Sunday, July 5, 2026
Friday, July 3, 2026
Ang Aking Mga Mirasol
Ang aking mga mirasol
Alagad ng Musika
Alagad ng Sining
Nawa’y kayo ay pagpalain
Ng Dakilang Lumikha
Nawa’y maging matatag ang inyong puso,
At matuwid ang inyong landas.
Manatiling mapagpakumbaba sa bawat tagumpay,
May tapang sa bawat pagsubok.
Dalhin ninyo ang liwanag saan man kayo naroroon,
At ipadama ang pag-asa sa inyong mga gawain at likha.
Kasabay ng kabutihan at katarungan
Habang kayo’y patuloy na naglalakbay
Tandaan ninyong lagi kayong mahal.
Kayong aking mga mirasol
Laging harapin ang liwanag.
Thursday, July 2, 2026
Tuesday, June 30, 2026
When Seoul Surprises: Why BTS’s Arirang resonates with so many people around the world
This did not surprise me because I was unfamiliar with
public art. Our annual visual arts exhibition in school includes art
installations of our students, and when my children were still in university, I
often spent afternoons sitting beside sculptures while waiting for them after
class. Public art has always invited me to linger.
What gladdened me in South Korea was something else.
Everywhere we went: Busan, Changwon, Daegu, and Seoul, art
was not an afterthought. It felt woven into the country’s everyday conversation
with its people. We encountered contemporary sculptures standing quietly
against mountains, historical monuments in city parks, mosaics on neighborhood
walls, granite animals beneath pine trees, bronze figures honoring books and
learning, and historical markers preserving stories beside bicycle paths. None
of them demanded attention but I did notice somehow. What left a lasting
impression is that they simply existed alongside ordinary life, waiting for
anyone willing to slow down, to pause and notice.
That says something about South Korea.
On our free day of the tour, while biking through Yeouido
along the Hangang, we stopped beneath a bridge where a series of historical
markers caught my attention. They narrated the story of Yeouido before it
became the bustling financial district it is today. Once a sandy island across
Mapo Port, it became an airfield during the Japanese occupation.
One marker carried the words, “Yeouido, Where Dreams Take
Flight.” I lingered over that sentence because it speaks of more than airports,
arrivals and departures, or the passage from one era to another. It speaks of
aspiration. The markers introduced pioneers of aviation whose dreams inspired
others to imagine new possibilities for themselves and for their country.
Dreams and aspirations move from one generation to another,
from teacher to student, from artist to artist, from parent to child, from
dreamer to dreamer. This is why BTS’s What Is Your Love Song? campaign makes a
lot of sense.
Earlier this year, many ARMYs wondered why Arirang seemed to
receive so little promotion. There were no endless countdowns or overwhelming
publicity. Instead, BTS offered a simple question: What is your love song? We
got to see buildings wrapped in humongous red ribbons.
Walking through Korea, I began to see that question
differently. It behaves like public art. It does not tell us what to think. It
invites us to participate. It asks each of us to pause, reflect, and discover
our own answer.
This is also what Namjooning has come to mean for me. It is
not simply visiting museums or cafés because Namjoon had been there, but
learning to pay attention to the culture that shaped his artistry. Public art.
Historical markers. Trees. Pottery. Sculptures. Rivers. Books. Conversations.
Ordinary things that lead to every day beauty.
As a librarian, I have always believed that stories live
inside books and that it expands outside its pages. South Korea amplified and
validated this belief.
Stories are cast in bronze. Carved in granite. Painted on
walls. Placed beside rivers. Installed in parks. Waiting for someone curious
enough to stop.
That is also why BTS’s music resonates with so many people
around the world. It did not emerge in isolation. It grew from a culture that
understands the importance of persisting, remembering, creating, questioning,
and leaving something beautiful behind for the next person to discover.
That too, is a love song. A song of the people. Arirang.
Apobangpo! Purple and true!
Monday, June 29, 2026
Saturday, June 27, 2026
When Seoul Surprises: History Beneath Our Wheels
Near the bike rental station stood a tunnel with a sign: “A
Walk Through the History of Yeouido Airport.” I was tempted to walk through it,
but we had bicycles waiting and the road ahead seemed to be calling us instead.
For the next hour, we rode along the Hangang, passing families on picnic mats,
couples strolling beneath the trees, runners, bikers, too and children racing
ahead of their parents. Eventually, we stopped beneath one of the bridges to
rest. That was when a series of historical markers caught my attention.
The markers narrated the story of Yeouido before becoming
the financial district and riverside park that people know it today. Once little more than a sandy
island across Mapo Port, its destiny changed during the Japanese occupation
when an airfield was built there. As I walked from one marker to another, I
realized that this was not merely the history of an airport. It was the history
of people whose dreams took flight.
One marker bore the words: “Yeouido, Where Dreams Take
Flight.” It is a beautiful phrase because it speaks of more than airplanes,
arrivals, departures, or the passage from one era to the next. It speaks of
aspiration.
The story begins with Art Smith, an American aviator whose
aerial demonstrations at Yeouido in 1917 captivated thousands and inspired many
Koreans to dream of flying.
Among those inspired was An Chang-nam, who became the first
Korean pilot to fly over Korea. Beyond aviation, he devoted himself to Korea’s
independence movement before his life was cut short in a plane crash at only
twenty-nine years old.
Art Smith inspired An Chang-nam. An Chang-nam inspired Kwon
Ki-ok. One person’s courage became another person’s beginning.
Reading those markers, I realized that inspiration also has
a history. It moves from one generation to the next, from teacher to student,
from artist to artist, from parent to child, from dreamer to dreamer.
I then realized how BTS’s songs about hope, resilience, and
even resistance feel deeply rooted rather than entirely new. They belong to a
much longer Korean tradition in which art, music, and culture carry memory,
courage, and hope across generations.
Not because BTS is equivalent to these historical figures,
but because they, too, have inspired millions of people to create, study,
volunteer, teach, write, make art, to simply choose one more day to live or
endure difficult seasons. Their music becomes another marker along the path,
reminding those who come after them that courage can be inherited.
As a librarian, I have spent much of my life believing that history lives in books as well as places inhabited by dreamers, innovators and wanderers. Seoul validated that. History also lives in parks, tunnels, riverbanks, and the places where people choose to stop and read the space and environment.
Sometimes the greatest discoveries are not found inside
museums alone. Sometimes they are waiting beside a bicycle path, though
unnoticed, reminding us that every generation leaves markers for the next.
Friday, June 26, 2026
When Seoul Surprises: Damien’s Shark and the Philosophy of Namjooning
Kuya once spoke about Hirst’s The Physical Impossibility of
Death in the Mind of Someone Living as a class topic in his humanities class.
ARMY Daughter, who works in a museum joined the conversation. I have been with
artists long enough to understant the quentessence and quirks of artworks. A
shark in a tank of formaldehyde is outrageous, indeed, but I never thought that
one day I would stand before the work itself.
Last week, at the National Museum of Modern Contemporary Art
in Seoul, I finally did.
It was larger than I had imagined.
Suspended in a glass tank, the shark appeared impossibly
still, yet strangely alive. It was neither simply dead nor fully alive. It
existed in tension. I found myself thinking not only about death, but about
what I have come to understand as the life-death-life cycle.
This year marks ten years since my transient ischemic
attack, also known as mini-stroke.
Ten years ago, life divided itself into a before and an
after. Since then came other endings: COVID, Menopause , Ouie and Mama’s
passing, Papa’s slow disappearance into dementia, friendships that faded,
relationships that quietly unraveled, abandonment in a fickle fanbase, children
growing into adults.
Looking back, I realize that life has never moved in a
straight line. It unfolds in cycles. Something ends. Something is lost.
Something new quietly begins.
We left the museum and as we wander into Cafe Homie for
coffee, I carried a strange feeling of contentment.
As I ordered our drinks, only then did I discover that
Namjoon had once spent time there and had taken a photograph from the space
where I happened to be sitting.
The coincidence made me giddy. It also completed the day.
One artist had invited me to contemplate mortality. Another
quietly reminded me how to inhabit life. Suddenly, I understood Namjooning a
little differently. It is not about collecting places because RM once visited
them. It is not about reproducing someone else’s itinerary. It is about
cultivating the same habits of attention.
Standing before difficult works of art. Reading widely.
Walking without hurry. Sitting in cafés. Listening more than speaking. Allowing
museums, rivers, trees, books, art, music and conversations to reshape the way
we see the world.
That afternoon, we wandered through a small gallery in
Insadong. We rode bicycles along the Hangang. We cooled our tired feet in a
shallow stream while children laughed nearby and elderly couples watched the
evening settle over the river.
Perhaps that is why the day remains one of the most
meaningful moments of our Bangtan Pilgrimage. I came to Korea hoping to
understand the culture that shaped BTS. Instead, I received more.
I came home understanding something about my own life. That
is the invitation of both Damien Hirst and Kim Namjoon of BTS. To keep looking.
To keep wondering. To keep making. To keep living.
Survival becomes a story where life thrives. The opposite of
death is not life. It is forgetting to live.
