Sorry for the poor quality of the pictures.

Cell phone capture from the autobiography of the British Surgeon, Geoffrey Keynes,

"The Gates of Memory"--Oxford Un iversity Press,1981

“the analogy with recent Korean political situation”

What year in Korea? 3.1 운동? How could he interested in Korea?

Mallory once said, "Because it's there."

I personally feel that he really didn't mean what he said.

He just gave an excuse, so that regular people might accept it as a truth

and not ask the same question again.

In other words, he said so to keep their mouth shut.

How do I know? I personally thought about the answer many times and many years.

And I happened to have returned home alive.

During my days of mountain climbing, I was asked the same question many times.

I did not have an answer then. It was an enigma that even I could not answer or solve.

But, over the years, I had quietly developed an answer of my own

which I think Mallory would agree with me with a smile in the other world where he is.

To me and people in general, there was no justifiable reason for going through the hardship and the risk

of getting into inhumane major expeditions. I had had no real answer for many years.

After my climbing career (major expeditions. Not just a local hiking.) was over,

retrospectively, I sort of got the answer to the question of "Why do you climb?" 

I realized that it was not because "It was there." in Mallory's excuse.

But, instead, the answer would have been that "Because I was HERE."

Most people may not understand this phrase of mine.

I do not know if anyone has ever said this phrase before.

I will make it easier for them to understand in four steps.

1. Because I am here alive, that's why I have to be there.

2. Because I am here captured in a cage, I have to be out there in total freedom.

3. In other words, it was an obsession to be free from the reality of living in the human social system.

4. To some people, including me, living in a prescribed "modus vivendi" was rather oppressively chocking.

So, they headed for the mountains for more fresh and free air.

It is an act of a counter-revolution, betrayal, or revenge to the human reality.

To some people (not many), life is so precious to be wasted in the civilized system of living.

Alpinists!  leisurely hike-,that is not the case, ' higher, farther, colder, steeper, -- snow covered even  better'---

My friends never tell his wife what happened during  the trips.--ㅎㅎ

all those close calls! One of  them, whose name-photo, I would not disclose, still  tries "abseiling" vertical drop.

Few years ago,when I was inviolved heavily in "quality  improvement"activities in heart surgery at my hospital,  I went through a couple of  books on  airline industry and  mountaineering,  one of which was "Into thin air" by Jon Krakauer.

System changes,  team changes,etc----- at the end of a day, one priniciple--"the leader cannot fall"  whether  it was

fighter  pilot new project, rock climbing, or heart surgery program.