I am a Korean student, who is currently living in Paju - the very north part of South Korea. I like to talk with people about social issues all around the world like politics, education or welfare. But I also would also love to talk about movie, books, and music (especially classical). And I really like traveling!

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

I think here is a good place to write down my ideas about traveling.

For me, the purpose of traveling is to throw endless questions on myself. Me, myself is a 'traveler', but also a 'little world'. When I go to travel, it's not just moving a body, but to carrying all the historical, social, political, cultural, economical background/viewpoint of myself. Traveling, therefore, is for a person to visit a new place, but also a crash of a little world to a big/unfamiliar world. Then the big/unfamiliar world will make a big confusion in my little world, and make my well-ordered way of thinking & living disordered.

So the traveling is dangerous. That doesn't mean your personal safety is not protected. It is dangerous because you may have an experience in an improper time, when you are not ready. I this case, a travelor use some interpretative frame to protect their thinking - like déjàvu, appearance, and culture differences. "I've seen it before in another country." "Oh, this is pretty!" "This is so different with my country." These kind of interpretative frame can arouse a person's curiousity, but it will be impossible to understand the implicit meanings. It will just remain as a 'curiosity'. Moreover, you will loose a great opportunity of thinking that was provided by a destination because you are pretending that you know well about something, even though you are not.

But it is impossible for a travelor, to be able to read the meanings and contours of the objects and events in front of their eyes at a look. The streets are full of social and historical clouds, and will throw you into a confusion. It will be good if you had some proper research about the cities you are going to visit, but if not, you will need to put your 'hasty feelings' in parenthesis, and will need a patiences of thinking to prevent your 'hasty ascription of meaning'.

If the local household seems poorly, you should not click your tongue and go back to your hotel, but should ask yourself if there is any sense of superiority behind of your slight pity. Also, you can ask yourself if the place are being tourist attraction, their community life disbands, cheap-labor increases because of the visiting of the travlors inluding you. What if your expensive camera in your hand is making their poverty much miserable? What if your slight pity became available because of your thinking that you can face away the situation, or get away from the situation whenever you want? What if your way of thinking was based on the ideas like "the locals are deeply rooted in the ground like a plant, but I can move around anywhere like an animal"?

I want to throw these kind of endless questions to myself while I am traveling, and would like to share that with my guests and hosts. So what places to visit & take pictures, it doesn't matter for me. It will be great to visit some places that makes me think or meditate a lot and share the thinking with other people or write it down in my journal.

Interests

I loved reading from an early age. These are my favourute authors. Saint-Exupéry, George Orwell, Noam Chomsky, Richard Bach, Ernest Hemingway, Leo Tolstoy, George Soros, Carl Marx, and Friedrich Nietzsche.

My hobby is to collect foreign moneys - it is quite different with many other people who does that because I have never bought the money by myself. I grew up in a Christian family, so most of my collection, I received them from the missionaries, friend of ours from all over the world. Each money have their own stories, and make me think of the one who gave me that. It doesn't matter if it is expensive or cheap, valuable or not. They are just full of reminiscences of my precious friends. Maybe you can be one of them!

And I really like to go to museums!

• animals
• culture
• books
• education
• meditation
• politics
• reading
• traveling
• music
• violin
• cycling
• teaching
• history
• mountains

Teach, Learn, Share

I can play violin for you - I played it since I was 5 years old. I decided not to be a violinist because my teacher required me to practice 10 hours a day, but still I enjoy playing it.

I can also teach you how to read Korean characters. I guarantee you that if you stay with me for 3 or more days, you will be fluent on reading Korean letters. It's so scientific and easy to learn because the king who made it was... well... he was a genius!

I would like to teach you some Chinese characters also if you want!

And... I can also tell you why Korea was seperated to 2 parts, South and North, and why the North Korea started nuclear developement and why are they not giving it up until now.

What I Can Share with Hosts

I can share a room with you, and can bike with you. Because here is a suburb, we have very nice mountains and streams. It's really good to bike! And also I can show you North Korea even though we can't visit there. There is a nice observatory neer hear. If my time is okay we can visit Seoul together and hang around little bit. Since I really like history, I can explain the history of Seoul, and of course of entire Korea.

Countries I’ve Visited

China, France, Germany, United States

Countries I’ve Lived In

South Korea, United States