Korean Quotes

I took Beetle home thinking that after the Korean War was over, I would have to take him out of the Army. I thought, well, what am I going to do with him? ~ Mort Walker

Westernization is an often-used word in Korea, and can be applied to something considered cold, lacking in jeong, and going against traditional Korean values. To suggest that Korean households are now "Westernized," whatever that may mean exactly, would be a gross oversimplification. ~ Daniel Tudor

Then there was David, lording it up at Buckingham Palace, thinking he was king of the shit heap. That guy was definitely nuts, like every dictator that had gone before him. Nero, Caligula, Henry the Eighth, Napoleon, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Margaret Thatcher, Colonel Gaddafi, that crazy North Korean bastard who was in Team America, Kim Jong whatever. ~ Charlie Higson

It makes it very hard to say what you believe in and not be attacked for it. And it's not fair; I'm Korean, but I'm not supposed to talk about my experience and my life? It's unaccepting. ~ Margaret Cho

All of my high school male teachers were WWII and/or Korean War veterans. They taught my brothers and me the value of service to our country and reinforced what our dad had shown us about the meaning of service. ~ Oliver North

I open the box, and there are notes. Notes and notes and notes. Peter's notes. Peter's notes I threw away.
"I found them when I was emptying your trash," she says. Hastily she adds, "I only read a couple. And then I saved them because I could tell they were important."
I touch one that Peter folded into an airplane. "Kitty…you know Peter and I aren't getting back together, right?"
Kitty grabs the bowl of popcorn and says, "Just read them." Then she goes into the living room and turns on the TV.
I close the hatbox and take it with me upstairs. When I am in my room, I sit on the floor and spread them out around me.
A lot of the notes just say things like "Meet you at your locker after school" and Can I borrow your chemistry notes from yesterday?" I find the spiderweb one from Halloween, and it makes me smile. Another one says, "Can you take the bus home today? I want to surprise Kitty and pick her up from school so she can show me and my car off to her friends." "Thanks for coming to the estate sale with me this weekend. You made the day fun. I owe you one." "Don't forget to pack a Korean yogurt for me!" "If you make Josh's dumb white-chocolate cranberry cookies and not my fruitcake ones, it's over." I laugh out loud. And then, the one I read over and over: "You look pretty today. I like you in blue."
I've never gotten a love letter before. But reading these notes like this, one after the other, it feels like I have. It's like…it's like there's onl ~ Jenny Han

I'm going to go where my heart takes me, even if it's a messy road. ~ Ha Myung-hee (writer), Said By Dr. Jung YoonDo, Doctors (닥터스)

Whether we can somehow listen in on tree talk is a subject that was recently addressed in the specialized literature. Korean scientists have been tracking older women as they walk through forests and urban areas. The result? When the women were walking in the forest, their blood pressure, their lung capacity, and the elasticity of their arteries improved, whereas an excursion into town showed none of these changes. It's possible that phytoncides have a beneficial effect on our immune systems as well as the trees' health, because they kill germs. Personally, however, I think the swirling cocktail of tree talk is the reason we enjoy being out in the forest so much. At least when we are out in undisturbed forests.

Walkers who visit one of the ancient deciduous preserves in the forest I manage always report that their heart feels lighter and they feel right at home. If they walk instead through coniferous forests, which in Central Europe are mostly planted and are, therefore, more fragile, artificial places, they don't experience such feelings. Possibly it's because in ancient beech forests, fewer "alarm calls" go out, and therefore, most messages exchanged between trees are contented ones, and these messages reach our brains as well, via our noses. I am convinced that we intuitively register the forest's health. ~ Peter Wohlleben

For a long time, just skating in the Olympics had been my goal because not many Koreans had done it. ~ Kim Yuna

But obviously, we've got to stand with our North Korean allies. ~ Sarah Palin

My grandfather knows about hauntings, it occurs to me now. Here was where he knew his sisters, here was what he remembered, every day, in his Imperial school, as the Japanese grammar spread inside him, as he learned the language of the people who took his sisters and destroyed them. All his thoughts come to him in Japanese first, his dreams in Japanese also ... I think of how every single thing he says in Korean comes across a pause where the Japanese is stilled and the Korean brought forward. Each part of speech a rescue ~ Alexander Chee

It is difficult to disturb the common usage of Korean that is bent to the perspective of a male-oriented society. Korean society is based on both a politics and history that have been disguised as a solid society of solid male poems, a solid written language, fixed rules of how to write literature, and a narrative language. ~ Kim Hyesoon

Nobody knows how many North Koreans have died or are dying in the famine - some estimates by foreign-aid groups run as high as three million in the period from 1995 to 1998 alone - but the rotund, jowly face of Kim Il Sung still beams down contentedly from every wall, and the 58-year-old son looks as chubby as ever, even as his slenderized subjects are mustered to applaud him. ~ Christopher Hitchens

A South Korean teenager, 18-year-old male, is about five inches taller than his North Korean counterpart. And there are many soldiers who are only about 4'6". The height requirement is supposed to be 4'9". That's the size of my 12-year-old son. ~ Barbara Demick

The amphibious landing of U.S. Marines on September 1950 at Inchon, on the west coast of Korea, was one of the most audacious and spectacularly successful amphibious landings in all naval history. ~ Bernard Brodie

I will bring more Korean dance moves and Korean songs overseas. ~ Psy

Listening to South Korean television was like looking in the mirror for the first time in your life and realizing you were unattractive. ~ Barbara Demick

It is the experience of those who have had to do with the various peoples of the Far East that it is easier to understand the Korean and get close to him than it is to understand either the Japanese or the Chinese. ~ Homer B. Hulbert

Women in Korean myths disappear after giving birth. The reason they were born is to produce sons. ~ Kim Hyesoon

The quality of Korean actors is actually quite high. Their passion is overwhelming but not many platforms are available to cater to their creative needs. They're thirsty for something new and I think that's where I connect with them. They have vision. In certain sense many Korean actors have better vision than directors. ~ Lee Yoon-ki

I was told many times that my writing was either too Korean - or not Korean enough. ~ Min Jin Lee

I walked behind my father on the way to her headstone, he looked like a house that was caving in. ~ Kyung-Sook Shin

I want to help promote Korean music around the world. ~ Swizz Beatz

Aim high in your career, but stay humble in your heart. ~ Korean Proverb.

We had it drilled into us time and time again: 'If someone above you falls, grip tightly to the vertical rope and cradle that person in your arms until help can get to you.' ... If someone fell down on me I swear I would have bitten him on the ass and would keep on biting until he got off onhis own. ~ C.S. Crawford

I wish that they had the freedoms like the Japanese and the Koreans and the Mexicans and everybody else that has that freedom to come over here and play the game, because I know Cuba has a very strong baseball history. ~ Rafael Palmeiro

The U.S. military was segregated 'til the Korean War, and the blacks in World War Two were totally segregated. ~ Clint Eastwood

Tens of thousands of North Korean women have been sold to Chinese men. By some estimates, three quarters of the roughly 100,000 North Korean refugees living in China are women and more than half of them live in arranged unions with Chinese men. ~ Barbara Demick

To be honest, I'm not that much of a reader of Korean fiction, since so little is translated. ~ Chang-rae Lee

I wrote a piece from North Korea called Visit to a Small Planet which is a line I stole from a play of Gore Vidal's, because it did seem to me as if I had left this planet completely to go on this visit to the northern part of the Korean Peninsula, and it was as if coming back from another spatial body altogether. ~ Christopher Hitchens

North Korea is a necrocracy, or a mauselocracy or a thanatocracy in which the one [Kim Il-sung] is diffused into being with the other [Kim Jong Il], and where both of them are said to have had miraculous births attended by miraculous phenomena such as, for example, birds singing in Korean, when they were born. ~ Christopher Hitchens

North Koreans are irrational to some extent, but I don't think they're totally irrational. I think they watch American cable channels. I think they watch the European cable channels. I think they, their decision makers keep up more than we know. And I think they want us to think they're a little crazy. ~ William J. Clinton

North Koreans have two stories running in their heads at all times, like trains on parallel tracks. One is what you are taught to believe; the other is what you see with your own eyes. It wasn't until I escaped to South Korea and read a translation of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four that I found a word for this peculiar condition: doublethink. This is the ability to hold two contradictory ideas in your mind at the same time - and somehow not go crazy. This "doublethink" is how you can shout slogans denouncing capitalism in the morning, then browse through the market in the afternoon to buy smuggled South Korean cosmetics. It ~ Yeonmi Park

That is a reward that humbles me: the fact that immigrants coming to America, much like I did, can come into a Forever 21 and know that all of this was started by a simple Korean immigrant with a dream. ~ Do Won Chang

When I grew up, in Taiwan, the Korean War was seen as a good war, where America protected Asia. It was sort of an extension of World War II. And it was, of course, the peak of the Cold War. People in Taiwan were generally proAmerican. The Korean War made Japan. And then the Vietnam War made Taiwan. There is some truth to that. ~ Ang Lee

Wow, bad news. Mr. Obama now hates Israel because the Israelis want to build 1,600 apartments in their own capital city, Jerusalem. Russia hates Israel, too. So do the Europeans. So does Ban Ki-moon, a Korean who is secretary-general of the UN. ~ Ben Stein

Glory to the heroic soldiers of the Korean People's Army! ~ Kim Jong Il

I'm sure mothers are important across every culture, but particularly in Korean society, the role of the mother is of great importance. ~ Bong Joon-ho

Thanks to many great K-pop singers, the groundwork has been laid for more Korean songs to be readily accessible to an overseas audience via channels like YouTube. ~ Psy

We must work with the Australians, the South Koreans, the Japanese and the Filipinos to contain China. And then we must ask for their support and their help with North Korea. Because believe it or not, China is as concerned about Kim Jong-Un as we are. ~ Carly Fiorina

Brian Myers takes a fresh approach. He largely ignores what the regime tells the outside world about itself, but concentrates instead on what North Koreans themselves are supposed to believe, paying special attention to the North Korean narratives and mass culture, including movies and television shows. ( ... ) There are few books that can give the world a peek into the Hermit Kingdom. The Cleanest Race provides a reason to care about how those in North Korea see themselves and the West. It is possibly the best addition to that small library. ~ Andrei Lankov

Music brought the war in Vietnam right into our bedrooms. Songs we heard from America made us interested in politics; they were history lessons in a palatable, exciting form. We demonstrated against the Vietnam and Korean wars, discussed sexual liberation, censorship and pornography and read books by Timothy Leary, Hubert Selby Jr (Last Exit to Brooklyn) and Marshall McLuhan because we'd heard all these people referred to in songs or interviews with musicians. [...] Music, politics, literature, art all crossed over and fed into each other. There were some great magazines around too [...] Even though we couldn't afford to travel, we felt connected to other countries because ideas and events from those places reached us through music and magazines. ~ Viv Albertine

There's no escape for us. We are like mice trapped in a dungeon of wildcats.We are Koreans; we are cursed race and there is no hope for us as long as the Japanese are around. ~ Sook Nyul Choi

From the beginning, you were music to me, music was you. That's why I came this far. If you're not there, there is no music. ~ Dream High

With a book called 'Keeping Score,' I really did want to write a book about the Korean War, because I felt that it is the least understood war in the American cultural imagination. So I set out with the idea that Americans didn't know much about the Korean War and that I was going to try to fix a tiny bit of that. ~ Linda Sue Park

The Philippines was with the U.S. in the Second World War, in the Korean War, in the Vietnam War, and now in the war against terrorism. ~ Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo

Maybe it's a cultural thing, being Korean, but my first reflex has always been to exude humility - but it doesn't help you in acting. For acting, humility isn't the best thing. It'll weaken your work. ~ Steven Yeun

Hold on to your hats, Korea is a land of surprises ~ Don Oberdorfer

White people can describe themselves with just American. Only when pressed do they go into their ethnic heritage. Doesn't seem fair that I have to forever explain my origin story with that silent hyphen, whereas white people don't. It's complicated. But simple. Simplicated. ~ David Yoon

Oh, sorry. My excitement must be clouding my ability to judge comedic hyperbole. ~ Daniel Palladino

Small nose and huge mouth

Once upon a time, there was an old couple who have problems with their appearance. The man has got a small nose, woman has got a huge mouth. Someday, their neighbor invited them to have dinner. They really wanted to go and have a good time with neighbors but they were nervous what they show their face. they got good idea.
He made fake nose by candle, she sewed her mouth. in the party, they talked near the stove. Then his nose began to melt. His wife laughed to see him and her mouth became huge. they were nervous and put they heads down. The neighbor said appearance is not important, we like you because you are so kind. Since then they didn't care so much about their face and lived happily after.
---------
Korean Short Story ~ Korean Folklore

Your life can be different, Young Ju. Study and be strong. In America, women have choices. ~ An Na

Ah, that poor boy was unlucky. Perhaps his trainer or doctor had told him to take some spicy food for fast blood circulation. That's why he had come here for Korean Tofu Soup – which is very spicy. Because of jogging, his heart was already beating fast, which means fast blood circulation. To make the matter worse, the hot and spicy soup, combined with witnessing some hot action, meant that his blood wasn't running, but boiling. He was clinging to the wall trembling. If they hadn't killed him, he would've died on the spot anyway. ~ Waheed Ibne Musa

The North Korean state was born at about the same time that Nineteen Eighty-Four was published, and one could almost believe that the holy father of the state, Kim Il Sung, was given a copy of the novel and asked if he could make it work in practice. Yet even Orwell did not dare to have it said that "Big Brother's" birth was attended by miraculous signs and portents - such as birds hailing the glorious event by singing in human words. ~ Christopher Hitchens

If you're not fascinated by Korea yet, you damn well should be. The most innovative country on earth deserves a hilarious and poignant account on the order of Euny Hong's The Birth of Korean Cool. Her phat beats got Gangnam Style and then some. ~ Gary Shteyngart

When I became a poet, the Korean literary world expected women poets to sing passively of love. Naturally, this was not written anywhere, but this rule existed nonetheless. Consequently, I received plenty of serious criticism. ~ Kim Hyesoon

I was afraid of Korean food when I moved to L.A., let alone sushi. I remember thinking either sink or swim. Living here in Studio City, Ventura Blvd. is the Mecca of sushi restaurants. What you thought was so exotic is just run of the mill. ~ Parvesh Cheena

Though it has no intrinsic value – you cannot eat or drink a dollar bill – trust in the dollar and in the wisdom of the Federal Reserve is so firm that it is shared even by Islamic fundamentalists, Mexican drug lords and North Korean tyrants. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

It would be nice to think that the menacing aspects of North Korea were for display also, that the bombs and reactors were Potemkin showcases or bargaining chips. On the plane from Beijing I met a group of unsmiling Texan types wearing baseball caps. They were the 'in-country' team from the International Atomic Energy Agency, there to inspect and neutralize North Korea's plutonium rods. Not a nice job, but, as they say, someone has to do it. Speaking of the most controversial reactor at Yongbyon, one of the guys said, 'No sweat. She's shut down now.' Nice to know. But then, so is the rest of North Korean society shut down - animation suspended, all dead quiet on the set, endlessly awaiting not action (we hope) or even cameras, but light. ~ Christopher Hitchens

It seems Korean women are enjoying a passive and fragile status, intoxicated by appearance. Not only feminism, but any serious discourse ends up being swept away by popular culture in Korea. ~ Kim Hyesoon

The Korean private market had unbundled education down to the one in-school variable that mattered most: the teacher. It was about as close to a pure meritocracy as it could be, and just as ruthless. In hagwons, teachers were free agents. They did not need to be certified. They didm;t have benefits or even guaranteed base salary; their pay was determined by how many students signed up for their classes, by their students' test-score growth, and, in many hagwons, by the results of satisfaction surveys given to students and parents. ~ Amanda Ripley

In contrast, Western historians, and those in South Korea, say the North attacked the South on June 25, 1950. Both sides agree that after the war began, the North Korean Army captured Seoul in three days and pushed as far south as Pusan before American troops arrived to drive back the North Koreans nearly as far north as the border to China. ~ Sheryl WuDunn

The second factor helping to bring the dissociative disorders back into the mainstream was the Vietnam War. For sociological reasons originating outside psychology and psychiatry, the Vietnam War and the posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that arose from it were not forgotten when the veterans returned home, as had been the case in the two world wars and the Korean War. The realization that real, severe trauma could have serious long-term psychopathological consequences was forced on society as a whole by Vietnam. Once this principle was accepted, it as a short leap to the conclusion that severe childhood trauma might have serious sequelae lasting into adulthood. ~ Colin A. Ross

Unlike the Afghans and Iraqis, the South Korean people solidly supported the American military presence, which was part of a United Nations operation. ~ John Eisenhower

My Hellboy is modeled on my father in some ways: a guy who's been in the Korean War, and he's traveled, and he's done a lot of stuff, and he's kind of got a been there, done that attitude. He's also been in the world. Del Toro's change was to have Hellboy bottled up in a room and mooning over the girl he can't have. ~ Mike Mignola

President Bush said that American workers will need new skills to get the new jobs in the 21st century. Some of the skills they're going to need are Spanish, Chinese, Korean, because that's where the jobs went. Who better than Bush as an example of what can happen when you take a job without any training. ~ Jay Leno

The North Korean regime remains one of the world's leading proliferator of missile technology, including transfers to Iran and Syria. The transfer of nuclear weapons or material by North Korea to states or non-state entities would be considered a grave threat to the United States, and we would hold North Korea fully accountable of the consequences of such action. ~ George W. Bush

A military situation at its worst can inspire fighting men to perform at their best. ~ Marguerite Higgins

The Globe reports that North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il raises money by selling fake Viagra pills. What it is about this guy? None of his missiles seem to launch. ~ Jay Leno

인간이 동물이 될때는 동물보다 더 못한 존재가 된다."
"Man is worse than an animal when he is an animal ~ Rabindranath Tagore

In the mid 1990s the Korean film industry was really open-minded. ~ Bong Joon-ho

In early 2014, the global economy's top five companies' gross cash holdings - those of Apple, Google, Microsoft, as well as the US telecom giant Verizon and the Korean electronics conglomerate Samsung - came to $387 billion, the equivalent of the 2013 GDP of the United Arab Emirates.78 This capital imbalance puts the fate of the world economy in the hands of the few cash hoarders like Apple and Google, whose profits are mostly kept offshore to avoid paying US tax. "Apple, Google and Facebook are latter-day scrooges," worries the Financial Times columnist John Plender about a corporate miserliness that is undermining the growth of the world economy. ~ Andrew Keen

Most Korean parents saw themselves as coaches, while American parents tended to act more like cheerleaders. ~ Amanda Ripley

The Korean war has always been an unpopular war among the American people. ~ Paul Robeson

...travel permits to Pyongyang were notoriously hard to get. In order to keep Pyongyang as a showcase city, the North Korean government restricted visitors. ~ Barbara Demick

I'm a quarter Chinese and three-quarter Filipino. I don't look Filipino; I look more Chinese or Korean. It actually works in my favor: in terms of roles, it gives me a broader canvas. ~ Reggie Lee

East Asia has prospered since the end of the Vietnam War, and Northeast Asia has prospered since the end of the Korean War in a way that seems unimaginable when you think of the history of the first half of the century. ~ William Kirby

Although all new talkers say names, use similar sounds, and prefer nouns more
than other parts of speech, the ratio of nouns to verbs and adjectives varies
from place to place (Waxman et al., 2013). For example, by 18 months, Englishspeaking infants speak far more nouns than verbs compared to Chinese or Korean
infants. Why?
One explanation goes back to the language itself. The Chinese and Korean
languages are "verb-friendly" in that verbs are placed at the beginning or end of
sentences. That facilitates learning. By contrast, English verbs occur anywhere in
a sentence, and their forms change in illogical ways (e.g., go, gone, will go, went).
This irregularity may make English verbs harder to learn, although the fact that
English verbs often have distinctive suffixes (-ing, -ed) and helper words (was, did,
had) may make it easier (Waxman et al., 2013). ~ Kathleen Stassen Berger

My wife will tell you it's the little things, like driving my boys to school on my days off so she can rest. We're not into PDA, but every time we end a phone conversation, we say 'sarang,' which means love in Korean. ~ Daniel Dae Kim

When I was growing up, we were taught in school that North Koreans, and especially the North Korean leadership, were all devils. ~ Park Chan-wook

Traveling on, the shaft of his light reached now a great, dully shining oblong, and he stopped, surprised. Then, through the glass sides, he saw bright shapes of fish wheel in schools down the opaque water, startled by the illumination. Coming at last, and so suddenly, on life like his own, Mr. Lecky moved closer. The fixed flood of his light enveloped these small fish dimly, glowed back on him. They came sliding, drifting, mouths in motion, gills rippling, up the light, against the glass. Their senseless round eyes stared at Mr. Lecky. Idling with great grace, the extravagant products of selective breeding - fringetails, Korean, calico - passed, swayed about, came languidly back. Moving faster, stub-finned, crop-tailed danios from the Malabar coast appeared, hovered, taking the light on their fat flanks, now spotted, now iridescent pearl or opal.

Seeing so many of them, so eager and attentive, Mr. Lecky felt an unexpected compunction. He was their only proprietor; and soon, trapped unnaturally here in the big tank, they would starve to death. His light went back to a counter he had just passed, showing him again the half-noticed packages - food for birds and pet animals, food, too, for fish. Returning to the tank, his light found many of the fish still waiting, the rest rushing back. He went and took a package, tore the top off, and poured the contents onto the rectangle of open water. It would perhaps postpone the time when, having eaten each other, the sick rema ~ James Gould Cozzens

Back then, I think, both sides were just very young. They needed to grow up enough to realize that thing get quite complicated in the business of living, that a lot of things require mutual understanding and compromise. I mean, when you get right down to it, all business for us men on earth is based on material things - so we've just got to work hard and share the fruits of our labors with one another. Only when that is done righteously can we render our faith honorably to God. Within a generation of adopting a school of thought in the name of New Learning, be it Christianity or socialism, we all became such ardent followers that we forgot the way of life we'd led for so long. (2007: 163) ~ Hwang Sok-yong

Korean audiences are amazing. The fans scream so loud, and that really surprises skaters when they first perform in my shows. ~ Kim Yuna

He was desperately lonely. He had a hard time connecting with new people. If South Koreans were sympathetic toward him, he found them condescending. Even though he hated the North Korean regime, he found he'd get defensive when South Koreans criticized it. This was a common predicament for defectors. ~ Barbara Demick

(The North Korean army had to lower its height requirement from five feet three in the early 1990s because of the stunting of the younger generation.) ~ Barbara Demick

When the Korean economy was just trying to get back on its feet after the war, having parks was a luxury. ~ Lee Myung-bak

I've always been a fan of Korean cinema but never really pursued it, as I wanted to pave my way here in the States. I figured, once I established myself here, Korea might take notice. And it did. ~ Brian Tee

Even if you buy a Finnish, Korean or American phone - it will be Ericsson on the inside. ~ Hans Vestberg

The Korean War, which China entered on the side of North Korea, fixed Mao's image in the United States as another unappeasable Communist. ~ Pankaj Mishra

There is an old saying that goes 'Start by plucking a hair, end by killing a man'. It is also said, 'Two hands must meet to make a sound'. The atrocities that happened here weren't carried out by strangers - it was us, the people who'd once lived together harmoniously in the same village."
"They say it was the superstitious freaks who did it."
"No, it was Satan who did it."
"Come now, what sort of a ghost is that?"
Ryu Yosop replied, "It is the black thing that lives in the heart of every man. ~ Hwang Sok-yong

In 2013, Samsung accounted for about 20 percent of South Korea's total business profits. Samsung Electronics, just one of scores of subsidiaries, accounts for close to 15 percent of the total shares in the South Korean stock market. But you don't need to know these figures to get a feel for Samsung's hold on the country. ~ Kim Young-ha

I always think of the future. I think that's how I can work happily now. And I always think 'where would I be living if I married a Korean person?' I work hard now for my future, my future wife and family. ~ Nichkhun

I supported the Korean Trade Agreement in 2011. They promised - when it was signed, President [Barak] Obama said it would increase our exports to Korea by $10 billion a year.That creates jobs in America.Since - last year, 2015, there was no increase, like instead of billions of dollars there was like a $100 million increase in our exports to Korea, whereas as their imports to us went up $12 billion, and our trade deficit increased 240 percent. ~ Jeff Sessions

When he reached the last hole he saw, far to the west, a series of rockets bloom in the sky. He watched their green and yellow and red petals arch across the horizon, and fade into the gloom of the earth. It was very beautiful, but he recognized them for Chinese rockets. ~ Pat Frank

The single craziest thing about being a priest, he'd found, was that celibacy was simultaneously the most private and most public aspect of his life. One of his linguistics professors, a man named Samuel Goldstein, had helped him understand the consequences of that simple fact. Sam was Korean by birth, so if you knew his name, you knew he was adopted. "What got me when I was a kid was that people knew something fundamental about me and my family just by looking at us. I felt like I had a big neon sign over my head flashing ADOPTEE," Sam told him. "It's not that I was ashamed of being adopted. I just wished that I had the option of revealing it myself. ~ Mary Doria Russell

There's our homecoming picture. Last Halloween, when I dressed up as Mulan and Peter wore a dragon costume. There's a receipt from Tart and Tangy. One of his notes to me, from before. If you make Josh's dumb white-chocolate cranberry cookies and not my fruitcake ones, it's over. Pictures of us from Senior Week. Prom. Dried rose petals from my corsage. The Sixteen Candles picture.
There are some things I didn't include, like the ticket stub from our first real date, the note he wrote me that said, I like you in blue. Those things are tucked away in my hatbox. I'll never let those go.
But the really special thing I've included is my letter, the one I wrote to him so long ago, the one that brought us together. I wanted to keep it, but something felt right about Peter having it. One day all of this will be proof, proof that we were here, proof that we loved each other. It's the guarantee that no matter what happens to us in the future, this time was ours.
When he gets to that page, Peter stops. "I thought you wanted to keep this," he said.
"I wanted to, but then I felt like you should have it. Just promise you'll keep it forever."
He turns the page. It's a picture from when we took my grandma to karaoke. I sang "You're So Vain" and dedicated it to Peter. Peter got up and sang "Style" by Taylor Swift. Then he dueted "Unchained Melody" with my grandma, and after, she made us both promise to take a Korean language class at UVA. She and Peter took a ton of se ~ Jenny Han

I got called back into the Navy during the Korean War. ~ Daniel J. Evans

Undoubtedly, the best way for a consumer to have a good time in the 2010s was to turn to Korean products: for a car, Kia and Hyundai; for electronics, LG and Samsung. ~ Michel Houellebecq

Hwang Jung-eun is one of the brightest stars of the new South Korean generation - she's Han Kang's favourite, and the novel we're publishing scooped the prestigious Bookseller's Award, for critically-acclaimed fiction that also has a wide popular appeal. She stands out for her focus on social minorities - her protagonists are slum inhabitants, trans women, orphans - and for the way she melds this hard-edged social critique with obliquely fantastical elements and offbeat dialogue. ~ Deborah Smith

Even in the far future,
never forget the you of right now
Wherever you are right now,
you're just taking a break ~ BTS