Ruminations in Korea

I have been absolutely hammered with vast amounts of work for the past couple of weeks. It looks like things are easing up a bit and I have a bit more time these days.

At the urging of many people, and one person in particular, I have put together this brief little "about me" post:

I was born in the rather unassuming community of Logan, Utah, tucked away in the top of the Rocky Mountains. I spent most of his formative years just outside of Logan in the even smaller town of Nibley, where cows outnumbered people.

My mother started me on the piano when I was 5 years old. Although I learned to play the piano very well over the next several years, playing became a living hell. I really enjoyed playing the piano, but I hated practicing. I hated practicing because I was forced to do it. Mom forced me to do at least 30 minutes of piano before doing anything else. No playing, no reading, no TV, nothing until practice was done. So, instead of learning to love practicing, I learned to hate it and wanted to get out of it. My parents wouldn’t let me quit, which only made the situation worse as I got older.

I didn’t want to play the piano. I wanted to spend all of my time doing what I enjoyed most, which was reading. I realized at a very young age that my hometown was small and provided very few opportunities for adventure and culture. I would escape the confines of my rural, one gas-station, no stoplight, cow town by fleeing into the pages of books.

I could open the pages of any book and have a completely new world opened to the eyes of my imagination. I could explore anywhere, and meet new and fantastical people and creatures. I am forever grateful to my older brother for encouraging me to read and sparking my interest in fantasy literature. The first fantasy book I remember reading was "A Wrinkle In Time" when I was in third or fourth grade. By eight years old I began reading The Lord of the Rings. From there, Terry Brooks, Michael Moorcock, Piers Anthony, Robert Asprin, Christopher Stasheff, feed my imagination.

At eight years old, I was allowed to join the RCA Record club. My first albums for one penny were: ACDC Back in Black, Rush 2112 (still the best album ever made), Foreigner Head Games, Foreigner Double Vision, Nazareth Hair of the Dog, Queen Live Killers. My father was horrified.

Entering junior high school provided me with the escape from the piano that I needed. Guitar. A guitar class was offered. I used guitar as an excuse to get away from the piano. Was it a mistake? Yes. I completely abandoned the piano and have gone from playing Chopin and Prokofiev to now being unable to play a single song.

However, I became enamored with playing classical guitar. I became quite good. At 16 years old I placed third in the Utah Freestyle Guitar Compentition.

I was always a disappointment to my father. He was "Mr. Sports guy." Having done everything including football, basketball, track, and golf and been captain of most of those teams. I have always been soft-bodied and big. At 8 years of age, during my brief foray into the world of soccer, the couch decided that a great self-esteem building nickname for me would be "Chunk." Thanks Alan Baker! That didn’t stick with me for very long and still doesn’t traumatize me very much. Needless to say, I had no interest in sports, particularly contact sports. My father was horrified.

Eventually, just to make him stop bothering me, I joined the junior high wrestling team. My 7th grade 136 pounds and the 9th grade jocks’ 136 pounds were constructed of different material and I routinely got my face pounded into the mat.

Somehow, probably due to the 9th grade 136-pound weight class varsity wrestlers 9th grade alcohol problem, I found myself in the varsity position. As I was warming up for my first varsity wrestling match I was involved in a bizarre warm up accident with one of the junior varsity guys and ended up snapping my left wrist at the growth plate. The doctor ordered me out of wrestling forever. My sports career was over. I was happy. Father was horrified.

The horror deepened for father as I turned to singing, the theater and debate in high school. I was in numerous plays and musicals. Our show choir took the national sweepstakes award at the national competitions in 1987. I was chosen to sing in the all-state choir. I came one slot away from making the national debate tournament. I was in the first group of three students to earn a high school "letter" in Debate in the school’s history. Father wouldn’t buy me a letterman’s jacket for a debate letter. It was too embarrassing for him.

During high school and my first year of college, I was a radio DJ at top radio stations in Northern Utah.

Father nearly had a coronary when I declared my university major to be philosophy. After one year of university I went off to Korean to do volunteer work for a couple of years. I began my Korean adventure in 1988 and I have lived in Korea for the vast majority of the time since then. I speak, read, and write Korean. My going to Korea meant and end to the time I could spend playing guitar.

After two years, I went back to the US and did another year of university. I then became a guinea pig for an exchange program with Pusan National University, which I attended for a little over one year. Then, it was back to the US for a final few months of university. I went straight to law school for the next three years. I visited Korea during summer vacations.

I joined my current firm in 1996. I’m a frequent seminar speaker, radio talk show guest, and a popular guest lecturer at universities. I spent one a year on the faculty of the Korea Maritime University as an adjunct professor where I taught classes on the WTO and WTO trade dispute resolution. Given my unique position as a Korean-speaking, long-term foreign lawyer in Pusan, I’b also a frequent subject for newspaper and other media stories.

My latest undertaking it to pick up the guitar again. I have abandoned the restrictions of playing classical music for the gritty world of the blues. It is very cathartic.

Basically, I am avid reader, erstwhile writer, movie buff, and music lover, My interests are too diverse to really get into. A glance at my CD rack will show Alice Cooper next to Chopin next to Johnny Cash. I enjoy playing electric and acoustic blues guitar. Tattered science-fiction and fantasy share bookshelf space with leather-bound copies of Dickens, Tolstoy, and other great books. I have more DVDs than I know what to do with. I also am somewhat of an accomplished martial artist, holding black belts in Hapkido and Kuk Sool Won. In 2000 I placed third in my weight class in the Korea Kuk Sool Won competition.