June, 2011

June is the Memorial Month as we recognize and express our gratitude for all the soldiers and ancestors who gave the last full measure of devotion, sacrificing their lives for their country and families. Koreans used to call this month as the “Month of Wonho [Memorial Month],” and many huge banners of celebration were displayed on the main streets of every city and town. I used to visit to my home country right after our winter semester, which ended around the latter part of May, and I always found welcoming banners. The Korean government changed it to “Bohoon Month [Memorial Month]” some time ago, but from that time on, June was not really my month.

My game of a lifetime, golf, has been sliding downward fast as my USGA handicap index surged in June to 14.6 (15), and I now belong to the B flight in our local club. My lowest index in this town was 9 and I tried hard to stay in the A flight, but my stress and agony from making mistakes has been almost unbearable for some time after my winning the President’s Cup Match Play championship in 2009. I just don’t know how I can go back to A flight, even though I’m practicing more than ever on the driving range.

Frustrated from my golf game, I started a new hobby of video editing, using the Pinnacle Version 15 program, and joined the video club of our community. I was invited to give a speech on “Women and Work Force” to a group of women business owners on June 28. As I looked around for resources to use in my speech, I found a television program tape on a similar subject in 1999. I had done a one-hour program on Korea’s MBC on “Women Can Change the World” right after a national financial fiasco in Korea in 1998. I found the most of the content of the tape would also fit my new talk and wanted edit the tape, so I had to learn how to edit a videotape.

I also plan to make movies using many pictures of our family. I’m slowly progressing, but it will take some time to master my new adventure of becoming a movie maker. As some of you know, I scanned most of printed pictures of the past before we moved to California.

June also is the month to remember the Korean War, which has been called the “Forgotten War.” I was shocked to read some reports that some young Koreans believe the Korean War was started by the Americans and South Koreans, which has been promoted by criminally insane North Korean leaders. That war killed millions of South and North Koreans—without accomplishing anything of any real use for the Korean peninsula.

That tragic war began in the early hours of June 25, 1950, when North Korean troops crossed the 38th parallel and invaded South Korea. I was a seventh grader at the time and vividly remember how the war broke out, accompanied by fierce fighting on both sides and coming to an end with an unfinished resolution of the Korean peninsula. The war featured some of the most intense fighting ever experienced by American soldiers—and under some of the worst conditions. Nearly 37,000 American servicemen lost their lives in just three years, the majority of those losses concentrated in the first year of fighting. That is a significantly higher figure per year when compared to the 58,000 American casualties spread over ten years in Vietnam.

There were both severe trials and staggering accomplishments during the Korean War: the humiliating retreat of inexperienced Korean and American soldiers in the opening days of the war; the brilliant Inchon landings, masterminded by the late General Douglas MacArthur; and the savage hill fighting during the last years of the conflict.
Although an armistice was signed in 1953 between the United Nations, the U.S., China, and North Korea, South Korea refused to sign, leaving the two Koreas separate—and they remain separate to this day.

As the weather here as well as other places takes unpredictably spooky turns, we haven’t gone to surf fishing once this year, but we do plan to visit the beaches of Santa Barbara County soon.

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