous historian, religious leader and publisher in modern Korean history. Public interest in Yu Yeong-mo, who is also well known under the nom de plume of Daseok, also increases when Mr. Ham is remembered becaus…

Mar 21,2001

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