Islander 30 - Relationships and Meaning

Relationships and Meaning

BUS INESS

Why does the relationship between urban and rural labour markets nneed improving?

The Fall of the Ivory Towers

What does AI mean to you?

Hierarchical vs. Flat Organisational Structure in Firms

My experience of building relationships Beyond the Curriculum

Seungho Ham, Year 13, Halla

Edited by Bonnie Hyun, Year 13, Halla

Why does the relationship between the urban and rural labour markets need improving?

Many people think that there are clear differences between the urban and the rural regions. Location, population, infrastructure, the average age of the residents, social indicators show the evident difference between the two areas. However, this is an oversimplification, especially in the labour market, because the rural and urban areas have close and complicated relationships in their labour markets.

Economically, rural-urban linkages play key roles in the flows of agricultural and other commodities from rural-based producers to urban markets and, in the opposite direction, flows of manufactured and imported goods from urban centres to rural settlements. This flow includes transferring human resources such as the labour force and enterprise.

Research from the ILO(2019) demonstrates that a greater portion of workers are living in rural areas globally. This trend is remarkably high in Africa, Asia and the Pacific regions. In Arab States, the Americas, Europe and Central Asia, a relatively greater portion of workers are living in the urban areas. Interestingly, the average GDP per capita, the total of all value-added created in an economy per person, of the Arab Staates, the Americas, Europe and Central Asian countries is relatively higher than the African, Asian and Pacific areas. This trend shows that if the country is economically well-off, more of the population will be concentrated in the urban areas. As the GDP increases there will be more demand for labour and young rural residents will move to the urban districts to get jobs with better pay and social connections.

This graph also shows the different socioeconomic conditions of the urban and rural workforce. It suggests that in more economically developed regions, rural labour markets are less of a driver of employment creation than in urban labour markets. In contrast, in less developed economies (and especially in low-income countries), people living in rural areas have a stronger tendency to participate in the labour force, and particularly in employment, while inactivity appears to be more commonly urban. This may reflect a situation in which many individuals in rural areas are obliged to take up employment regardless of the characteristics of the job or the working conditions in order to survive, while in urban areas the jobless may be more able to afford to look for a proper job for longer or to quit the labour force altogether. It is also important to note that inactive persons include the retired, students focusing full-time on their education and homemakers. Where informality is more pervasive in rural areas, the corresponding lower social protection coverage and insufficient oldage pensions in rural areas may mean that older individuals are forced to remain in employment rather than retire. Likewise, the socioeconomic context in rural areas may keep students from devoting themselves exclusively to their education.

These characteriistics of the labour market cause significant economic losses. As the number of educated unemployed increases in urban areas, the labour force will not be used efficiently, and in rural areas, it will be deployed only in certain areas without many educational opportunities, slowing improvements in the working environment and technology.

To overcome these regional limitations, the development of the labour force in urban and rural areas is very important. Potential workers in the urban labour market have more opportunities to get an education than in rural areas but fewer workplaces, and potential workers in the rural labour market have more workplaces than in cities, but lack opportunities to get an education. More inter-connection between the urban and rural areas will lead to the increase in demand for the goods produced in urban areas and in small-farm production in the rural regions. This increase in demand and expansion in the economy will increase employment as firms earn more and produce more by hiring more resources.

To conclude, building and developing deeper relationships between the urban and rural labour market is important to provide sufficient workplaces and education for each side.

The Fall of the Ivory Towers

By Warrick Kwon, Year 11, Noro

Whetherit be the streets of the City of London, Wall Street or Yeouido, the financial districts across the world are seen as the heart of the city, in respect to both of its socioeconomic and demographic aspects. In regards to city demographics, the financial districts function as the ivory towers of the city: bankers inhabit the soaring skyscrapers that enlighten the skylines during the night. The grandiose bank buildings of the past, built with robust marbles to project messages of credibility and trustworthiness, have now been replaced by glass skyscrapers which shout out that ‘the sky is the limit’, a prevalent phrase amongst contemporary bankers. In regards to the socioeconomic aspects of the city, banks play a pivotal role in functioning as the heart of the city through supporting individuals’ economic activities.

In these structures live the subject of today’s article: bankers. In their ivory towers, they stand above businesses and people, allowing transactions to happen, making investments based on a significantly greater arsenal of information and liquidity than the average man. It is this mysterious nature of their occupation that gives them the elevated social premium and idolisation amongst the majority of the population: when we think of bankers, what first comes to mind is not corporate valuations which haunt the countless nights of analysts. Even so, not many of us are even actually aware of the diverse range of roles and jobs that exist within an investment bank.

Edited by Yongjae (Jeremy) Kim

However, one thing is for certain: when we think of investment bankers, the first words that come to mind are slick suits, luxurious after-hour parties, million dollar bonuses and large mansions. Rather than the essence of their occupation, we take them for how they are superficially seen within society. The uncomfortable truth is that all of this might be nothing but an illusion that deceives the common eye. The reality is, yes, there may be elements of partying and large incentives, but a more significant portion of bankers’ lives are composed of countless hours suffering from severe workloads in their allegedly privileged ‘ivory towers.’ It is an industrial standard for junior bankers to spend up to 100+ hours a week in their cubicles where it has simply become naïve for them to believe in the existence of a work-life balance given the nature of their heavy workload. Even if they were to be fit to survive 100 hours of work, the strictly hierarchical workplace environment where promotion is based on the duration of their experience in the firm, not a meritocratic metric, often limits what they can do and their incentives. In short, the portfolio managers who manage millions, or even billions, on TV shows are the very few, the crème de la crème of the bank hierarchy: not the majority of investment bankers.

Perhaps this is why we have seen a rapid decline in the number of prospective individuals striving to enter the banking industry. The infamous working hours and workload have deterred people from joining the industry, and this has made it increasingly difficult for firms to attract the most talented individuals to the industry. Moreover, the fact that in recent years there has been a rapid expansion of other industries as attractive alternatives for those who might have joined the banking profession certainly did not help in assisting the industry with a greater influx of prospective workers. Nevertheless, the banking industry, which is renowned for hiring only the most qualified individuals in the job market, has been swift to prevent excessive talents from flowing out. Even prestigious investment banks located in Wall Street who have previously been robust in their stances to not raise bankers’ wages have announced shifting pay structures reflecting the demands of workers. To illustrate, major investment banks such as Morgan Stanley, Barclays and JP Morgan have all raised wages for junior bankers who have just been recruited out of undergraduate and graduate studies from $84,000 to $110,000, $85,000 to $100,000 and $85,000 to $100,000 respectively. On top of this, Goldman Sachs which was one of the most inflexible in terms of raising wages, have also increased wages from $85,000 to $110,000 indicating how significant the threat that firms are feeling is. Such news may be music to those aspiring bankers, but what makes this action a landmark decision for banks is the fact that banks have previously been conservative in changing their payment structures and amounts. Already wages are considerably higher than in other industries and decision making procedures of banks are difficult to change, the recent change in how much junior bankers receive during their first two years of employment indicates the sense of threat banks are feeling.

Despite the efforts of the banking industry to reverse their worker problem, it is worth noting that such may only be a temporary band-aid solution to tackle the issue. After the real estate bubble burst in 2009 forcing a rapid introduction of regulations that limited the activities of banks and the financial market overall, banks were no longer able to leverage as much they did nor craft a multitude of financial derivatives that played a significant role in the industry’s profit mechanism. Thus, it may be suggested that the only way to retain its glorious past will be through not only even more drastic transformations to payment structures but also through luring talented individuals through developing the industry’s performance for years to come in a broader scope.

What does AI mean to you?

In 1997, history was made. IBM's AI machine, Deep Blue, defeated a world chess champion Garry Kasparov. Since people have always considered the area of Chess, contemplation requiring people’s pure thinking ability, the feeling of shock and awe prevailed across the world. It was a moment that everyone felt a sense of expectation yet anxiety that the AI could be superior to human beings in both automatic work and conscious work. In 2016 Lee Se Dol, a world champion of Baduk, had 5 matches against an AI machine named ‘Alphago’ created by DeepMind. Despite Lee Se Dol being beaten 4 to 1 by Alphago, we were neither disappointed nor shocked, but rather praised Lee Se Dol for defeating Alphago once. Still, the glimpse of hope for us was brutally torn to shreds, after Lee Se Dol, ridiculed, said “Alphago was further developed after the match I won. My every play did not work for Alphago anymore. Alphago is gradually developing.” These were the words that foresaw exactly what would happen to us.

By Justin Kim, Year 12, Halla Edited by Ms.Bate

When you hear the word “proletarians”, what unconsciously pops up in your mind? Marxism? Poor workers planning a revolution against the government? Socially forsaken people? At this moment, the proletarians are us, human beings who are threatened by AI. Even though our human beings have developed intelligence over the centuries, we were still animals - we are imperfect, dishonest, needing money, sleep and food to sustain us. Otherwise, there came AI which could process more quickly and more accurately than us, be 100% honest and straightforward, and work 24/7/365 without food, sleep and money for their livelihood. For the companies, profit-seeking entities, which candidate, human beings or AI, would companies prefer to hire? AI, which has a far higher productivity with a far less production cost, would be a superior worker to us. As AI’s applicability expands to the cognitive field, more and more human workers are threatened with replacement.

It might seem a fantasy for us to be replaced by AI robots, but unfortunately some of us are not aware that we are now partially being replaced by AI robots. For example, Goldman Sachs has announced the grand plan to gradually replace their traders with AI traders. Chavez, the entrepreneur of Goldman Sachs, argued that 4 human traders can be replaced by 1 AI computer, and decided to invest more than $72.5 million in AI development and analytics. In 2018 one third of Goldman Sachs employees were AI analytics or engineers. This shows that human beings, including you, are at the verge of being replaced by AI which is better than you in every aspect as a worker. Then, the skills and experiences learned would not help the poor unemployed to win the job over AI, thus the unemployed become a useless workforce, “proletarians”.

Would this be doom for the human population, giving up their crown and becoming a mere assistant to the AI robots? Of course nothing is confirmed and the long future cannot be foreseen exactly. However, there has been a clear trend in the exponential growth in the technology over the era as this can be seen by a flood of revolutionary developments consistently shown in the 21st century. There would be a definite point, not a very long way away, at which AI completely becomes superior to human beings in terms of cognitive tasks. In terms of our society, AI means a revolution of efficiency and possibility for an unprecedented rate of development in human history. For people who aspire to survive AI not knowing when this threat will lead to an endpoint for their career, their endpoint as a valuable worker. However, as AI has to produce something we wnat to remain vaaluablle, we

Hierarchical vs. Flat Organisational Structure in Firms

Hierarchical organisational structures have had a long history in industries, perhaps since the very origins of modern business. A strict hierarchical relationship between members of a company has helped many traditional firms flourish, and many have hence long devoted themselves to retaining a system of such.

It was only in the recent past, when the world started to see an increasing number of firms - especially newborn, innovative ones - inclining themselves to a flat organisational structure. This can be attributed to the role of companies such as Google: a prominent beneficiary of the flat organisational structure they have carried through since the turn of the millennium. Today, this innovative stance seems to be considered the golden key for the ideal modern firm to succeed.

However, it must still be acknowledged that regardless of how much the business world has shifted, the impact of the differing size, profitability, goals, and skills of respective firms are still significant, despite often being forgotten determinants in dictating a suitable organisational structure for a firm. Not all companies can, or should, be facsimiles of Google; it would be naïve for a firm to simply align themselves to this trend Silicon Valley mega-firms have constructed. Rather, a firm must deeply ponder on the sort of structure that would best suit them after weighing the benefits and drawbacks of each kind.

By Jeremy Yongjae Kim, Year 12 Halla Edited by Andrew Kim, Year 12, Halla

Hierarchical Organisational Structures

Hierarchical organisational structures resemble a pyramid, where there exists a chain of command from top to bottom. Often, a single CEO or a small oligarchy governs a hierarchical firm, with the number of employees generally increasing down the hierarchy. It is easy to picture this structure as being similar to a military command structure or a feudal system. It is common to see such structures in large and conventional firms, which require a hierarchy to better accommodate their enormous size and to clarify reporting relationships. Many of these firms, however, retain such a system merely because they have long been accustomed to this sort of structure through years of hierarchical management experience.

One benefit of a hierarchical structure is that employees are presented with opportunities to “climb the ladder” to reach senior positions in a firm, where further stability and income is guaranteed. Hence, employees in hierarchical firms can welcome a relatively clear career path, with a better understanding of the road they must take in order to advance towards success. This may encourage productive behaviours of the employees, and a firm is likely to anticipate continual growth unless they fail to compensate their employees with satisfactory income.

Also, companies with a hierarchical organizational structure typically consist of several departments, each with more niche positions than flat organizations. This allows employees to become experts in their field, with many opportunities to specialise and develop their skills as valuable capital to the firm. This is especially beneficial for conglomerates or expansive firms, which seek expertise in multiple areas in order to target a wider market.

However, there are still certain disadvantages to a hierarchical structure. Hierarchical firms are continually prone to bureaucracy - employees are constantly walking on eggshells, burdened with competitive pressures from above and from their colleagues. In addition, niche positions may allow the coexistence of multiple skills within a firm, but may induce a lack of collaboration across specialised departments. These firms tend to experience communication silos as a result, where teams talk exclusively amongst themselves at the expense of big picture company goals. It can result in uncoordinated product shipments, misinformed marketing decisions, and poor customer support, hindering efficiency and growth. A sticky ‘red tape’ (regulations or conformity to formal rules or standards which are claimed to be excessive) of a strictly regulated hierarchy may also restrict employees in terms of creativity.

Flat Organisational Structures

Per contra to hierarchical structures, flat organisational structures are structures with limited vertical management between the leadership group and employees. In some cases, there may even be no middle engagement between leadership and the employees. Likely seen in startups and small firms, this structure fosters a suitable system for those who have relatively few employees or seek for a collaborative and interconnected work environment where everyone has an equal share in contributing to the firm.

Major benefits of a flat organisational structure may be that employees have extra responsibilities and involvement to the overall growth of the firm. This is because the power and responsibilities of a firm are likely divided evenly throughout the organisation, fostering a naturally competitive environment where employees work to their full potential abilities, yet ultimately working together in a heuristic manner - this may, for example, be in the form of workers freely critiquing each other whilst working on a common project. As a result, workers are free to get involved in important conversations and decision making processes; this collaging of transparent ideas and brain power enables the achievement of maximum efficiency, necessary for a firm’s long-term growth. Considering the morale of the workers, it is also noteworthy to understand that limited bureaucracy relieves employees from pressures from above and emancipates them from unnecessary pressures.

On the other hand, a flat structure can sometimes make it difficult for employees to specialise in roles they could perform best in. In many occasions, especially with startups, each worker is expected to be ‘jack of all trades’ and to pitch in on multiple tasks. The absence of management layers makes managers and directions to be stretched thin. Overall, this may induce confusion and uncertainty among employees; in the long term, this may outturn poor oversight, deficient performance, and lack of direction, potentially detrimental to the healthy growth of a firm.

My experience of building relationships Beyond the Curriculum

By James Kang, Year 11, Mulchat Edited by Hyeonah Joh, Year 12, Halla

The trend of forming and joining groups is prevalent in society. People form communities to share interests, acquire self-esteem, feel secure, or for political, religious, or professional reasons. According to an article on Lumen Learning, there are five main characteristics of groups: interdependence, interaction, synergy, common goals, and cohesiveness.

- Interdependence: Interdependence, in essence, is the recognition of the need for others in the same group. In order to maintain the group and achieve its goals, members have to rely on each other.

- Interaction: The interaction in groups is different from everyday communication: it has a certain purpose. Interaction is key to creating roles, norms, and relationships within groups.

- Synergy: Working in groups allows their members to accomplish things that weren’t possible alone. This increase in work quality, quantity, and efficiency is referred to as synergy.

- Common goals: Interactions and synergy are only meaningful if the group has a goal. Regardless of what individuals aim for, the group as a whole must have a common goal in order to keep the members together and achieve something tangible and worthwhile.

- Cohesiveness: Members of a group or team tend to feel a sense of cohesion and wholeness, as if belonging to a larger whole. Cohesiveness defines the sense of connection and participation to a purpose bigger than that of an individual.

The five key components of groups hint at the importance of healthy relationships. The positive impacts of such relationships can be observed by looking at how relationships develop outside the classroom.

Aaren started the “Hello World” CCA with the goal of making computer science and programming more approachable for students. Now, the computer room is an environment for interaction between students, allowing them to share knowledge about the subject and aid each other. “I think getting to know people who share the same interest is a very useful experience.” His effort to prepare interactive lessons and build such relationships count for a lot.

The positive impact of relationships can also be found in the hydroponics CCA. Recently, members of the CCA have been committed to making an ‘automated hydroponics tank’ that can replace the water at set times and foster the growth of plants via a medium set at a certain concentration. They set their sights on conserving and improving the environment around us - not only the school’s but also the whole Jeju environment - and placing the hydroponics tanks around the school will be the first step towards their goal. The members feel proud that they are contributing to the public good. They also value being able to spend more time with each other which wasn’t possible before due to differing schedules. “Each time we take a step together towards our goal, I feel a higher sense of belonging and intimacy. Most importantly, doing it together with my friends is stress relieving and lets me focus more on my work.”

The development of relationships isn’t limited to CCAs. For example, the Mathematics Society, one of the biggest societies in the school, is also a place of positive influences and interactions. I joined the Mathematics Society two years ago and participated in various activities, including the Maths journal writing, HiMCM competition, Arts Week exhibition, and the Y6-7 transition. The focus of the Society is to develop mathematical skills and share the experience with each other and to others. This process of building relationships for enthusiasm in mathematics and mutual development is the main factor that allowed the great influx of new members in our Society.

Such success of building positive relationships provoked me to join the Tech Crew. The team supports performances, such as the Arts week performances, Orchestra Shows, and other big events, behind the stage. By joining the team, I was able to build stronger relationships with my friends, make new relationships with students in other year groups and the supporting teachers, and learn important values like teamwork, trust, and giving or receiving help. Though not acknowledged very often, our work is significant as we serve as the basis for those magnificent performances to happen. There are also other groups in the school that are formed to assist events, students, and even the Jeju community, such as the marketing team, media team, and the Walk and Pick CCA, all of which create a positive impact in our school and the world around us.

At all stages of their lives, people engage in groups and form teams, including play groups, performing in a band, joining in an athletics team, or studying together. Forming groups bring beneficial influences: fulfilling individual psychological needs, sharing personal interests, relieving stress, saving time, enhancing the quality of work, helping others, and many more. How students in common CCAs, Bryants, societies, and other groups depend on each other, explore new ideas together, and build a strong sense of collective identity hints a lot about the true meaning of forming relationships.

PRICE GOUGING AND HOARDING AMIDST THE CORONAVIRUS OUTBREAK

BY DONGWOOK WARRICK

KWON, YEAR 10, NORO

Desperate times call for desperate measures. When the coronavirus struck the world out of the blue, socio economic aspect sof the world were impacted in unprecedented ways. In some nations, such as Vietnam and South Korea, it provided the opportunity for proving how adept they were in dealing with a pandemic. In others, such as Britain, where 5G phone masts are burnt due to some people believing the ‘urban myths’, it revealed how much some citizens were not willing to accept scientific theories. Regardless of the discrepancies between nations, one common characteristic found in all states suffering severely from the crisis was that hikes in prices followed by hoarding of goods, where the demand is insensitive to the price, occurred frequently: the purchase of large quantities of a commodity. However, the concept of price gouging is not a new concept; long before the Covid19 outbreak, governments desperately attempted to drive down the prices of commodities in such ‘desperate times’. To illustrate, various Attorney Generals from US states impacted by natural disasters, such as Florida, have issued statements warning storeowners against price gouging. However, both empirical and theoretical reasoning suggests that efforts from the government to combat price hikes will only backfire. Ergo, government intervention should certainly not be the cure to recent supply shortages or price gouging in areas facing a national crisis such as natural disasters

and epidemics.

Primarily, the government intervention to combat price gouging severely infringes upon individual property rights. Property rights aside, it is principally a false dichotomy to label retailers and owners of the desired products as evil opportunists. The direct cause of this is because the sale of products at higher prices should not be considered an act of greediness. Price inflates simply due to the increase of demand and stagnant supply. Of course, this does not mean that people suffering from harsh situations do not deserve pity and empathy, but in national crises, everyone is a victim.

People are inevitably influenced by each other based on social phenomena. The most recent Covid19 outbreak not only impacted Wuhan’s regional economy, but net transactions in and out of China declined drastically,contributing to the overall decline of the SSE Composite Index. Thus, when everyone is a victim of circumstance, just because one happens to have what others do not cannot be the yardstick of evil and good.

What is incriminating, is the fact that the government is intervening in the flow of private property. By no means should the government interfere in individual property and liberty since property rights are the crux of the success of capitalism. Consequently, by seizing the right for individuals to reap

what they have sown, the government is undermining the very pillars of our society. Yes, some people do get these wrong. For instance, individuals who react poorly towards the demands of the market lose their property in terms of diminished value. It is better to let market forces drive price down so that the same mistakes are not made. Evidently, it is true that in a natural state, market forces are able to correct themselves. The concept of owning property gains meaning only when one is not entitled to necessarily ‘do’ something for another individual in exchange for their belongings. This was established long before us, through the concept of the ‘Invisible Hand’ proposed by a Scottish economist named Adam Smith. Thus, just as one can decide not to sell products, one is completely justified to freely choose whom and where to sell their products to, selling to anyone who wants the product for the price being charged. If the government decides to intervene in the free will of suppliers and consumers by controlling prices of products, it is clearly a violation of private property laws. The simple fact that one happens to be a supplier of essential goods such as water, electricity and medical supplies during a national crisis does not give the government the right to dictate the business decisions of companies.

How do price hikes resolve the problem faster? In this argument, we will discover the advantages of a laissez faire economic model when combating

natural disasters or the outbreak of epidemics. The underlying reason is that the market corrects itself. In this case, profit plays a pivotal role in correcting the market. The significance of profit in an economy is that it enables rapid changes and influx of goods to disaster-stricken-areas. When the price of goods escalates, it signals to the private sector to participate in these markets thereby significantly increasing the supply of goods. Ultimately, this signals supply chains and individuals around nations to manufacture and supply more products. With profit acting as a signal in an economy, the increased supplies of goods can drive prices down and ultimately solve supply shortages. In contrast, with capped prices, none of this would happen: supply will not increase due to the lack of financial incentive which is going to be even more harmful for individuals going through these crises. Ergo, it is clear that the private sector is the only agency that can help resolve the problem effective immediately. It is therefore absurd to consistently argue that the government should be the sole party handling the problem.

On the other hand, proponents of government intervention as a solution to price gouging tend to argue that governments can simply subsidise factories to produce more in order to deal with supply shortages. This is naïve: why decide to spend more of the taxpayer’s hard-earned money and harm the integrity of the system as a whole when the market clearly works? In short, there is no basis for the government to disregard a viable solution and choose to implement a totally ineffective and illegitimate solution. Even if price gouging were to be harmful for society, there are existing checks and balances in the market. First, price gouging is doomed to fail. There has to be minimumal competitors in order to buy up huge portions of the market and manipulate the flow of supplies. However, the moment where profits for producing goods increase even a little, more suppliers will be involved in the market after receiving the signal. Ergo,

cornering the market will be impossible after all. Second, firms have the innate motivation not to hike their products to unreasonable levels. With unaffordable price tags on their products, firms will be condemned and will be forced to lower their prices. If they do not comply with such societal pressure, they will face a public relations crisis resulting in the decimation of their company image. As a result, the claim that products will become unaffordable for the majority when price gouging occurs is unrealistic. These are many reasons why the free market economy can deal with price gouging better than any other government intervention.

This, of course, is not the only view. Critics claim that from a utilitarian perspective, the government creates greater utility or value through intervening within market forces. If the government can help its own citizens escape the horrible conditions they face, they explain that market forces can be violated or restricted. These ideas focus on institutional responsibility rather than individual responsibility since after all, citizens are the ones who are directly affected by the shut down of the economy, not the government and it is the government which decided to close the economy. Moreover, they question the effectiveness of the market correcting itself. The direct cause of this is because higher prices for products with low profit margins such as eggs or milk will not necessarily bring forward any extra supplies. There will be a limit towards motivating individuals to allocate their supplies of goods if they think it is not simply ‘worth it’ to take the risk and go into specific areas. Also, the speed of supplies will eventually have delays which means that goods may not reach the individuals who are really in need of them. Consequently, in a situation where price and supply mechanisms are failing to function properly, the government has a responsibility to interfere and correct the market forces to better deal with the crisis people encounter.

Nevertheless, a scenario where price gouging is present is more beneficial than the counterfactual. In a society

without price gouging, supply shortages will never be resolved. Suppliers will not be motivated from supplying products into these areas if profit margins are not greater compared to other regions. If supply continues to be an issue, it is inevitable that black markets will increase in order to sell scarce products at a higher price. This will even decrease the accessibility of prerequisite goods for individual survival. Moreover, significantly low costs of products mean that irrational consumer behaviour triggered by fear and uncertainty will increase. As a result, essential products will be less available to the most vulnerable ones which is why simply capping prices without contemplation may be counterproductive. Conversely, in a society with price gouging, it has been shown that the supply and demand will adjust to levels which resolve the problem effectively. Even if we say that supply does not increase sufficiently to give everyone access to supplies, it is still beneficial. In cases such as the corona outbreak, less public exposure leads to the less spread of the disease. Similar attempts made by foreign governments such as China and Italy prohibiting public appearance have seen to be more effective than South Korea’s response to the outbreak: giving out masks at a government-regulated price. In both scenarios, efforts to tackle price gouging is never the ideal solution to solve national crises.

Evidently, government interventions are not necessarily the best ways in tackling the issue of price gouging. The idea of viewing government intervention as an ultimate panacea is flawed. Rather, the glorified solution is oftentimes not effective due to mechanistic factors: realistic infeasibilities of actually ‘stopping’ hikes from happening and the delay of signals due to limited profit margins. Not only on a practical level, it is fundamentally wrong for governments to compromise the building blocks of our nation because of something that might be effective. Ergo, the excessive emphasis on government intervention is something that must be re-evaluated

The relationship between covid 19 and the economy Self-Isolating and Relationships in the Covid Pandemic

FICTION

The Third Titan War · Your actions can increase the violence of elephants · Bananas · Broken friendship

The man behind the dark

By Sophia Park, Year 10, Jeoji

Edited by Mr. Davies

Click-click, clatter, clatter, Click, Enter

In the darkroom, from the rectangle box, a bright shade of white illuminated the room. The sound of clicking and typing was all that could be heard. With a sudden ‘bop’ sound, on the screen, there were a few new letters. After seeing that his words were uploaded, he then left the room, with a triumphant smile.

His comment made waves on the internet. More words were added under his. The comments were increasingly more exciting than his. He has been working as an online truth-teller, where he feeds up others with ‘tea’. It has been such a normal routine for him, he even forgot the name of the person who he was supposed to write about. Well, it was only a daily occurrence. While he was out of the room, grinding a fresh batch of coffee beans. Grinding the coffee beans, he was humming to the acoustic guitar music. The sweet and bitter taste surrounded him, the corners of his mouth were going up. Today was a new, fresh day, and he was so delighted to see how the new day was going. Wearing his jacket, he left the house.

When he opened the door to his office and went to his seat, people were saying, “Good morning, Mr Smith.” He smiled at them and sat down. It was a brand new day and he was waiting for the treat that he would encounter

at the end of the day. He was the most popular man in the office. Always polite to others helped him reach the image he desired. After work, he went to his home, walking down the same paths he walked in the morning. As he went inside his house, a comfortable feeling greeted him. He took off his jacket and darted to the darkroom. This was his treat for the day. He was full of wonder about whether his comment had made waves on the forum. And oh yes it did. Under his comment, hundreds of users tagged one wanting to know more as they agreed with his words. He grinned, and this time he did something a bit different. He didn’t just post some words, but instead uploaded something worth so many pixels. Grinning, he said. “Guess we have to see what happens”

A few days passed. Mr Smith acted just as how he always lived his life. Always getting compliments from his workers, known as a kind figure in society. One day a famous figure had died, due to the recent bad comments she received. He just shrugged and went on reading the next slide. Somewhere else in the world, the police officers were there. They just couldn’t get any hint about the recent suicide. They never knew that someone had uploaded a collection of photos and the police officers were unable to find the suspect. When they tracked the IP of

the computer, it was located in Russia. How in the world were they able to find out about it? Online crimes were always hard to find out as they could easily hide their identity, they could pretend to be someone else. Only if it was no one, would they have been sitting here? Feeling the anger working on a crime for so long, they were so curious about why and who has made this happen.

On a sunny morning with birds chirping, at Mr Smith’s house, the doorbell rang. Mr Smith answered, “Who is it?” and opened the door. Soon silver handcuffs were snapped on his wrist and he was dragged away to face his crime.

The sun shone above the house, yet the whole house was dreadful, and there was no feeling of life. Inside the house, one of the rooms, one room, where one square was vibrating, yet the room remained locked.

For the people in the company, they were astonished that such a great worker had left them without saying anything. But if they knew who he was, then who is he really? Is he the same man they knew or the man who went to jail? Unable to define his identity, this was the end of Mr. Smith.

Alice in Wonderland, the Perception of Reality

By Shona Park Year 10, Noro

“I’m late, I’m late!” It is not usual to see a white rabbit with a pocket watch disappearing through what seems like an endless black hole that ends up to, well, who knows what or where? But what is more nonsensical is that a rabbit talks! Through the wondrous and most bizarre rabbit hole, landing in a land full of illogical creatures that grow and shorten in a matter of time, it seems like a mere fantasy. However, what if I told you that these fantasies can happen in real life? You suddenly sense that the objects around you shorten or tower over you as if you tried one of those ‘eat me’ cakes or magical mushrooms that caterpillars offer you. This all depends on perception, how you balance out dynamically between reality and mentality. Perception takes place in a field of dynamic forces trying to sustain the cognitive balance between the perciver’s personality, beliefs, and perception. What we perceive is the situation itself and we can define perception as a fair balance between reality and mentality. Yet, it is not sufficient to only consider mentality nor the reality as both ingredients in this balance must be weighed carefully. Or else we could end up with a syndrome known as the “Alice in Wonderland syndrome” (AIWS). The name of the symptoms seems very childlike and adventurous, however, this disease is considered something extremely serious which alters the way you see the world, as in changing your perception of the society around you.

AIWS is a rare neurological disorder characterized by distortions of visual perception which disorientate body image, the experience of time, and so on. People with this syndrome see things around them smaller or bigger than they are, feel their own body altering in size, or any of the syndrome’s numerous other symptoms.

AIWS includes heavy migraines, perturbation, and nausea as some of the initial signs of the possible syndrome. However, from this syndrome, we can see that the perception does indeed go far beyond our prognosis. It may affect all sorts of body functions such as limb controlling and discoordination, frequent memory losses, lingering sensations, abnormal hearing, and emotional instability. However, this is just a minor case of initial body malfunctions resulting from the AIWS, and this all comes down to perception.

The frequent mention of the word perception summarizes the whole concept of AIWS. The distortions in visual perception can be broken into micropsia, macropsia, pelopsia, and teleopsia - objects appearing smaller, larger, closer, and farther from the original place and size. AIWS mostly messes with the vision of a person with a false, disoriented perception inserted in their brain. To put it into easier words, hallucinations and illusions are examples of the perplexed faulty visions caused by the abnormal perception. In one case a 17-year-old boy described his symptoms as: “quite suddenly objects appear small and distant or large and close. I feel as I am getting shorter and smaller, shrinking, and also the size of persons are not longer than my index finger. Sometimes I see the blind in the window or the television getting up and down, or my leg or arm is swinging. I may hear the voices of people quite loud and close or faint and far. Occasionally, I experience attacks of migrainous headache associated with eye redness, flashes of lights, and a feeling of giddiness. I am always conscious of the intangible changes in myself and

my environment”. This indeed seems not like a wonderland in which Alice arrives due to her unsuppressed adventurous curiosity but rather an extremely unpleasant land.

The boy also comments upon the constant disturbances in his sound perception during the interview. This voice is a common one and often an experience that occurs within the patience as a form of paranoia. These disturbances encompass misinterpretation in amplifications of mundane sounds but go further as a person may be affected by the loss in the sense of time, a lack of partial perspective brought on by visual distortion. Distorted sense of velocity is the direct result of reoriented perception in terms of the lack of time and space perspectives. Just to clarify precisely, one would be inching along ever so slowly in reality but you might be sprinting uncontrollably along a rapid-moving escalator. It seems monotonous but this is the very start of the discovery of the AIWS.

Dr.Todd was the first to discover this disease. As he was working shifts in the Hospital at Menston in West Yorkshire he realized that some of his patients were experiencing severe migraines making them suffer an alteration of the sense of time, touch and perceptions of their own body. This led them to medical procedures and vast check-ups but the result was unexpected. None of the patients were suffering from brain tumors, damaged eyesight or mental illness that could be held accountable for these symptoms. They were all able to make a sensible judgment, accept the reality lucidly, being able to distinguish it from the hallucinations, but their perceptions were distorted. This was how the AIWS was brought to the world.

The reason this piece of writing was read in the first place would probably be the word that caught the most of your eyes, “Alice in Wonderland”. So other than the distorted perceptions how is this symptom came to be addressed by its name? The reason for that is because of Lewis Carroll. Other than the reason that Alice, the titular character who experiences multiple life thrilling events all involving micropsia, macropsia, pelopsia, and teleopsia and the descriptive details on the misshapen perception that are thoroughly narrated throughout the novel, is the very first of depicting the bodily distortions associated with the perception lenses gives significance, even naming this particular disease by its name. It has also been suggested that the author of the novel, Lewis Carroll has been suffering from a severe migraine which became his key motive and the true inspiration of his infamous book.

By now we can presume that the symptom is indeed troublesome in formulating our normal life. Imagine the curtains moving on their own and feeling like the bedframe is ten times smaller than you. It is not a pleasant sort of wonderland that even courageous people would favour exploring. So how can we get rid of this disease that likely seems horrifying to live with? Unfortunately, there hasn’t yet been a standardised treatment or cure for this syndrome. It is still left for us to explore this infinite rabbit hole that might lead us to something after all.

Billy Milligan

By Eunsuh Kim, Year 11, Sarah

Can you believe that there could be more than one person in a single body?

Can’t you believe it? If yes, you cannot help it. However, there has already been such a case. Billy Milligan, an American guy, is the main character of this story. Billy Milligan was a man with a mental illness called Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). Due to a traumatic childhood, he contracted the disease at the age of five and created his first divergent personality.

Billy Milligan was born in 1955. He grew up in Ohio and moved to Miami, Florida, after his parents got divorced. After moving, his mother married another man, Johnny Morrison. Billy was sexually assaulted by Johnny Morrison, and this caused him to create his first identity, Christine. Christine was a 3 year old girl who was blond and could not read. Billy also made Shawn and a boy with no name.

When he turned 9 in 1964, his identity was completely divided into 24 identities, including his original identity.

Several years later, he was arrested in 1977 for raping 3 girls at Ohio University. After being arrested, Billy was prosecuted because of 3 kidnappings, 3 armed robberies, and 4 rape cases.

As a part of his defense, he was tested by Dorothy Turner, a doctor who was working at a mental health care center in Columbus, Ohio, and she concluded that he had a dissociative identity disorder.

He had 5 main identities and 19 sub-identities. The first main identity was the original identity, himself: William Stanley Milligan. The second identity was 22 years old Arthur from England. He was the smartest identity among all 24 identities and wore glasses, could speak many different languages and controlled who could take control of the body. The third identity was Ragen Vadasconivinich, a Yugoslavian. His nickname was the ‘keeper of hate’, who took care of dangerous situations. He had the strongest power, was very skilled in martial arts, could control the adrenaline inside his body, and was very violent. The fourth identity was 16-yearold Tommy. He was an antisocial and aggressive artist who is very talented at escaping and handling electronics.

His last main identity was 18-year-old Allen, a born-to-be negotiator and swindler, and the only smoker among all identities.

Even though he genuinely had different identities, at the very beginning, the police officers and doctors refused to believe him. They thought he was acting in order to be found not guilty. However, after being diagnosed with DID, his identities became an issue. This was because Billy was a dropout student from high school, but his identities were very talented in some fields; for example, Arthur was able to speak Arabic and African languages fluently, and Tommy was able to use electronics proficiently.

Since he was proved to have other identities, in the end, he was found innocent.

After being found innocent, Billy was committed to many different mental hospitals including Athens State Mental Hospital. He was cared for by David Carl, a psychologist.

He was finally discharged from the hospital in 1988, being diagnosed as perfectly cured of DID. In 1991, he became a movie director and owned Stormy Life Productions. He lived in California from 1996 and died of cancer in 2014.

Now, can you believe that there could be more than one main identity in a body? I hope so. This story is not fiction, it is a true story based on someone’s real life. Thus, be careful. Who knows, you might have another identity inside your body, and it might take you to court!

“The only true happiness lies in knowing who you are” - Laurell K. Hamilton

PHILOSOPHY HISTORY

TEENAGE KICKS

By Ally Lee Year 11, Geomun

Edited by Seungho Ham

“You can’t just give up on someone because the situation’s not ideal. Great relationships aren’t just great because they have no problems. They’re great because both people care enough about the other person to find a way to make it work”. Relationship can be defined as the way in which two or more concepts, objects, or people are connected, or the state of being connected. It is especially crucial and complex in school, where different people gather in quite a limited space of the school building. Unfortunately and luckily, it is almost necessary to collide with each other and have conflicts with each other. The relationships that occupy most of the student’s everyday life is friendship. Friendship occupies the majority of relationships in students’ school life. It will shape the personality of a person throughout

their life (Hohmann, 2017). Especially in teenageers, most of the students' free time is spent socializing and interacting with their peers. Compared to relationships in the early stages in life, teenage relationships occupy a bigger part. Some research suggests that friendship between teenagers affects the characteristics of each individual. Furthermore, it might set the salient characteristics in the case where close friends have similar traits. For example, teenage boys tend to make friends depending on their aggressiveness. The proverb “birds of a feather flock” suggests that those with similar interests or of the same kind tend to form groups. In NLCS Jeju, those who play sports tend to gather at the Astro during lunch or break times, which leads to building a consensus. As their time spent together increases, naturally, they become closer to each other.

Moreover, friendship is different from friendship in the early stages of life. There is less differentsex friendships, and the majority of the friendship is made between the same sex (Andorfer, 2008). A high proportion of same-sex friendships last until adolscence. To elaborate, there is a research suggests that other-sex relationship has a positive correlation with antisocial behavior or teenagers, more particularly, from grade 6-7 and 8-9. However, this is only based on one study (“samesex versus other-sex best friendship in early adolscence: longitudinal predictors of antisocial behavior throughout adolescence”) and might not be reliable. In NLCS Jeju, from year 7 to 11, the school teaches the girls and boys separately. It might be a beneficial idea in one way, but not in another. The possible advantage is that it can prevent conflicts between boys and girls. The disadvantage is that students aren’t able to fully learn about the other sex. In society, almost nowhere else separates the environment completely between other sex. However, separating them since childhood may not be a good idea for preparing students for life in society. Overall, friendships in teenagers can be seen as the middle stage of friendship in life. It is not as perfectly stable as friendship in adolescence, but it can be said that

it is somewhat stable. The three expectations that a person desires for a close friend is somebody to talk to, somebody to depend on, and someone to enjoy.

Friendship can be simple and complicated at the same time. There are many theories that try to explain and prove the relationship between friends. However, relationships cannot be defined with a single scientific theory. This article suggests a few theories that are linked to friendship, but it doesn’t indicate that friendship is just a relationship that occupies the majority of a student’s teenage relationship. It differs from one person to another.

Human Pet Relationship

Human-pet relationship is a bond between a pet and the owner. A lot of people around the world take care of a variety of pets and build a special relationship with each which is different from the relationships that humans build with each other. This relationship is special because it can be decided by humans whether to have it or not. From the day the owner decides to have a pet, owners should take care of the pets as family members, providing all the essentials needed and the pets serve for their owners giving numerous benefits. Since having a pet as a new family needs lots of effort, there are many people who strongly disagree with this relationship while some love it.

Pets have served humans for a long time. The first relationship between animals and humans started more than ten thousands of years ago. Since prehistoric times, humans have been dependent on animals but in a different way to today. They had a hunter prey relationship where animals were used as a source of food and clothes. The ancestors of the pets we have now were practically used for hunting and guarding. However, as the changes in human living happened as civilizations developed, pet’s roles have also changed. In the past, if the pet’s role was very important to human’s lives, now, the pet has the role of companion. Instead of using pets as a life source, we take care of them.

as much as we take care of them, we receive more positive energies creating a mutually beneficial relationship.

Then, what benefits do pets bring to humans as a companion? Firstly, they help us with our mental health. Humans suffer from high stress levels and pets are the ones that can deal with it by providing companionship. Caring for a pet helps the owner to feel like they are needed and wanted since pets cannot live without them. Feeling loved and wanted are essential feelings for humans especially for those who feel lonley. Not only do pets help create companionship, but they also help the owners to meet new people. A special bond between pet owners exists. When we walk around the streets, we can easily see pet owners having a short talk. This helps the owners to create new friendships since it is most likely to get closer with each other naturally having similarities. Moreover, there are lots of places where all those owners can meet such as pet shops, pet cafes or the parks.

Pets help create a routine and structure of the day of the humans. Having a routine is an important part of a human life because it helps us reduce the time we waste everyday and helps us to live a healthy life. If we have a pet, most likely, no matter if you want it or not the routine will be created. Dogs need to get out and have a walk everyday, owners need to feed them regularly, and take care of what they’ve done. These are all the factors that will inevitably create a routine without any other special effort. How can a daily routine help us stay healthy? This also slightly connects to our mental health. First of all, it easily eases us

from having a bad mood. No matter how you feel today, maybe anxious, angry or stressful, you have to follow the routine. It helps us easily forget what has happened that day because we are busy all the time. Also, with a fixed routine, we can reduce the time we waste. This is beneficial because we can use time more efficiently but this is not the only thing. If we use our time well, we feel very proud of ourselves and end our day very happily.

Humans and pets have mutually beneficial relationships meaning that we have to give as we get. Some people think it is unmanageable because it requires too much time, effort and money. Just basic things such as feeding and taking a walk needs effort. However, there are many more things for the owners to do. Pets are the same living organisms as us. They need to go to hospitals when sick, need warm bedding, need toys to play with and most of all they need lots of care. If taking to hospitals, buying necessary supplies are more likely money consuming, giving lots of care is a different type of thing. It really requires lots of effort and time. For example, the owners cannot leave the house for long unless we ask someone else to take care of our pet. Also, we always have to check our pet’s condition.

Pets and humans have been interacting with each other for thousands of years and as the time passes, the form of relationship changes. Today, we form mutually beneficial relationships giving help to each other. Nobody knows how this relationship will change or develop but it is certain that humans have special bonds with pets.

BY JEAN KIM YEAR 10, JEOJI Edited by Jenny Roh Year 12, Halla East

Ways to develop relationships in love

By Hanju Park, Year Sarah Edited: Inseo Youn, Year Halla Eas

Having a stable love affair with another individual is so much harder than you would expect. Throughout the journey with your partner, there will be various unexpected setbacks, making the relationship fall into deep concern. This causes people to suffer in a new relationship after the previous one: because of the threat of mental stress naturally in the human body. A main example of the aftereffect is melancholy. This usually starts when people start to regret the breakup. It leads the individual to easily make a quick choice, which also calls up a robust desire to revert everything back to the past. This sadness sometimes becomes more severe. Daarkness steals a person’s decision-making skills, reversing the same situation onwards without letting the person to even try and think about the situation wisely. If that is the case, talk to the counselor and to prevent the consequences what are the methods we can take in order to have a healthy, fine relationship with people?

The first impression of love is always exuberant and hopeful. This gives a sense of arrogance that the relationship will last. From this misunderstanding, the stable relationship shakes and stumbles soon. So, we shouldn’t decide serious choices from being allured by the delightful mood at the start. Other’s opinions are also important and have the same value as yours. Therefore when both are suffering in a dilemma during a relationship you should consider and accept two opposing arguments. If one feels that another is dominating there’s bound to be a conflict between them.

As dating abuse is rising as social issue, the significance of respect in relationships is also gaining its worth. To keep crucial etiquettes of love, we need to speak in correct, polite words and prevent physical forces even when you’re losing your consciousness. Violence causes humans to go through a deep trauma throughout the process but also in their whole life. This compromises an individual's mental state and makes them hesitate in meeting others. Abuse is never the answer to revitalizing the connection between lovers. Never commit any kinds of abuse which degrades the situation into a more concerning problem.

Maintaining a relationship is difficult but, at the same time, it's a really important skill in our life. If we are less facetious in solving issues within the two, less breakups will happen in the world which will increase the average happiness of civilization. Keep up on understanding what others are saying and don’t act impulsively. Those are only the two points you should remind yourself when you have a lover who you never want to lose.

Relationships Surpassing Generation

By Emily Lim, Year 11, Sarah

Edited by Andrew Kim

There are various generations simultaneously co-existing such as baby boomers, Generation X, Generation Y, Millennials, and Generation Z. With different perspectives shaped by unique experiences growing up, how can all of the generations live together in one world? Are there any conflicts while also cooperating? If there are, how should they be overcome and how do generations maintain their relationships?

When Gen X and Millennial people married they had to confront some differences. Generation X (people born in 1965~1980) and Millennials (people born in 1981~1996), have different perspectives on the phone. While Millennials had to constantly check their phone, Gen X failed to understand Millennials’ attitude of having trouble putting away their phones, therefore considering them rude. This is all because they have different attitudes towards internet use and phone calls. A characteristic of Gen. X, according to Foster (NYT, 2018), is being more private and careful about what they share online. Gen X grew up using landline phones or payphones; so they regard making phone calls as inconvenient. Imagine standing in the cold at a payphone box making your call. They would prefer meeting face to face rather than waiting outside in the freezing weather without any certainty the other person will pick up. In some cases, when Gen X rather stays at home, they would not be able to know who was calling them. Thus, children were taught to answer calls, often with polite greetings and introducing their names. However, some believed the cost of making phone calls was expensive and phone calls are time-consuming. According to the research from Bankmycell, it is shown that 75% of this generation tried to avoid phone calls. Therefore, it is shown the relationship between Gen X and Millennials often experienced conflicts on how they view the use of phones and the amount of time they utilize them.

Moreover, the relationship between Gen Z and Millennials conflict with each other. As they do not have huge age gaps, they do not usually experience conflicts on newly developed technologies or lifestyles, such as phone calling, but they have different priorities before marriage. Gen Z and Millennials often start their relationship by meeting each other through dating apps or in schools. The difference is that during preparation for marriage it was found that Gen Z mostly prioritized financial independence, career stability, and owning a home. It also showed that Gen Z males prioritized career stability more compared to females, who composed 49% of the total respondents. Gen Z is uniquely different from Millenials; their freedom of choice acquired through money and careers are more prominent than love and marriage. In addition, while most generations generally seem to feel the sense of duty to marry and have a family, Gen Z do not feel the pressure of marriage and mostly do not want to marry at all. This can explain how Gen Z’s lives changed, such as women becoming more independent and getting their own careers. Now, there are no expected stereotypical gender roles, such as men earning money for the family or women having to do housework.This explains why Gen Z do not feel the need to marry and how the two generations may have disagreement over their marriage lives. Therefore Gen Z and Millennials confront conflicts with each other.

Overall, as different generations lived their lives in different cultures and time, it is natural for them to confront conflicts when they have interactions. However, generations can cooperate and find a point of compromise together, thus, showing people who lived in different time periods can also build strong relationships with each other. While they might mostly have disagreements over the use of electronics and technology, every relationship should endeavor to understand the others’ thoughts and try to see things from a different perspective.

Dream a dream

Everyone has different dreams. People usually think that a dream needs to be a job they want to have in the future. If that was the definition of a dream, many people will have the same dream. A dream is not what you want to become. Rather, it is something you want to live for. The purpose of a dream is to find value. It is important to think about what values you want to live with, and truly feel the want to find an answer to the mystery of life..

‘What is your dream?’ People find it difficult to answer this simple question. Actually, this is not a simple question. Many students find it stressful to think about their dream. It is perfectly normal to not know what your dream is. It would be rather questionable if a student has already chosen their dream. We are still young and we have experienced only a very tiny bit of the world. How can we know what we want to live for, when there are so many things we don’t know and haven’t experienced yet? Even adults don’t know what their dream is. There isn’t any serious problem living without a dream, but your dream can motivate you to live your life to the fullest. Just thinking about pursuing your dreams can make your heart beat faster and bring excitement.

By Hanna Wang, Year 10, Sarah

Edited by Hyeonah Joh

We can broaden our horizons about dreams by listening to successful people talk about their dreams. Do you know BTS? BTS is a South Korean boy band that debuted in 2013. However, when they first debuted, they faced many hardships. Their company was small and people weren’t really interested in them. Many people criticized the name of the group and they had to face malicious comments that trampled their dreams just because they said their role model was BIGBANG. One of their songs, “Paradise”, speaks about their thoughts on dreams. The lyrics says, “It’s alright to stop. There’s no need to run without even knowing the reason. It’s alright to not have a dream, only if you have moments when you can feel happiness.” These lines of the lyrics tell us that we don’t need to come up with a dream. Our dream is a true meaningful one only when we understand why we chose that dream above others. Our dreams should reflect what we want and enjoy. There is no need to continue what we are doing only because we feel like we need to do them. Many teenagers and people who recently graduated from college relate to this song, as this is when many people spend time worrying about their future.

What is the meaning of having a dream? Dreams add meaning to our lives and help us pursue through difficult times. Think about what your real dream is. You don’t have to go far. Dream a dream.

The relationship you have with yourself

The most important relationship you will develop throughout your life is, without a doubt, the one you have with yourself. I do not want to make this writing sound like a typical cheesy self-help book. These are practical, hopefully useful tips I have accumulated in my past experiences. It is a fact that mental health issues are rising to the surface, along with the development of social media. Hence the overload of mental health related quotes and content recommended on your Instagram feed. #everythingwillbeok, #justthinkpositive #loveyourself… I remember finding these easy-going, casual hashtags annoying. Putting everything aside, here are some tips for anyone struggling with their mental health.

#1 You DO NOT have to love yourself right this instant.

Yes, even your social media page now is telling you to ‘love yourself’. But you don’t have to beat yourself up for not being in love with who you are right now. Sometimes the concept of self love does nothing but add pressure. Taking a step back and simply realising that ‘Alright. No, I do not love myself. I occasionally despise myself, but that’s OK. I accept that I don’t. Maybe I will in the future, but for right now, I don’t and that is perfectly fine as well.’

#2 Instant happiness is key. Think simple. What little things make you feel better? I don’t mean big goals that will take time to achieve. It could be a cup of tea. Or a comfort food like pizza. Watch that ‘meaningless’ comedy show and laugh a little. Something that would get your mind off of anything you’re going through. Personally, I went on late night drives with my mom with the windows down and the music blasting. It might not feel like much but it’s good to have someone who will always have your back when you are looking for an escape to breathe.

#3 If you feel like going on a downward spiral, get out of your bed and take a shower immediately.

This one sounds awfully specific, but there is a perfectly good reason why. The ultimate start of lethargy is not taking care of yourself, primarily bad hygiene. Try to get out of the gloomy endless abyss before you get consumed, just shower and don’t think about abandoning self care.

#4 Detach yourself from feeling low

Something I have heard endless times is that depression is more of a medical thing than an emotion. When your brain is feeling low that means your brain is lacking serotonin at the moment, a hormone which stabilises your mood and sense of

well-being. This means that you being low is not your ‘fault’ nor is it something that you can fully control. Do not beat yourself up thinking that it is. Get out and get some physical exerciise and boost your serotonin.

#5 No overdosing in self pity Sadness is addictive. Much more addictive than happiness. Sadness has lots and lots of layers to it, depression, shame, pity, anger to name a few. Happiness is the opposite. It is mainly one note. Happiness isn’t a permanent emotional state. It comes and goes, and it’s so precious to us exactly because it’s so fleeting. You can bring yourself to a sustainable state of contentment if you work on it. You become addicted to sadness because it requires very little of you, and that’s about the easiest thing you can do.

By Jaeyoung Chung, Year 11, Jeoji Edited by Hanju Park, Year 10, Sarah

BY HYEONAH JOH, YEAR 12, HALLA

Edited by Jiho Lee

Meaning of Mugunghwa, the

“An eternal blossom that never fades.” The rose of Sharon (‘무궁화’ in Korean, pronounced ‘mugunghwa’) is the national flower of South Korea. The plant holds a special meaning in the history and spirit of Korea.

The rose of Sharon is a deciduous shrub. Its height ranges between two (6 feet 7 inches) to four metres (13 feet 1 inches). The flowers bloom between July and October, with common colours including white, various shades of pink, and purple. During the blooming season, flowers begin to bloom at dawn, wilt in the afternoon, and fall by twilight. This cycle repeats over approximately 100 days where about 3000 flowers bloom from each shrub.

The rose of Sharon is believed to have existed in the Korean peninsula since 8~3 B.C. A book called <산해경> (Classic of the Mountains and Seas) states that there is a flower called ‘Hunhwacho’ in the country of gunja that blooms in the morning and wilts in the evening. Here, gunja means ‘man of virtue and noble character’. The country of gunja refers to South Korea and ‘Hunhwacho’ is an old name for the rose of Sharon. In a book called <구당서 > (Book of Tang), there is evidence that Korea was called 근화향 (geunhwahyang), which means ‘the country of the rose of Sharon’, since the Silla Dynasty. Furthermore, the rose of Sharon has been revered by the Korean people for a very long time. Ancient records show that the rose of

Sharon was called “blossom from heaven” even before the Gojoseon era.

However, the rose of Sharon wasn’t a publicly recognised symbol of Korea until 1896. During the foundation stone ceremony for the Dongnimmun Gate, “Aegukga” (the Korean national anthem) was sung. The chorus includes the phrase ‘무궁화 삼천리 화려강산’ (‘mugung-hwa sam-cheon-ni hwa-ryeo-gangsan’). The aforementioned ‘Mugunghwa’ is the Korean name for the rose of Sharon and the national flower of Korea. ‘Samcheonni’, or three thousand ri (approximately 1200 kilometres) is the vertical length of the entire Korean peninsula. ‘Hwaryeogangsan’ means “splendid rivers and mountains” (Ministry of the Interior and Safety). The three words add together to describe and symbolise the Korean peninsula. According to the literary column of <동아일보> (The Dong-a Ilbo) published October 21, 1935, Korea was referred to as ‘무궁화동산’, pronounced ‘mugunghwa dongsan’, by popular independence activists like An Chang-ho during the Japanese Colonial Era. ‘무궁화동산’ means ‘a hill covered with roses of Sharon’. From this, the word ‘무궁화동산’ came to represent Korea, which also contributed to the spreading recognition of the rose of Sharon as a symbol of Korea.

The rose of Sharon is written as 無窮花 in Hanja characters. The first character, ‘Mu’, means none. The second character, ‘Gung’,

means end. The last character, ‘Hwa’, means flower. Putting these three characters together, the rose of Sharon creates the meaning “an eternal blossom that never fades” (Ministry of the Interior and Safety). At first glance, the blossoms of the rose of Sharon seem to have individual petals, but they are actually connected. This represents the solidarity and cooperative spirit of the Korean people. The three thousand flowers that bloom during the blooming season symbolise the endurance, perseverance, and progressive spirit of the Korean people during times of hardship.

Due to its significant meaning, the rose of Sharon has many special uses in Korea. The top of the flagpole that the taegeukgi (the South Korean national flag) is run up is shaped like a budding rose of Sharon. This shape is used in flags for state agencies, government award certificates, badges for members of the congress,

and badges and caps for the army and police. Also, the name of the highest order awarded by the government of Korea is ‘무궁화대훈장’, or the Grand Order of Mugunghwa.

The rose of Sharon has walked alongside the Korean people for the entire history of Korea, and it continues to walk alongside them even today. To the Korean people, the rose of Sharon has a much deeper meaning than just a shrub. It has stood with them from the establishment of Gojoseon, the Three Kingdoms period, the Joseon Dynasty, the painful Japanese colonial era, the joyous liberation from Japan, the tragedy of the Korean War, and finally a pandemic on an unprecedented scale. The rose of Sharon seems to say that, like it always did, it will stand with Korea as people endure through the pandemic with their persevering, cooperative and progressive spirit.

Parasocial relationships

By June Kim, Year 10, Jeoji

Edited by Jenny Roh, Year 12, Halla

Parasocial relationship is a one-sided relationship between individuals and celebrities. Individuals begin to build an imaginary connection and develop relationships with celebrities when they perceive media figures as attractive. They develop illusions of intimacy in the parasocial relationship they have developed. The non-celebrity is the one who puts time and energy into the relationship, and obviously, the celebrity is completely unaware of it. People forming parasocial relationships have dramatically increased due to technological advances in past decades and, recently, due to the Covid-19 pandemic as people have to rely more on technology in order to interact with others.

Is having parasocial relationships a healthy habit? People have conflicting opinions on this issue. There are both advantages and disadvantages in having parasocial relationships. One of the main benefits of the relationship is that they are much easier to form compared to other relationships. Others require us to socialize, talk about ourselves, make connections, and, finally, the hardest thing, overcome the fear of being rejected. Building those relationships is very challenging for some people, especially those with low self esteem and a fear of social rejection. However, in a parasocial relationship, the partner doesn’t know about the existence of it. There is zero chance of getting rejected, which means that it is very unlikely

In addition to the benefits when starting the relationship, parasocial relationships seem more favourable when we consider ending relationships. Sometimes we definitely face situations where we have to end some unhealthy relationships. However, people go through many struggles with ending those relationships. Sometimes they are worried about how the partner and other people perceive them when they end the relationship; or maybe they believe that endings will affect other parts of their life. On the other hand, for parasocial relationships, there is no reason for people to have such worries as the partner is totally not aware of their relationship.

People tend to feel special attachments to not only the celebrities they like, but also the people who like the same celebrities. People who like the same celebrities are called ‘fandom’. This culture of fandom creates two benefits. Within the group, people share a lot of things and support each other in large part as they are specially attached to each other. This gives the fans a sense of belonging; they are connected and engaged. Also, people get to improve their social interaction skills by being engaged in many forms of social interaction based on a common interest derived from the relationship.

However, even the good things turn bad when they go to extremes. Parasocial relationships get very problematic when people are too dependent on them. People can forget that the parasocial relationship is one sided when they are too deep inside the relationships they formed with the celebrities. They may start to believe that they are actually in a real relationship with the celebrities. There are some people who disturb the celebrities’ privacy based on these thoughts: visiting their private areas and stalking their path. They believe doing such things is not a problem as they believe their relationship is special. Increases in the number of threatening fans shows how parasocial relationships might produce negative consequences, too.

Parasocial relationships are formed by non-celebrities with celebrities. It is a one-sided relationship, which means that only the non-celebrities are aware of the relationship. This makes the relationship special, and it creaates a lot of benefits such as improvement in social interactions and feeling of social connection. However, it may also have some negative effects on people when people go so deeply into the relationship.

Meaning of the Olympics

Yoon Kim, Year 11, Geomun

What is the Olympic Games?

The Olympic Games is an international event where countries all over the world join together and compete in various sports once every four years. The Olympic Games have more significance than just an international sports competition because the Olympic Games have an extraordinary origin, culture and history.

When did the Olympic Games start?

The ancient Olympic Games were very different from the Olympic Games we see nowadays. The ancient Olympic Games started in ancient Greece in 776 B.C. It was to honour Zeus, the god of thunder. It originally only had a 400m sprint race, however, more events such as marathon, swimming, javelin, boxing, wrestling, long jump, high jump and many others joined in. Back then, the prize was also very unique; a crown made out of olives, which is one of most honourable prizes that could be awarded, plenty of cash, right of tax exemptions, dedicated front row at the theatre and even lifetime free-meal in a civic building!

Modern Olympic Games

April 6th, 1896, the Modern Olympic Games were revived after more than 1500 years of resting period. The first Games were held in Athens, Greece which was also the country where the ancient Olympics used to be held. The first Olympic Games had 43 different events including athletics, cycling, fencing, tennis and gymnastics. This culture is continued today every four years except 1916, 1940, 1944 when world wars were happening and the pandemic which postponed the games of 2020 to 2021.

Olympic on an odd year

The Tokyo Olympics 2020 was an odd case, which was held in an odd year. As we all know this was due to the outbreak of Covid-19. The Tokyo Olympics in 2021 also involved interesting events such as surfing, trampoline and skateboarding,

The Olympic flame

If someone talks about the Olympic Games, the Olympic flame could not be skipped! Every opening ceremony of the

Olympic Games involves the lighting of an Olympic flame. Before the Games begin, the Olympic flame is carried from Athens on foot by relay. Occasionally, they use airplanes, but if possible, they are held in the torch and carried by the relay runner. This tradition has been kept since the first modern Olympic Games in 1896. Out of this unbelievable culture, the most remarkable relay I would pick is the relay in 1948, for the London Olympics. The world was recovering from World War 2 and the Olympic Games was a welcome message of peace to people all around the world. The first runner, Corporal Dimitrelis, took his military uniform before he started the relay, and the relay continued along the border celebrating the return of the peace.

Olympics and Peace

As mentioned above, the Olympic Games have a very close relationship with peace. The Olympic Games itself encourages political leaders to act in favour of peace, to organise conferences on sports and peace, and also develop initiatives with other organisations specialising in the field of peace, including the United Nations.

There is another form of how the Olympics kept the peace. Have you ever heard of the Olympic truth? This is a sacred promise not to attack where the Olympics is happening. This is more like a consecration of the host country where the Olympic Games is being held.

We also can find evidence that the Olympic Games are encouraging peace in the Olympic flag. As the Olympic Games is to ensure nations compete on a fair basis and to encourage a mix of multiple nationalities and races, the

Olympic flag is made out of five rings with different colors. These rings represent all races and nationalities by including five colors, one of which is used in every flag of the nations of the world. Each ring is used to represent America, Europe, Africa, Oceania and Asia. However, back then to nowadays, the Olympic game’s vision has not changed, it is to unite the world and encourage peace.

For peace

The Olympic Games is one of the most famous events in the world. Today, once every two years as the Winter games have been moved, countries meet in one place and compete. Sometimes, this is used as propaganda and could be also used as a political tool. However, we should all remember that ultimately, the Olympics are a symbol of free competition and world peace. Therefore, next time when you watch the Olympics, remind yourself how important world peace is and what the Olympics means to you.

Religion

Religion refers to a belief or cultural organization consisting of those who worship or rely on the absolute truth, the sacred or spiritual being with supernatural power. As the diversity of religion is now recognized, there are about 4,300 different religions in the world, there are a variety of forms of worship and beliefs. These various beliefs are based on the society or personal nature they belong to, which leads to the tendency of each religion. In other words, religion appears in a way that acts and practices beliefs in society, but the recognition of religious diversity in society does not accept all religious tendencies. Although religion is deeply rooted in the culture of society, atheists do not believe in religion. The beliefs of some religions may be contrary to the general concept of society. So what are the general views and aspects of religion in the whole society, including the atheists? What personal views do you have about religion?

By Sophie Lee, Year 10, Mulchat

Most of the positive views on religion come from the positive influence religion has on society. First of all, religion gives suffering people a place. People in arduous and exhausting situations look for a place to depend on, and they find religion as that place. Finding a place allows people to be more reassured in life unless it does not change into a fanatic belief. Besides religion has been a contributor to world society.

One of the religions that contributed greatly to society is Christianity. Christianity is one of the religions that built the deepest relationship with society and is the largest major religion in the world with more than 2 billion believers. Christianity is based on the peace, love, and sacrifice spirit of Jesus, building the faith. Christianity supported promoting human rights for children, preventing animal abuse, and establishing education and charity agencies. They systematically volunteer by establishing Christian Aid to work on direct

charitable activity. Besides, the popular celebrations of Christianity, such as Easter and Christmas, are a welcome distraction to society. The people enjoy and relax on these celebration days, whether they are religious or not. This proves that Christianity has a positive aspect on society, and positively influences the people. Shown by these actions, religion has contributed steadily to worldwide welfare.

Religion is a cultural system in society and is deeply related to society. Some people give positive attention to the good influence of religion. Eventually, as religion belongs to society, religion must compromise with society. However, we can expect the symbiosis of religion and society in the future. Society will improve their relationship by publicly giving religious people respect for their faith, and religious people following the rules of society will create positive views on each other.

POLITICS

Cancel Culture: This Year’s “Hottest” Trend

By Stella Kim, Year 10, Jeoji

Edited by: Dongwook (Warrick)

Recent turmoil involving entertainment’s brightest stars in South Korea has become a huge controversy. Celebrities who, in the past, have violently bullied others have been put under a microscope to be dissected by the general public. The majority of the public opinion is to ‘cancel’ these celebrities, i.e., to end their careers. However, is it justified to cancel someone? Or do these people deserve the backlash?

Popularly performed online by Millennials and Generation Z, cancel culture is the practice or tendency of engaging in mass canceling as a way of expressing disapproval and exerting social pressure on those who become a target. It has a familiar pattern: a public figure or a celebrity does or says something offensive and a public backlash from people across social media ensues. Cancel culture is most commonly fueled by “politically progressive social media”, calling to cancel a person, in other words, to effectively end their career and annihilate them off of their platform. It is often done by boycotting their work and spreading the news online through worldwide hashtags. Although it takes up a more modern version, cancel culture is the evolution of the history of public shaming. Cancelling someone for their offensive behaviours or statements can be justified especially when that person has a significant influence over the public opinion. Celebrities, political figures, or even students who have a different opinion from the rest are no exception. But is ‘cancel culture’ just? According to Insider, canceling culture creates unwarranted victims who have been falsely accused of the actions and words they are not responsible for. Canceling culture could be manipulated to serve the in-

terest of the people who misuse it. Sometimes these mass actions of the public could be used by those who need these diversions for self gain. On top of this, cancel culture is aiding in canceling free speech. Many celebrities and academics who spoke their mind have been canceled by both the left and right. If the ideas did not align with the left or the right, the speakers were silenced and they were canceled from their fame or influential positions. People have no intention of listening to the opinions of others and learn to analyze what the speakers are actually saying. Yes, many times, these speakers do phrase the words in a very awkward or vague manner. This adds to the idea that all of us need to educate ourselves to understand what we do and say is very important. We do have the freedom to express our innermost ghost in a well-thought out and arranged way. But if we are afraid to speak our minds for fear of being canceled, our society could be heading for disaster.

We need to stop and think about what we are doing as people. Canceling is a way to express what the public feels towards the actions and words of those who can influence public opinion. Likewise, the right to express personal opinions by celebrities, politicians, and anybody for that matter, is also an important tool. The most important reminder we need to take cognisance of is that all of us are entitled to speak our minds and we need to stop and think before we say or do anything, making sure that we have considered all the possible consequences of our actions and words. We need to educate ourselves to respect others’ opinions and try to understand them before we do anything that could

How is Huawei affecting China US relations?

By Alice Kim, Year 8, Sarah Edited by Dongwook Warrick Kwon, Year 11, Noro

The ban on Huawei, a Chinese telecommunications company, by the US government for national security reasons caused a worldwide stir. The ban took place while Huawei was enjoying exponential growth over several years, ranking second worldwide after Samsung. Regardless of whether the suspicions were based on reasonable grounds, the decision by the U.S. government has caused tensions in SinoAmerican trade relations. The political relations between these two hegemons could affect global trade and the supply chain for years to come (Whitten, 2020).

Huawei has been under scrutiny in the USA since 2011 due to its perceived close ties to the Chinese government. American lawmakers and regulators have been strongly against Huawei’s introduction to the U.S. market for years. The adversarial pressure led to Huawei repudiating contracts and opportunities, such as a deal with 3Leaf Systems, a server network, according to CNBC (2018).

The controversy began in 2019 when the United States accused Huawei of accessing and exposing users’ data as well as coercing allies to cancel their contracts with Huawei (Liu, 2021).

On May 15, an executive order banning Huawei was placed. It prohibited US companies from purchasing telecommunications equipment from foreign firms (Brown, 2021). Such a significant influence for technology companies — the inability to access foreign telecommunications equipment — was bound to have a detrimental effect on the firm’s success within the industry. However, despite speculation, the ban did not have much of a direct impact on the company itself, as the smartphone branch of Huawei was relatively smaller compared to its main telecommunications

and cloud service branches. The only shortfall was the slight decline of global market share by 2.6% from 2019 to 2020. Otherwise, Huawei even experienced a boost in global revenue by building independent ecosystems (Buchholz, 2021).

The US government’s actions drove a foreign company to the verge of failure and detrimental loss. If it weren’t for Huawei’s quick-witted response, the damage could have gone much further than a slight scratch on the surface of the company. The serious nature of the ban brings one to think that the security threats behind the ban were much beyond a small nuisance or triviality.

Fu Liang, a Beijing-based telecom industry expert, believes that the U.S. government is deliberately attempting to isolate Huawei from the global market (Dan, 2021). The excessive interest of the U.S. government in China could indicate that the answer to the ban could have more hidden dimensions to it than what is said to justify it.

For decades, the perplexing relationship between China and the U.S. has been observed to be like neither allies or adversaries. This is because the two countries’ fundamental ideology clash: security interests, political values, conception of world order, etc. Nonetheless, they do not view each other as threats, and their economies are so intertwined that large conflict is avoided at all costs (Pei, 2014).

As the economic gap between the two countries narrowed, however, the attitude towards each other has varied accordingly. As of now (2021), several new strains have emerged between the two countries: China adopted a more assertive foreign policy since 2010, its rapid military modernisation programme and cyberattacks unsettling the

U.S. and its East Asian allies, and substantive disagreements continued (Pei, 2014). The strains were further amplified by the U.S. ban on Huawei. Political matters such as these could be the actual reason behind the ban.

The Chinese government has expressed strong dissatisfaction and disappointment on the unfair actions upon them and likewise suspected political motivation (Chikermane, 2020).

To this day, the U.S. is keeping its stance on Huawei and the justification of the ban. Most U.S. citizens support the government’s tough stance on China, studies show: 89% of U.S. adults consider China a competitor or enemy, 48% believe limiting China’s power and influence should be a top foreign policy priority for the U.S. (Silver, 2021).

In conclusion, it can be said that the U.S. China relations are fluid and difficult to decipher, but political disagreements and economic sensitivity have worsened them. The ban on Huawei could have such political motivations behind the already-existing security threats, which added fuel to the fire. Currently, it seems that neither country is up for much appeasement and the restoration of their relationship is yet to occur. Going forward, it would be prudent to observe the bilateral relations for their influence on global trade and the supply chain.

WHAT DOES AN INFLUX OF REFUGEES MEAN TO THE GLOBAL ECONOMY?

By Amy Hwang, Year 9, Noro Edited by Inseo Youn, Year 12, Halla East

The day, August 15th 2021, Afghanistan’s citizens' life changed once again. The newspaper printed ‘Taliban in front of capital Kabul... Advance to a point 11 km south’ in black ink, bold letters on their headlines. This shot a shuddering shock wave through the global community and turned on the alert signals for governments. The sudden news of the Taliban takeover started to apply pressure to the nations bordering Afghanistan. A community was on the move. Despite the pressure the global community exerted on Afghanistan’s neighbours to take in refugees, governments believe that refugees have the potential to harm their domestic economy and society. However, statistics show that they do not actually harm the economy, but positively influence it.

Afghanistan has been one of the biggest producers of refugees, and after the Taliban takeover, the number has struck its highest point. The Taliban are only allowing traders or those with valid travel documents to leave the country, resulting in 2.2 million Afghan refugees already in neighbouring countries and 3.5 million people forced to flee their homes within Afghanistan's borders. The United Nations, aware of the emergency crisis, has urged Afghanistan's neighbours to keep their borders open to refugees and called on the international community to support those countries. Most of Afghanistan's neighbouring countries, including Iran, Turkey, and Pakistan, have announced that they won’t take in any more refugees, Pakistan for example took 1,450,000 in 2020, and that European countries should take more responsibility. European countries are showing more signs of positive actions towards accepting refugees and protecting them.

However, even though some countries show positive attitudes toward receiving refugees, there is still concern about the social and economic consequences of their decisions. Since refugees are unfamiliar with the host countries, there is a high possibility that they will encounter several social problems including racism and discrimination, a misunderstanding of culture, and lack of communication skills due to not being acquainted with the language. They may also face problems related to their financial status i.e. not being able to earn a living. The governments are financially and economically burdened since they have to provide shelter and partially use their financial resources to support the refugees settling into the country. However, this essay will prove that their concerns are unnecessary.

Contrary to their concerns, it has been demonstrated that refugees can actually improve the economy in a few areas. Firstly, resettled refugees can increase trade and investment between countries in several ways. Refugees want familiar things from their country, leading to international sales and often by creating a taste for those things among their host country’s communities. For example, migrants in the US have introduced Americans to new foods and due to this, imports of these foods have increased. Furthermore, refugees and migrants have specialised knowledge about how markets work both in their home countries and their adopted countries. By letting them into a new environment, they are able to know local regulations and meet new potential business partners in their host countries. They also become familiar with informal norms and customs that make trade and investments possible.

The government is also concerned about the rising demand in the housing market. Tucker Carlson, from FOX News, claimed that “when the supply shrinks, the

cost rises. One reason it’s happening is that America’s becoming a lot more crowded than it ever was and one of the reasons for that is that we’re living through the biggest influx in refugees in American history.” Carlson blamed the Afghanistan refugees for the insufficiency of housing supply. However, this is totally false. Rising demand of the housing market is due to historically low mortgage rates and the largest generation in American history (millennials) entering the housing market. It is true that when housing prices are escalating, new immigrants might contribute to the growing demand for housing, but when housing prices are falling, immigrants generate the additional demand for housing needed to stabilise the market.

One of the biggest misunderstandings that citizens face when receiving refugees is the increase in the unemployment rate of native workers. They worry that the refugees might take away their workplaces, however, this is the total opposite of what the reality shows. Workers and industries clustering in the same place increases employment opportunities for workers and increases the qualified labor pool for employers and this creates an outsized effect on the US economy: higher-income workers cluster in the same cities, the demand for goods and services increases as well. Studies hsve shown that mingrants contribute in taxation on their incomes just about as much as they cost so society breaks-even on them.

Likewise, even though the crisis has put a lot of pressure on the global community, it is important that the governments acknowledge the more advantages refugees will bring instead of the negatives. Generally speaking refugees don’t cause any harm to the domestic economy so why not support more taking in of the refugees?

Fear and racial hatred

As the 5G pole crashes into the ground, there is a distant roar of approval. The noise is deafening. The grainy footage shows multiple men setting fire to 5G poles, the hungry flames licking it up like a starved animal. And the problem is, multiple countries are facing dozens of the same reports. Only in the UK, there have been more than 50 of these uncalled-for attacks. Some have gone as far as harassing the telecom engineers. Why had this sudden fear and hatred of 5G technology sprung up?

It all started with a single spark: Xenophobia. Xenophobia’s initial definition was the fear of strangers, but now, it has come to connote a totally different meaning — fear of Asians. Since the COVID-19 outbreak, there have been multiple accusations against Asians; take various examples of fake news. Many claim that COVID-19 was a virus manufactured from a lab in Wuhan, and leaked into society through a security accident. Others claim that the Chinese government had purposely set the virus loose to cripple other countries’ economic growth. The 5G pole incident is another example of these allegations. Due to a single false idea, the spark had spread the conspiracy theory to the society. The problem is, the attackers truly believe that they are doing the right thing.

So, why do people hate? There are mainly two reasons for this uncalled for phenomenon. The first is that people want to have someone or something to blame for this disaster.

By Cathy Kim, Year 9, Jeoji Edited by Terry Kim

They want to know that this can be stopped easily. There are many examples of this, however, the most notorious may be the Witch-hunt in Salem. When young girls started to show strange symptoms in the secluded town of Salem, they blamed witchcraft for this. And to play the antagonists in their script — the outsiders. The people of Salem gathered a group of beggars, the impoverished, all who were different from the majority, and threw them in a ‘witch jail’, where many of the accused lost their lives.

However, there is another reason for hate. Fear is a feeling towards something that makes you feel helpless. Hatred is a feeling towards what is making you feel threatened and insecure. Although seemingly disconnected in definition, these two emotions are tightly connected. Like a domino, one emotion leads to another; when you feel that you cannot do anything about something, you begin to hate it as it makes you feel insecure. Thus: ‘fear brings hatred’.

Take an obvious example; many countries around the world block foreigners and immigrants from settling in their country, often participating in protests and obvious acts of discrimination. This hatred, or xenophobia, was brought on by the fear of losing their jobs in the already-crowded country. They feared their occupations being stolen and taken by outsiders who had ‘jumped the line’ jeopardizing their homes and families.

Asians were thus viewed as a pest; something to get rid of. Look at the graph below.

CGTN (China Global Television Network) summarizes the information above in a single phrase: “while crimes triggered by racial hatred in 2020 decreased overall by 7 percent, those targeting Asian people rose by 149 percent”. In New York there was an 833% increase in Anti-Asian hate.

Hate is derived from fear. How do we stop hating? To stop hating, we need to do the three ‘A’s. First, we need to be aware of the things that have caused us fear. The most dangerous haters of all are the ones that hate and discriminate without knowing it; if they do not know it, they cannot think to fix it. Second, we need to acknowledge that fear. If we pretend that we do not fear something, we would never find the chance to fix that stem of hate. Lastly, we need to act and change that fear into positiveness. It is no use to take the first two steps without completing the third; we need to find a way to fix our fear and set it back straight. We can brace ourselves and face the very source of our fear; most of the time we’d find that there was nothing to fear in it at all.

(Zhaoyi P., ‘Chart of the Day: stop Asian hate crimes, how's it now?’ from Center for the Hate and Extreme)

Aware, Acknowledge, Act. We need to rip the hate out of our society, and to do that, we need to destroy it from its roots. Take out the fear with the three ‘A’s. See the world for what it truly is.

Planet Earth

By Claire Fan, Year 8, Mulchat

Edited by Injoon So

The recent climate has changed drastically and people fear for what the meaning of this may be. The Australian wildfire, the Amazon fire and the constant typhoons coming all the time, for example the storm bomb off the California coast. The climate has changed, for example, from rarely having extreme temperatures to constantly having them; more and more money has been spent on the damage caused by them, and what caused the disasters? Us. We are the cause of greater economic damage to places like London where well off individuals extend their property down into the basement and then the rain water can’t drain away. Floods are the result.

It is only the 21st century and we already have several typhoons across the world, a few storms, 15 mild earthquakes, 27 floods and so on. There were 416 natural disasters in total in 2020 compared to 2001when there were only 111 natural disasters. This tells us how much has changed over a period of twenty years, it might not seem so significant to you but in 20 years there has been an increase of about 300 natural disasters.

So what is it that this huge change might have been trying to tell us, the continuous change must have been bothering us, right? Although this has been happening for years now, we as humans have not taken any great action towards

changing this. The United Nations recently had a meeting with leaders representing countries to solve the problem of climate change and, as a conclusion, the nations decided to use less resources. However, this does not change the way people do things, the people in our society do.

Every scientist accepts that at some time the world will end. Astronomers believe that the Earth will run out of oxygen in about one billion years, bringing life to an end. Then, 6.5 billion years later the Sun will expand, destroying the planet itself.

Science may have advanced, but there is still much we do not know. Biologists estimate that 86% of all species on land and 91% of those in water have yet to be discovered. Predicting the future seems an immense challenge when we know so little about the present.

This is why we should protect our climate and the same for our environment until it goes back to a black nothingness.

Equality between genders? The Taliban

By Dan Lee, Year 7, Sarah

Edited by Shona Hyun Park, Year 11, Noro

Women are being treated harshly by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Nothing much has changed since the old days when they were last in power; the Taliban’s rule didn’t allow women to be educated, play sports, leave home independently, inherit properties, work, and wear makeup. They didn’t have full rights in their life.

The Taliban’s oppression over women didn’t just end with the clothing restrictions. There were numerous rules that suppressed them.

Women were not to speak loudly in public as no strangers were to hear a woman's voice. All ground and first-floor residential windows should be painted over or screened to prevent women from being visible from the street. Moreover, photographing, filming and displaying pictures of females in newspapers, books, shops and houses was banned. The modification of any place names that included the word "women", for example, "women's garden" was renamed "spring garden". Furthermore, women were forbidden to appear on the balconies of their apartments or houses. In addition, rules banning women's presence on radio, television or at public gatherings were passed. There are more rules that oppress gender equality.

The Taliban restricted education for women. They banned women from getting education after the age of 8 and 106,256 girls,148,223 male students, 8,000 female university undergraduates, and 7,793 female teachers were affected.

Moreover, the Taliban banned women from working. Every specialist was fired from their work and 25% of the workers were kicked out of the government. Also a Physicians for Human Rights researcher, who travelled to Kabul in 1998, described "a city of beggars" filled with "women who had once been teachers and nurses now moving in the streets like ghosts under their enveloping burqas, selling every possession and begging so as to feed their children”.

They were required to wear clothes that covered all their body called a burqa every time they went out.

This was the situation when the Taliban were in power before. It looks liike they are turning the clock back again.

China and its relationship with marine plastic waste

By Eunsuh Kim, Year 11, Sarah Edited by Stella Yeom, Year 13, Halla East

The sea, the great unifier, man’s only hope, is being contaminated. Every year, more than 8 million tons of plastic waste are released into the ocean. This is very dangerous because it affects not only marine organisms but also humans. We saw the devastating incident of a whale found with 100kg of plastic waste inside its body on the shores of Scotland. Not only is this a problem for marine animals, but the 70 thousand microplastics emerging from a single use of the washing machine causes lethal results to humans damaging our organs and resulting in death. As a result, we do not have any time to lose to save us and our nature.

In order to effectively combat this issue, China has actively made an effort to decrease plastic waste by carrying out the ‘National Sword Policy’ since 2017 which bans the import of waste into China. By emphasizing the need to promote environmental protection and Chinese society, the result of this policy has led China’s production of plastic waste and used paper to decrease by 92% and 52% respectively.

Moreover, China is aiming for a more stable, high-quality plan which

is the 14th five-year plan (20212025). This is a plan that focuses on the effectiveness of energy, improved resources, preventing pollution, and protecting the environment. It is a centralized and integrated national economic program. In order to achieve its goals, the government of China has recognized the need to target its waste sector.

To be specific, China has made great initiatives to transform its waste management in order to adopt the values of the circular economy into its own. The circular economy, an economic system of closed loops in which raw materials, components and products lose their value as little as possible, renewable energy sources are used and systems thinking is at the core. Among many initiatives, the Wastefree City Initiative that was launched in December of 2018 enabling 10 cities to implement programs that enhanced solid waste management. Additionally, In 2019, the National Development and Reform Commission of China issued a new policy, announcing a ban on plastic bags across all cities and towns in 2022. Also, China declared its willingness

to go further, through its policy called ‘Further Strengthening Plastic Pollution Control’ in January 2020, which bans the usage of disposable items, improves monitoring, reporting, and supervision systems, and promotes the production of eco-designed products. In February 2021, China also emphasized its priority of managing plastic waste, utilizing renewable resources, and accelerating the development of a green and low carbon circular economy through the Guiding Opinions on Accelerating the Development of a Green and LowCarbon Circular Economy issued by the State Council of China.

In conclusion, China and marine life have a complicated relationship. To maintain our environment in a healthy state, various factors need to be considered which include education, legislation, monitoring, and research. This can be helpful to collaboratively create a multi-level approach for individuals, companies, communities, non-governmental organizations, and governments. Thus, I believe every country, including China, should try to protect our great unifier.

The historical relationship of Communism and Korea

By Brandon Lee, Year 10, Noro

Everything needs to be equally divided and jointly owned. This is the central idea of Communism which was once the largest ideology that demolished many nations. Many peasants in different countries were inspired by the social ideology of communism and decided to join in. It was mainly widespread in Asia, countries like Russia, China and Vietnam to name a few. But what about Korea?

In Korea, there was a big movement of ideologies, in which many independence activists imagined the future with their own ideology. This time in Korea was harsh as imperial Japan forced a merger to Korea, and many citizens were tortured or killed. Because of this, some Korean citizens wanted a world where everyone was happy and equal. Basically, they wanted a “Utopia”, but this was difficult because during the Japanese Occupation, the world underwent two big wars, World Wars 1 and 2, which left it in chaos. And, when Korea claimed their independence, Korea was divided into two powers, “Communism”, and “Democracy”.

After the 6.25 war, Korea was evidently divided; not just in ideologies but the Korean Peninsula itself. The North followed “Communism”, and the South followed “Democracy”. However, due to Communism espousing equality,

many citizens in South Korea willingly crossed the border and went to the North. Also, there was a political party in South Korea which was called “The Workers Party of South Korea”. This political party had more than 360,000 party members in the South alone. Although this party was outlawed due to the U.S occupation in South Korea, it was a striking movement that even initiated an armed guerilla struggle. And after the 6.25 war, the leaders in the “Workers Party of South Korea” crossed the borders to the North and the leadership of the party went to PyongYang. Due to this, South Korea imposed harsh restrictions on crossing the Northern border without any permission, and many people got killed.

The main event related to this was the “Gwangju Uprising”. The Gwangju Uprising was due to the government thinking that there was a group of communists in the city “Gwangju” who messed up the country through their political press. And the Korean army troops began to fire, rape, and killed the citizens of Gwangju. But due to this violent reaction, the Gwangju citizens took up arms, raided the police stations and became citizen soldiers that protected the city which fought with the Korean army hand to hand. This was also classified as the “Gwangju Riot”, as a rebellion begun

by the communist sympathisers and rioters who possibly acted for the North Korean government. In many fights between the Korean army and the Gwangju army, the Korean army mostly won the fight due to a good amount of gadgets. But sometimes, the Gwangju army won the fight due to miracles. Due to the Gwangju uprising many citizens in Gwangju were slaughtered and the government sentenced Kim Dae Jung to death , and over 1394 people were arrested due to their involvements and19 receiving harsh sentences.

Also the Uprising impacted on South Korean politics and history where the uprising became the symbol of South Korea’s struggle for democracy. This can be shown how serious people were in communism, because the soldiers of the Korean army really believed that the people in Gwangju were all communists, due to the misunderstanding of the commanders orders. Many of the citizens in other areas really thought that the government did a good job because the rage of communism was strong around people due to the 6.25 war and they had bad feelings about North Korea. This also shows the madness of communism in Korea, and shows mostly about the historical relationship between Communism and Korea.

China my perspective

“Relationship”, this single word means more than anything in the world.

This word can sometimes be stronger than a diamond, forming an individual shape and connecting people through memories; in the form of Friendship, Family and Love.

However, the relationship between China and America is not a strong one. In fact, it is more likely to be a pessimistic relationship. It wasn’t as unpleasant as now at the beginning. In 1979, during Chinese premier’s visit, Dèng Xiaopíng visited the White House to meet Jimmy Carter, the 39th president of the USA. President Carter announced that the People's Republic of China, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council (P5) and a war friend of America during WWII. is the only government that will replace Taiwan.

Over the last forty years the economy of China has grown unbelievably, overtaking Japan’s GDP in 2010. America first said that China is invading the privacy of people worldwide but later, on the 22nd of March 2018, the US government announced that Chinese imports were faced with $34 billion worth of retaliatory tariffs with the reason being China is causing America a trade deficit. However, when examined in close detail, America has actively clashed with China to check its rising power.

By James Choi, Year 11, Mulchat

Edited by Dongwook Warrick Kwon

As a response to the action, the Chinese government announced that America’s imports are also facing tariffs. Furthermore, President Xi announced that China will not surrender. For America it is an unofficial announcement for the battle for new dominance. The reason for China challenging America is that China needs to accept the conditions for opening the market, meaning that the Chinese Dream about competing with the USA for the strong authority among the nations can be brought to fruition. The Chinese formed the “One Belt and One Road” plan, a policy to connect Europe and Asia including 4.4 billion people and 29% of Global Domestic Product along the silk road economic belt and marine belt, and AIIB to provide financial support. Furthermore, it has a few solutions for the problems within the country such as enlarging the steel industry and conquering the target of bringing China great again.

Now eople believe that the shape of the dispute between the two superpowers could be changed because the US had elected Joe Biden. However, even though a democratic president has been elected, the economic growth of America is negative and the anti China policy is being continued without any change.

Eco-friendly

Did you try to think about how much trash is produced in just one year? According to the World Bank, over 2 billion tonnes of trash is produced per year and the amount of global garbage is expected to reach 3.4 billion tonnes in 2050. There are a lot of relationships in our lives but one of the significant relationships in life is an eco-friendly relationship. What is an eco-friendly relationship you might ask? An eco-friendly relationship can be defined as being eco-friendly by living with intent. Living with intent means living without harming the environment, and to help as much as you can to prevent any harm inflicted on the environment. Being eco-friendly starts with a small implement like turning off lights when you go out of your room or sorting your trash in the right way and also recycling would help too.

Let’s try to have more focus on recycling. Recycling something means using a raw material that will be transformed into a new item. However, materials like plastic and single-use waste products cannot be recycled. By recycling, millions of tons of garbage sent to landfills and incinerators can be reduced. Garbage that is sent to landfills and incinerators is a big problem. There are three main problems with landfills: toxins, leachate, and greenhouse gases. There are materials that end up in waste that include a huge amount of toxic substances. As an example there is electronic waste, such as televisions, computers, phones and other electrical devices that contain hazardous substances for example mercury, arsenic, cadmium, PVC, solvents, acids and lead. These substances couldn’t be recycled and over time these toxins leach to our soil and groundwater and damage the environment.

The second main problem is leachate. Leachate is produced when the waste on the landfills breaks down and water filters through the waste. The liquid formed by these processes are extremely toxic and can pollute land, groundwater and water ways. Landfills containing these toxic liquids are harmful to the environment. Plastic such as PVC and other materials break down and melt into the mixture with the leach water. It takes a year or more to fully fill out the landfill cell, and during this time the rainfall lets the contents naturally decompose. Because of this rainfall filtering throughout the landfill it dissolves and flushes 5-7 percent of the toxin the leach water contains. So the mixture of these liquids creates a foul smelling liquid, known as leachate which includes ammonia and various toxic salts. Depending on the rainfall, a single rainfall can fill up olympic sized swimming pools of leachate each year. Additionally landfill produces greenhouse gases. It is better to not have waste to dispose of as other methods like combustion of waste are equally dangerous.

By Stephanie Lim, Year 10, Jeoji

Edited by Shona Hyun Park, Year 11, Noro

Are efforts to protect the environment really effective?

These are the few typical features that always appear when I ask somebody if they are an ‘Environmental Activist’. From their shoulders hang tote bags with Starbucks tumblers in their hands arguing that this is all for our planet Earth. They search on the internet how to reform a milk carton into a pencil case and use Coca-Cola bottles to store soy sauce. However, the reality is that lots of these environmental activists themselves are not even aware of what actions actually do benefit the environment and what do not.

If I search the keywords ‘tumbler, eco-friendly, environment’ on google, I get over a hundred academic resources that provide information about the positive impacts that the use of tumblers has on the environment. I’m not saying that I completely disagree with the use of tumblers to benefit the environment. But guess what? To save the environment by using tumblers, you need to use the same tumbler over 1000 times to make its production more energy-efficient than a styrofoam cup. However, even before we can use a single tumbler 100 times, new trendy tumblers are made from Starbucks and people buy them like blind worshipers. The same goes for tote bags. The tote bag was originally produced to perform its function as a reusable bag. However, nowadays people rather think of it as a fashionable item and just use it and throw it away - much like a plastic bag. The fact is that the energy used in order to produce a tote bag is 28 times the energy consumed to make a plastic bag and 8 times the energy consumed to make a paper bag. According to a 2018 study by the Ministry of Environment and Food in Denmark, an organic cotton tote needs to be used 20,000 times to offset its overall impact on production. Tell me, when was the last time you saw anyone use a tote bag even 100 times? Overall, plastic production

could be increasing every second due to the unconscious consumption of tote bags. Another study done by the Environmental Investigation Agency and Greenpeace found out that the introduction of a charge in the UK in 2015 might actually have increased the amount of plastic we use thanks to these thicker and heavier bags. Despite an 83% reduction in the use of conventional carrier bags, people are still buying these heavy-duty replacements at a similar rate with 1.5 billion sold in the UK last year.

Everyone remembers that iconic speech made by DiCaprio when he finally won the Oscars in 2016, right? ‘‘Plans to fly around the world doing good for the environment ‘’ says Leonardo DiCaprio. He plans to ‘FLY’ around the world to do good for the environment. It is a surprise that Di Caprio thinks that traveling in his private jet using all the fuel wouldn’t worsen climate change. Not that his acknowledgement of the environment isn’t something to be thankful for, many celebrities and politicians take advantage, proposing that they care for the environment. However, when they finally become famous or elected, a majority abandons the promises they made to protect the environment and abuse it for image-making. This is a very common process also seen in our everyday companies.

In 2018, Starbucks Korea started promoting the use of strawless lids and paper straws. All plastic lids and straws were replaced under the justification of recycling more plastic and decreasing the plastic being wasted throughout the worldwide Starbucks franchises. The company argued that they made use of polypropylene which is a commonly accepted recyclable plastic. However, the critics pointed out that only 9% of all the plastics that are produced are actually recycled. Also, there are 2 premises made from the start of this whole recycling process. Firstly, unlike Starbucks mugs,

‘Of nature, by nature, for nature..?’

the to-go cups obviously would never all be 100% recycled, failing to provide a sustainable solution for the environment. In addition, all the additional waste would cost 1.6 billion dollars to reuse all the plastic waste produced.

I am an eco-friendly customer who loves drinking Starbucks drinks. Once Starbucks posted a picture of a sea turtle suffocating from a plastic bag that it misunderstood as a jellyfish, claiming that they will use paper straws instead of plastic straws and reusable plastic instead of disposable plastic. As an eco-friendly customer full of green-Starbucks pride, I decided to help out the green initiative by drinking more of my favorite strawberry smoothies. But is it really so? For people who really do wish to preserve the environment, you have to think smart, not hard. For example, when you acquire clothing, there are 3 choices that you can make based on which stage you are at. Firstly, if you are at the stage before purchasing a cloth, you could look at what materials the cloth is made of. It is extremely important that you are cautious if the cloth is made of fabrics that are sustainable. It’s time to become material-smart and choose durable fabrics like lyocell processed bamboo that can all be produced without chemicals. Furthermore, if you already bought your clothes, you could take good care of it. The frequent use of detergent has a negative impact on both the cloth and the environment as it uses electricity, damages the cloth, and releases harmful chemicals in nearby rivers. To avoid this from happening, you could use organic and environmentally friendly detergents, and wait until a lot of laundry is accumulated before washing it. Finally, when it becomes time to throw the cloth away, you could recycle the cloth rather than throwing it in the trash. Clothes and textiles that are

By Injoon So, Year 11, Sarah Edited by David Noh, Year 12, Halla North

Why is Feminism an Outburst

of Profanity in South Korea?

Feminism. This simple unadorned phrase ends up with unceasing backlashes and ultimately leads to the abominable “Battle of Sexes”. From these vigorous reactions, we can infer that this word does indeed carry a colossal significance. So how can we define feminism, which is such a broadly interpreted word?

Although it is unbelievable and almost hysterical to claim, women do have a part to play in this interpretation within South Korea. By women, we mean radical feminists who have taken an excessive approach to what they claim is gender equality. Some of these radical movements even have the tendency to claim superiority of women to men and moreover target other women who

By Shona Park, Year 11, Noro Edited by Stella Yeom

According to Cambridge, it conveys a meaning of a belief that women should be allowed the same rights, power, and opportunities as men and be treated in the same way, or the set of activities intended to achieve this state. Let’s give an emphasis to the “same”, the “same” rights, the “same” power, the “same” opportunities, “same” treatment. But, especially in South Korea, this phrase is interpreted as man-hate, a gathering of extreme radical beliefs.

As a young woman, as a student and as a feminist, the current understanding of feminism in South Korea comes as a depressing reality, nothing more than an abject consequence of the attempt for gender equality in political, social and economic aspects in South Korea. So what exactly led to the implementation of aggressive misogyny towards feminism in South Korea’s society today?

As mentioned previously, the misconception of feminism roots from the misguided perception that men will face societal disadvantages in response to “breaking the glass ceiling”. This results in a lot of South Korean men, and even women, abhorring the term feminism and feeling a vacant distance from the very concept of it. However, the momentum for this stereotypical misogyny is far more complicated than a simple reaction to the perceived illegitimacy of the ongoing gender equality. This vigorous discouragement of feminism comes from the misconstructed perception that the term is centred around the hatred of men and that in order to embrace the concept, there is a necessity to oppress one gender to make the other superior. This indeed is the depressing reality that a concept to allow equal opportunities and treatment, initially claiming justice is hit with the waves of backlashes and mistreatment.

Now let’s dive deeper into how feminism was shaped this way in the first place. As previously mentioned, radical feminists within the society are one of the reasons behind the stereotypes regarding the understanding of feminism. We use the word “radical” feminist a lot but we often utilise it without knowing the exact meaning behind it. So what characterises radical feminism you might ask? Radical feminists possess the tendency to be more belligerent in their approach. They aim to dismantle the patriarchy rather than trying a flexible approach in adjusting the system through legal changes. Due to this, people, especially men but also women, are fighting so hard against feminism in South Korea, and that could possibly leading to one of the other significant reasons as to how feminism is shaped in such a way in our nation. As feminist issues come to the fore in deeply patriarchal South Korea, there is increasing opposition among young men that they’re being left behind. One of them claims they do not support the viral #MeToo movement which demonstrates how widespread sexual harassment and assaults are presented. Instead, he claims that he is “fighting for justice for men”. As the emergence of mainstream feminist voices came into the society utilising #MeToo as one of the effective mediums a brutal murder of a young woman near a subway station in Gangnam took place as a response. This woman’s death triggered a new attitude in how the public started to view feminism within society.

In conclusion, we end in the note that there are a lot of factors behind the social, political and economic curtain that shaped how feminism is today in South Korea. We should all be aware of how one factor influences the other and how it formed a bubble of misconception around the term.

We have to recognise that this abject reality not only affects South Korean women but also South Korean men and also the following generations to come. So, after reading this article do consider what feminism means to you instead of disregarding it because the term is now definitely not a stranger to you.

Single Sex Marriage

By May Lee, Year 8, Mulchat

Edited by Injoon So

A study from Cornell University showed that the distinction between completely heterosexual or being 100% homosexual is a myth and that “mostly-heterosexual” more accurately portrays a person’s sexuality. During these more enlightened times, many countries, gradually, are starting to legalise same-sex marriage. It is far past time for South Korea, a highly developed country, to do the same and get over the absurdity of preventing people from getting married. Not only is it morally indefensible, but it also ignores the benefits countries can derive from unions.

Marriage and civil union not being available creates several difficulties for same-sex partners. Besides the obvious point of not being able to get married, not being legally recognised as a family prevents LGBTQ+ couples from adoption, surrogacy, visiting their partner at a hospital (during urgent situations, only family members are allowed access to visit), inheritance of money after a partner’s passing, and being able to acquire a loan when buying a house. As a result of these disadvantages, many non-heterosexual people are discouraged from being in a relationship and are not able to start a family. This counters the popular misconception that gay marriage decreases the population wrong. This idea essentially means that allowing gay marraige would not pressurize people into suppressing their sexuality and simply marrying to have children and be socially acceptable instead of putting their happiness first. The legalization of gay marriage would most definitely result in the increase in adoption, likely to bring benefits to the children as they would prefer the care of loving parents in rather than a more impersonal government facility.

In the U.S., after the legalization of gay marriage, there was a noticeable drop in suicides and suicide attemts especially among adolescents. South Korea is a country where suicide is the 4th highest cause of death overall and 1st amongst youth aged 10 to 24. So, it isn’t surprising that there are numerous ongoing suicide preventiion campaigns in South Korea at the moment. However, legalising gay marriage might prove to be the most effective method of all. It is unfortunate that the government hasn’t considered all the benefits this will bring. It is a proven fact adolescents with same-sex attraction are more than twice as likely as their peers to attempt suicide. The effect this change in the law coulld have on them could bring hope for the future. There are many ways to interpret this data but it doesn’t change the fact that legalising gay marriage will benefit the country in many ways.

Within Ireland, members of the LGBTQ+ community sharing their own experiences and stories with friends and family had a huge impact on the way people viewed non- heterosexual marriage. Openly talking about LGBTQ+ relationships and not treating it as a taboo topic is important to open the perspectives of those currently opposed. Although protests and marches have the advantages of being able to gain attention faster and displaying the message in a stronger and clearer way, they may come off as too aggressive and won’t go far in a conservative country like Korea. In comparison, a more gradual and soft method of fighting for change, such as personally sharing experiences that others may be able to relate to, may be more effective. Sharing their experiences and stories in a personal way suggesting that this could be the story of a relative or friend of the listener will bring more people onboard supporting this social change.

We the People

By Victoria Park, Year 7, Sarah

Uganda. For most, you will only be able to think of the equator, wild life, or perhaps you have never heard of the nation Uganda. Essentially, Uganda is not prominent as a nation. It’s issues are also buried deep inside its borders. One of the issues in Uganda is homosexuality. Inside the walls of Uganda, homosexuality is forbidden and a taboo – at least for now. The future, though it may seem fixed, may differ from what we imagine, and I believe that the topic of LGBTQ+ rights in Uganda is worth a reflection.

Before moving onto the possible ways Uganda will turn out in terms of LGBTQ+ rights, a history of LGBTQ+. The duration which Uganda opposed homosexuality is not as long as one would imagine; the concept of homosexuality itself is a foreign one, too. It was only in 2009 that Uganda decided to propose a death sentence for acts of “aggravated homosexuality”. Although it was passed in 2013 as a “law”, it was then softened due to international criticism. If this was the case in the past, then what awaits Uganda in the future? There are, to answer, only three ways in which the future of Uganda’s LGBTQ+ rights will be: Uganda’s opinion may change little, the opinion might turn

to favour of LGBTQ+ rights, or the opinion may be worse than ever on the topic. These opinions, however, will differ from which perspective we are looking from: the public, the government, and the church.

The first perspective is the public –42.72 million people who may have the ability to sway the “minds” of politicians. According to the Pew Research Center, an opinion poll revealed that 96% of Ugandans were against homosexuality, with only 4% of the whole population supporting the rights of homosexuals. Interestingly, the older they were, the more accepting of homosexuality they were too; this suggests that it will be hard for public opinion to be open to LGBTQ+ rights, as the future of the Uganda will be shaped by the younger people. In addition to this, only a few people turned up for Pride Marches in Uganda. In one case, the people organising a pride march expected more than or about 500 people however, according to the gay activist Moses Kimbugwe, less than 200 people actually came. Moses Kimbugwe suggests that even though some may wish to march “with them”, they are afraid of the Ugandan government. If what Kimbugwe suggests is true, the per-

spective of the public may not matter at all – even if more than half of Ugandans support LGBTQ+ in their hearts, they will never be able to speak out. Yet, although there is only some evidence to support the idea of the public thinking positively of LGBTQ+ rights, there is a hope to hang on for. “We are here to walk for those who can’t walk, who are afraid to walk. We are here to celebrate our rights.” This is what Kimbugwe said in 2015. Behind this simple quotation is the determination of the Ugandan activists. Though not much evidence is there to support a positive future for the LGBTQ+ Rights Movement, the simple determination of the gay rights activists may win over the statistics and reports. However it is highly unlikely that the Ugandan public will be supportive of LGBTQ+ Rights Movement.

Another perspective to consider is the government. Currently, Uganda is a presidential republic, meaning the President of Uganda has the power of both the head of state and the head of government. There are multiple parties in the political system of Uganda –however, if counting only the recent dates, there was only one President of the Ugandan third republic: Yoweri Museveni (1944–). Most likely, he will

be the President of Uganda for some time. If this is the case, it is most likely that the policies will not change. In 2014, Yoweri Museveni signed the infamous ‘Kill the Gays’ bill. This is a policy where the penalties for gay people and their sexual acts are toughened, including life sentences for gay sex or same-sex marriage. Unless there is a strong rebellion from the National Resistance Movement side or a stronger one from the people of Uganda, it is most likely that Yoweri Museveni will continue to preside in Uganda with his prejudicial ideas on LGBTQ+ rights. Even if Museveni lost his status most of the other politicians are unsupportive of LGBTQ+ rights. This is unless, by some miraculous chance, some other elective who supports gay rights stands up and becomes the President of Uganda. Then, most likely, things will turn out differently. But this is an inordinately improbable scenario, as most candidates — and voters— are against LGBTQ+ rights.

The final perspective to look at is the Church. Church is, though not overwhelmingly, significantly important when discussing gay rights. This is partly because the start of Uganda’s opposition to gay rights began when

American conservative evangelicals came to Uganda and promoted such ideas — they worked so hard that finally Ugandans were convinced. Currently, there are several different bishops and clergymen who support, or at least aren’t against, LGBTQ+ rights — but this is the case for mostly small churches, generally insignificant local churches. However, even if there was a major bishop who took a stand for LGBTQ+ rights, they are most likely to be forced to step down by their fellow bishops who do not support such rights. In 1974, Christopher Senyonjo was installed as the Right Reverend of the Church of Uganda. Senyonjo was supportive of gay rights and worked for equality. However, as soon as his acts became significant, the Church of Uganda declared him no longer eligible as a bishop, then took away his remaining privileges and involvement with the Church. It is most plausible that this will also be the case if anyone does promote LGBTQ+ rights as an influential religious leader in Uganda. As for now, the Archbishop Stanley Ntagali declared that “homosexual practice is incompatible with scripture”. From this, one can probably guess that the Church will remain the same as ever: preventing the revolution that Uganda desperately

needs. In other countries, like Ireland, where the church was equally strong, the situation changed in a generation and now marriage equality is widely accepted with Ireland being the first country in the world where the majority of people, not politicians, voted to accept same-sex marriage. Attitudes can and do change over time.

After considering these perspectives, it is most likely that the future will be the same as the present. Those in a homosexual relationship will be criminalized, blamed, and humiliated. The unjust rule will remain and dominate the society, slowly eating away all freedom in the country. Logically, it is unlikely that the situation will change at all, as no solid evidence supports the idea that Uganda’s anti-gay spirit will subside. However, logic is not everything. It is inaccurate to say that Uganda will never be free from being the devil’s henchmen in suit and tie. You cannot be sure of anything. No one can find the rewind button; the least we can do is to march forward with bravery and might, fighting for what is right, and never stop believing. The future is upon our hands, waiting for our decision.

PHENOMENON

MONUMENTS OF PHENOMENON

Phenomenons are remarkable people, things, or events, and artifacts are one of them. Did you ever wonder about historical artifacts or about how they were built? In this article, I will be telling you about two historical artifacts such as pyramids in Egypt and Stonehenge in Wiltshire.

Pyramids are pyramid-shaped, ancient structures located in Egypt. Most pyramids were built as the pharaoh’s tomb believed by the Egyptians to have eased the monarchs’ passage into the afterlife. The Great Pyramid (Khufu’s pyramid) was built of approximately 2.3 million blocks of stone and stood nearly 50 stories high upon completion. Its base forms a nearly perfect and level square, with sides aligned to the four cardinal points of the compass. It was a mystery of how this ‘perfect’ structure was built in ancient times, which makes the pyramid a phenomena.

The exact method by which these architectural masterpieces were built is not definitively known, but the leading theory is that the Egyptians who built the pyramids may have been able to move massive stone blocks across the desert by wetting the sand in front of a contraption built to pull the heavy

objects. Physicists at the Amsterdam University figured out that dampening the sand in front of the device reduces friction on the sled, making it easier to operate. The researchers took evidence from the wall painting.

Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument located in Wiltshire, England. One of the most famous sites in the world, Stonehenge is the remains of a ring of standing stones that is between 4,000 and 5,000 years old. Work started on this super stone circle around 5,000 years ago in the late Neolithic Age, but it took over 1,000 years to build! Archaeologists believed that the final changes were made in about 1,500BC, in the early Bronze Age.

The lighter stones weigh about 3,600kg each, the same weight as 2 cars, while the bigger sarsen stones each weigh as much as 22 tonnes! So how did Stonehenge get built? A legend from the 12th century claimed giants placed the monument on a mountain in Ireland, before a wizard named Merlin magically moved the stone circle to England. However, there is no certain solution to this question and the Irish wizards would likely have prevented such a theft!

Each year, on June 21st, the longest day of the year, the sun always rises over the Heel Stone at Stonehenge – a large stone which stands outside of the main monument.The sun always sets over the Heel Stone on the shortest day of the year, December 21st, so the researchers suspect that Stonehenge might have been used as a ‘calendar’, and so to the study of the stars.

In 2007, the New 7 Wonders Foundation held a contest to name the “New 7 Wonders of the World.” Still, there are more Wonders of the World that have been compiled from antiquity to the present day, to catalogue the world’s most spectacular natural wonders and manmade structures. Yet, there are things to be figured out from these wonders. No doubt the revelation of these secrets will be phenomenal.

Science

Are you an Analyst, Diplomat, Sentimental or Explorer?

“What’s your MBTI?”, “Do you want to play MBTI bingo?”, “Want to buy some MBTI merch?” The explosion of MBTI has grabbed the public imagination like nothing since the blood type personality test of yesteryear. Friends, on where else but Facebook, engage you in conversation about your MBTI. You can, of course, create an Instagram story revealing all the glory of your prowess. Endlessly repeatable analysis is available via SNS. It’s no longer a psychological test to discover a personality type through answering a few simple questions but a new type of entertainment.

Did you know that the MBTI test was first launched in 1962? MBTI is an acronym for “Myers-Briggs Type Indicator,” which originated from test organisers Katherine Cook Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers. It took 20 years for Myers to develop these questions . This self-reporting personality index is based on Carl Jung’s theory of personality types. The actual purpose of Myers Briggs during World War II was to help women enroll in the industrial workforce since they thought that acknowledging one’s personality preference could refer to a better finding

work that matches their personality. This personality type indicator consists of four bipolar preference tendencies: extraversion (E) and introversion (I); sensing (S) and intuition (N); thinking (T) and feeling (F); judging (J) and perceiving (P). During the test, the subject chooses one from two indicators that he or she prefers for each of the four preference tendencies. Based on the answers the person’s MBTI type code is produced by combining the four alphabets from each of the preference tendencies and there are 16 types of MBTI codes in total.

Since MBTI has become widespread among the public there are more varied uses of MBTI. As it was mentioned before, MBTI is very easily found in the media. Many YouTubers use MBTI as their new content and it actually works well when attracting viewers. Even TV programs began to discuss this and share their MBTIs.

Since MBTI is so popular among people, enterprises are using this in marketing strategies. From April 13th to May 3rd, Kakao operated an MBTI special exhibition and provided a gift recommendation service based on personality types and tastes.

By Hayeon Kim, Year 10, Geomun Edited by Shona Hyun Park, Year 11,

What is synesthetic condition and how can it change the way of perception?

By Michael Hwangbo, Year 12, Halla North By Michael Hwangbo, Year 12, Halla North

When we think of the ways of perceiving, the first things that come to mind are the sensory organs. You perceive external stimuli through your sensory receptors including eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and skin. Your brain then processes the information and either can respond to the stimuli or could save it as a knowledge in your mind. The majority of humans have a similar extent of sensory perception. If others can sense something, there is a high possibility that you might sense it as well. But what if you have an extraordinarily specialized or developed sense organ? Can you dramatically sense better than others? Are there some people in the world with super senses? Will the supersense only benefit you?

This article will be exploring two artists with distinct forms of synesthesia, and how such conditions affected their inspiration and ability to perform. Furthermore, I would like to make a personal evaluation of whether this extraordinary condition only benefits people or society.

You might all have heard of Pharrell Williams, a superstar musician. This gifted man has produced a number of masterpieces including HAPPY, FRONTIN’, and DROP IT LIKE ITS HOT using his unique sense. He has a perceptual phenomenon called ‘synesthesia’, in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to involuntary stimulation in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. For instance, a synesthetic person can visualize combinations of colours while listening to music or can visualize a shape when hearing a particular note or pitch. This particular type of synesthesia (sound to colour) is called chromesthesia. Pharrell Williams has a medical condition which, for him, translates

auditory information or stimulus into a visual phenomena. Pharrell himself says:

“There are seven basic colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. And those also correspond with musical notes…White, believe it or not, which gives you an octave is the blending of all the colors… Colors are light in the electromagnetic spectrum. For every color, there is a sound, a vibration, a part of the human body, a number, a musical note…”

“What gives me meditation is the shower. When I get in the shower, because of something called sensory deprivation, when one of your senses is being blocked, it allows your mind to wander and be imaginative. So when I’m in the shower, the water blocks out the sound, so it makes me imagine things.”

Another well known person with synesthesia is Geoffrey Rush, an Australian actor born in 1951, participated in various masterpieces including Pirates of the Carribean series. Rush has two types of synesthesia; grapheme-colour and spatio temporal. Grapheme-colour is the most common form of synesthesia: slightly over 1 percent of the global population live with this condition. These people see individual letters of the alphabet and numbers (collectively referred to as graphemes) “shaded” or “tinged” with a color. While different individuals usually do not report the same colors for all letters and numbers, studies with large numbers of synesthetes find some commonalities across letters (e.g., A is likely to be red). Another type of synesthesia that Rush has, Spatio temporal, is also referred to as Spatial-sequence synesthesia (SSS). Those with spatial sequence synesthesia (SSS) tend to see numerical sequences

as points in space. For instance, the number 1 might be further away and the number 2 might be closer. People with SSS may have superior memories; in one study, they were able to recall past events and memories far better and in far greater detail than those without the condition.

Other than the types of synesthesia introduced above, there are still 54 other forms including emotion to pain/ smell/touch and smell to sound/tastes/ touch etc. Research suggests that there is one person with the condition in 2000 people and that the majority of people with synesthesia are not aware of their condition initially. This means that there is a mere chance that you or someone close to you has such a condition. If you feel like you are having some symptoms of synesthesia (involuntary perception shifts, sensory triggers that consistently and predictably cause interplay between senses), you would like to utilize the gift to develop yourself in various aspects either in the academic or field of art.

The anecdotes of the two artists mentioned above suggest that synesthetic conditions have given them support and inspiration. However, many people with such conditions suffer from general stereotypical views of them within the society. For instance, people might experience ridicule at the hands of their peers. Children without synesthesia will often find a synesthete’s descriptions of their experiences to be strange or threatening and react through shunning or criticism. Thus, it can be seen that the cost of having a unique way of perceiving things is that they need to live in societal prejudice on them, which could be highly stressful.

Relationship with patients and physicians and meaning

By David Noh, Year 12, Halla Edited by Injoon So, Year 11, Sarah

The field of medicine notably progressed throughout the endeavour to alleviate humanity. It initially treated the human illness and health condition, but the relationship of patient and physicians has been hugely critical. Although the medical system in ancient times was physical, modern medicine values both sentimental and physical cure. Physicians try to build up the relationship with patients for the efficient and suitable medication.

The relationship between the patient and the doctor is the foundation of health care. It is the process of making diagnoses and plans, gathering data, ensuring compliance, and providing patient activation and support. A patient-doctor connection exists when a doctor, with mutual permission, satisfies a patient’s medical needs. One of the contemporary medical ethics is based on this relationship. Throughout the endeavour for the betterment of care, doctor patient relationship has developed into various formations.

The activity and passivity model is one doctor patient relationship model. Some people believe that it is suitable to maintain the differential in power between the patient and doctor as it provides a steady course of medical care. In this model, doctors can act as a provider and organiser for the patient who seeks for technical and information assistance. This has advantages and though this seems appropriate in medical emergencies, this model, known as the activity-passivity model, has lost popularity in the treatment of chronic conditions, such as rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. In this model, the doctor actively treats the patient, but the patient is passive and has no control.

Doctors construct plans such as a work schedule, book appointments, and plan ahead in order to accomplish the goals of generating and sustaining a plan. As a result, patients must organize ahead of time, schedule appointments, and conduct study on the topic to be discussed with the doctor. In a handful of ways, the doctor-patient interaction is related to planning. One, it boosts the doctor’s reputation. Prior to visiting the doctor, patients are able to make informed selections about the type of examination and treatment they choose. As a result, health-care activities are reduced to speed up processes and improve doctors’ ‘competence.’

However, because of this relationship, the doctor has an ethical obligation to put the patient’s well being ahead of their own. A doctor’s ethical obligation is to utilize competent medical judgment in order to serve the patient’s best interests. Being a doctor is a tough profession. Their purpose is to cover a wide variety of care delivery tasks on behalf of their patient; as a result, the patient must have faith in the doctor, and the doctor must carry out the patient’s wishes.

Planning is thinking about and organizing activities. Planning is required when integrating plans. Likewise, the doctor-patient relationship requires proper organization of activities and critical thinking in order to integrate plans set by the doctor and the patient. The doctor and the patient must agree on certain issues before choosing any treatment

How do Babies Perceive the World

Neuroscientists are developing an ability to understand how the human brain is organized to recognize faces or scenes. But how? What are these networks and where are the regions of our brains they occupy? Or do babies develop their reactivity over time?

Three-month-old babies do not talk very much. However, they have the skills to recognize two objects as being the same in different environments and lightning. Neuroscientists have tested 42 babies, based on how long infants lingered on the image to check if it’s similar or different, and they now know that babies will tend to look for longer at novel images. According to Japanese studies, they have a skill that recognizes the same object for being in different environments and lightning. So they are more likely to notice differences in images such as illumination.

According to Susanna Martinez Conde, a neuroscientist at the State University of New York, ‘this means that when babies are born they are highly responsive to all sorts of variation in the world, they have what is known as high-level discrimination.’ So, as we grow up, our discrimination skills became narrow and we are left with only a constrained range of differences we can appreciate. Additionally, Martinez Conde reported, the illusion of constancy is an evolutionary adaptation that enabled early humans to survive by allowing us to realize important objects despite changes in our physical environment.

In this article, I will explain differences in how babies perceive and understand the world around them. First of all, babies perceive the world with self-control. For example, they watched an adult demonstrating how to make several noise-making toys. Then, another adult came and shouted and scolded to make a big noise, angrily. After the demonstration, the babies were welcome to play with toys, but half of them were angry, like the second adult, and they turned away. Mostly, babies don’t hesitate with toys, but babies in the second group waited first, and then played with the toys.

Additionally, babies could sense the difference between their native language and foreign language. If they heard a foreign language, they sucked the pacifiers for a very long time. According to researcher Patricia Kuhl, “the vowel sounds in the mother’s speech are the loudest, and the fetus locks onto them.” Moreover, they’re tuned to each other’s emotions. For example, two pairs of babies, one 5 months old babies and the other 3.5 months old babies, sat in front of one monitor each. That monitor shows two baby facial expressions, smiling and frowning babies. Then the scientists recorded the audio. One is a happy baby and another one is a frowning baby. When they heard the happy audio, they looked at the happy baby and when they heard the sad and frowning baby audio, they turned to the frowning baby monitor screen.

Finally, babies have the ability to develop an impressive mastery of sign language for 6 months. The history of it started in the 1800s, and William Dwight Whitney, a professor linguist, remarked on the superior communication abilities of their children, while studying the deaf community. However, Whitney did not discover any further until it was rediscovered in the 1970s. In the 1980s, Dr. Joseph Garcia realized that the six months old children were communicating with their parents using sign language and when they were nine months old, they had substantial vocabularies. What surprised Dr. Garcia was that babies, now 12 months old, started to say a few words, and when they were two years old, they posess simple vocabularies. After that, Dr. Garcia started to teach signing to adults who are not deaf. In the 1990s, research findings improved a lot. Professor Linda Acredolo and her partner Professor Susan Goodwyn researched together at their university. They even won a series of NIH grants about BSL (Baby Sign Language). They continued conducting the first comprehensive baby sign language research and discovered a lot of benefits as a result: less frustration, a larger speaking vocabulary, and a twelve IQ point advantage. In the 2000s, PBS began running the Signing Time Series. BSL has also been winning prizes from professionals, an endorsement by the American Academy of Pediatricians. PBS helped over 2,000,000 babies in over 190 countries learn the baby language.

In summary, babies perceive the world differently from adults and this is demonstrated in results which are self-controlling, recognising the differences between their own and foreigners’ language, tuning in to each other’s emotions, and sign language development. Babies have the power to see and realize what they’re doing and thinking.

By Lewina Moon, Year 8, Mulchat

Optical Illusions

Optical illusions, more appropriately known as visual illusions, involve visual deception. What people see doesn’t match the image generated inside the brain. When humans look at something, what they are really seeing is light, specifically light from a light source that bounces off whatever they are looking at and enters the eye. The light is then converted into electrical signals which the brain turns into images. For some illusions, it is extremely difficult for the brain to focus on everything in the view at once, so the brain takes shortcuts by simplifying what is seen, forming visual illusions in the brain. There are also illusions which the brain attempts to fill in details that don’t actually exist. There are three main types of optical illusions: literal, physiological, and cognitive illusion.

Literal optical illusions occur when our brain fills in gaps that don’t actually exist in the actual image, which creates an image in the brain that is different from the real image. The brain focusing on specific areas of the image results in our eye perceiving something that isn’t actually there. A famous example of literal optical illusion is the picture of an elephant that has feet and then feet without the elephant’s legs.

Unlike literal illusions which the brain fills missing parts of an image, physiological optical illusions are the result of excessive stimulation on the eyes and brain of bright light, tilt, size, colour, movement etc. The brain is confused by the various stimuli and takes time for it to understand the actual image, which causes people to perceive impossible pictures. Examples of physiological illusions include after images following bright lights–the excessive exposure of the eye to an image leads to the retinal photoreceptor cells

to continue sending neural impulses to our brain even after stopping looking at the image.

Cognitive optical illusion is the most complex type of illusion out of the three illusions. Cognitive illusion often leads to unconscious inferences of images, and it assumes that the illusions generally arise from the interaction of a person with the world. Unlike other optical illusions, the inferences made are often actually not within the image itself, but rather result from the brain’s subconscious thoughts and how it links one object to another. The common four types of cognitive optical illusion are ambiguous illusions, distorting illusions, paradox illusions, and fiction illusions.

Other than these three types of illusions, there are countless other illusions that don’t fall into these three categories. For instance, a photographer David Morris captured an astonishing sight of a giant tanker floating above the water as he looked out to sea off Cornwall, UK in March 2021. This is an optical illusion named a superior mirage. Superior mirages occur in cold atmospheric conditions and are often seen in the Arctic. The illusion is due to temperature inversion–the refractive index of air depends on its temperature. The lower the air temperature, the higher the refractive index of air, making the ship appear in a higher position than its real position. This illusion can produce far-away objects at different altitudes; here a distant ship appears above the water, but in hot temperature objects below the horizon can become visible.

By Eileen Kwak, Year 12, Halla East

Can UFOs exist? The relationship between outer space and Earth

Are we the only ones in this universe? Over the last 20 years, more than 120 incidents of UFOs have been reported by the US military and were dismissed as the products of overactive imaginations or simple tricks of the light. For example, there was Britain’s Roswell sighting. USAF claimed that they saw lights in a forest. However, the Pentagon states that ‘UFOs really do exist.’ They say that UFOs are real, and they are possibly a result of alien activity.

In the past, UFOs and aliens were just thought to be imaginary, people believed that they were simply cartoons for children. However, today, scientists are beginning to take them seriously. For example, in June 2020, astrophysicists at the University of Nottingham estimated that there could be more than 30 intelligent civilisations in the milky way galaxy alone. Our society is starting to believe that it is crazy not to believe in aliens.

The universe is extremely broad and wide. Scientists estimate that there are billions of galaxies in the

universe, and there might be more. Humanity is starting to realise that the universe is too broad for them to be certain about everything. Today, society is beginning to take outer space exploration seriously. For example, NASA recently sent tardigrade astronauts to space, and most of them survived. Tardigrades are small, microscopic creatures that can survive harsh environments. Aliens might not be the aliens many people imagine. This can mean that some aliens can be microscopic. Therefore, even though we do not know what aliens look like, there is still a high chance that they may exist.

In the future, it is likely that scientists and explorers will explore outer space and find them one day. For example, recently, scientists have found a planet outside of the milky way. However, it is most likely that it would take a long time. According to Mr Jonti Horner, an Astrobiologist, the real question is if aliens are close enough

By Seoha Han, Year 8, Jeoji

Edited by Injoon So

Music and the brain

Music is a form of art that uses sound organized in time. There are various musical elements, such as rhythms, harmony, tone, dynamics, and texture, that are used to express emotions and entertain listeners. Producing such a beautiful sound requires a mass of brainpower. Previous studies have linked playing music to solving maths, however, this relationship is highly controversial. Contested as it may be, an increasing amount of research supports the powerful potential of music to influence our brain.

Studies have found that music and spatial or temporal reasoning problems in mathematics activate the same areas of the brain. Listening to music activates certain parts of the brain: classical music and minor tones for the right hemisphere, upbeat and major tones for the left hemisphere. It has also been observed that certain frequencies of sounds are processed differently by the two hemispheres in the brain. Using certain sounds or music can stimulate one hemisphere of the brain more than the other, which can be used to enhance the balance in the brain. According to a study in 2012, listening to music during maths tests can improve a student’s performance by up to 40%. Through these studies, experts ultimately proved that listening to music might improve cognitive and maths skills.

Using research results mentioned above, some found ways to utilize music in the medical field as well. The majority of symptoms such as attention deficits, learning disabilities, autism, obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression,

anxiety, and chronic pain all result from an imbalance of electrical activity in the brain. either an increase in activity on one side or a decrease on the other can produce an imbalanced electrical activity that affects the brain’s functions. The side of the brain that is problematic is most often the side that is understimulated.

Recently, Dr. Robert Melillo, one of the most respected specialists in childhood neurological disorders in the world, collaborated with composers to develop BrainBalance music that specifically deals with strengthening each hemisphere. BrainBalance Music is a tool used to achieve a balance of brain activity by stimulating the brain. Unhealthy activities in the right hemisphere, which causes ADD, OCD, anxiety disorder, and autism, are specifically treated by low-frequency tones, negative, or downbeat music, and music that creates images such as environmental sounds without words. Decreased activity in the left hemisphere which results in dyslexia, learning disabilities, poor memory, and depression is treated by high-frequency tones, upbeat music, words, and repetitive mathematical, rhythmic sounds. Dr. Melillo has created BrainBalance Music to make

By Joanna Ryoo, Year 11, Sarah

Edited by Hyeonah Joh

Phototropism and Geotropism; Plants and Sunlight

Plants are autotrophs, which means that they create their own food through photosynthesis. To carry out photosynthesis, plants need sunlight so they grow towards the sun. This natural tendency is called phototropism. Phototropism is the growth or movement of an immobile organism, or parts of it, towards or away from a light source.

The materials required for an experiment on phototropism are three small cups for soil, seed, pen, notes, tape, water, and a foil. Firstly, fill each of the three cups with soil and plant seeds in them. Then, label each cup as controlled, tip, and base. Place the cups inside a box to measure whether the seeds are able to receive sunlight. Then, cover the top of the plant with a foil tip for the ‘tip’ cup, cover the base of the plant with a foil of the ‘base’ cup and leave the ‘control’ cup as it is.

There are three variables for this experiment: independent, dependent, and control. An independent variable is a variable whose variation does not depend on the other factors. A dependent variable is a variable whose variation depends on that

By Eunsuh Kim, Year 11, Sarah

of other factors. Controlled variables are factors that are held constant or limited in a research study. In a phototropism experiment, the condition of the covered space is the independent variable. The dependent variable is the place that the plant is curved. The controlled variable is where the light comes from.

The three plants grow in different shapes because of a hormone called ‘Auxin’. Auxin is a hormone that regulates growth, particularly by stretching the length of a plant. They are normally produced at the tip of the plant. The hormone causes plants to curve in order to absorb sunlight. When the plant is shaded, auxin moves to the side of the plant where sunlight is available. Because of this, the size of cells on the sunny side of the plant remains the same but on the other side, the cells grow. This causes the plant to grow towards light.

Another relationship between plants and sunlight is geotropism. Geotropism is the growth of a plant in response to the force of gravity. There are two main types of geotropism, distinguished by the way of growth in relation to the force of gravity.

When the stem grows against the force of gravity, it is known as a negative geotropism. When the stem grows in the same direction as the force of gravity, it is known as a positive geotropism.

The materials required to carry out an experiment for geotropism are a ruler, foil, towels, water, seeds and a marker. To begin with, spray the towel with water and place the seeds. Next, place seeds inside them and label each of them as bottom, side, and turn. Place one end of the towel below the plant so that the bottom creates a ramp. At the end, name the other one as a side, and the last one as a turn. Do not forget to turn the ‘turn’ everyday.

For this experiment, the independent variable is condition and how the seed and

plants were grown. The dependent variable is the shape of the root and the plant. The controlled variables are the amount of light and the type of plant.

Geotropism also happens because of auxin. If a root of a plant is placed horizontally, the bottom side contains more auxin and the plant grows less and towards the ground, in the direction of gravity. The opposite is the same. When a stem of a plant is placed horizontally, the bottom side will contain more auxin and grow more, causing the plant to grow upwards which is against gravity.

So there you have it. Sunlight and plants work magic together.

Can Humanity Still Become Friends with Outer Space?

Humanity has been reaching for a place 62 miles away from the ground. Our curiosity has led us to previously unexplored destinations, and there is no turning back now. Space organizations have made their promise with the rest of humanity to take a huge step further, exploring outside of our home planet to solve mysteries and prove their theories true. To keep that promise, the scientists will have to enter a new world.

But here is the problem: the amount of space debris caused by humanity is rapidly increasing. This will negatively affect our future generation, and future investigations into outer space. Is it even possible to keep our investigation going without harming the other part of our galaxy? Even if we continue asking ourselves, it might already be too late to think so.

Approximately 550 of 7.75 billion people currently on earth have ever gone to outer space under the auspices of various organisations. It may have been their dream, passion, and hope for numerous years. They have given up their own time to train. They have faced numerous failures until they found their desires come to fruition. The world knows how astronauts and space organizations contributed to the development of space technology. However, once astronauts have gone to space, it is not just their bodies that travel out of the pull of planet earth; high-technology equipment, especially processed foods and other kit required for survival, travels with the astronauts in a massive spaceship. There are so many of them that some of the kit has to be left in outer space. If not, it would be impossible for the astronauts, cosmonauts and heaven-sailing staff to return safely to earth. This has been happening for decades. People go to space, leave some of the inessential kit behind, and return to their home planet. Over time, a new question has been asked amongst astronomers...

What we are doing, is this right? Is it too selfish of humanity to leave their garbage out in space?

The space debris problem is more significant than what one might think. Scientists would not have known that exploring outer space for the development of science would bring such huge consequences. But as we continue on our exploration, the amount of space debris has started to increase, old communications infrastructure, old weather satellites, at an alarming rate, and has turned out to be an unstoppable problem that we should be taking responsibility for.

Out in space, there are at least 27,000 pieces of space debris floating around, polluting earth’s atmosphere. According to NASA, “the rising population of space debris increases the potential danger to all space vehicles.” (NASA, 2021) The garbage that has come from us is hurting our biggest inventions. Despite the fact that space debris does not put human spacecraft and outer space exploration at huge risk, sensitive space equipment will not be able to continue on a safe journey if the possibility of being damaged by space debris increases. This risks the safety and success rate of the investigation for future generations.

Not only does it put our investigation at risk, the amount of space debris and climate change might be linked together; a New York Times article states that “our planet’s atmosphere naturally pulls orbiting debris downward and incinerates it in the thicker lower atmosphere, but increasing carbon dioxide levels are lowering the density of the upper atmosphere, which may diminish this effect.” (The New York Times, 2021) The atmosphere plays a big part in clearing out space debris, as most of the objects drawn into the atmosphere will eventually decay in less than ten years in the thicker lower atmosphere. However, as carbon dioxide impacts the density of the atmosphere, it causes this effect to decrease. We may see more space dirt rushing towards us in the future.

Space debris problems are not something that we can completely solve with our current technology. According to a Scientific American article, the cleaning process of space debris would require thousands of spacecraft. This fact should not be ignored. Problems that take place outside of our planet will eventually rebound on us. “Finding ways to remove at least some of that space junk should be a top global priority,” said Donald Kessler, a retired NASA senior scientist for orbital debris research. Kessler also mentioned that the amount of debris will continue to increase even if we stop launching spacecraft to outer space.

The mystery and wonder of outer space is constantly attracting scientists as the technology develops and the area of exploration increases. Outer space exploration and the study of astronomy benefits humanity and future generations, but should we not think about the disadvantages? Could we try to reduce the problem we are currently facing? If astronomy benefits us and stimulates our imagination, we should not be indifferent to the fact that outer space is being polluted. The increasing number of space debris will only harm our future exploration.

By Shirley Jang, Year 8, Noro

Edited by Warrick Kwon

The mechanical woodpecker

By Stella Lee, Year 12, Halla

That wasn’t very successful, was it? She questioned me once she saw the watermelon being dropped to the ground. Like a block of lead plummeting down to the sand, softly landing, no crash, no nothing. I didn’t reply since replying was pointless in this situation. As if I denied her statement, she would hit me and if I encouraged her to continue, she would cry on and on; her screeching voice like nails on a chalkboard, the scratching of an unborn child. So instead, I stayed silent and she lost interest sooner or later. The clouds above us were immobile, silent as they watched as fall, fall, fall. If I drop down, would I survive? The second question she asked me. This time, I had to answer as it was a definitive statement. A subtle fact, urging me to go on, intrigued by her own subjective boredom. Probably, was my reply.

The air between us was saturated with untold tension, dripping down, making me want to drop down to my knees. Then prove it, was the respective reply. I gulped, audibly, there was no use in hiding my excitement. She knew it, I knew it, we all knew it. It was evident from the start, wasn’t it? The inevitable plummeting of the watermelon and the sound of its tender flesh meeting concrete got smothered due to the mechanical woodpecker drilling the ground; in search of something that didn’t exist. You have a choice, to jump or not to jump. To lead me or to follow me. But in reality, what’s the difference? Yes, she was right. There

was no difference anyhow. After our fall, everything would be just the way it was: the mundanity of everyday objects, people softly whispering to their loved ones, the teddy bears being crushed by a trash compactor.

Yes, it was all the same. Still, I couldn’t help but yearn to see her demise first. So I told her, you could be my god, my messiah that would lead us to our respective destruction. She laughed, clearly and loudly. That was a bit cheesy, wasn’t it? That was the reply. The word of god. Yes, I acknowledged. Yes, it was. Okay, she lithely stretched her bow-like body, a sprinter ready for a jump not taken. Yet. And then, and then,

She ran across the top of the building and jumped untilI you couldn’t see her glimmering headband anymore and then and then thud! I heard the sound of classic music playing, probably from some abandoned theatre somewhere, the lyrics mumbled and muffled. It went on like this: I’m laughing, You’re laughing, We’re laughing. And I supposed that the jumbled unintelligible mutter between them had some kind of meaning but I wasn’t interested. I also didn’t look downwards because it was evident what I would see. A girl, mangled, sad, singing at the top of her lungs, reviving. I detested rebirth so I left.

Alumni Interview

By Jenny Roh, Year 12, Halla

Edited by David Noh, Year 12, Halla

Relationships are a significant component for human beings. Although it characterises human interactions, relationship is a complex word to define. There are numerous definitions and it varies with a person’s perspective. This suggests that everyone has their own definition of “relationship”. After interviewing graduate student Sung Hyun Shin we could interpret and understand her definition and viewpoint on relationships. Sung Hyun graduated from NLCS Jeju in 2015 having joined the school in Year 10. She stepped into the international education field starting her IGCSE at school. Transferring to an international school from a public Korean school gave her numerous opportunities in terms of forming new relationships compared to her limited life before.

Sung Hyun explained her definition of relationships as “It is one of the reasons why I am continuing to live and the existence of family, friends and loved ones motivates me to do anything in my life.” She also emphasised that relationship and interaction with others is something important in her life which lets her flourish. She said that if she cannot withhold any relationship with people, there would be no point in living.

The interview began with pondering her past school life. Before Sung Hyun transferred to an international school, she used to go to a public school in Seoul. Back then, she had various disagreements with the school policies and the nature of the school. For instance, in Korean public schools there are strict regulations towards a student’s appearance or the dress code: hair length, colour, and makeup. Moreover, some Korean school systems rank the students according to their grade and expose the rankings to others. It clearly pressured her to be an academically exceptional student in every field of studies. Compared to her old school, NLCS Jeju gave her diverse opportunities when she first joined in 2012.

She agreed with the statement, “Relationships have a high correlation with jobs”. She linked this statement with her own experience when she first came to the school. She said, “I built new relationships with the teachers and staff during my IGCSE and IB journey which was very helpful. In the boarding house there are many opportunities given to

us as we live with staff and peers. I felt trusted since the house mistress and other staff gave us freedom and we spent time together making birthday cakes. I think me and my friends all felt cared and respected as we spent more time together and shared a lot of parts of our daily life.” The correlation with school and relationship extends to jobs. Sung Hyun brought up that, “It is unavoidable to have relationships with different people and it is essential as it has a direct link to opportunities.” It is not always friendly relationships that we tend to make but other kinds of relationships are also important in our life.

Social media also contributes to her social life and constantly keeping in touch with her friends and relationships. She said, “I usually use Kakaotalk to contact my old friends. I think it is convenient, free and there is no risk of losing the data unless you lose your phone.” She also mentioned, “If we meet once a year, I’ll call that as often.”

The following students helped prepare this issue of Islander:

David Bae Jason Bang Peter Chang Jaeyoung Chung Joseph Fernandes Jessica Heo Sabrina Huh Serena Hong James Kang Minju Kang Alvin Kim Andrew Kim Jeremy Kim Cathy Kim Stella Kim Hyunseo Kim Daniel Kim Warrick Kwon Jean Kim June Kim Hailey Kim Jinyoung Kil

Crew List

Amy Kim Eunsuh Kim Taehee Kim Ji-min Lee Sangmin Lee Brandon Lee Sophie Lee Jiho Lee Theresa Lee Emily Lim Stephanie Lim Lewina Monn David Noh Stephanie Oh Shona Park Jenny Roh Joanna Ryoo Injoon So Hanna Wang Jian Yeo Inseo Youn

Designers:

Albert Choi Alice Jeon Kelly Jo Siyeon Kim Sally kim Eunice Kim Esther Lee Seobin Lee Seunghwan Lee Taehwan Lee Hyun Min Grace Nam Luna Park Seojin Yang James Jeong

Staff: Alice Bate Elizabeth Barlow Raymond Maher Anthony Quinn