So I'm leaving for Korea. It's been almost 5 years since I've last been to Korea.
I never quite missed Korea, nor felt the need to visit. For the first three years or so since I came back to Australia, I was busy with studies and worried about what my future would hold especially in terms of my permanent residency/visa issues, and future career. Once I graduated, and found a job, and got my permanent residency, I suddenly was faced with a great difficulty at church. By that time, I was heavily involved with ministry at church, and I was greatly disturbed and discouraged by the way the church was headed and by the conflicts that we were having among ourselves. In short, it was a busy and trying 5 years. I am only starting to gain back the stability and peace in my heart I once used to have, and I am learning to enjoy and be joyful when I am serving and participating at church.
With all these, I could say that I did not really have time to think about visiting back to Korea. Even now, I did not plan for long, or wanted to visit Korea, it just so happened that an opportunity and a few reasons surfaced. It's probably going to be good to visit my family, relatives, and some friends. I will also visit my sister who is living in St. Louis in the States, and that'll be a good trip too. I've never been to the US, and I really don't know what to expect. Excited? Hardly. But I am anticipating the good things that will result out of this trip as whole.
I started writing this up when I was at the Sydney Airport, waiting for my flight. Unfortunately, I couldn't access the internet, nor I had time to finish writing this up. I completed writing this little life fragment during the flight. I hope to keep on blogging during my trip whenever I get the chance. It should be interesting, since I'm pretty sure that I'll have so much time to think about various things. Now I come to think of it, I really should get my environmentalatory series done and post them. Stay tuned.
2 comments:
my name is Ronnie, and I'm a Singaporean who has been learning Korean for 5 years, and I've written and published a book entitled "Curse of Jeju Island" (화산섬의 저주). It's a vampire fiction loosely based on the aftermath of the Jeju Massacre in 1950 (제주도민 학살 사건). You'd be able to find out more from my personal homepage:
http://ronnieng.blogspot.com
the story synopsis is as follows:
Korea was under the colonial rule of the Japanese Empire between 1910 and 1945.
During the Japanese occupation, thousands of Koreans were used as test subjects (guinea pigs) in secret military medical experimentation units, such as Unit 731, Unit 516, and many more. Towards the end of the colonial period, the Japanese military scientists were working on a new project, which was a "vampirisation process" on humans through genetic alteration.
If the project proved successful, the "supposedly-dead" could remain alive through parasitic life sustenance - a biological mechanism that mimics the blood-sucking vampire bats and leeches. The Japanese Army paid some poor hapless Korean parents to allow the medical officers to perform the experiments on their children. However, the Korean parents involved in the transaction believed that the experiments were merely another series of medical trials, and were not aware that it was actually a vampirisation process.
Theoretically-speaking, the success of this project would allow the Japanese Imperial Army to utilise the "undead" as "immortal soldiers" to fight through the end of World War II. The project, however, didn't seem to yield any immediate nor apparent result, as the Korean children in question didn't seem to show any physical sign of becoming "vampirised". The medical officers could not find any sort of cell mutation nor behavioural change in these children.
The project was finally abandoned, when the Japanese Army were forced to surrender to the Allied Forces in 1945 after the American dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. All documents and project facilities pertaining to the said experiments were destroyed, so as to eliminate evidences of the Japanese Imperial Army's atrocious deeds.
The children grew up normally - some of them joined the US-led South Korean Army (known as the Regiments), while some of them embraced communist ideals and became the insurgents (known as the Guerrilas). The two remained at war until the "Jeju Massacre" , which claimed the lives of more than 60,000 people. Their bodies were then sealed in the volcanic cave of Mount Halla. Amongst these 60,000 people were some of the test subjects who were earlier involved in the vampirisation process. The vampirisation process only became effective when these dead bodies were laid in the cave.
The geological conditions (temperature, mineral make-up, etc) of the volcano cave helped to promote the vampirisation process, and their genetic structure mutated to resemble the feeding patterns of bloodsucking creatures such as bats and leeches. Thus these group of the dead were resurrected to become vampires, as they acquired the ability to shapeshift into bats, and back into their human form. They are now doomed to roam the streets of Jeju seeking living human prey and continuing the battles that they once fought in life. Thus, the bitter feud between the two mortal factions – The Regiments (former soldiers) and The Guerrillas (former rebels) – has now become immortal.
Today, we meet Han Mirae, a young Korean girl who is caught in a love triangle between Jackie Chang, a swashbuckling vampire hunter from Singapore, and Shin Taewoo a powerful vampire of the Guerillas. And, we meet Kim Hyunsuk, the Regimental, who abducts Mirae in order to set a trap to kill the other two.
Can Taewoo or Jackie save the girl in time? And who is Mirae's real love?
Could Seiji Inada, being a Japanese vampire hunter, somehow be linked to the vampirisation project conducted by the Japanese Army several decades ago? Hhhmm... It very well could, especially if his father, Kazuhito Inada was one of the soldiers involved during World War II...
Ronnie,
All I can say at the moment is that, while your novel sounds somewhat interesting, I do not know how you thought it was appropriate to post that "comment" here.
I'll leave it posted for now, however, as a friendly gesture. In the future, though, I hope you will respect the online spaces (eg. blogs) and people behind them.
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