한국어 After watching the 1990s film Seopyeonje, a sorrowful tale of an obsessive pansori (traditional Korean musical storytelling) master who seeks to reach a deeper realm of sound through his supremely gifted daughter, while striving to preserve this venerable vocal…
Forever Rain “Forever Rain” my favorite track from his magnificent mixtape album “mono.” The song perfectly encapsulates the motif of the whole album, which deals with the dichotomy and contradictions of life, of both wanting to be left alone and…
Everythingoes The song’s intention is clear from its long, meditative intro: nearly two minutes of RM gently repeating, “Ji-nah-gah (time heals),” as if to reassure both himself and his listeners that, in the end, things will be okay. This masterpiece…
Two days ago, Korea celebrated the 80th anniversary of Independence Day. As many of you know, Korea was occupied by Japan from 1909 to 1945. During those years, Japan ruled the peninsula brutally, stripping Korea’s resources for its conquest of…
Uhgood Each line in the song is spare, yet heavy with nuance. Layered metaphors and subtle turns of phrase reveal how much can be said with so little. Through Uhgood, RM demonstrates the austerity and expressive depth of restraint, inviting…
Moonchild The term moonchild, loosely defined as someone idiosyncratic or out of step with the world, becomes in RM’s hands the embodiment of a person lying awake deep into the night, gripped by anxiety about an uncertain future, a feeling…
My friends, if you’re craving a truly compelling TV drama, I highly recommend Our Unwritten Seoul, which just premiered on Netflix this past weekend. I tend to sample new dramas but rarely follow them through to the end; only the…
A writer once said that each of us carries a crying child in a quiet corner of the heart. What does she mean? Even as we grow into adulthood, we keep an inner child—the figure for the painful memories of…
School started up again last Thursday. From Friday through Sunday we were off on an orientation retreat just outside Seoul. Coming home this afternoon, cotton clouds drifting across a blue sky, traffic moving at an easy pace, I cracked a…
