Islander Issue 25-26

Page 1

25 Turning Point


01 HISTORY


"The only lesson of the History is that no one learns their lessons from history" -George Bernad Shaw


Hyunjoo Anette Cho, Y11, Mulchat

WORLD WAR I


World War I, also commonly referred to as the Great War, was one of the most prevalent historical turning points in human history and the second deadliest conflict. War lasted from 28th of July in 1914 to 11 November 1918 between european countries and some others. World war 1 had many different causes: mutual defense alliances, imperialism, militarism, nationalism, and assassination of Archduke Franz Ferinand. Many battles occur during war which were the turning points during and after the war. Due to these turning points, many changes occurred. European countries made mutual defense agreements saying that if one country was attacked, allied countries will be bound to defend them. These ag reements pulled countries into battle. Between the 19th and 20th century, there were two different coalitions: the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance. The Triple Entente consisted of France, Russia, Serbia, Britain, Belgium, and Japan. The Triple Alliance consisted of Germany, Austria Hungary, and Italy. As a result, when Austria Hungary declared war on Serbia, Russia stood up and helped Serbia to fight back. Then, Germany saw it as Russia mobilizing; therefore, Germany declared war back on Russia. France drew against Germany and Austria-Hungary, and Germany pulled Britain and Belgium as she attacked France through Belgium. Imperialism was also the cause of World War 1. Imperialism means bringing additional territories under their control. Every country wanted more raw materials, so it was to get raw materials from their colonial countries located in Africa and parts of Asia increasing competition and so a desire for greater empires led countries into a fight and into war. In addition, militarism and nationalism also helped countries to be involved in war. For militarism, there was an

arms race between european countries. Which means, the european countries were obsessed with increasing military power. A b ove a l l , t h e a s s a s s i a n t i o n o f Archduke Franz Ferdinand was the turning point of the remaining peace. On 28th of June 1914, Archduke Franz of Austria Hungary, the heir to the throne of Austria Hungary, was driving a car with his wife and Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnia Serb member, shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand. T he death of Franz Ferdinand meant the loss of their presumptive to the Austro Hungarian throne. As a result, they got mad at Serbia; therefore, Austria Hungary planned revenge, but needed a justification; they sent a big list of impossible demands to Serbia. Serbia refused it and, at the same time, Austria Hungary invaded Serbia on the 28th of July. The battle between Austria Hungary and Serbia lead the great powers of Europe to be divided into two coalitions: the Triple Entente, consisting of France, Russia, and Britain, and the Triple Alliance, consisting of Ger many, AustriaHungary, and Italy. During the war, there were many different turning points. There are three representative battles, which gave turning points to citizens and society, and one turning point that leads to World War 2. The Battle of Verdun happened between 21st of February and 19th of December in 1916 around the city of Verdun in northeast France. German and French armies fought and 362,000 French soldiers were killed and 337,000 German soldiers were killed. Related to the battle of Verdun, the Battle of the Somme happened. It was the largest battle of World War 1. It was to draw German forces away from the Battle of Verdun. The first day, British suffered 57 470 casualties including 19,240 dead. These two battles were known as horrifying battles

in World War 1. Furthermore, the Battle of Jutland was the turning point for the naval fights. It was the largest naval battle because it’s the only battle that had a full scale clash of battleships. It happened between May 31 to June 1 in 1916 near the North Sea area of Jutland. It had the intention to break the British naval blockade of the North Sea and allow German mercantile shipping to operate again. During this battle, German had 10 ships, 1 cruiser, 3,058 soldiers and 10 serviceable ships, and Britain lost 11 ships, 3 cruisers, 6,784 soldiers and 24 serviceable ships. As a result of the battle, Britain won the battle and kept control of the North Sea, and German never tried another naval battle. Lastly, the Treaty of Versailles was the last turning point for World War 1. It was the peace treaty which officially ended World War 1 between allied and central powers and the German empires. It took six months of negotiation, but it excluded Germany; after the negotiation, they forced Germany to sign it. This was the ending point of World War 1, but turning point towards World War 2. World War 1 was important because it was the turning point for women and the society. During and after the war, women became able to take part in working and gained more gender equality. They were able to get jobs and do more outdoor work, not indoor work. Women had more rights and became able to act independently. As technologies developed, many different kinds of medicines were invented and different ways of medical therapies were founded. Last but not least, countries became aware of remaining peace all around the world.


WORLD WAR II

Eugene Jean Cho, Y7, Mulchat

World war 2, also called the second world war, is a conflict that involved virtually all parts of the world during the years 1939~1945. So how did World War 2 start? On September 1st, 1939, Hitler invaded Poland from the west. It was because Adolf Hitler was a ruthless dictator with dreams of conquering all of Europe. Conquering Poland was a step in that larger plan. The Polish military wasn't powerful enough to resist him, and Hitler calculated — correctly, as it turns out — that Europe's other powers wouldn't intervene in time; two days later, France and Britain declared war on Germany, beginning World War 2. Also, on September 17th 1940, the Soviet Union invaded Poland. With attacks from both sides, Poland surrendered quickly, and by early 1940 Germany and the Soviet Union had divided control over Poland. On April 9, 1940, Germany continuously invaded Norway and conquered Denmark. A huge turning point of World War ll, according to historians, is the battle of Stalingrad during which German forces were defeated after five months of combat. It was a turning point because it was the first battle where the Soviet Union won against the Nazis. Under the leadership of ruthless head, Joseph Stalin, Russian forces had already successfully blocked a German attack on the western part of the country- the one that had the ultimate goal of conquering Moscow – during

the winter of 1941 to 42. However, Stalin’s Red Army had suffered great losses in the fighting, both in terms of soldiers and weaponry. After the battle of Stalingrad, the approach of winter came and, along with diminishing food and medical supplies, this spelt the end for German troops there, and the last of them surrendered on January 31, 1943. On June 6, 1944, chosen as “D-Day”, the Allies began a huge invasion on Europe, landing 156,000 British, Canadian and American soldiers on Normandy, France. Hitler landed all the remaining members of his army into Western Europe as his response, making sure that Germany would defeat the Allies. The Soviet troops soon marched into Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Romania, while Hitler gathered his army to make the Americans and British back off from Germany in the Battle of the Bulge which lasted from December 1944 to January 1945, the last major war, which caused the Germans great suffering. The Allies continuously landed aerial bombs on Germany, and by the time they formally surrendered on 1945, May 8th, the Soviet Union conquered most of Germany. Hitler was already dead, having died by suicide, but never found, in his Berlin bunker. Heavy casualties sustained in the campaigns at Iwo Jima (in Japan) in February 1945 and Okinawa in AprilJune 1945 and fears of the even costlier

invasion of Japan led Truman to use the new and devastating weapon. Developed during a topsecret operation code-named The Manhattan Project, the atomic bomb was landed on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in early August. On September 2nd, U.S. General Douglas MacArthur accepted Japan’s formal surrender. A f t e r t h e w a r, Ko re a b e c a m e independent again. The Philippines and Guam were retur ned to the USA. Bur ma, Malaysia and Singapore were returned to Britain, and French Indo- China (an IndoChinese Union from 188, a group of French colonial territories) was returned to France. World War 2 proved to be one of the deadliest international conflicts in history, taking the lives of 60 to 80 million people, including 6 million Jews who died at the German’s hands during the holocaust. Millions more were injured, and still more lost their homes and property. It is one of the deadliest wars remembered today.


Turning points in WW2 Hyunseo Hailey Yoo, Y11, Geomun A turning point is a time during your life when you make decisions that would lead to a significant change in your life. Despite the fact that turning points appear numerous times to make huge changes, turning points during World War 2 can be key ones which still impacts people today. If some of the following turning points did not occur, your life could well be very different now. There were 5 key turning points during WW2. To start, the first turning point occurred when Great Britain and France declared war. In 1939, Great Britain and France declared war on Germany in response to Hitler’s invasion of Poland. This made the over-confident Hilter startle and diverted his g rand plan from its intended course by opening a second war front. Hitler’s foremost plan was to take control of the whole world with Russia’s endless natural resources, sta r ti n g wi t h o ccu py i n g Po l a n d . Hitler partly rectified this diversion by occupying France in mid-1940, but the 2nd front remained during the entire war and denied Germany the ability to strategically follow the prime principle of war, the principle of concentration of effort. The battle of Britain is known as the second turning point of WW2. During the summer of 1940, Hitler rapidly occupied France in Blitzkrieg invasion in his attempt to ‘close’ the wester n front. Then, he followed with an unprepared attempt to beat Britain in an air campaign that would enable invading the British island. The German Luftwaffe suffered greatly from lack of heavy bombers and from short flight range of its fighters

in the battle of Britain. Fighting the entire battle over Britain meant also that while for the Luftwaffe each lost aircraft meant losing a trained crew, many downed British pilots were able to return to duty and keep fighting, so for an equal number of downed planes, the Luftwaffe had much greater losses in trained pilots. The smaller Royal Air Force was initially losing the battle to the stronger Luftwaffe. This changed when in the middle of the battle Hitler ordered to change the objective of the Luftwaffe's effort from destroying the Royal Air Force to terror bombing London. This big mistake, and the other problems of the Luftwaffe mentioned above, allowed the Royal Air Force to recover, increase the Luftwaffe's loss rate while maintaining its own force, and win the battle of Britain. The western front remained "open" and active. The third turning point of World War 2 is known as the ‘Pearl Harbor. The Japanese attack of Pearl Harbor forced the US into the war at the same time when Hitler was stopped near Moscow. As for Japan, in Pearl Harbor, it just started a war it could not win. Admiral Yamamoto, their greatest military leader, warned them of that, but the extreme militarist Japanese leadership refused to consider other options. The next turning point was the battle of Stalingrad and Kursk. In the two following summers of 1942 and 1943, Hitler attacked in Russia again with all the force his army still had, but in both cases, his advancing forces were first stopped by fierce defensive fighting of Russian lines of defence, and later heavily beaten in massive counter

attacks that caused the Germans huge losses which at that stage were no longer replaceable. After these two great bloody battles, the Russian army gained the initiative and moved from defence to attack, an attack which pushed the German army all the way back to Berlin. The last turning point was about the fighters. During late 1943, The British night bombing campaign of German targets could not be as precise and efficient as daylight bombing. The American heavy bombers bombed in daylight, but even with many gunners on each bomber, they suffered heavy losses from the Luftwaffe's fighters. The arrival of long-range fighters, especially the P-51 Mustang, enabled allied fighter pilots to escort the heavy bombers all the way to their targets in Germany and back. This greatly reduced the losses of bombers, and constantly reduced the Luftwaffe's force. The result was that the mighty allied air power was finally able to efficiently strike the German military industry and its vital resources again and again and to cause heavy losses to the Luftwaffe. This significantly weakened the German forces on all fronts. To conclude, the 5 turning points of World War 2 were Great Britain and France declaring war, the Battle of Britain, Pearl Harbour, the Battle of Stalingrad and Kursk, and the longrange fighters.


Turning Points in the Development of man

Woojae Jay Lee, Y9, Jeoji


As a child, I used to imagine strong animals: lions, tigers and sharks, fighting each other to death. However, as I got older I learnt that none of these species are the strongest on Earth. We, as humans, are distinctively the top of the food chain. However, apes, our far ancestors, were not like how we are. Apes, without weapons and tools to survive, were very low in the food chain, just living in trees using fruits and berries for food. In Africa, where most apes come from, the trees that they used to live on started disappearing due to climate change. This made them move from trees to the ground, and this was the turning point in human evolution. With more competitors for food, apes had to find a way of protecting themselves and finding food. As apes were a lot smarter with bigger brains than other animals, they developed tools and learned to control fire. Furthermore, with the discovery of agriculture, people started forming collective societies. This gave people specific jobs like farmers, hunters, smiths etc. These small societies developed into larger countries. With more manpower, people could be dedicated to researching new things and inventing new tools without worrying about starving. Humans have come a long way developing into the most dominant species on Earth. In the long history of humans, there were multiple turning points where humans had to overcome a problem and evolve into a superior species, which is the topic that will be covered in this article. Before humans started dominating Earth, there was a long history of evolution. Most apes started in trees. Like you would imagine, they were small monkeys depending on fruits and berries as their food source. As the number of trees decreased in Africa due to hotter climates, some apes stayed up on trees relying on them solely, whilst others tried to leave the trees and find food elsewhere. Their bodies

started developing into a shape which was more efficient for running, and using their hands instead of their jaws. The effective shape was the shape of a modern humanoid. One of the existing evidence of this is Lucy. Lucy is a skeleton that was found by Donald C. Johanson in Hadar, Ethiopia. The first few pieces of fossils found were the shin bone and the femur. The angle of the completed knee showed that this species of apes were upstanding, but the shape and size of the body showed that this was not a modern human. The upright shape helped them to spread out into other places on the planet for food. As there were not many fruits on the ground, they resorted to hunting and consuming meat as their main source of food. The large amount of protein consumption developed their brains and muscles. When natural forest fires happened, food sources for apes were all burnt including other animals. With no other food source, they turned to the burnt meat. The burnt meat they had were much softer and were much less likely to be containing parasites, or being stale. The softer food meant that their teeth and jaws could devolve. The devolved jaw and teeth gave more space for the brain to develop further. They also found that fire warms the surrounding atmosphere. This meant that they could live in colder climates. The light from the fire also let humans be active at night. Their developed hands for picking fruits and climbing trees were put to other uses, crafting tools. As they needed weapons and tools that were stronger than just their jaws, they looked at the most common thing in the forest next to trees, rocks. Rocks were first used without any modification. Although rocks could be used as a blunt weapon, humans found that sharper rocks worked best for hunting animals, cutting trees etc. Rocks are often very dull with age, and not many, if any at all, have sharp edges. To overcome this problem, they learnt a method of sharpening rocks with their newly developing brains. This method is called knapping. Knapping is a method of sharpening

rocks by hitting them with a harder rock, called a tool stone. These tools were another turning point in human evolution. No other animal on this planet has evidence of using a modified tool in order to help their survival. Tools helped humans move away from using teeth and jaws as their primary tool and weapon. This can be clearly seen from the difference in dental differences between older apes and humans. Modern humans can be seen with smaller canine, the sharpest teeth found between your incisor teeth and your premolar teeth, than the ones of any other apes. This is because canines are used to kill or damage other organisms. Canines of more passive animals usually desolves smaller. In the case of humans, they simply did not use them at all, which lead to them having smaller canines and jaw muscles. The space was used for further brain development. Although knapped stone tools were certainly revolutionary, it took a lot of time, force and mastery to make these tools. The humans started learning that grinding stones against each other was more effective in creating more delicate and sharp tools than knapping. This was a big turning point in stone tools. One of the reasons being that tools like axes have superior performance with sharp edges and flat sides, which could not be achieved with hitting rocks together. With these superior tools, there were a lot of advancements in human’s lifestyles. Humans have relied on foraging wild plants like berries and grains or hunting large animals. These sources of food were very unreliable as everyone relied on the foragers and hunters to find enough food for the whole tribe. These tribes, which were each formed from small families, could not do all the jobs that were required for survival. With the discovery of agriculture, humans started to settle in certain points. They relied more heaviely on reliable sources of food like


fishing, farming, livestock etc. These kinds of food sources were possible because the tools were much more effective at their specific purpose. Settlements and dependable food supplies created bigger and bigger tribes which lead to countries. These kinds of societies meant that there was enough time and manpower for further development in technology. Even with the new technique of knapping and grinding, stone tools had their limits. Rocks cracked quite easily and could not be made into tools that were smaller and more delicate. The first metal used by humans was broze. Bronze can be easily cast, the action of melting a metal material and pouring it into a cast where it forms a certain shape. This was mostly because it is easy to find lots of it everywhere and it has a lower melting point. However, these tools made from bronze were very soft; they could be deformed just by giving the slightest bit of pressure. In certain parts of the world, archeologists do not find any evidence of bronze use. Many conclude that there was no ‘Bronze age’ in those parts, as bronze is very inefficient and soft. Anyway, humans needed a superior yet common material for tools. With the knowledge they have learnt from casting bronze tools, they found a new metal, iron. Iron is a very strong metal, but cannot be found anywhere other than from mines today. However, archeologists state that iron used to be very common; pockets of iron on the surface could be found very easily. Moreover, iron is relatively easy to cast and form into different tools. Iron is also one of the strongest out of the commonly found metals. Steel, an advanced kind of carboniron, is often used as materials of tools and structures to this day. In the iron age, most people on the land had formed into some form of society ranging from countries to small tribes. Even some of them

were advanced enough to trade technology and resources between them. The iron age is the shortest out of the three ages, stone, bronze, iron, at only a few hundred years. Even to the iron age, there were no reliable sources or recordings. Although the earliest for ms of recordings can be found in the stone age, an example being drawings on cave walls, most of them did not last long or had big drawbacks as recordings. For example, the cave wall was a somewhat reliable recording that lasted a long time. However, as societies expanded, a wall of a cave was not enough to carry information. Furthermore, they could not be carried. Many trials for recording can be found all around the world. The earliest kind of paper is the Papyrus. Papyrus, a paper made from a plant called Papyrus plant, but as it was made from plants it was very hard to obtain larger amounts of Papyrus. The earliest for m of ‘reliable’ paper can be found in China, in the Han dynasty. Not much information is known about the invention of paper. It is identified as invented in the 100s. In western parts of the world the earliest form of paper can be found from the 11th century. Although paper may seem very boring to a few, paper was the only way for people to share information effectively from society to society, from generation to generation. Before this invention and discovery of recordings, was the Dark age. The Dark age is not named dark because there were no lights or the sky was pitch black, it was named so because we have very little, if any, information about that age. Because of the lack of recordings from the age, there are no records of impactful changes that were made. To some historians, the Dark age is seen as a step back in history. This age displays the importance of recordings. So man has faced numerous turning points throughout history and I hope I have given you an insight into some

of these up to the end of the Dark Ages.


JAPANESE COLONIAL ERA IN KOREA In 1910, Korea was annexed by the Empire of Japan after years of war, intimidation and political machinations. Korea was considered a part of Japan until 1945. In order to establish control over its new protectorate, the Empire of Japan waged an all-out war on Korean culture from 1910. This was very dangerous because after King Sejong made hangul the Joseon (the name of Korea before 1897) people thought hangul was just an insignificant language and they didn’t research hangul for a long time. So a few years before Joseon's national sovereignty got taken by Japan the people started to worry about hangul. But from 1930 Japan had a policy called national extermination policy. The policy said that Japan and Joseon were originally one country, their ancestors are the same, change the last name to be like the Japanese to get the honor of the Japanese and be loyal to Japan. This policy was to obliterate Joseon’s ethnicity. Finally, in 1938 Japan made the Joseon stop using hangul. These policies made some changes in Korea. First, the people became urban. The population data shows that Joseon was a very static society whose urbanization had not progressed over 100 years. Also, the society was ruled by a high primacy of Hanseong, the capital city. The Korean peninsula experienced rapid urbanization in the secondhalf of the Japanese Colonial Period.

The urbanization was achieved on a qualitative development accompanying industrialization. Since independence, the country has experienced rapid urbanization, but its rate has not been higher than the one of the colonial period. In the colonial period, the Korean peninsula attained some regional balance. Second, during the colonial era, the incidence of water-borne diseases, like typhoid fever and dysentery, increased and the respiratory diseases, both diphtheria and tuberculosis, also increased. The forceful sanitary police system had influenced the communicable prevention act and health policy for over 50 years after the colonial era. In 1954, after Korea gained independence, the Korean government proclaimed the communicable prevention act. Since then the government increased the number of national notifiable diseases and refined the related acts to meet the public needs. In 2000, the communicable prevention act was fully amended to satisfy the modern public health principles not the sanitary policy rules. And the revised act named 'Infectious Diseases Control and Prevention Act' was proclaimed in 2010. Globalization, emerging and re-emerging infectious disease, climate change, change in health behavior, development of information technology, unification of

Korean peninsula would be the next challenges of infectious disease control and prevention in Korea.


The battle of midway:

Sunghyun Tom Lee, Y12 HE

THE TURNING POINT OF PACIFIC WAR Before the Battle of Midway, the Imperial Japanese army was leading the war in a dominant position. The America n army, after the tragic failure at Pearl Harbor in 1941, desperately needed a bold victory to win the war, while regaining the belief that the Allies can win the war. The majority of the citizens were still skeptical about American participation in World War 2 and their chance of surviving the war. Roosevelt in the White House desperately needed a bold event to regain hope in the American army. The Battle of Midway was indeed a turning point for the US Army during World War 2 and it became the source of tragedy for the Japanese Navy. The American army needed to first stabilize their chaotic army base, which was still paralyzed due to the shock from the Pearl Harbor Attack. As a result, President Roosevelt stated that Pearl Harbor should be remembered as the most humiliating moment in the entirety of American history. In response to that tragedy, President Roosevelt finally received enough support from his citizens to enable America to participate in World War 2. He ordered Admiral Namitzz to lead the new American Navy to detect the

Japanese Navy. The foreign Navy was moving towards small islands in the Pacific Ocean, but they had a major problem, which became critical in their defeat. They tended to overestimate t h e m s e l ve s a n d ex a g g e r at e h ow strong their army was. During their planning session, the Japanese generals started to use dice to randomly create a “situation” to see how they could respond to unpredictable incidents. However, the final plan they decided was a well-detailed one, which had no viable alternatives. On the other hand, the American Navy was desperate enough to set up a perfect plan for the next battle. They didn’t have enough soldiers and battleships due to the Pearl Harbor Attack, but they kept on gathering the maximum number of ships possible. One of the battleships was Yorktown, which was previously destroyed. However, General Namitzz ordered the engineers to fix Yorktown before the battle commenced. Since he knew that the elevators and the engine were not damaged, General Namitzz thought that it was possible to use Yorktown in the next battle. His prediction was correct. More than 20 assist ships and 200 engineers fixed a massive battleship

that had everything destroyed baring the engine and elevators. For the battle plan, the US Navy needed to search for the Japanese Navy to determine their next destination. However, since the Pacific Ocean was too large for the planes to search for the Japanese ships, the generals decided to hijack the messages sent between the Japanese battleships. One of the messages played a critical role, which was a message that used AF. The US Navy needed to know where this “AF” location was and they decided to leak their own fake information. When General Rochefort sent out a message that the Midway was running out of the water, the Japanese battleships soon sent a message that claims that “AF doesn’t have enough water.” Now, the US Navy knew where the Japanese Navy was going to attack next. However, they still didn’t have enough planes and battleships. The weapon of battle during the 1940s was in using aircraft carriers. The US Navy had three of them: Hornet, Enterprise, and Yorktown herself. Enterprise was one of the strongest aircraft carriers in the world and was, fortunately, sailing to America during the Pearl Harbor Attack, due to a typhoon. On the other hand,


the Japanese army had four aircraft carriers, Akagi, Kaga, Soryu, and Hiryu. Each aircraft carrier was known to have the capability to destroy multiple battleships. The situation was worse on the number of aircraft and battleships. The US Navy had 25 battleships, 19 submarines, and 360 aircraft. However, the Japanese Navy had 102 battleships, 11 submarines, and 264 aircraft. This significant difference in the number of the possible options made most of the American pilots and naval officers feel devastated. While the battle strategy was also an important factor in their victory, the number of available attack options was also one of the features that needed to be considered. This also became an important reason why the Japanese ar my was so confident and not as desperate as the American navy. The battle began on the 4th of June 1942. At the start, Japanese planes started to initiate attacks onto the Midway. Although they thought that their air force was strong enough to destroy the entire base, the Japanese army only sent 8 planes which had the impossible task of searching the entire Pacific Ocean. In contrast, the American Navy sent 20 planes. This determined the first reason why the overall result of the war ended in the Japanese army being defeated. Following this mistake, the Japanese army started to bombard Midway. However, this raid didn’t givhave much significant effect on the American army, as all of the soldiers had been evacuated before the attack began and the runways, which are an essential facility for the air force, weren’t destroyed at all. On the other hand, this raid caused 22.4% of the entire air force of Japan to be destroyed, including the planes destroyed during the attack and thoses that ran out of fuel. Based on the common assumption that more than 20% of the entire fleet being destroyed means complete failure, the Japanese army was already plummeting in morale at the start even before the climax of the war. As the American army’s radar could also detect the presence of the Japanese army, the American pilots also started

their attack on the Japanese army. Despite their efforts, the American pilots soon realized some of their bombs failed to explode. However, they soon started to use their other functioning weapons, such as the normal Gatling guns and rifles. The American Navy also started to use the submarine “Nautilus” which was a source of distraction to the Japanese army. This submarine later provided a path for the American ar my to victory. While the Japanese ar my remained in chaos, as the malfunction in communications continued, the American pilots soon discovered a small trace made by Araci, one of the Japanese ships. This ship was left behind, as it was constantly disturbed by Nautilus and was forced to leave a slight trace. This trace was noticed by C. Wade McClusky as he led aircraft on the Enterprise, America’s strongest battleship. As he followed this trace, the entire aircraft fleet arrived just above the main Japanese navy with all of the aircraft carriers. That was when one of the Japanese soldiers reported “Aircraft above! Dropping suddenly to our ships!” It was the start of the “Five Fateful Minutes.” F i ve Fa t e f u l M i n u t e s w a s t h e highlight of the entire battle of Midway. Following the trace of Araci, Enterprise Aircraft fleet Number 6 pilots soon started to bombard everything they saw on the surface. These pilots were all highly experienced, which led to fast and efficient attacks being pummeled on the Japanese f leet. All of the pilots began to attack Kaga, the first aircraft carrier to be seen. However, this meant that there were still more Jspanese aircraft carriers that didn’t suffer any attack. This slight chance was terminated when Richard Best and two wingmen soon realized that something was wrong and they turned to Akagi, a second aircraft carrier. This attack soon disabled Akagi and Akagi soon exploded in a complete inferno. That was two carriers in total and two were still left: Hiryu and Soryu. Soryu also followed Akagi and Kaga, when Yorktown’s Number 3 aircraft bombers arrived. They immediately went to

Soryu and started bombarding it with bombs. Three 1000 pound bombs soon hit the front, middle, and end of Soryu and sunk the ship, leaving more than 700 victims. With only Hiryu remaining, the Japanese started to resist by sinking Yorktown. However, despite their assumption that Yorktown was destroyed, the workers repaired Yorktown “in the middle of the battle.” It took double the amount of bombs and complicated torpedo skills for the Japanese fleet to completely destroy Yorktown using a submarine. The sailors of Yorktown all survived. Hiryu, on the other hand, was eliminated like others in the Japanese fleets. Since all of these four carriers’ communication and weapon systems were off line during these Five Fateful Minutes, the attack remained unrevealed. As Hiryu was also bombed with four bombs, a massive fire soon rose, which caused the engines and lifts in the carrier to malfunction. It took hours for Hiryu to sink, leaving more than 300 victims. This marked the end of the Battle of Midway and victory of the American Navy. This battle was essential for both sides. The American Navy needed a victory to transmit belief to the soldiers that they could actually win the war, while the Japanese needed to be closer to the American territories to take a dominant role in the negotiation. However, as American soldiers were more motivated and had efficient systems, they gained a massive victory. In contrast, the Japanese army thought that they would win another battle and didn’t prepare carefully. This led to their plans being useless and their weapons to malfunction, playing a critical role in their defeat. The Battle of Midway led the American army to move towards the Japanese mainland, which later ended as Iwojima was taken over and two atomic bombs landed on the Japanese mainland. As the Japanese army couldn’t reach the American continent again, this battle could be said to prove a major turning point in the conflict and determined the end of World War 2 in the Pacific.


Turning Points In Western Art History Jinseo Annabeth Kim, Y10, Jeoji


The Italian painter Giotto was a genius who opened up a new chapter in art history. Instead of obeying to the strict set of rules of Byzantine style art, which is to present figures flat and linear with little suggestion of space and size, he showed contrast in his work by accentuating the light and shadows to develop the threedimensional form. Giotto's natural style, along with anatomical human description and perspective in the Renaissance period, became the origin of Western art and exteded all the way through to the 20th century. Mourning Christ is one of a series of murals painted in a private chapel. The painting shows the moment of mother Mary embracing her son for the last time, and those around them mourning his death. Caravaggio was also another italian painter who rejected the artificiality of the Renaissance beauty and mannerism with the usage of intense light and realistic portrayal of characters. He used the composition and dramatic contrast techniques that he captured close enough to fill up the whole space to express the unprocessed truth of everyday life in art. Though Caravaggio's painting life is only 12 years long, he is recorded as a reformer of Western painting in that he opened a dramatic Baroque era with a new interpretation of old themes. "Embao's Dinner" depicts an apostle being surprised to discover that the man who joined the bar was a resurrected Christ. The chair that is pulled backwards, expressions of arms wide open in surprise, and fruit plates that seem to fall outside the picture frame in the corner of the table make viewers feel as if they are in the story of the painting. ​ Jacques-Louis David was a French p a i n t e r i n t h e N e o c l a s s i c a l s t y l e, considered to be the preeminent painter of the era. His strict and orderly composition marked the end of rococo art. "Art must contribute forcefully to the education of the public”, said David, demonstrating his values on classics and morality, creating a neoclassicalism that respects order and reason. In the Horatius brothers' pledge, the three brothers, who vow to choose death if they fail to defeat the enemy, well reflect on the new social atmosphere

that emphasized self-sacrifice. Just as the French Revolution wiped out the profligate aristocracy at the time, the painting shows the new ascetic value of people. David clearly contrasts his works to traditional art styles by showing the difference between men drawn with hard and straight lines, while drawing women with soft, curved lines. Wassily Kandinsky was a Russian painter and an art theorist. He pioneered abstract art in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His unique perspective on the form and function of art emphasized the synthesis of the visual and the auditory. He could hear colours and see sounds, and this unusual perception was guided to the development of his artistic style. He believed that the purpose of art was to convey the artist's unique inner vision, which required transcendence of the objective world. He explored the expressionistic qualities of colours in his works focusing on conveying emotions through colours without using figures. Farbstudie quadrate, also known as Concentric Circles, is one of his most famous colour studies, and perhaps his most recognizable artwork. Colour combinations within concentric circular patterns are arranged in a all-over grid format. Farbstudie Quadrate can be seen as an organized investigation of perceptual effects of the interactions between colours and the emotional effect the contrasting colours produce. The Young Ladies of Avignon is by Pablo Picasso, one of the most famous and influential artists in the 20th century. In this work, he used stereoscopic techniques that left a milestone in the fundamental concept of ‘beauty’, such as perspective, anatomical structure, and colour. Instead of following the style of clearly recreating the appearance of objects established after the Renaissance, he described the intellectual structure inside of his mind, which marked an important turning point in the development of modern art. The Young Ladies of Avignon is the first true art work of the 20th entury. It is a work that ended the Renaissance style

in the West, which had been around for 500 years. The five women that appear in this painting are anatomically messed up. They have eyes tilted to one side, distorted ears, and limbs in the wrong places. One of the womens’ eyes looks straight ahead, and the face is drawn sideways. Perspective is also destroyed, and instead of gradually retreating back, the space is splintered in jagged sections. Some critics described these sections as " debris from broken glass." The women's extremely ugly appearance antagonized those who visited his studio and saw the painting. Matisse thought it was a joke, and Braque was shocked enough to say he thought he drank kerosene with fire. Jackson Pollock was an influential American painter, and the leading force behind the abstract expressionist movement in the art world. He was the first notable artist to completely break away from the conventional brushpalette-easel approach of painting to become an “all-over” painter. He was known to spread large raw canvases on the floor in order to pour, drip, splatter and flick paint onto its surface, from all sides, using all manner of implements from sticks to knives to basting syringes, creating intricate patterns of colour and texture. Lavender Mist is one of several works produced by Jackson Pollock when he was at the height of his “action painting” technique. As with other paintings produced by Pollock during that time, the visual impact of Lavender Mist comes in part from its sheer size, a nearly ten feet wide piece of vibrancy. Standing in front of the painting, viewers are immersed in the remarkable environment it creates. Upon close examination, the details of the technique can be fully appreciated - lines that grow wide then dwindle to a mere hair’s breadth and the varied textures of the paint on the vast expanse of canvas. These variations give the painting a shimmering, 3D quality. The interweaving assortment of lines becomes an intriguing net that extends over the whole piece.


02 SOCIAL



TIME BOMB Kimyeong Andrew Cheon Y11, Noro

The Korean economy is at risk due to the low fertility rate. The nation's fertility rate is among the lowest in the world at 1.25 births per woman and it ranks 220th among 224 nations around the world. The nation's working-age population will also begin to decrease starting this year. As such, the Korean economy is facing a population decline crisis. We'll take a closer look at the turning point that low birthrate and aging population brought on the economy with Dr. Lee Geun-tae of the LG Economic Institute. Generally, we say the working-age population is people from the ages of 15 through 64. This population reached a peak in 2017 and started to decline in 2018. According to Statistics Korea, the population of people from the ages of 15 through 64 increased from 13.7 million in 1960 to 37.63 million in 2017 but decreased to 37.62 million in 2018 and the working-age population is expected to decrease rapidly in the future. The working-age population refers to people from the ages of 15 to 64 who are capable of performing economic activities without difficulty. They are the pillars of a society's economic growth. However, 2018 is the first year that Korea's working-age population started to decline and the elderly population

above 65 years of age was higher in number than those between the ages of 0 and 14. At this rate, the working-age population is expected to be less than half of the entire population while those over the age of 65 will reach 41% of the population. The bigger problem is the rate of this change. First off, the problem is that the speed at which the working-age population is declining is much faster compared to the aging process. Advanced European nations have already become aged societies with the elderly accounting for over 14% of the entire population from the 1980s. However, their workingage population started to decline from the 2010s. In other words, they had around 20 years before their workingage population started to decrease after they became aged societies. However, for Korea the working-age population decline is happening first as the nation's elderly population is expected to reach 14% next year. This is due to the rapid decrease of the younger generation because of the low fertility rate which led to an aging society compared to European nations. Also, because Ko re a ' s wo rk i n g - a g e p o p u l at i o n is declining so rapidly, the elderly will have to take the place of young workers. In Korea, the main workers of society between the ages of 20 through 40 will be rapidly declining while the number of elderly above 60 will surge

all at the same time. In other words, the elderly will have to replace the youth workforce. The rate at which Korea's workingage population is declining is faster than any other country in the world. For European countries, their workingage population started to decline 10 to 20 years after they became aged societies where their elderly population reached 14% of their total population. H o w e v e r, Ko r e a ' s w o r k i n g - a g e population will start to decline this year and it will become an aged society next year. This population change brings about a lot of changes in the economy. The working-age population is a society's main producer and spender. However, if their numbers start to decrease, a country's growth potential becomes that much weaker while their labor market as well as their welfare, education, defense, and overall society is affected. It may seem like a coincidence, but there are many cases when countries experience economic crises around the time their working-age population decreases. A case in point is Japan. Japan's working-age population started to decline from 1995 but the "lost 20 years" had already started for them in 1991 as their real estate bubble burst. Although Japan's real estate bubble and its subsequent burst were pointed out


as the direct reason for the economic crisis, it would be difficult to say that their demographic change did not play a major role. It was because of the decline of those between the ages of 15-64 who were the major producers and consumers of society not only reduced the country's production capacity but also shrank demand. Moreover, fiscal deficits and expanding national debt are also recognized as important side effects of an aging society. Ta k i n g a l o o k at c o u n t r i e s t h at experienced a decline in their workingage population, Japan and Southern European countries saw their real estate bubbles burst while consumer stagnation caused negative economic crises. Of course, population decline would not be the fundamental cause of an economic crisis. However, the economy could lose its vitality with the decrease in population of those in their 30s and 40s who are the most active spenders and producers. Thankfully for Korea, the decrease in the workingage population is not expected to lead straight to an economic crisis. It is because the extent to which growth has been sustained by real estate bubbles or national debut is not as large compared to the countries mentioned above. However, if the working-age population kee ps o n d ecli n i n g, th e n ati o n ' s consumer market and industries will change. According to studies on future household consumption and spending for the next ten year s, estimates suggest that necessities such as food and housing as well as items related to health will rise sharply due to the increase in the elderly population. As the population of those over the age of 65 will increase even more in 10 years, pharmaceuticals and healthcare industries will see a 30% increase in demand while supply disruptions are expected in sectors that require younger workers. By industry, healthcare, medicine, phar maceuticals, IT & communications, as well as software development were shown to have a

higher share of younger workers. The medicine, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, IT & communications industries were expected to see an increase in labor demand especially for young workers in the future so they are highly likely to experience a labor shortage. According to statistics, the youth unemployment rate for Korea last year was 9.8%. The figure has been g row i n g s t e a d i l y s i n c e 2 0 1 2 . I f the nation continues to have a low birthrate, in 10 years the population of those in their 20s will decrease by 20% or by 1.4 million. Industries that mostly hire young workers will face a labor shortage, unlike today. Japan, which has long seen its working-age population decline, has many IT and communication fir ms that require young employees but cannot hire them. So, what could be a solution to this working-age population decline which is quickly becoming a threat to the Korean economy? The labor shortage is expected to become a major limitation to Korea's economic growth in the next 10 years and the relative shortage of young workers is even more worrisome. This means that labor shortage can intensify for industries that are seeing a rapid increase in demand due to aging such as healthcare, or high-tech manufacturing industries that have a higher percentage of younger workers. To prepare for this, we must increase the quality of our youth workforce, and urgently consider increasing the number of high-quality foreign workers coming into Korea. However, the best solution would be to solve the low birthrate problem. But, this problem remains unresolved despite spending 100 trillion won to tackle the issue. As such, we need a viable solution that can be planned and carried out with speed to turn off the warning signals of a population crisis.


The Turning Point of Capitalism

consumers and producers know from two different factors, demand and supply. Hence, the invisible hand theory works in the micro scale of economy. However, Keynes pointed out that invisible hand theory requires time to stabilize. This is a very crucial disadvantage of the invisible hand theory since, over the long periods of time it takes to recover the economy, social depression increases and leads to revolution and social actions of economically weak social groups. Another factor Keynes criticized was about the Say’s law, which is a production of a product creates demand for another product by providing something of value which can be exchanged for that other product. So, production

By Seungho Ham, Year 11, Geomun

In the 20th century, the world faced one of the biggest turning points in history ever. As the huge incidents like the Great Depression and two World Wars occurred, the world economy was inhibited. Many economists, like Keyens, realized that the classical economics of the early 20th century cannot be effectively applied to macro issues like war and worldwide economic crises, and created Keyensian economics to overcome the depressing circumstances. Keyensian economics became the new wave of economics and finally led to one of the biggest turning points of capitalism in history. Keyensian economics is based on the errors in classic economics as they applied to national economic and political issues. During the 20th century, Keynes realized that the classical economics which are based on Say’s Law where prices adjust so that supply creates it’s own demand was inappropriate for national issues such as the Great Depression. He started to give opinions for the reasons why classical economics has some errors. Keynes criticized the economic system in that period with two different reasons. First and foremost, Keynes blamed the invisible hand theory as the main problem of the economic depression. The invisible hand theory was one of the most famous and influential economic theories, which illustrates the unintended social benefits of an individual's self-interested actions. The invisible hand theory was not theoretically wrong, there was an absence of consideration of other social factors. Basically, the invisible hand theory mainly works based on automatically changing price when confronted with a glut or a shortage. Price is the variable

is a source of demand. This law sounds persuasive, but this theory was proven as wrong since Say created this law regardless of the main point that money itself is different to other objects and can decrease or increase. This variable characteristic of money is because the bank produces money if needed since they have the right to create credit from the capital saved from the customers. In capitalism, to maintain the cycle of money, it is essential to produce money. This is because the cycle begins with borrowing since there is no capital existing if the government does not produce them. Also, as loans lead to the interest, the government should produce new capital and the borrower or community should get another loan to pay back the interest. This is the reason why the government endlessly produces money and money is a variable source. Hence as money is a variable source, produced supplies and demands are both available to vary. To sum up, Keynes produced another theory that was completely opposite to two theories, the invisible hand and Sey’s theory believed as basic and absolute truth in economics. As this theory was shown in one of the most confusing periods of the worldwide economy, the theory called “keynesian economics” had become a turning point


of capitalism and actively changed the basic knowledge of capitalism.


Junyeong Alex Kim, Y11, Noro

THE MALTHUSIAN THEORY OF POPULATION

Most of the geographers of the school would agree that the overall human population has grown since the first humans on Earth. When looking at data on this topic, it is noticeable that there is a massive increase in population over the last 500 years. But have you ever thought of the obvious examples of overpopulation around us? Places such as South Korea or Bangladesh are common examples of such countries. But if there is an increase in these countries as well, what would happen to us? Would we go extinct? Would we survive? If you’re interested, Malthus may have the answer for you. T homas Robert Malthus was an English cleric, scholar, and economist born in the mid-18th century. In 1798, Malthus published a piece of work named, ‘An Essay on the Principle of Population’. This explored the question of population growth with an extreme view on the future of humanity and evoked many questions and criticisms on the essay from other commentators. In retur n, Malthus published six more versions of the essay, each one answering questions and including new examples each time. Despite this, the essay was harshly criticised even in the 19th century due to its horrific

negativity. I n t h e e s s a y, T h o m a s M a l t h u s pointed out that the population grows exponentially, similar to the graph above, and that the food supply grows arithmetically, in a straight line. Therefore, Malthus concluded that the population will increase continuously as long as there is enough food for the whole population. However as the population exceeds what the food supply can support, only a limited number of people will be able to survive, the rich and the powerful. Malthus also argued that other factors such as disease or natural disasters would also affect this. Malthus believed that people would start to fight over the limited resources to be able to survive unlike the seemingly-unlimited room for population growth at his time. This idea is very similar to Darwinism in the sense that only the fittest (the strongest) will survive. In a nutshell, the Malthusian theory states that the population increases at a faster rate than the means of its subsistence and unless the population growth is stopped by another factor such as disease or war, we will inevitably reach degradation or wide spread poverty. On the other hand, other economists


a r g u e d f o r a n o t h e r t h e o r y, t h e cor nucopian theory. Often called t h e a n t i - M a l t h u s i a n t h e o r y, t h e cornucopian theory argues against the Malthusian theory and imagines the world in a totally different state. The cornucopian theory argues that as time passes and the overall population on Earth increases, there will be technological advances and the usage of these technological discoveries will aid the feeding of the people. Examples to such technological advances would be inventions such as fertilisers or tractors to aid the farmers. This, as explained by the cornucopian theory, will increase the food production for the population leaving the population able to sustain itself. H oweve r, t h e re w a s o n e c r i t i c a l problem that Malthus did not expect to happen, the industrial revolution. Regardless of the fact that nobody could have anticipated the industrial revolution, this led to many flaws in Malthus’ theory. Unfortunately, Malthus did not live long enough to go through the industrial revolution as he died in 1834 due to a cardiovascular disease. He was not able to adjust his theory with regards to the industrial revolution, leading it to be proved false by the revolution itself. H o w e v e r, m a n y f a c t o r s l e a v e the moder n world horribly close t o M a l t h u s ’ t h e o r y. T h e r e c e n t COVID-19 pandemic is an example for such factors that may keep the human population from growing continuously. The corona virus was so infectious and contagious that the world was placed in a situation where it was dangerously close to proving Malthus right. As many believe that Malthus is mostly correct, we must explore some of his ideas with the aid of his works, but in a different more modern context with different viewpoints.


Your turning point in life Sihyeong Daniel Ha, Y11, Sarah

Not everyone is born wise and smart. Instead, life experiences define your value and teach you how to be wise. At the same time, a person keeps re-evaluating their life in order to suit the wise path and not to wander from the path. Some proportion of people will stay in the wrong path, tricked by nature, or depleted of luck. But at some point, they will redirect their path to fit in by having enormous fluctuation called the “turning point”. Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a motivational theory in psychology comprising five distinctive conditions of human needs, often depicted as hierarchical levels in a pyramid form. The theory explains the lower level of the pyramid has to be satisfied before the individuals can attend to higher needs. From the bottom of the hierarchy to the top, the needs are physiological, safety, love and belonging, esteem, and self actualization. According to Maslow’s theory, the highest level is self - actualization. However, before Maslow was dead, he adjusted his theory into a more subdivided 6 level theory. To fulfill an individual’s actualization, they only pursue an individual’s benefit and encumber others. Maslow realized that this will prevent human beings from reaching an idealistic and optimistic society. So he added one more stage called “self transcendence”, having the altruistic desire to champion and support others. However, the condition of self transcendence could only be satisfied when individuals experience a massive shift called the “turning point”. The turning point is a time at which a decisive change or shifs in a situation occurs, especially one with beneficial results. Turning points for individuals are all unique. According to the survey of 1000 university students and 1000 elderly, about 46 percent claimed that graduation from high school was their turning point. In your 20s, it’s the age when the majority of the students graduate high school and move to university. As they move to a new environment, major changes occur like temporarily migrating to different nations for educational purposes or other various purposes. Lifestyle distinctively shifts. This could be the major reason why it displayed the highest result in the survey. To be specific, turning points are not tangible. Turning points are undefinable because the period or motivation will be idiosyncratic or some proportion of people could state that they had no stimulation or fluctuation in their life. The turning point is a crucial part of the entire story because it brings out the final action and determines the flow of the narrative. To restate the definition of the turning point, it is a time period that the audience spends their time to organize and to solve conflict resolution. Today, by using this moment, I wish to convey a story that had a colossal shift. Currently, he is attending the class from the University of Columbia and this story is from when he was in Year 11. Just like other parents, his parents used to worry about his attitude towards learning. He was even defined as the “bomb” between teachers who every teacher wanted to avoid teaching him. He was uncontrollable. So his parents wanted coercion and motivation for their son to start studying. Nonetheless, his effort was fruitless and the advice seemed to fall on deaf ears. The rabbit out of the magician’s hat was that he was a model student before but after he went up to Year 11, he halted all the educational stuff. In addition, his parents forced him to undergo the counseling process but he refused. As a result, he had no positive change. This is because the external change has a limit for surely shifting the person. His parents did not understand that “external” stimulations have a limit and “internal” change was needed. His parents moved the school more than once even over different countries to find the optimal environment for his study. Yet, this did not work either. Instead, his parents ended up investing a massive amount of money but had no reward or repay. One morning, he woke up just like any other usual mornings. However, he told me that he felt some unknown instinct that the forest behind his house was calling him to come. The forest was restricted for a long time for having a frequent wild animal appearing. Surely this also could not prevent him from entering the forest


without any protection or permission from the superintendent. This was done so that he would learn from isolation. When he entered the forest, he felt nervous for being nonpartisan of the forest but as he penetrated along the forest, he later explained that the time in the forest influenced him the most. When he was located in the middle of the forest, he felt he was isolated from the society and he was not born to be accorded into the community. However, he never felt lonely for being isolated. It even amplified his ability to concentrate more and had a more analytic attitude towards everything. The same more than once even over different countries to find the optimal environment for his study. Yet, this did not work either. Instead, his parents ended up investing a massive amount of money but had no reward or repay. One morning, he woke up just like any other usual mornings. However, he told me that he felt some unknown instinct that the forest behind his house was calling him to come. The forest was restricted for a long time for having a frequent wild animal appearing. Surely this also could not prevent him from entering the forest without any protection or permission from the superintendent. This was done so that he would learn from isolation. When he entered the forest, he felt nervous for being nonpartisan of the forest but as he penetrated along the forest, he later explained that the time in the forest influenced him the most. When he was located in the middle of the forest, he felt he was isolated from the society and he was not born to be accorded into the community. However, he never felt lonely for being isolated. It even amplified his ability to concentrate more and had a more analytic attitude towards everything. The same trees seen inside the house and seen inside the forest, had a hugely different attitude towards looking at the subject. Then, he noticed that temporary isolation was needed for him. His parents always rely on external changes or support from others, never believed in himself or was let to choose his path. So he went to his parents to ask them to allow him some freedom. He promised to study hard but only in his way and requested not to have interference. Surprisingly, he received all A for his major subjects. Today, he still remembers that day and always says the whole incident that happened steered his life into the right path. In conclusion, everyone undergoes a different life with different people by having a different goal. As you can see, being different and distinctive is not wrong. It is only being different. I strongly think that it is a compulsory procedure to find the right path for each person. To locate themselves on the right track, a change called the “turning point” could support you.


THE BACKGROUNDS OF PA R A D I G M S H I F T Warrick Kwon, Y9, Noro I dare to say that the philosophy of science is distinguished with the emergence of Thomas Kuhn in the scientific community. Whilst many have never come across the name, the phrase ‘paradigm shift’ may be a familiar topic for numerous individuals. The term ‘paradigm shift’ was initially proposed by the American philosopher and physicist Thomas Kuhn. Since the initial usage of ‘paradigm shift’, the overuse of the phrase is even the subject of criticism among many scholars. The shift of paradigms has been proven to foster great changes in the international community as new intellectual progress and social changes occurred through paradigm shifts. To illustrate, the rise of heliocentrism and the decline of geocentrism during the Renaissance era triggered the birth of anthropomorphism. Thus, as elaborated, the paradigms are significant because it forms the way of peoples’ thinking. As paradigm shifts have been so crucial, how do paradigms change? To answer that question is the

very purpose of this article. The zeitgeist shifts when certain conditions are met, generally shifting as part of the process involved in the Hegelian Dialectic. Also known as Dialectical Materialism, it is a philosophical notion in which a conventional ‘thesis’ is challenged through the establishment of an ‘antithesis’ resulting in the production of a new ‘synthesis’. The synthesis created through the process of dialectic becomes the zeitgeist, or the spirit of the time. It is this zeitgeist that determines the social paradigm of the era. As can be easily observed from literature or artworks produced during the same era, there is a tendency to share similarities ranging from implied messages to utilised techniques, so too different social events contribute to the formation of the spirit of time. To illustrate, literature and poetry produced after the two world wars generally condemns the brutalities of warfare influenced by prevalent anti-war sentiments in society. This

social trend was able to emerge only through the process of the Hegelian Dialectic. The antithesis highlighting the repercussions of warfare with e m p i r i c a l ev i d e n c e : c o n f ro n t i n g unprecedented levels of casualties and violence during the two world wars challenged the conventional thesis, warfare as a means to an egocentric end, consequently created a synthesis which entirely shifted the perceptions towards exerting violence to another sovereign state. Evidently, in a general sense, the zeitgeist shifts through the encounter of two contradicting values. In a more specific sense, paradigms shift mainly spring up in two areas: shift of intellectual and social paradigms. Intellectual paradigms shift through s c i e n t i f i c b re a k t h ro u g h s. T h e s e discoveries often trigger a fundamental shift in the ways science previously proceeded. Initial doubts raised by scientists regarding atomic structure can be an example. Ancient Greek philosophers viewed atoms as little balls which compose objects. As


time proceeded, paradigm-shifting discoveries, such as the discovery o f e l e c t ro n s by T h o m p s o n a n d Rutherford’s gold foil experiments revealing the existence of nuclei, shed light to the structures of atoms. Such ideas changed the course of scientific thought and it opened a new field of science examining the behaviours of matter that is invisible to the naked eye. A more recent example of shifts in an intellectual paradigm is the introduction of chaos theory. Chaos theory developed as an attempt to explain how events occur despite causal ambiguity. Chaos theorists refrain from explaining predictable phenomena; the primary focus of chaos theory is to examine non-linear, unexpected circumstances. The chaos theory shifted the paradigm regarding atomic structure again, by suggesting an electron-cloud model. This is now the orthodox of the academia, showing the transformation of the zeitgeist. All these new waves of scientific reasoning contributed to intellectual progress through the enrichment of scientific arguments and reasoning. The change of views about one’s surroundings occurred via intellectual progress. Therefore, in the cases of intellectual paradigms, intellectual discoveries and new methods of interpretation enables paradigms to shift, which is of course not only limited to areas of science, but mathematics, social sciences and artistic progress. Not only does intellectual zeitgeist shift, but the social zeitgeist also transforms when specific conditions are met. When does this happen? As social paradigms determine the political and societal structures of the individuals living in that society, it is certain that they have a grandiose influence upon societal systems and members bound by the existing social paradigm. For such significant, vital components of a society to be challenged there must be a major failure or problem in the societal structure. Indeed, the entirety of paradigm shifts which occurred during the course of humanity are based upon societal failure. Whether the implementation of the social

contract has been successful is the yardstick to evaluate if societal failure is present. The direct cause of this is because society is built upon a social contract of representation and preservation. The reason why society is able to function as a whole is because every member of that society shares a mutual interest. That is, the members of society opt-in to give up a certain portion of their liberties for the greater preservation of one’s liberties: the guarantee of essential freedoms and democratic representation. This is why individuals do not prioritise their selfish interests above others and avoid taking any means necessary to achieve such cause because they are aware of the fact that such behaviour will eventually result in harming themselves. However, if societies are run based upon the implicit agreement of the government providing greater benefits at the expense of a portion of the citizen’s freedom, when governments fail to abide by the contract, the social contract becomes no longer valid. Ergo citizens have a complete justification to withdraw from the contract. This is evident throughout history: the eighteenth century French Revolution. When French aristocrats were no longer in the interests of the citizens and lived luxurious lives while the working classes lived in complete agony, citizens challenged the government as they perceived the government no longer representing their will.The result of these uprisings was the establishment of a new form o f g ove r n m e n t i n Fr a n c e wh e re democratic values and equality were emphasised much more than before. Certainly the social paradigm shifted through social phenomena. After witnessing these characteristics amongst human progress, Marx characterises the transformation of social zeitgeist using the concept of historical materialism. He explains that history is all about the clash of material conditions. In other words, the social paradigm of humans have shifted through numerous events which he then classifies into six different stages: primitive communism, slavery, feudalism, captialism, socialism and communism. The inter nal

contradictions and flaws of capitalism cause the failure of the social contract t o o c c u r, a l o n g w i t h t h e r i s e o f socialism and communism. Therefore, the contradictions and failures of functioning as a proper government representing their citizens’ best interest also triggers the shift of social paradigm to occur. The way in which we view the world will constantly change. New bringing forth of ideas, challenges upon the existing social construct, can cause drastic shifts in societies. Some fear such change, as they do not want to leave their ‘comfort zones’ and experience changes in the power dynamic. However, if this is the case, humanity would never be able to support progress from the beginning. It is these special conditions which enable the zeitgeist to transform and open various opportunities for a wider population. Ergo, paradigm shift is inevitable and necessary.


Tu r n i n g p o i n t s o f entrepreneurs which led to their success By Siwoo Steven Kim, year 11, Sarah

All of us experience a number of ‘turning points’ during our lives. Some might succumb to the changes they encounter, but the brave few may withstand the challenges and even better their lives. One such person who exemplifies the fearless spirit is the Korean business magnate Chung JuYung, the founder of Hyundai Group. Chung was born in a small house in Kangwon Province on November 25th 1915, as a firstborn son to his family which consisted of six sons and two daughters. His youth was marked with abject poverty: his parents were so poor that they could not afford him to go on with his study after elementary school. Instead, Chung helped his father with the agricultural work. He was only 14 when he made the promise to himself to make something of his life and escape poverty forever. He secretly sold the biggest property his family owned - the cow - and with the money, he ran away from home. On the first night after leaving his family, Chung read an article by chance that recruited workers for constructing a railway in Wonsan. Even though Wonsan was a city far away from his hometown, he went there without any hesitation in order to make money. A few months later, Chung returned home with cash to support his family. After that, each time his family’s finances suffered, he would run away without notifying his parents and come back with money months later. Despite the family’s strong disapproval, Chung eventually settled in Shindang, where he was employed at a rice shop. There, Chung worked slavishly, of which the owner took notice. When the time came for the owner to retire, he decided to leave the business to Chung, instead of to his own son, who was a gambling addict. This was the first major turning point in Chung’s professional trajectory. Owing to his strong work ethic, he even beat out the owner’s own son. After a few months of adjusting, Chung became a successful

owner of the shop. However, the shop’s prosperity could not last for long: these times were when Korea was under Japan’s colonial rule, so Chung had to capitulate to their unfair regulations. Eventually, he had no choice but to close down his shop. He turned to mining for work. For a while, he survived on the rice shop profit and the earnings from mining work. It was


not long, however, until he decided once again to change things around for himself. He knew his ambitions were bigger than surviving on mere daily earnings and started an auto repair business to reel in the big money. Such a move - escaping the comfort zone to set a new challenge for himself - constitutes Chung’s second major turning point in his life. Of course, even without the challenges Chung set out for himself, his life was not exactly smooth sailing. Numerous times, his business was taken away by the Japanese, and once his auto repair shop even got burnt down because of an employee’s blunder. The Korean War that lasted for three years in the 50s also hindered his business. However, each time of adversity, Chung overcame it with great audacity and resilience. Likewise, in 1973 when President Park Chung-hee out of the blue ordered Chung (a business magnate by then) to start a ship, Chung accepted the challenge, despite the initial reluctance - which became the third and the biggest turning point in his business career. When meeting with the English customers, he had nothing but the ship’s blueprint to show; however, with his charisma and persuasive power, he managed to win them over. The ship company from then on grew exponentially, becoming South Korea’s largest heavy industry. Today, that company’s name is known throughout the world: Hyundai Group has become the second largest corporation in Korea, following Samsung. Until now, the Hyundai Heavy Industry (HHI) had earned about 133 million USD after Chung’s establishment. Needless to say, if it had not been the guts and guile of one legendary man, the birth of such a gargantuan company would not have been possible. His life’s story is that of immense ambition and bravery to match it. All of us, regardless of the different walks of life we each take, can learn a lesson from that.



03 SCIENCE

"I don't do magic Morty, I do science. One takes brains, the other takes dark eyeliner." -Rick and Morty


Macintosh: How they changed our world John Jeon, Y8, Mulchat


If you are interested in electronic devices, or even if you are interested in big companies in general, I am sure that you have heard of the company Apple. Apple is one of the first few companies that began to produce computers for each household or workplace. At first, Apple was just one of the leading companies to produce computers. However, nowadays where we find it is inevitable to use electronic devices such as smartphones, it became a global leading company where it earns trillions of dollars and is known to most people. Due to this, it became very difficult to ignore the fact that this company has become a turning point not only in the computer market, it became a turning point in most of our lives, presenting the new technology that we have never contacted before. If you have never heard of apple, or if you don’t know what kind of company it is, I will tell you what company apple is and its brief history. Apple.inc, originally Apple Computer Inc, is a company that creates consumer electronics, personal computers, servers, and computer software. Its most famous line of electronic products is the macintosh personal computers, iPad tablet computers, iPod portable media players, and the iPhone smartphone along with other accessories such as the HomePod, apple watch and the AirPods. Founders Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne started the company under the name Apple Computer Company. They started to make their first computer product, known as the Apple I, in a garage and they began their success by making the Apple II, 3 years faster than IBM made their first computer, but soon failed terribly with their misconception of price on the Apple LISA, their next product. However, they were able to make up for their mistake with the release of the Macintosh. From that point on, they began their competition in the computer market with IBM, but thanks to Jobs’ clever use of technology used in Apple’s computers, they were able to take first place in the computer market. However, when Apple made a mistake signing a license contract

with Microsoft, Windows made a huge profit from this incident and Apple fell to second place in the computer market. After the incident, Jobs became very stubborn with the Apple LISA and claimed that the Apple series, which was their main source of profit, was a terrible product and all they needed was LISA for their main product line. Due to this, Apple had to fire Jobs from the company. If you are an adult or a student, then you may have come across an iPhone and that might be what comes to your mind when you think of Apple. However, as I mentioned before, Apple started influencing people with new computers before they entered the smartphone market. Therefore, I will first introduce you to the macintosh: the first line of computers made by Apple. The Macintosh, the 128K, was their main flagship computer after Apple LISA. While the Apple II was able to obtain success with less powerful hardware but with better software, LISA wasn't. It’s a very high price: even more expensive than the Lower end Mac pro they just announced a few months ago. The Macintosh was a turning point for Apple. They needed to redeem their mistakes. And they were able to. Their first computer is famous for each family having each one of them. With its success, Apple continued its Macintosh lineup. Macintosh II, Macintosh SE, Macintosh Quadra, Macintosh LC, and Macintosh classic. These were all computers manufactured for dedicated personal use. Before, the computers that people thought of were mostly personal desktops. However, in 1989, Apple introduced the macintosh portable, a desktop that was considered ‘portable’ (even though it weighed 7 kg). Although the price and the ridiculous weight led to it being a failure, it became the first form of laptops and it led to a start in the laptop industry. Then, Apple began to collaborate with IBM and Morotora after using the Mortora’s 68k operating processors. They formed the AIM team (Apple, IBM, Mortora) and created the power CPU Macintoshes. As


Apple released the Power Macintosh in 1994, they also made a product in a laptop variant, the PowerBook. They continued their lineup of power books until 2006, and their products all had big impacts on the industry. Like the PowerBook G4, which provided the full aluminum chassis, the design is still similarly used in the MacBooks today. In 1998, with the provision of fast internet in homes, Apple released its Internet Macintosh, also known as the iMac. It was one of the first all in one pc, and this product didn’t come with a PowerPC name on it. It's all-inone design idea is still used in Imacs today, and most people comment that its design esthetic looks futuristic even today. This shows Jony Ivy’s minimalistic design at its best. Due to this, some people who had migrated to pcs came back due to the fantastic hardware. From the success, Apple released the iMac g4, that people say

looks like the Pixar lamp, along with Imac g5 which looks very similar to the iMacs today. From 2006, A pple moved from power pc processors to Intel processors. This was because Morotora wasn’t really interested in making CPUs for Apple hardware and IBM was moving away from the pc industry. Intel was having great success from their Pentium and Prescott lineups. After moving on to intel, Apple refreshed their iMacs with intel chips and made a new lineup of Macintosh: the mac mini and the mac pro. Mac mini was one of the first mini desktops to come in a portable factor. You needed a monitor in order for the machine to operate, but it just had a cleaner look than a big fat desktop and you could still upgrade it. When it was released in 2005 it used the power pc G4 but in 2006 it started to use the intel core duo processors. The lineup

continued until 2014, stopped, and resumed in 2018 and it had a huge effect on mini desktops that you can actually carry around like the Lenovo IdeaCentre and the intel nuc. The Mac Pro is another desktop that uses intel CPUs made by Apple other than the Mac mini. It is a workstation for pros, and it uses more powerful chipsets than the ones used in Apple’s other products. It basically started the workstation industry and it is marketed in opposition to the Dell workstation. From that point on, Apple became a top computer manufacturer. Their l i n e u p b e c a m e c l e a re r w i t h t h e iMac and the Mac mini which were considered ‘unique’ desktops replacing the other power pc macintoshes. From that point on, Apple was famous as Apple computer INC, and it became an extreme tur ning point in the pc industry and for pc users. They


introduced a ‘unique’ type of computer that changed people’s lives forever. Their OS (Operating System) was significantly different from Windows, but they were cleaner and easier to use. This operating system and the macintosh’s unique features and design inclined many computer users to their products and Apple computer Inc became one of the leading computer companies in the industry. Even though Apple continued its lineup of desktops, they simultaneously continued laptops. The Macbook pro lineup started in 2006 after Apple ditched the power pcs. It was just the same model with the powerbook g4 with a different name and the display ratio of 16:10. In 2008, Apple implemented a revolutionary design element: instead of manufacturing part by part and assemble them, Apple carved the whole machine from a thick piece of aluminum, and Apple called this the ‘Unibody Macbook pro’. From this, they earned major benefits from the unibody design. First, the build quality became the best compared to any other laptop even

today. Also, Apple could reduce the price of the materials as all Apple needed in addition to the aluminum was the display and the chassis case. And finally, the durability became excellent. Once you touch it, you will be amazed at the smoothness of the surface, the perfection of the seam between the hinges and the plate, and the perfection of the cut. Apple used this unibody design on other laptop lineups such as the Macbook Air, a thinner and lighter version of the pro. Apple continued changing the processor and inner hardware, but Apple continued this design until 2012, when Apple applied the retina display of 2880 x 1800 resolution. Apple kept on manufacturing the unibody macbook pro, but the retina version was much thinner even compared to the macbook air, and the gpu and the cpu inside was pretty powerful enough to be considered ‘pro’. Due to the amazing hardware, it became one of the most famous macbooks. The glowing Apple logo became the icing on the cake. Their design esthetic kept going until Apple

launched the slim macbook 2015, which was a fanless thin and light laptop weighing only 0.92kg, a whole 6kg lighter than the very first effort all those years ago. However, since Apple needed to make the design thin and sleek, they had to change their amazing scissor switch keyboards to the controversial butterfly switch keyboards. The thin macbook pro became a major issue for the company since, due to the fanless design, it heavily thermal throttled and the butterfly keyboards had a major durability issue getting broken even with small debris going inside the mechanism. Meanwhile, Steve Jobs had passed away in 2011, and Apple made huge changes within their computers. Apple released their new lineup of Mac pro and iMacs. The iMacs changed their design into a unibody aluminum design in 2007 and in 2012, Apple changed their design into a slim unibody design with shrunken bezels and more power and more of a circular shape than before. In 2017, Apple added 5k retina displays on their imacs and, from that point on, Apple only upgraded their

inner hardware. The imacs were a huge gift for designers and video creators as the display had excellent colour gamut and accuracy, and it had pretty decent power. It also became revolutionary as it was the first all-in-one designed computer. Thanks to the pros that had constantly used the imacs as their primary device for content creation, Apple provided the pros with an even more expensive iMac pro in 2017 with intel’s XEON processor inside and a very powerful gpu in the famous space grey color. Other than their main lineup of all-in-one computers, Apple continued to manufacture more of their mini desktop lineup (mac mini) and the workstation lineup (Mac pro). When Tim Cook became the CEO of Apple, they released a new mac

pro in a cylinder shape. Although it looked quite nice and it was very much a portable device, the terrible failures it had, such as the thermal throttling which always comes in most small and compact devices, rendered it a poor product. Apple had already released the 2016 macbook pro with the thin and light design and the butterfly keyboard mechanism to fit the thin design. The design esthetic was so nice that it caught many people’s attention. The 15 inch came with an intel 6th gen H cpu with 4cores and the 13 inch version came with the intel 6th gen u processors with 2 cores.The design was nice and durable and the force touch trackpad, which is considered to be the best trackpad in the industry, became even better so it became a very

appealing purchase for people who use regular computer tasks. It even came with a touch bar that you can use as a replacement for your function keys. It could change into different applications since it was a sort of second screen. However, it was a big disappointment for the pros, the main target demographic in the macbook ‘pro’ consumer line. The first problem was the price. It was whooping $2400 when it was first released due to the advanced material used in the chassis, and a new touch bar which had cost a lot for Apple to make. The second issue was the battery life. It was still an ‘advanced’ version of the 2015 macbook pro retina, but it had worse battery life than the 2015 version that came out one year previously! Why


would people buy this when it has a degraded spec? The third issue was the lack of ports. A lot of you would face this problem when you have a macbook that was manufactured after 2016. The Macbook before 2016 had all the ports known to mankind; Displayport, thunderbolt 2, USB-A, HDMI port, SD card reader and the famous magsafe that was one of the most secure charging ports out in the market. In 2016 instead of adding the new usb-c with thunderbolt 3 that was on the market, Apple completely ditched all of the ports except for the thunderbolt 3 ports and even though they added usb-c charging, pros who needed the ports to accommodate the likes of an SD card reader were disappointed. They now had to buy a dongle or an adapter for usb-c if they bought a macbook and even the adapters that were sold in the Apple store cost $80 which people didn’t even have to pay if they just left the ports. Another issue was our old friend thermal throttling. Since they added new processors in such a small form factor, the heat caused from the cpu didn’t have enough room to flow through, leading to thermal throttling. This caused the fans to be extremely loud even if you just turned on gmail. This is not a problem for some people who bought the macbooks just for the stylish design and you just need a computer for writing documents. This might not be the problem for you. But for the pros that do video rendering and 3d design, the power produced by the heat from caused by the smaller chassis leads to a lot of pros leaving Apple and just moving to pcs. The final issue was the controversial butterfly keyboards. The reliability on these keyboards were terrible. Just a little debris or dust that going inside the keyboard distracts the mechanism and would break the keyboard itself and Apple would have to replace the whole bottom half of the Macbook just to fix one keyboard. This delicate keyboard became a pain for Apple for three years, spending a lot of money to fix this terrible keyboard. People also hated the feel of these keys as there was almost no travel in the keys to make the Macbook lighter. There

was no decent feedback when pressing the keys leading to confusion if they had properly pressed the keys or not. The new thin and light design of the Macbooks are considered a “failure” to the tech enthusiasts. However, this has brought huge changes to the industry. First, the design and the trackpad. While no other company has followed a failure such as the butterfly keyboard, the design asthetic and the large trackpad has influenced the design of the Dell xps, the Surface laptops, and Razer Blade. Furthermore the use of thunderbolt 3 and usb-c charging has influenced many ultra portable laptops and many ultrabooks today has at least 2 usb-c ports and some laptops like the lg gram support charging through this port which is a benefit for many people who want to use power banks when they are low on battery or they want to charge their laptop on airplanes or any place in case they forgot their charger. At the very end of 2019 Apple refreshed the 15 inch lineup of the Macbook pros, the most controversial lineup Macbooks, with new 16 inch screen, shrunken bezels and a larger chassis so that there is sufficient airflow and finally scissor switch keyboards that don’t break and have decent feedback. To conclude, Apple has created computers that have changed people’s experience with their computers c o m p l e t e l y. T h e y h av e c r e a t e d hardware that is built well and looks stylish. They have their famous retina

displays on their computers which makes it even more attractive to designers. Their products also have changed the whole industry and they are the ones who always make the first step to change even if it is not what the consumers want. Their design and software as well as ideas are revolutionary. Steve Jobs once said that “A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them.” and I think this is embedded in Apple's products. They are not afraid to make a change. Therefore I believe that the creation of the Macbooks have been a turning point for designers, computer manufacturers, businessmen, normal office workers, professionals, students, the computer industry and the whole world.


RAY RAY RAYTRACING TRACING TRACING

Hyeonseo Daniel Lee Y10, Noro

Ray tracing is a method of displaying graphics by calculating the light level and angle given to every single pixel within a game and is currently the closest anyone has got to mimicking real life in a game. As it attempts to calculate the effect on every location, it requires a tremendous amount of calculation every moment to successfully run the whole procedure. The traditional way of representing objects and reflection with light was to show every single point of an object that received light and the parts that didn’t in one image every moment, but this doesn’t depict the situation realistically. While using this method, it only shows the shadows of objects, and not any reflection or intricate shadows cast by multiple objects. On the other hand, ray tracing runs on pure calculation, where strengths of light vary depending on the substance material, and reflection rate, refraction, etc. This allows your game/video to depict everything closest to real life, as close as we can in current times. This is because it mimics how real life works: you perceive your life around you by your eyes seeing the millions of reflections and shadows and different lights passing through gaps all at once, thus giving an accurate depiction of life around you. Also, this method of loading things still has much room for improvement in the future, although it already seems perfect. This is because unlike other methods of graphic loading, ray tracing means to perfectly follow reality. Many improvements and research is going on at this moment, such as loading methods that use rays with almost no thickness, similar to real life.


Battle Of the Scapel Jiaan Mark Li Y11, Jeoji


It is hard to imagine stitching a wound without numbing it first, and performing surgery by using a rusted scalpel that has been resting peacefully in the pool of scarlet liquid underneath the operation table. This however, was the condition of the surgical world one and a half centuries ago. The duel invention of anaesthetics and antiseptics in the mid 18th century was the best that a surgeon could even have asked for. Before the development of anaesthetics, clinical procedures, such as surgery, were extremely difficult as the patient had to stay conscious throughout the process. Being a surgeon meant a g reat amount of physical and mental stress as not only did they have to witness the traumatizing effect on the patient, they were also required to be incredibly efficient. Speed and precision thus became the leading factors that determined a skillful surgeon. Although in some cases where herbs or alcohol have been used, for instance opium, the result was not idle as the pain would only be suppressed and not eliminated. Despite how sophisticated or experienced a surgeon was, patients usually prefered death rather than going through such unspeakable pain, which is understandable, even by modern standards. The first ever anaesthetic agent to allow a successful surgical operation was introduced in 1846 by a Boston dentist, William Morton. It was around 10 in the morning of October 16th, where a group of doctors gathered around to witness the great leap forward. Morton fed the patient, Edward Abbott, a printer, around a quart of ether that led to a deep and undisturbed sleep. When Abbott woke up, he couldn’t recall anything, not even the incision of the blade. Like a fuse set on fire, the news spread quickly across North America and Europe. Although some do suspect the questionable claim that Morton actually discovered the idea of using ether as an anaesthetic, this

remarkable achievement was, however, the foundation on which more effective anaesthetics entered the medical field. While Morden went on to fight for his patentship for “his” discovery, ether lost its popularity after several cases of lung inflammation and the use of the anaesthetic became rather controversial. Some doctors believed t h at t h e a b s e n c e o f p a i n wo u l d suppress healing and the majority of patients disliked the dizziness; not to mention the lack of understanding and knowledge on how these chemicals functioned. Chlorofor m, another anaesthetic agent, was discovered in 1847 by a British doctor named James Simpson, and was only accepted by the public after Queen Victoria agreed to use this chemical during the delivery of her eighth child. Even though the segregation of pain resulted in far more precise and intricate operations, there was another fatal issue --- post surgical infection. “A man laid on the operating table in one of our surgical hospitals is exposed to more chances of death than was the English soldier on the field of Waterloo," remaked Sir Simpson. Nobody at the time knew or understood the cause for this lethal aftermath. Fascinated by curiosity, scientists and surgeons around the world intended to answer the question once and for all. Joseph Lister, a Scottish surgeon, realised that wounds that were left open in the air would seem as if they were rotting from the inside, forming pus and showing clear signs of fever from the patient. All of this does not apply to a sealed or stitched wound. Louis Pasteur, a well renowned French chemist, also noticed that meat broth exposed to air would fermant and harden. Just like Lister’s observation, broth stored in vacuum jars where air was absent did not affect the quality of the broth at all. Pasteur knew that the signs of deterioration must be caused by invisible microorganisms, bacteria; using the broth as an open petri dish, cultivating itself. Thus an infection, Pasteur speculated, was due to the rapid multiplication and bacterial division of foreign microbes. This idea

would later be known as the famous “Germ Theory of Disease ''. Lister on the other hand, thought that if diseases can be caused by bacteria, then there must be an antibacterial drug, treatment, or process that can eliminate the microorganisms or prevent them from entering or dividing. Under the inspiration of the germ theory of disease, Lister set on a great quest in finding the ultimate solution. He observed in a town near Carlisle (England), that sewage disposers had the ability to clean waste with a liquid that contained carbolic acid. Despite the absolute oddness of his decision, Lister attempted at applying sewage disposers on to the wounds of his surgical patients. In August 1867, after applying carbolic acid to a 13 year old boy’s severely infected arm severed after losing it in a factory accident, the wound eventually dried up and skins at the site of the amputation started to regrow. But just like the introduction of anaesthetic, Lister’s discovery faced both criticism and compliments. T hose who were ske ptical about Lister’s discovery, pointed out that his method of “ger m killing” was simply a cure for infection and not as a way for prevention. Lister would then begin to develop and improve his antiseptic techniques and frequently published papers regarding his findings. Extending his previous attentiement, he introduced weak carbolic acid hand washes for surgeons, baths for instruments, and sprayed the solution around the operation area as a way of forming an invisible antiseptic barrier. With the help of anesthesia and antisepsis, a new generation of surgeons would march into the unknown tackling problems that couldn’t be solved before. In 1869, with the help of a medical arsenal, Lister successfully removed a breast tumour from his sister on their dining table with ether and carbolic acid, eliminating all signs of pain and postsurgical infection. She survived, as an evident of the mid 19th century medical miracles, and forever shifted the medical field by switching it from exploration to cure.


The emergence of Social Contract theory has been the catalyst of the revolutions which started from the eighteenth century in Europe. The theory functioned as the ideological basis as it established the notion that governments exist to serve the peoples’ will. Consequently, the philosophic idea justified political uprisings in a society where the commonwealth of the people are not represented by the government. The social contract remains as the foundation of the government, where representation is perceived as one of the crucial pillars of democracy. The concept of the social contract may have been left. However, society is different than it used to be several centuries ago. Social perceptions towards social issues shifted, new technologies have been introduced which drastically change the lives of individuals. One of the most significant

technological advances is the creation of social media enabling mass-scale communication platforms. Based on the sea of information, firms nowadays analyse data and utilise this data looking for patterns and trends. This is called big data and it has shifted the course of humanity drastically since the initial proposal of the social contract. Thus, it is inevitable that certain attributes of the contract must be amended to facilitate the shifts in society. This article will highlight the factors which cause the establishment of a new social contract and outlines the basicis of this new social contract. What are the reasons for a new Social Contract to be in place? The main factor is due to the emergence of an asymmetrical relationship of power structures within the status quo. This is seen in mainly two ways. The primary mechanism is that a

handful of massive technological firms are gaining more influence over citizens. To illustrate, very few social media companies such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have the ability of acquiring countless information regarding their users. This information includes the daily life patterns of individuals to political orientations individuals possess which are obtained through network services these firms provide. Using such information, these firms gain asymmetrical power by not only profiting off consumer data, but they gain foresight and interpretation t ow a rd s c o n s u m e r b e h av i o u r a s these firms analyse consumer trends. T h i s h a s p rove n t o b e t h e c a s e through Cambridge Analytica and its misdemeanors. Cambridge Analytica has been accused of wrongfully abusing the personal data of Facebook users for political campaigning after harvesting

Technology and the New Social Contract Dongwook Warrick Kwon, Y9 Noro


the data without consent from the users. Thus, when a private entity controls vast reserves of personal data it possesses the ability to analyse and anticipate the behaviours of its users, these firms acquire an unequal stake in the system. It is in the best interest of the government to fix asymmetrical power relations amongst members of society. The asymmetrical information crisis not only defies the notion of equality which is one of the driving pillars of democracy, but it severely infringes upon the privacy rights of individuals. Moreover, it is even more necessary for a reform in the social contract to occur due to the unique characteristics of data. First, the few firms who take control of sensitive information are highly unaccountable and obscure to the public. Google, Twitter or Facebook are not legally obliged to disclose the consumer information they possess under the current legal system. Ultimately, people do not know how their private information has been used by these firms. Even if people were to know about the irresponsible acts conducted by these ‘tech-giants’, people cannot do anything to solve such problems. As the ‘receivers’ of the technology, these individuals do not have a viable alternative to replace these technologies when they decide to opt-out. Moreover, as monopolies grasp these individual details, it makes it impossible for individuals to erase or do anything with the data once the data is obtained by these firms. The second way where there is an asymmetrical power relationship is through the power given to government via technology. Technology has become an indispensable feature in modern societies. Every individual’s identity can be defined through several digits thanks to the advancement of data organisation. In such a society, once the government gains access to the information, the government is granted a highly significant right. Moreover, the government is capable of spying on individual citizens using this very technolog y. As revealed through E d w a rd S n ow d e n’s t e s t i m o n i e s,

the US government listened to the phone calls of and spied on texts by their own citizens. If it were not for the development of technology, the government would not have gained such power over its citizens. This goes against the social contract, as the government is exercising more power and enjoying more rights over its citizens when the gover nment is providing no extra protection, benefits or anything at all. Therefore, in order to maintain the social contract, the entities which control a disproportionate amount of data must be restrained in their influence.Since this article provided the necessary reasons for establishing a new social contract, what would this new contract be? Primarily, the use of technology and data from both tech giants and the government will have to be transparent. This way, the number of data abuses and spying can decrease, not infringing upon the rights of citizens. Moreover, governments should be more obliged to legislate which restricts the use of data and technology for malicious purposes. This is because as technology progresses the influx of more and more different ideas is inevitable. Such different ideas are spread across the globe to people who have completely different ideologies. It is beneficial for more ideas to be available for people to be influenced, evident through the cases of the Arab Spring: democratic notions flowing into a highly non-secular muslim nation such as Egypt leading to a peaceful democratic revolution. The trigger towards this very process was a brief tweet on the Internet. This shows the impact of technology in fostering positive social change. On the other hand, there are certainly downsides to technological advancements. The rise of unemployment rates, privacy violations and social relations are issues that humanity will have to deal with. Societies are established under a social contract. The very contract that represents the will of citizens and protects their best interests in exchange for sacrificing rights and freedoms. If citizens are sacrificing more rights and not receiving anything from their

government, this is a violation of the reciprocal relationship between the government and its citizens. An appropriate way to decrease the asymmetrical power relationship must be proposed to resolve the social contract crisis arising from technology.


04 MEDIA



Reed Hastings NETFLIX - A textbook model for creative destruction

Sean Hong, Y12, Halla North

While Netflix is facing competition currently in the video streaming industry from Amazon, Hulu and many others, it was a

truly disruptive force that reshaped the entertainment industry entirely. The change Netflix brought can be seen as a revolution in the entertainment industry because it completely revolutionised how entertainment was served to the consumers. In economics, this process of innovation can be described as creative destruction, which is an economic concept developed by Joseph Schumpeter in which new production units outplace old ones. Netflix is an excellent example of this as its new forms of service outplaced Blockbuster, a major player in entertainment in the 1990s, and it challenged other existing entertainment industries by offering its original shows, allowing binge-watching and providing service on demand. Considering its impact on the entertainment industry, Netflix’s success is definitely a turning point in the entertainment industry.

Netflix had a humble start compared to its current status as a major player in the entertainment industry. In 1998, the company was founded by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph. At that time, Blockbuster, Netflix’s main rival, was paramount in the entertainment industry; it was the leading video rental store chain in the US. In order to compete with Blockbuster, the first business model Netflix used was to send physical DVDs to subscribers in the mail. Subscribers chose movie and television titles from Netflix’s website, which were then mailed to customers in the form of DVDs with prepaid return envelopes. While the business model itself was novel for customers and brought much attention, the real advantage Netflix had over its competitors was the absence of late fees. Blockbuster’s business model depended largely on late-fees, which were so notorious and unpopular that customers were yearning for an alternative. Reed Hastings himself founded Netflix after having to pay a $40 late fee to a local Blockbuster Video store after renting Apollo 13. In the year 2000 alone, Blockbuster collected about $800 million in late fees, which was 16% of its revenue. Netflix’s new business model appealed to the dissatisfied customers and seemed to be advantageous. Furthermore, the fact that customers could rent unlimited amounts of DVD for only a subscription fee of $16 a month was comparatively more appealing than having to pay rental fees for each VHS tape. However, despite these innovations, Netflix was still making losses. This was because many people owned VHS players instead of DVD players because they were a lot cheaper. While Netflix did make attempts to ease the situation by collaborating with electronics firms to offer free DVD rentals to new DVD player buyers, the situation was still dire. In the year 2000, Netflix only earned $5 million in revenue while Blockbuster earned $4.5 billion. Then, an historic event occured, the CEOs of Netflix offered to sell Netflix for $50 million to Blockbuster. Without the benefit of hindsight, Blockbuster rather humiliatingly rejected the offer, which was one of the most regretful decisions Blockbuster made. This shows that Netflix had a rough start despite the novel business model and success it has now.


However, the tide turned in 2001, when DVD players became increasingly popular. Netflix was able to continue business and its revenue finally increased, eventually leading to Netflix’s first profitable year in 2003. In 2004, the competition between Netflix and Blockbuster began to get serious. While Blockbuster was at its peak in 2004, with 9,000 stores globally and making $5.9 billion in revenue, it made some disastrous business decisions that led to its downfall. First, it parted ways with Viacom, which decreased the potential for innovation. Then, in an effort to keep up with Netflix, Blockbuster launched Blockbuster Online, an online subscription service, and eliminated late fees, the most unpopular Blockbuster policy. However, these measures proved to be failures. This is because Blockbuster Online was unsuccessful due to Netflix and the elimination of late fees resulted in popular VHS tapes not getting returned for long periods of time. According to Forbes, it was estimated that the elimination of late fees cost the firm $200 million and an additional cost of $200 million was incurred by Blockbuster Online. While Blockbuster’s market value depreciated from $4 billion to $12 million and the firm eventually filed for bankruptcy, Netflix was experiencing huge success. It now boasts a market value of $8 billion, with its total subscribers being 15 million. After the competition against Blockbuster has been won, Netflix has not become complacent; rather, it continued to revolutionize the entertainment industry. When Netflix’s on-demand video streaming service gained traction, there was abundant scepticism. In 2010, Jeffrey L. Bewkes,

the chief executive of Time Warner famously said, “is the Albanian army going to take over the world? I don’t think so.” While it is certainly true that the “Albanian army” failed to dominate the world, it has completely changed the entertainment industry. The revolution started in 2007, when Netflix launched its on-demand video streaming service. Initially, the service’s only merit was that consumers could watch videos immediately rather than having to wait for programmes in cable TV or rental DVDs. It was limited in the content it offered and there were not enough box sets. However, the limitations were quickly resolved by 2010, when Netflix signed deals with entertainment giants, such as Disney and Paramount, to stream their content. Now, Netflix became increasingly popular and had 20% share of peak-hour traffic. Besides streaming popular programmes, Netflix started investing in original shows to stream exclusively on Netflix. These shows were great in both quantity and quality. In 2016, Netflix released 126 original content and the “House of Cards,” the first original online exclusive series, received major Emmy nominations in 2013. Despite the soaring success, Netflix could not sustain dominance. Various firms, such as Disney, AT&T-Time Warner and Comcast, adopted the online video streaming business model and many other firms are eyeing to join the fray. This has made it difficult for firms to raise profits. For example, Netflix is using $3 billion a year and would need to raise prices by 15% to break even. While the situation has soured up for firms, the creative destruction catalysed by Netflix has been greatly beneficial for consumers. They can now enjoy an array of quality content at lower prices on demand. The entertainment industry has also undergone significant change as online subscription business models have triumphed over cable TVs. While Netflix is facing competition from all sides, the world is surely reaping the benefits of its revolution.

From its very inception to its current status, Netflix has been the textbook model for creative destruction. The disruptive force it

brought into the industry has shaken up the existing firms and its progress has been fueled by innovation while benefiting consumers greatly. With contenders challenging from left and right, only time will tell whether the machine has run out of steam.


TO

TO A L L ALL T H E B OT YS I ' V E L OV E D HE BOYS B E F O R E Jeonghyun Sophia Park Y8, Jeoji We all make our own decisions. We are even making our own decisions to read this. No matter who tells you what to do, in the end, it’s you who makes the choices. However, sometimes, the things that happen, aren’t just our decisions. It may be affected by the people near you or like some natural environment. Like this, sometimes, the things we do at first look like a terrible mistake, but later on, these may be an awesome point of life. No matter whether the results are good or bad, these are called turning points. Like this, in the famous book of “To All The Boys I Loved Before” by Jenny Han shows us that others may make the turning points for you, but it may end up good covering that mistake of your own decision. The story starts off with Lara Jean Covey saying about how her sister Margot’s boyfriend and family friend Josh is her crush. But, since she knows that that wouldn’t happen, she finishes a letter that she has written to him, starting years ago. This was the way Lara Jean has responded

to every single other boy she loved. She has kept them safe, but one day these letters went out to the world. At this particular time, Margot has broken up with Josh to go to college in Scotland, and Josh didn’t come to play with the Song girls anymore. However, when these letters go out to the world, Josh comes in and asks her about it; did she really love him before? To stop this, she started to fake date Peter Kavinsky, one of the boys to whom Lara Jean wrote a letter to before. And the rest of the story is about how it becomes a real thing. Even though in this mild romance book, there are some turning points that are set by the author. In this novel, there are two major turning points. The first turning point is when the letter gets sent out. This turning point is quite special because this wasn't Lara Jean’s choice to make. This happened because Lara Jean and her younger sister Kitty started a fight the previous day because she told Josh that Kitty loves him. As revenge, Kitty sent the letters she had written. This

started to be a turning point for Lara Jean. After the letters started to go out to the world, Lara Jean, started to talk again to them about the letters. This was not because Lara Jean had to. This wasn’t her fault. At that moment, Lara Jean definitely hated the world because all the bad things keep on happening to her. Also, Lara Jean isn’t her sister. While her sister, Margot, likes to stand up on people Lara Jean always enjoys the quiet life. Like this, even Lara Jean’s personality is going against her. But, due to the mistake that her sister Kitty has made, Lara Jean started to speak out about what she meant by this letter. Furthermore, a lot of turning points were made by this, and Lara Jean had the choices of turning points. The second turning point is something which Lara Jean chose to do, which is when Lara Jean goes to Peter Kavinsky to start fake dating. This was when Josh, her sister’s ex started to get into her. He kept on bugging her and kept on asking her for what the letter means, she was Josh’s first love.


However, since he is her sister’s ex-boyfriend Lara Jean didn’t think that she should go behind her sister’s back, because the Song girls relationship was much more important than having a boyfriend. So to make him go away, she went to Peter Kavinsky and kissed him to show Josh that those letters mean nothing. So she starts fake dating. Throughout the people she wrote a letter to, she knew that Josh would be the most annoyed if she dated Peter Kavinsky. This turning point was kind of cleaning up the mess her sister made. However, there would be a lot of other ways, but she chose this way. It wasn’t really a wise choice, but it was the choice she made, so she should be responsible for the results. Later on, while fake dating Peter Kavinsky, the two get a lot closer, and their old emotions come back as something larger and they start to date. And Lara Jean is really genuinely happy about this happening. This novel also goes on with P.S. I Still Love You, and Always and Forever, Lara Jean, which is also made into a Netflix movie, To All The Boys I Loved, and P.S. I Still Love You came out previously. The reason why this was so successful is that Lara Jean isn’t always so sure about the choices she makes and the turning points she goes through. She is afraid just like us. If you want something great to happen in your life, you can’t just sit down and wait for something to happen. You have to build up your own turning points. To do that, how about doing something that scares you every single day? These attempts may be small. But, later one day, these attempts could go towards you and become something so big, big enough to be one of the biggest turning points in life.



05 FICTION


ETHA AND ERIK Jiho Stella Lee, Y10, Noro


“Without me, you’ll be all alone Erik.” Etha carelessly laid her legs upon the head of the bed, staring. Erik didn’t bother to reply. For him, Etha’s mindless commentary was as prominent as stating that it was almost winter. He could easily tell that from the barren lands, unfruitful and dying like the rest of the world that crumpled around him. The elfen creature pouted as the reaction she desired wasn’t silence. Her former world consisted of unanswered questions and lingering hesitation. Still, tomorrow, she would wed Otto and her life would take place somewhere where her questions were considered irrefutable. She briefly wondered where Erik would be after she became a Hildegard. Maybe he would remain in the room with the ashen fireplace, lying in a bed that he had outgrown. This image entertained her greatly, the idea that she was truly his superior. Grinning, Etha tiptoed towards Erik, who had his back towards her. “Boo,” she whispered into his cold ear. Yet, Erik remained lifeless; inanimate like an abandoned puppet. “Erik, Erik.” Etha tried to divert his attention onto her solely. She detested the idea of being ignored. Still, Erik remained oblivious to her overwhelming presence. After a series of futile attempts, she eventually gave up, sitting straight upon her bed and absentmindedly twirling her ring. That was when Erik raised his head, stealing glances at the oversized ring on her finger. The glittering diamond sending fragmented rainbows throughout the otherwise dark room. The uncanny silence lingered. Erik yearned to speak but his voice was gone. He wanted to warn Etha that her alluring beauty would diminish after the marriage like blood leaking out from his unclosing wound. He wished to tear open her bewitching little head to observe every crease she had on her reckless mind. If Etha had really loved him, she would’ve chosen to die beside him in this very room. The gun, heavy in his hand, sang to him. Calling him in a distant, detached voice. “Erik, Erik.” It was so persistent that he had to reply quietly. “Yes?” From hearing his voice, she looked up for a moment. After that fragment of time passed, she became bored. Etha had already diverted her attention to a particular ring that was on her hand, slipping. “What were you saying, Erik?” She replied tiredly. “No, nothing.” That was the last conversation Etha had with Erik before he disappeared. Even so, his absence was to be noticed countless nights after. Numerous moments in their lives were to be built up for that singular event to unfold. Etha, emerging from the blue-greens of the lake where she was mistaken for a water nymph; adored in endless layers of chiffon and velvet, devoured by strangers and royalties; screaming in her room when Erik was whipped for taking her out to the wet gardens. Unpredictable whims, destructive desires that laced every command, pouts and kisses. Innocent laughter, shallow promises that gave him false hope, a nonexistent future. Erik, merely serving as a background to her glamour. Eagerly lapping up the supposed love she had for him. The love that had originated from the high heavens- right before they plummeted down to the womb. Often, Erik felt tormented by the fact that he could not die, for he never had a life to demolish. Now, he didn’t feel anything at all. Etha was his goddess. It wasn’t a curse, but a miracle to love and be of any interest to the ruthless little sylph. That attention was the sole thing he lusted after. And, Erik said the old witch told Em the beauty that if you desire for eternal youth there is a price to be paid. Yes, said the beauty. Of course, I’ll give you anything. The witch cackled in delight. In order for you to obtain eternal youth, you must give me your first child. The beauty pondered this for a moment and deciding against love nor marriage, determinedly nodded. Erik feebly tore his eyes away from the page and listened to the howling wind outside. With the wind controlling them, the snowflakes mindlessly flung themselves to the dark earth like shattered pieces of glass. The world was encased in an unquestionable, threatening silence. Erik didn’t want to continue since he wanted to sleep. He yearned to bury himself to the hilt into the blissful void. Where no one, including himself, existed. However, Etha interrupted haughtily. Oh, I know the next part. The beauty eventually fell in love with another man, and she had a baby. “Yes”, replied Erik exhaustedly. When the time came, the beauty didn’t keep her promise. Instead, she ran away with her family, to a place


where the witch could never find them. Nevertheless, the witch laid a curse upon her baby. A curse that wasn’t as prominent or striking like other external curses. Em was relieved since she thought that she had won against fate. In her ignorance, she considered this a durable consequence. Unbeknownst to her, the curse grew. In a place where it wasn’t visible to the naked eye. Eternally staining the bloodlines that stretched on and on, undisturbed. The wind outside had diminished, the world was idly encased in a blank embrace. Etha had closed her heavily lidded eyes so she didn’t notice Erik closing the book some time ago. Though when he finished, the entrancing little nymph stretched languidly, whispering into his ear. “That’s the life I want, Erik”. Or maybe it was “you’re my entire world, Erik”. Either one or the other, he couldn’t bring himself to remember it now. For Etha was gone and without her, he had diluted into the odourless grey of the fog, unnerving stillness of an abandoned room, reticence of a mourning, jaded child. Lamentably undisturbed, alone.



06 SPORTS



Tu r n i n g point of football Seungho Ham, Y11, Geomun

Football is a popular sport all around the globe. In Korea it was first introduced in 1882 when British crew members played football at Incheon port. Since then, football has been continuously played in the country and is still loved among Koreans. But the start of Korean football in the World Cup was not easy at first. Korea didn’t win a single game in the World Cup but instead lost to a huge difference in score. In the first World Cup, Korea’s national team lost to Hungary and Turkey by 9-0 and 7-0 respectively in the tryouts. It was going to take 32 years for South Korea to participate in the World Cup finals again. Following that first bruising encounter the KFA (Korea Football Association) joined the AFC (Asian Football Confederation) in 1954 and South Korea obtained 3 silver medals competing in three sets of Asian Games. South Korea gradually became better but still lagged far behind compared to other European countries. They needed a change in their team’s strategy and training style to boost the ability of the players. This change happened in December

2000 when Guus Hiddink became the manager of the national team for the World Cup in 2002. However, the start was not that smooth for Hiddink. In 2001, they lost to France 5-0 in the quarter finals. South Korean critics started to criticise Hiddink when the national team lost to the Czech Republic by 5-0 again in the friendly match after the Confederation Cup. Korean citizens started to doubt Hiddink and started to feel hopeless for their prospects in the upcoming World Cup. The 2002 World Cup, co-hosted by South Korea and Japan, was the first time a world competition was held outside of Europe and the Americas. South Korea had never achieved a victory previously but they won against Poland in their first game. Hwang Sunhong and Yoo Sangchul scored one goal each and the result was a 2-0 win for South Korea. The next game was against the United States which was a bit unlucky. The game showed the potential of our national team as they snatched a 1-1 draw coming back from a losing position. Ahn Junghwan made an equalizer in a set piece. The last game was against Portugal which

many people thought that Korea would lose. However, in an interview, Hiddink stated that they were confident and that the team would show miracles on the field. As the game went on, it seemed that Hiddink was right. Portugal received two red cards which reduced their number to nine, and our players pulled out their abilities to the limit to stop the Portugese players attacks. The game was changed when Park Jisung scored a goal from a corner kick. The score became 1-0 and remained at thios scoreline to the end of the game. The victory and the achievements they made advanced them to the round of sixteen. But the road to the finals was not that easy. South Korea had to face Italy who were one of the world cup winners. They had strong players such as Gianluigi Buffon, Alessandro Del Piero, Maldini, Inzaghi and Francesco Totti. Totti spised Korea in an interview before the game by saying that Italy was capable enough to score goals against Korea whenever they want. Most of the world predicted that Italy would gain an easy victory, but South Korea was not planning to lose here. At the start of the game, it seemed that the majority were right. Ahn


Jung-hwan missed a penalty kick and Christian Vieri scored a goal which made the score 1-0 to Italy. It seemed that Korea was going to lose but in the 88th minute, Seol Ki-hyeon scored an equalizer sending the game to extra time. Totti, who had disparaged Korea before the game, was sent off for an alleged dive which resulted in a red card. Before the end of the game, Ahn Jung-hwan was able to redeem himself from the missed penalty by scoring a golden goal. This goal led the Korean football team to the quarter-final where Spain was waiting for them. South Korea was lucky in this match. Spain managed to score two goals but both of them were cancelled. The score remained 0-0 so the game went to the penalty shoot-out. Korea won the game by 5-3 as Joaquín missed the shot and Hong Myung-bo, the team captain, managed to score against Iker Casillas. The run of the Korea national team was stopped by Germany in the semi finals where they lost 1-0. They lost against Turkey in the thirdplace match by 3-2 which placed them fourth in the tournament. After the world cup, Hiddink became a hero in South Korea where he was granted honorary citizenship while also getting a private villa.


Behind The Islander

Scenes

Ginger Heeseo Kim (Y12)

of

BEH THE IND T DES HE S IGN CEN ESERS

Taehwan Lee, Jeremy Lee, Eric Kim


The Islander design team had collaborated and brought you the layouts and design of the current issue. Our design team had a small number of designers, of a maximum of 4 members, but from this academic year we recruited more of us and thereby was able to produce issues of higher quality. In the Wednesday group, Eric Hyunwoo Kim, Taehwan Lee and Seunghwan Jeremy Lee all in Year 11 had newly joined. This section of the Islander is provided for recognition of the design.Thank you very much for reading Issue 25: Turning Point. We will be meeting you with developed quality of designs in our next issue. Love, The design crew

The Wednesday Team


Behind The Islander

Scenes

of


Thank you for reading the Islander: Issue 25,26. We will come again next issue with a more upgraded quality. Love, Design heads

Ginger Kim

Seyfried Sung

LAyla bu


y: ou b oy ht t Br ou g

Writers Hyunjou Anette Cho Eugene Jean Cho Hyunseo Hailey Yoo Woojae Jay Lee Sunghyun Tom Lee Jinseo Annabeth Kim Ki Myeong Andrew Cheon Seungho Ham Junyeong Alex Kim Sihyeong Daniel Ha Dongwook Warrick Kwon John Jeon Siwoo Steven Kim Hyeonseo Daniel Lee Jiaan Mark Li Young Sun Sean Hong

Jeonghyun Sophia Park Jiho Stella Lee Minhyeok Chung Daehyun Edwin Kim Junghyun Eileen Kwak Ryan Lee Yunseon Rachale Park Taehwan Lee Junha Daniel Hong Junho Steve Na Seoyoon Elysia Bae Woojin Sam Choi Ian Jung Juhyun Kevin Lee Chanhyuk Chris Park Minho Joey Kang

SM Chung Hyena Stella Yeom Jucheol James Lee Seohyun Lewina Moon Minseo Cha Sunwoo Heo Youju Lee


Designers

Special Thanks

Sunwoo Layla Bu (Issue 26) Sookyung Seyfried Sung (Ib art, Junior) Heeseo Ginger Kim (Issue 25)

Sincerely,

Mr Raymond Maher Hannah Heewon Seo


IB ART

In this section of The Islander, we proudly present you with the outstanding artworks of the graduating class of 2020.



GARDEN OF DESIRES

Chole Kang Oil Paint


My World Through Gulliver’s Travels

My World Through Gulliver’s Travels

Jung Yun Doh Acrylic on canvas


Space Jaehyun Shin Pen on paper Inspired by Escher, Spoce is a surreal drawing of a man whose cut-off head symbolises his loss of who he is in the present, as a result of his obsessive romanticisation with the past. The cubes (memories) in the background surround him, signifying that he is consumed by his own recollections. The omission of his eyes, as they normally connote consciousness, implies the lack of control he has of his own thoughts. normally The man holds his two hands open in the air inferring his helplessness.


e h T

Dis tor t

ion

Drypoint etching Megan Kim

This series of etching pieces show the struggle that I experience in the process of loving myself.

One eye is black, signifying how I can not see myself and know self love. Hands touch my face as if it is discovering it for the first time, trying to connect


Sun Woo Lee Oil on canvas

Cross-Polination

Cross-pollination is the key term to explain my personal experience of time. While the contrast between the flourishing and wilting flowers symbolise movement (life) and inertia (death), water conveys the idea of the continuous flow of time and timelessness. The expressionless self-portrait and its direct gaze intended to transfer the self-introspective emotions fear, anxieety, admiration, and fascination - that I gain from contemplating on time to the audience.

The Lone Acrylic paint on canvas Megan Kim This piece investigates human nature. I aim to signify through this piece that our desire towards love is because we are born incomplete, signified through the twisted character who has limbs growing from its body and busque. The figure is displayed nude and hairless to make it void of identity - and representitive of mankind as a whole. It is placed on the corner of the room to express weakness and fragility; wilting flowers signify how we are nut blooming fullly.



THE JUNIOR ISLANDER

POETRY Breathe in experience, breathe out poetry



Bat Dongmin Lee He dives like a fire bolt; he lunges towards the prey he sees. He is near to the sun but he plunges to the ground as fast as a breeze. Grasping the world around him where there are no trees. The swaying wood beneath him makes a glorious sound which sings Seeing his prey, he swoops silently after he catches it, he flings He glides to the top of the sky with his glorious wings.


Owl Andy Kim He sits on the branch of a gorgeous garden Silhouetted with silver he sits alone His unfathomable eyes gaze at the ground Beneath him the tall green grass sways He stares with his unblinking eyes And like the night sky he falls


Swan

Julia Cho

This long necked graceful creature This is a rare treasure She glides away across the river as you try to reach her This beautiful witeness, the attraction she drawn. Stare at her as she go off distance and gone And wonder what that that creature was-it was the graceful swan


The Eagle Benjamin Kim Over in sweety sands, way up in the sky. He waits for his prey, with his eagle eye. up on the mountain; He's the king of the sky. He snatches the fish with his crooked claws. He catches and laughs at the poor outlaws, He's as mighty as judges that choose the laws.


The snow leopard Emily Hwang

Nils Munier

He hides himself high on a hill

Helies lonely staring at the leaves

In a quiet land covered with a frosty chill

He crawls in cold lands

Lies on top the cream snow for his kill

On his pale peak he stands

The hissing wind of the forsaken lands

The sleeping snow beneath him waits

Glides past where he stands

He smells prey from his hidden peak

And like a bolt he jumps with his honed hands

And like a Peregrine Falcon he pounces


GREY WOLF Ellie Fowler 5AB Walking through the thick snow, As I trudge along I see it glow. Howling, hunting feel the wind, It joins my pack and I hear it sing. Standing staring off the cliff, Dancing snow swirls but I never turn stiff. Running swiftly as I smell a hare, Gallop back to my pack with not much to share. This is the life of a grey wolf, beware!

The Cougar Hailey Yoon 5GH He leaps and dives from his cliff wall His victim in a perfect pitfall It is in its very last stall Now it shots off to the wilderness lied below The thick oaks lean and give a little bow But the king has no time, he is after the shadow Now there is no way, The weak is about to have the shortest day The silver fangs dig deep to the neck, a painful death Tap, tap, tap, he climbs to his cliff crest With today’s victim on his neck The meal for seven days To be or not to be that is not the question There is no decision in front of the king There is only threat and death


What life is to me Gabriella Whitney Life, to me, is what I see The buzz of the bees Or the way people tease The way we play In the Gorgeous day Or the way we sleep in one big heap Or swimming in the school’s swimming pool Or the way we grow up This, my friend, is life to me

Myself Lisa Lee BANG! She runs away as she crashes into another object. She hogs the table as she goes and her marvellous mother sighs. The ground groans as she stomps by, As she takes out her behind handed homework She quickly doodles a draft of a report of Marie Anntoinate Her head is like a bowl full of oatmeal that has thoughts of its own homework She dives through the air like a dragon She swims through the pool like the ness She’s fierce, confident and always beaming, Yes, she is the legendary Lisa Lee.


FROM: THE ISLANDER

For the first, and hopefully the only, time Islander 25, Turning Point, and Islander 26, Phenomenon, are published together. In these unusual times, where the priority has been lessons, we have had to delay layout and writing of Islander last year. Issue 25 was written in the second term of 2019/20 when Covid first struck and Issue 26 in the third term of the last academic year. Sandwiched between these issues is a Junior Islander section with some phenomenal poems and a selection of Art from the IB exhibition that went ahead, on a limited basis, last Summer. We welcome you to the best of writing at NLCS Jeju. Some of the students have moved on but they are remembered here, particularly in an article on Ray Tracing by Daniel Lee, someone who has always looked at things in unusual ways over a number of articles in the magazine. The influence of the Humanities, see articles on Sloths, Wanting to be Forgotten and the Repitition of History and Science, see article on Moonbows, Elaphrosaurus and Scalpes, in the magazine is notable but it is pleasing to see some students signing up to the three CCA sessions to write fiction. Issue 25 and 26 represent a Phenomenal Turning Point in terms of layout and design. Ginger Kim has been instrumental in encouraging younger designers to join the team and they are acknowledged in this issue. Together with Seyfried Sung and Layla Bu, the design team has experimented with design and layout and the influence of each designer is apparent in the three individual sections.


MARKET INVESTIGATION MINHYEOK CHUNG YEAR 12, HALLA NORTH

Asiana airlines Asiana Airlines was previously affiliated with Kumho Asiana Group. Its major business content is domestic and international air transport, aircraft manufacturing, repair and various aircraft-related business. It is one of the two largest airline companies in South Korea possessing 85 aircraft in total. Despite the enormous extent of the company, its current circumstances are poor. The financial capacity of the firm has been weakened by a constant increase in debt rate since 2012; this recently reached over 1000%. Regarding this crisis, Hyundai Development Company(HDC) became associated with Asiana airlines. HDC has invested 2.177 trillion won in new shares to help improve the airline’s financial status. Th o u g h s h are p rice s o f HD C have fallen due to uncertainties in improving corporate value since Asiana Airlines' acquisition, considering the fact that the synergy between aviation sector and Shilla Duty-Free, hotels, and the solid capital of HDC, gives a certain expectation of an increase in share values of both Asiana airlines and HDC.

Samsung Electronics Samsung Electronics is the largest South Korean multinational electronics company. Its major business content is the manufacture of electronics such as smartphones, computers, and electronic components like lithiumion batteries, semiconductor, chips and more. Samsung electronics occupies the majority of semiconductor and application components commerce i n Ko re a , re s u l t i n g i n t h e g re a t export proceeds. The company has been putting effort into mergers and aquisitions for the last 5 years, currently working on 16 cases of

acquisition. Some notable cases include audio and electronics company ‘Harman international industries’ in 2016, network selling company ‘Ziilabs’ in 2018, and network company ‘Teleworld Solutions’. The corporations Samsung took over uniformly show strengths in new technologies such as AI and 5G. These acquisitions facilitate prompt responses to changes in the market and rapid growth in technologies which have been optimized in acquired companies. The semiconductor industry is expected to encounter an up phase in the coming years as mobile dram (Dynamic Random Access Memory ) and NAND flash are converted into 5G technology.

Our

BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT from the

MANAGERS ENTERPRISE REPORTS on TWO KOREAN COMPANIES


THE PHENOMENAL DECLINING POPULATION AND ITS IMPACT ON THE ECONOMY IN :

KOREA

Everyone would concede the assertion that a low fertility rate is detrimental for a country; South Korea is currently undergoing such a calamity. As one of the countries with an excessively low birth rate per woman, innumerable disadvantages occur due to declining working population which I will further explain later. According to the CIA World Factbook, with a 1.26 fertility rate, South Korea remains at 219th place among 224 countries. This imminent disaster is already affecting the country’s economy and eventually could lead to more serious problems. One of the negative consequences is the damage to companies due to a labor shortage. Since South Korea is running out of young people who are able to function efficiently, industries which call for youths to work are on the verge of confronting labor scarcity. Thus, companies would need to raise their pay to attract young people to join them. Because of such increment in personnel expenses, many companies would suffer great damage. Loss in human capital will influence not only companies but also consumers. Prices of products would increase significantly to make up for the possible loss to the company. Then, the citizens would need to pay a higher price to purchase necessities. The impending calamity will not stop here. It will continue unless the government provides a pragmatic solution. Subsequently, the corporations’ revenues will be curtailed because of decline in consumption by the public. Why would people spend more to buy unnecessarily expensive products? Not simply merchandise companies would face this

BY KI MYOUNG ANDREW CHEON YEAR 12, HALLA EAST

crisis, but also industries for healthcare or high-tech manufacturing companies will suffer from labor scarcity. This evidently shows how labor shortage can affect the economy unfavorably. But there is a solution for this catastrophe; robots can be used to replace the position of humans. Robots are in the ascendant in terms of accuracy and will do a marvellous job in place of young workers. Another solution would be to resolve a fundamental problem of low birth rate. But unfortunately, despite the investments of more than 100 trillion won by the government, no advancement was achieved. Another solution would be to invite in more foreign born workers or to encourage Koreans who have migrated abroad to return. Regarding the elderly people, who do not work anymore and therefore do not have income anymore, have to survive with pensions provided by the government. The government provides that pension from tax collected from the working population. In other words, working populations are paying their money to sustain elders’ lives. Such payment generates unfairness to the working population. People would be reluctant to pay more tax to help strangers to maintain their lives. Some might contend that the elders are not complete strangers but fellow Koreans who have already devoted their lives regarding their nation. However, it creates immense burden on the current labor population, thereby forcing them to cope with evermounting pressure to earn more cash. Nobody wants to make money for others to benefit from but, in the long run, current taxpayers

will become the pensioners of the future. Ultimately, the government might encounter fiscal problems if they don’t budget properly to ensure that there is sufficient money available to pay the pension. In order to do this we might need to put off the day when people retire by making them work longer before they can benefit from a pension. As we are on average, all living longer this will be a viable solution so students now can look forward to a longer working life. Some people might see this as an advantage but, I suspect, a lot of people will see this as a disadvantage. In conclusion, population decline in a specific country would beget several negative impacts. The utmost effect would be labor shortage; companies cannot employ young workers due to loss of human capital. However, problems with labor scarcity would ameliorate through using robots and AIs in the future. Another problem is the development of unfairness and pressure to the working population. They will have to drag their heels and be left with no choice but to continue slaving away for more hours to reluctantly provide for the elderly. Encouraging back the Korean diaspora could prove difficult as they have established new lives for themselves abroad and may no longer have the language skills to interact with the rest of the population. They would, however, come back with more advanced skills and could improve productivity if the Korean economy can provide appropriate jobs for them. What we need right now is any viable solution to rescue us from this tragic situation and it will remain as homework for us to resolve.


PRICE GOUGING AND HOARDING AMIDST THE CORONAVIRUS

OUT BREAKE 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 hardearned 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 con-

demned 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


Elaphrosaurus:

a Dinosaur Species that Lost Their Teeth as They Matured DAEHYUN EDWIN KIM YEAR 12 E l a p h ro s a u r u s n ew g e n u s o f vertebrae found in Australia. A fossil of a dinosaur with a unique growth process that disappears as it grows has been found in Australia, according to international media including the BBC and the Guardian.] The fossils of Elaphrosaurus, found in Tanzania, China, Argentina and elsewhere, had teeth to chew on prey from baby to adult but were different in the case of the newly discovered Elaphrosaurus. The researchers explained that Elaphrosaurus, which was found in Australia, had teeth like other Elaphrosaurus in his childhood and was able to eat meat, but all of his teeth disappeared during his adult life, which eventually ended his life as a herbivorous dinosaur. A new discovery by the scientists based on ancient fossils is truly phenomenal: the fossil of the dinosaur, unearthed in 2015 near Cape Otway, Victoria, by a joint team of researchers from Australia's Swinburne Institute of Technology and the Melbourne Museum, has been identified as a new genus of Elaphrosaurus, a relative of Tyrannosaurus and Velociraptor.(110 mn-year-old rare, toothless dinosaur elaphrosaurus identified, 2020) Elaphrosaurus, meaning a light lizard, was known as a carnivorous dinosaur that had a slender build but hunted with sharp claws and hooked

nails. However, the fossil's dinosaurs did not appear to have teeth even though they were fully grown adults, the researchers said. Dr Stefan Prophet, who led the study, said, "Considering the size and appearance of the fossils discovered, I thought it was a pterodactyl with wings in the early days of the study. However, according to the analysis, the fossil's dinosaur was found to have only a horn-shaped beak instead of no teeth, although it was an adult.(A New Rare Species of 'Toothless' Dinosaur Has Been Unearthed in Australia, 2020) There is another dinosaur that grows like the Elaphrosaurus in Australia and loses its teeth. The dinosaur Limousaurus, which was discovered in the Chinese Xinjiang Weiwu Autonomous Region in the mid-2000s, was also found to have grown on food that needed teeth when it was a baby, but lost its teeth and turned into herbivores as a result of the beak. At t h e t i m e , t h e re s e a rc h e r s explained that Limousaurus belongs to a carnivorous dinosaur that walks on two feet, and that the life cycle is believed to have changed to grow up and adapt to abundant food at the same time. Researchers who studied Elaphrosaurus in Australia have yet to confirm the exact reason for the

change in the dinosaur's physical characteristics and diet but expect that if a skull fossil, not a vertebrae fossil, is found, they will be able to find out more definite habitats.(Rare 'toothless' dinosaur identified in Australia, 2020) Meanwhile, tooth loss is common in modern animals, with platypus as a representative animal. The detailed findings were published in the latest issue of the Gondwana Research, an international journal in the field of earth science.


What is Moonbow? JUNGHYUN EILEEN KWAK YEAR 12 Moonbow, also known as the lunar rainbow, is a rare natural atmospheric phenomenon that occurs when the moonlight is used as the light source for producing a rainbow. The process in which a moonbow is created is very similar to that of a normal rainbow–it occurs by the refraction of moonlight in water particles. As the moonlight passes through water droplets, the light refracts and divides into red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet light. The seven different colours appear because each colour of the rainbow has different wavelengths. The angle of refraction is affected by the wavelength–red light has the longest wavelength hence has the smallest angle of refraction, while violet light has the shortest wavelength thus has the largest angle of refraction. For a moonbow to be visible, several combinations of factors are required. The presence of light (moonlight in this case) and water source is essential. The moon must be located in the lower part of the sky. If the moon is positioned above 42 degrees from the horizon a moonbow doesn’t appear. A clean and dark sky is needed; a moonbow cannot be observed if the moonlight is diffused by c lo u d s i n t h e a t m o s p h e re o r diminished by bright light. A source of water must be present in the air in the opposite direction of the moon. A bright moon is necessary thus the

moon must be full, or, at least, nearly full. The conditions needed for the moonbow are very specific, which makes the moonbow rare. Moonbows are rarer and fainter than rainbows made from sunlight because the moon is not a selfilluminating light source. The moon shines because it reflects the light from the sun. The surface of the moon only reflects 3-12% of the received sunlight despite the moon ‘illuminating’ so brightly. Therefore the moonbow is only created when the moonlight is the brightest: clear, dark sky with no clouds. The light from the moon is too faint for the human eye receptors to detect. The human eye has difficulty distinguishing the concentrated colours in a moonbow, which is why moonbows might appear as a simple white arc from the human perspective. This varies depending on individual people’s number and responsiveness of colour sensitive cones and lightsensitive rods located in the retina of human eyes. Although moonbow is rare, there are certain locations where they can be more frequently observed. Moonbows tend to occur more often in places with waterfalls because the water droplets of the waterfalls create layers of mist in the atmosphere, and a greater number of water molecules increase refraction occurrence. Moonbows created nearby waterfalls are often named spray

moonbows. Examples of best locations to observe moonbow include Victoria Falls between Zambia-Zimbabwe border in Africa and Cumberland Falls in Kentucky.


Lake Natron and the plight of the Pink Flamingo RYAN LEE YEAR 8, SARAH

What comes up in your mind if you hear the word “Lake”? I think of swimming in the cold water in the summer and having a rest in the sun. Most of the lakes around the world have clean water, and some of them are safe to swim in. Some are located in craters of mountains and some are as large as seas. Lake Natron, which is the lake that I will introduce to you, is 180 degrees different to all the lakes you have been thinking of. This lake’s water is so basic that creatures' contact with the water calcifies them right away. This deadly lake is located in Africa, Tanzania to be precise, and it goes by the name Lake Natron. Natron is a mixture of salt and other minerals. The water in this lake is extremely basic; It is 10.5 in the pH scale, which is similar to an ammonia solution. To explain how strong 10.5 is on the periodic table, if it has a high concentration in the air it will burn your eyes and nose and also burn your skin on contact. If you breathe the air, it might dissolve your lungs. The water kills all creatures in the world except the phenomenal pink flamingos and four species of fish. This dreadful alkaline water was created by Lake Natron’s geography. A bit Alice in wonderland ish, Lake Natron is shaped so that water can flow in but it cannot flow out, so the only way for water to leave is through evaporation. When water evaporates,

the salt will be left and this process happened over years and years. This is the same way in which Utah's great salt lake and the Dead Sea was formed. Lake Natron is still gaining more salt as time also evaporates. Lake Natron might sound like the most toxic and desolate place, but it is also the lake of birth at the same time. So, what do I mean? Lake Natron has the water to kill most living creatures, but the lake is an ideal place for the flamingos. Flamingos are the birds with long slender necks and legs, and have red - pink feathers. They have especially tough skins and a scale around their legs, so it prevents the salt laden water from burning, but just to be sure they stand on one leg! They also have the ability to turn saltwater into freshwater. There are not a lot of animals that can stand this harsh environment, so there is no competition for food. One of the major diets of flamingos is algae, and Lake Natron’s water is the perfect condition for algae to reproduce. Due to these features, 75% of the flamingo nests throughout the world are located in Lake Natron. Lake Natron is one of the places that have the most Sodium Carbonate (also called soda ash) which causes the extreme alkaline water. This Sodium Carbonate is mostly used in water softener, food processing aids, swimming pool chemicals, and


the manufacture of glass, paper, soaps and other important chemicals. People are making attempts to start mining Sodium Carbonate in Lake Natron from which we would get a huge amount of Sodium Carbonate for chemical discoveries and real-life supplies. However, this wonderful breeding spot for flamingos will be under threat if humans start to mine in Lake Natron. Mining would bring machines and workers, and flamingos are very sensitive to sounds and other creatures while breeding on the shores. Mining will also make the water choppy, and algae cannot live when the water is choppy. This means that flamingos’ food supply will reduce. If the best conditions for flamingo breeding are gone, flamingos will need to leave Lake Natron and this is not a simple problem that can be resolved right away. Flamingos need a long time to find and settle on a new breeding spot, and the population of the flamingos will decrease in huge numbers if they have less breeding. Mining sodium carbonates will help scientists to invent new uses of chemicals and make more real-life supplies such as soap. According to Chris Magin, the RSPB's international officer for Africa, this process might decrease the flamingo population at rapid speed. Chris Magin, the RSPB’s international officer for Africa, says "The chance of the lesser

flamingos continuing to breed in the face of such mayhem are next to zero. Mining from Lake Natron will bring huge advantages to humans, but we need to think about what disasters will be caused by our selfish acts.” To stop these mischievous acts of companies, we need to join and help. The Think Pink campaign started when the Tanzanian Government and Tata Chemicals proposed to build an industrial plant for mining in Lake Natron. This campaign grew bigger, and Tata Chemicals has decided to stop the project. However, the Government of Tanzania still has plans to mine Sodium Carbonate, and the only way for saving the biggest flamingo nests is to protest and join campaigns that are against mining Lake Natron. Our voices can save the future of another species of bird becoming extinct.


Natural phenomena in Jeju JUNHA DANIEL HONG YEAR 12

YONGMEORI TUFF RING

1. HEADLAND STRETCHED OUT OFF THE SHORE JUST SOUTH OF MT. SANBANG 2. LOCATED IN SOUTHERN COAST IN JEJU 3. ‘YONGMEORI’ MEANS THE HEAD OF THE DRAGON 4. THE TUFF IS FORMED BY THE COOLED LAVA FROM MT.HALLA

Yongmeori coast is located in the south-west coast of Jeju island. It is just beside the sea (adjoined). People can walk through the tuff ring (while the low tides prevail). Jeju island itself is actually a huge volcanic mountain. Yongmeori coast is a part of this mountain. Its sharp, angular shape is purely formed by natural phenomena, the interaction of magma with water. It is remnant of a tuff ring which is defined as a hydromagmatic volcano formed during an explosive interaction of magma with water and wet sediment. It has a relatively large crater compared to its height. They are formed around a volcanic vent located in a lake, along a coastal zone, marsh or groundwater. As it can be seen in the photo, the yongmeori tuff ring is not caused by a single basic volcanic eruption. Ash layers with different colours represent that they are formed by multiple volcanic activities, flowing in different directions, forming arches, holes in the wall and some flowing patterns. Its age can also be estimated through the number of rings (layers) since the tuff is always being eroded by the wind and waves.


al n e m o Phen spots Sun

JUNHO STEVE NA YEAR 12

Sunspots are temporary phenomena on the Sun's photosphere that appear as spots darker than the surrounding areas. They are regions of reduced surface temperature caused by concentrations of magnetic field flux that inhibit convection. Sunspots usually appear in pairs of opposite magnetic polarity. Their number varies according to the approximately 11-year solar cycle. They are dark areas that appear on the surface of the Sun. They are caused by strong magnetic activity within the Sun. Sunspots are not permanent and they can move slowly across the surface of the Sun changing size as they move. The appearance of sunspots follows the solar cycle of eleven years. Every eleven years there will be a period of increased sunspot activity. Sunspots vary in size from as small as 10,000 miles across to as large as 100,000 miles across. The earliest extant report of sunspots dates back to the Chinese Book of Changes, c. 800 BC. The first clear mention of a sunspot in Western literature, around 300 BC, was by the ancient Greek scholar Theophrastus, student of Plato and Aristotle and successor to the latter.The earliest surviving record of deliberate sunspot observation dates from 364 BC, based on comments by Chinese astronomer Gan De in a star catalogue. By 28 BC,

Chinese astronomers were regularly recording sunspot observations in official imperial records.The first drawings of sunspots were made by an English monk named John of Worcester in December 1128. Sunspots were first observed telescopically in late 1610 by English astronomer Thomas Harriot and Frisian astronomers Johannes and David Fabricius, who published a description in June 1611. Another phenomenon that occurs on the sun is the solar flares. The magnetic field lines near sunspots often tangle, cross, and reorganize. This can cause a sudden explosion of energy called a solar flare. Solar flares release a lot of radiation into space. If a solar flare is very intense, the radiation it releases can interfere with our radio communications here on Earth. Solar flares are sometimes accompanied by a coronal mass ejection (CME for short). CMEs are huge bubbles of radiation and particles from the Sun. They explode into space at very high speed when the Sun’s magnetic field lines suddenly reorganize. When charged particles from a CME can reach areas near Earth; they can trigger intense lights in the sky, called auroras. When particularly strong, a CME can also interfere in power utility grids, which at their worst can cause electricity shortages

and p ower o u tages . Sol ar fl ares and CMEs are the most powerful explosions in our solar system.


Child Prodigies:

Born or Made? SEOYOON ELYSIA BAE YEAR 12

"

CHILD PRODIGY

is defined as a person under the

AGE of TEN who produces

MEANINGFUL OUTPUT in some domain to the LEVEL OF AN ADULT EXPERT.

"

Every time the news shines a light on child prodigies who became sensations around the world, you can’t help but wonder if they were born a genius or the environment they grew up in made them that way. By exploring a few child prodigies and comparing their childhood, the answer to this question may come up. From Wolfgang Amadeus to Stevie Wonder, there have been numerous cases where a child showed a deep understanding and stood out from the crowd from a very young age. Mozart had started to play songs on the harpsichord at four years old and composed his own songs at five. His family recognised his talents and went on tours starting from when he was seven years old. Mozart’s musical dexterity, as well as his fine memory retention skills, were proven in the Vatican, around 1770, when he was only fourteen. After hearing the Miserere, composed by Gregorio Allegri, Mozart was able to transcribe the whole piece (which was around fifteen minutes with nine different chorus parts) from his memories. S o r Ju a n a I n é s d e l a C r u z i s another example of a child prodigy who showed outstanding intellectual potential early in her life; she knew how to read at the age of 3 and learnt Latin in only twenty-or-so lessons. De la Cruz wrote her first dramatic poem at the age of eight. Even though


her gender and family’s financial circumstances prevented her from receiving a formal education, word got out regarding her remarkable abilities. She was summoned to the court of the viceroy of New Spain where they arranged a public question panel with forty professors asking extensively about their professional field of knowledge. The depth and breadth of de La Cruz’s knowledge stunned onlookers. She had been uninterested in marriage but was always on the lookout for more books to read, which was why she entered a convent in 1669. She continued to produce poems, plays, and philosophical tracts. De la Cruz also built up a large collection of books and scientific instruments — she is remembered as one of the most important writers in Mexican literature. Singer-songwriter Stevie Wonder was also a child prodigy who overcame his disability and persistently walked the path of music. Despite being born blind and growing up in poverty, he became a skilled musician in early childhood where he was self-taught in how to write music, sing, play the piano, organ, harmonica, and drums. By age 12 he began recording music and performing professionally under the title ‘Little Stevie Wonder’. With the skills he amassed, he quickly established himself as a serious musician who could combine creative

songwriting with the mastery of diverse styles of music — including rhythm, blues, soul, funk, rock, and jazz. His songs were able to give hope to a lot of people and at only the age of 38, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. There are a few distinguishing factors that scientists found in most child prodigies. First is their ability to dig in deep into their topic of interest. The intensity of their focus, when it comes to exploring that particular area, sets them apart from other children of that age. Persistence in pursuing that area of interest is also commonly shown in child prodigies. Another factor is that young geniuses tend to be very curious about everything they see. Instead of passively absorbing information, they will set out to get their questions answered. In addition, most prodigies have a unique way of thinking. This may be a factor that makes it hard for them to connect with other children of their ages, but this extraordinary perspective will help them try new things. Coming back to the question that is asked by many people, were these child prodigies born talented or made? The answer is, quite frankly, both. A child may show a talent in a certain area (born) and noticing their potential to become even better, the parents could let them take lessons (made). The child would grow up exposed to their

area of talents to become even more professional in that field. Regarding the ‘born as a genius’ theory, there have been studies where scientists found out that a child prodigy’s brain has less neural connections than children of their age. This might sound contradictory, as we think that the more connections we have, the better. However, in the case of processing information, having less but more efficient connections makes it quicker. So some children really do seem to have a ‘brain of a genius’. Still, even if you feel like you’re not ‘one-of-a-kind’ and don’t know of a particular talent that you can put forward, don’t give up! You still hold a lot of potential within you and it would be a waste to just let it go without properly indulging yourself.


ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE as a SOCIOLOGICAL PHENOMENON: will they surpass

HUMANS?

Big changes are coming. As Turing, (1950) suggested the development of a machine or system that could think and communicate with humans, many engineers and scientists have made endless efforts to create machines and systems that can replace humans. Many SF novels and movies illustrate the future with robots; people eventually accept life with robots. Just not sure how soon this would happen but it really affects society to a great degree. People who are involved in this change are required to take responsibility for the best result and face the opportunity to prosper at the same time. This change is Artificial Intelligent (AI). Asilomar AI Principles, consisting of 23 articles, suggests how AI must be developed to empower people with AI in the near future. However, this principle only guides us where to start about AI, so we need more profound debate for each of the 23 articles. In the past decade, AI has developed dramatically. AlphaGo from DeepMind surpassed human’s ability for Go games. Not only this challenge, but also language translation, driving vehicles and developing biosimilar molecules have evolved using AI technology. How much can AI accomplish? Just what tasks would AI only take over? Or would AI take over most of the jobs of

humans? Would it be more than our imagination like SF movies? Then, how could we prepare for this change? There is controversy as to whether AI would surpass humans within several decades or not. Some experts, including Stephano Armon, a professor of Stanford University, and Roman Ampolski, a professor of Luiseville University, take a position of security against AI. They insist that predicting the future is very insecure according to human history. Therefore, taking more safe options with careful provision would be the best option. To prepare for the worst case could be the only option to cope with AI. However, Dan Weld, a professor of Washington University, agrees with the basic idea of preparation based on expected catastrophe, but this shouldn’t insinuate that AI will become superior to humans, so we need to worry about it. This kind of idea makes people focus on the negative effect instead of the urgent and important issues we have to resolve such as employment, health insurance, and education. Guruduth Banavar, the vice president of IBM research, worries that placing upper bounds on AI capabilities could limit that beneficial possibilities. The surge of change is inevitable. As we consider AI is the fourth industrial revolution, research on AI

technology has been actively carried out not only in university laboratories but also in companies as the core technology for realizing the 4th industrial revolution. As AI technology has penetrated deeply into our lives, it is true that our lives have become much easier and more comfortable than in the past but, on the other hand, we have begun to see various negative effects. We carefully need to examine the social changes due to AI in terms of intelligent products and services. By analyzing various cases of positive effects and dysfunctions in work environments, we must attempt to identify the main policy issues and start discussing them.

SIWOO STEVEN KIM YEAR 12



Phenomenon:

Reduction of Nuclear Power


BY WOOJIN SAM CHOI, YEAR 12 The idea of pandora’s box is that there are unspeakably horrible things inside a box, which to the naked eye, appears harmless. The idea of pandora’s box is a common way to describe nuclear power.

accidents, Chernobyl and Fukushima, were caused by external factors, ineffective bureaucracy and an earthquake respectively, not by flaws of nuclear power itself.

This is because, while on the outside, nuclear power is an efficient and clean source of power that can mediate between fossil fuels, which are biased on efficiency, and renewable resources, which are biased on cleanliness. It is seen as a pandora’s box in that while the previously mentioned aspects of nuclear power are seen to be hiding the ‘horrible aspects’, which are summed up perfectly by the painstaking tragedies of Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima.

The arguments made by the two sides overlap each other. In conclusion, is nuclear power bad? No. Is it good then? No.

With the nightmares of nuclear disasters still fresh in our minds, fresh since the atomic bombing of Japan, it is expected that there will be voices that try to halt investment into nuclear power. This side argues of the dangers that nuclear power enforces upon the environment and human society. Radiation is not a safe thing. The other side argues that nuclear power must be kept in use as it still pollutes far less than fossil fuels, and is far more efficient than renewable fuels. This side argues that the advantages of using nuclear power is far higher than the small chance of nuclear catastrophe. It is notable that the two infamous

The trouble is that nuclear power is a sword of two blades. Excluding fossil fuels, currently nuclear power is the most efficient out of all generation processes, whereas renewable resources, the obvious other choice, has far to go. The eventual aspect of denuclearisation depends on what the final turnout must be.


The Phenomenon of Sloth Productivity is a prime concern for people across the world, especially for students. There are various techniques and methods developed by productivity gurus that claim to turn you into a busy bee without fail. Every student encounters the pomodoro technique or the so-called systematic planning techniques. However, these techniques barely work and many students relapse into procrastinating soon. On an individual level, this lack of productivity is often a result of a phenomenon known as the student syndrome, in which humans tend not to complete work ahead of schedule even if they are able to. Furthermore, the reason why so many organisations fail to increase productivity, or even experience a reduction in productivity despite increases in the organisation’s size, is because of Parkinson’s law which states that the number of officials and the quantity of work done is unrelated. Both phenomena work in undermining a bureaucratic organisation’s productivity. First, the student syndrome is a widespread phenomenon that describes planned procrastination, in which people will only start to put their full effort into a task at the last possible moment just before the deadline. An academic paper by D.C. Smith at the University of Cape Town (2010) suggests that the student syndrome occurs because it puts a high level of urgency to ensure the proper amount of effort is put into the task. More commonly, people will have excuses such as, “I work better under pressure.” Another factor that accounts for the student syndrome and procrastination in general is the psychological phenomenon of delay discounting, which is defined as “the depreciation of the value of a reward related to the time that it takes to be released” according to Adriana da Matta (2012). A study by Leonard Green (1997) supports the existence of this behaviour when it found that people are willing to sacrifice $17 for an instant reward than a reward in the future. This psychological phenomenon has significance in various disciplines, including economics, in which the discounted utility model is based upon this behaviour. For us, we experience this when we seek instant gratification by watching a Netflix film over completing a homework that is due next week. It is only after the utility of completing the task has increased due to the impending deadline that we choose to work on the task. This supports a compelling argument in


favour of procrastination and the student syndrome: it is a rational economic decision based on the utility each choice brings. (It also means teachers should set short deadlines - ED.) However, there are some glaring weaknesses of procrastination in terms of one’s well being and overall satisfaction in the long term. First, it puts an enormous amount of pressure and stress on the student, which is detrimental to one’s health. Furthermore, the work produced under pressure is often non-satisfactory. While people argue that pressure enables them to put their full effort, it is often the case that they produce works below their potential. Research from David Arnott and Scott Dacko, of Warwick Business School, found that assignments submitted in the last 24 hours before a deadline suffered up to 5% lower grades The mean mark of assignments submitted 24 hours before the deadline was 64.17% and the mean mark of assignments submitted at the last minute was 59%. This translates into a drop of grade and leaves a cautionary tale for students around the world. Furthermore, another danger of relying on planned procrastination is that it relies heavily upon the existence of deadlines. While students might have produced an acceptable level of work within the deadline via planned procrastination, the real problem occurs when there is no deadline to complete a task. These tasks include starting a business or getting fit, when there are normally no advisors around to set deadlines and sanction you for not meeting them. Since there are no deadlines, people will postpone doing the work indefinitely, ultimately getting no progress done at all. These problems suggest that relying much on planned procrastination is extremely dangerous and one should try to get out of the habit. While it could be argued that the student syndrome could be overcome by educating people with better planning skills and making them more disciplined, there is another major problem that undermines the productivity of organisations: Parkinson’s law. This law stands in contrast to the conventional wisdom that the amount of work done within an organisation is proportional to the size of the organisation. This is because of the Law of Multiplication of Subordinates and the Law of Multiplication of Work. The Law of Multiplication of Subordinates states that, in a bureaucratic organization, an official who is overburdened with work will look for appointing two subordinates rather than having a colleague on the same level as him in the hierarchy. This way, the official’s promotion is not at risk. However, the same law works on the two newly hired subordinates, who will employ two subordinates each to share the burden. Therefore, the size of the organization increases exponentially, which is much larger than what is necessary. Furthermore, the Law of Multiplication of Work states that the work required to complete the same task multiplies as the size of the organisation increases. This is because there are additional responsibilities created for senior officers as the size of the organisation increases. They have to review the work done by subordinates, edit it and even reject it because the subordinates are less skilled than the senior officers. The subordinates also become less productive as the organisation increases its size and becomes more complex because they have to respond to different hier-

archies within the organisation and the senior officers might disagree with themselves. These inevitable inefficiencies of a bureaucratic organisation ultimately mean that the same amount of work is done even though the size of the organisation has increased significantly. Parkinson’s law explains the bureaucratization of organizations and its inefficiencies. Therefore, attempts to make organizations more productive have been made throughout the world, from setting individual task deadlines and reducing daily decision making to the debureaucratization of organisations. However, whether these are successful needs to be studied further. In conclusion, the phenomenon of sloth both at the individual and the organisational level, can be seen throughout the world in examples such as the student syndrome and Parkinson’s law. While many recognize that being unproductive should be avoided, it is the case that the forces that make us slothful are too strong in many cases. Although it is a cliche, one can only definitely overcome the phenomenon of sloth by improving self-discipline and working out innovative methods to become more productive.

BY YOUNG SUN SEAN HONG, YEAR 13, HALLA NORTH


DO YOU KNOW THIS GUY?

BY IAN JUNG, YEAR 9, JEOJI

There is this man with his eyes hidden under his black fedora with a mysterious expression on his face. Yet, this guy just seems to be normal. However, on the internet ,countless images of him as different characters exist and it is very easy to find a person with one of the images as their profile picture. Furthermore, as recently as the start of this year, 2020, only a few knew his existence. Here comes the question: Who is this guy and how did he become a phenomenon of the modern era? Firstly we must know his name to begin with. He is called Um Jun Sik, with a surname of Um and a given name of Jun Sik. This might sound like a stereotypical Korean name, but ironically, his peculiar name is one of the key factors that made him so popular. Unlike any other Korean name which has a meaning on it, nobody knows the true meaning behind this name Um Jun Sik. Anyways, Um Jun Sik was previously called PD Amumu, a nickname based on a League of Legends champion, Amumu. As could be seen from his name, he was

a game streamer. But one day he was streaming a video while driving, and due to his carelessness, he had a car accident with a taxi. In the process of dealing with the car accident, the taxi driver asked him for his name, and he told the driver his name Um Jun Sik. However, the taxi driver did not understand his name clearly and replied, saying “what kind of name is it?” People who were watching also thought his name was hilarious and began typing his name in his videos. Um Jun Sik eventually banned people from posting his name on his channel, and people wrote his name on other channels then. What kind of meaning did his name have? Does it stand for Ummagga junbihan siksa (meal prepared by mom)? Nobody knows. Nowadays people mentioning his name could be seen in nearly every place on the internet but on the other hand the haters also increased as well. Young people shouting his name out without context often annoys other people. In some extreme cases even his name itself is banned. Due to this unexpected popularity Um Jun Sik is


now experiencing severe panic disorder and hence he quitted streaming. This meme has some disadvantages as well as the advantages. Therefore you should not make fun of someone’s name. Still today, calling his name without his permission is strongly prohibited and this act has a possibility of getting into legal trouble. Therefore if you want no trouble and easy life you should not use his name to make profit or record his name anywhere. Hopefully he will not read this article and I won’t annoy him!


BY JUHYUN KEVIN LEE, YEAR 12

NATURAL PHENOMENONS


The 21’ st century allows the public to access the media easier than before with technological developments. In the media, there are a variety of photos and videos around a wide range of topics. One part of the visual media is pictures from nature, which astonishes people and are often considered surreal. These photos, staggeringly, are in a group called the “Natural phenomena.” The first phenomenon is the Volcanic lightning. Volcanic lightning is an electric discharge caused by a volcanic eruption, which differs from an ordinary thunderstorm. Static electricity, generated by the collision between fragmenting particles of volcanic ash leads to a dirty thunderstorm. This process leads to a stunning image consisting of various charging mechanisms. These include ice charging, frictional charging, fracto emission, and radioactive charging, which are chemical reactions providing an astounding picture for the public. When people search for wallpapers for their computer or other devices, there are images of clouds that are never spotted easily by people walking pass their town or cars. One kind of these clouds is polar stratospheric clouds, also known as PSCs, which are clouds in the winter polar stratosphere at extremely high altitudes of 15,000~25,000 m.

One primary type of a PSC is known as nacreous, implicated in the formation of ozone holes, made up of supercooled droplets of water and nitric acid. PSCs have different types within each other in terms of chemical phases and physical looks. Halo is a kind of optical phenomena, produced by the interaction of ice crystals and light in the atmosphere. This phenomenon has various forms, including white rings, arcs, and spots in the sky. Out of these forms, the bestknown type is the circular halo (The 22° Halo), and their rarity differs in a wide range. Halos are usually sighted near the sun or the moon, often in the sky above the Nepal mountain base camp. Including the three phenomena, there are numerous phenomena accessible in media, and each having different formations, each unique in form.


THE

PHENOMENON OF

GETTING YOURSELF FORGOTTEN CHANHYUK CHRIS PARK YEAR 12 There are diverse opinions and debates regarding data protection issues. How much can we edit our public past? Who is to judge a society’s collective digitized memory? The right to be forgotten, often known as the “right to erasure”, is a law established by the EU in which citizens have the power to demand that existing digitized data about them be deleted. In other words, Europeans have the right to request links to pages containing sensitive personal information about them be removed. Can the “right to be forgotten” be considered as legitimate? A man in Germany, who was convicted of murder 37 years ago was given a life sentence for killing two people on a yacht in 1982. This man, released from prison in 2002, fought to distance his family name from reports about the case. His case was initially rejected by a federal court in 2012 because the court argued that his right to privacy cannot outweigh public interest and press freedom. However, in 2014, Germany’s highest court officially established the right to be forgotten and forced search engines to comply with requests to remove results. As a result, the constitutional court in Karlsruhe legalized the right to be forgotten and had his name removed from online search results. In this kind of severe case of criminal, ‘right to be forgotten’ can be misused. Yet, the court also insisted that

individuals cannot unilaterally claim a right to be forgotten and that the decision had been influenced by the amount of time that had passed since the crime. Consequently, the “right to be forgotten” has been subject to a longstanding legal dispute between Google and the EU. In 2014, a European Court of Justice ruling forced search engines, including Google, to remove results when requested. However, Google argued that the right to be forgotten should only be applied to search results within Europe, not worldwide. The “right to be forgotten” comes under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which governs how personal data must be processed, in order to give individuals the right to ask organizations to delete their personal data. It states that “the data subject shall have the right to obtain from the controller the erasure of personal data concerning him or her without undue delay and the controller shall have the obligation to erase personal data without undue delay”. The GDPR outlines specific circumstances in which the right to be forgotten applies including when an organization is relying on an individual’s consent as the lawful basis for processing the data, when an organization is processing personal data for direct marketing purposes, and when the organization processed an

individual’s personal data unlawfully. However, some claim that the right to be forgotten means publications are forced to restrict search engine’s access to their online archives. Since the right to be forgotten is a law that regulates public digitized data, it can affect freedom of expression on the internet. Therefore, there is conflict and dispute between the court and the opposing side, especially companies like Google. Due to vigorous use of social media, internet, and messenger, our personal data is everywhere. To an extent that it would benefit people who want their data to be vanished. However, considering the side effects - misused by criminals - the right to be forgotten should be considered in our society.


UNSTOPPABLE

Data BreachesWill the FUTURE be SAFE? MINHO JOEY KANG YEAR 12 Recent news informs us about a data breach that happened at the EasyJet company. The airline has admitted that over 9 million people’s personal information was affected and, of them, approximately 2,200 people’s CVV number was also exposed. Such a data breach incident is not so rare for us anymore. There were numerous incidents like this and, at the same time, numerous companies have been fined for it. For example, British Airways have been fined $230m, Marriott $124m and, in the USA, Equifax agreed to pay a minimum of $575m. Thus, that’s why this issue is becoming more serious for us now because it’s clearly not getting any better. Primarily, data breaches can not only be a cause for misuse of personal information, but it can also lead to further trouble as the basis of numerous phishing or spamming incidents. Especially where the use of the internet is exponentially increasing due to the Covid-19 crisis, this type of threat is much more dangerous. Just from the EasyJet customers, it can reach out to the rest of the civilians in the world. As evidence, Google has reported that thousands of spam mails are being sent to normal civilians through Gmail, using the name of the EasyJet company. The potential danger in this case is thus very high. Such data breach cases should be

handled in extreme care, especially after the Facebook data breach incident recently. Despite the great fine that Facebook had to pay, the online companies are not paying enough care to the customer’s personal information. Services work under the common understanding that the customer’s identities are safely secured or else, there’s no other option for customers but to stop using the service and businesses will have no revenue stream available. If this continues, not only will innocent people’s privacy be stolen, but also the tertiary and quaternary industries will experience serious damage. Fining the companies for their flaws or warning the customers of potential phishing doesn’t retrieve the stolen information from the hackers. What is done is already done. Thus, we have to come up with a resolution that can ultimately prevent the hacking in the first place. My solution to this issue is to make a high standard qualification for any online service companies. In order to do that, there will need to be a separate online security organization, monitoring the quality of those qualifications. The main part of the qualification would be the hiring of white or ethical hackers. The current issues have shown us that the security systems are not working well enough. Even the greatest online SNS company, Facebook, had its data

breached. Therefore, going further than constructing firewalls, we will need to back-track the hackers so that any routes to where the hackers might enter the server is thoroughly blocked. This can be done through tracking the cookies and the online coordinates that the black hackers have left behind, just like how they hack the civilian’s devices. Furthermore, this method has a larger value than just making the security firmer. If we upgrade the security through this methodology, the demand for the ethical hackers will increase amongst the society and result in increasing the job opportunities. Thus, through deploying such procedures, we can not only solidify the online security, but also benefit socially in job-wise matters. The world will not stop it’s path towards online innovations. The importance of data security will increase drastically. Using these cases as a trigger, we need to organise our information in as stable a fashion as we can.


Social Phenomenon-

Donghak Ant Movement and

COVID-19 The start of the 2020s was devastating. COVID-19 engulfed the whole world. Millions of people are currently infected from the virus, and huge amounts of the people are dead from the virus. Since the current pandemic crisis worldwide, social, economic and political movements have been hugely changed from the world before the COVID-19. Economically, worldwide stock prices have fallen, and this caused the social phenomena called the ‘Donghak Ant Movement’ in South Korea. Have you heard about the ‘ant’ in the stock market? They are not about the literal ants, but they are metaphorical ants that symbolise the individual investors that do not highly contribute to the stock market, otherwise known as small investors. They normally symbolize the weak investors that have small amounts of capital or money, but sometimes ants hugely impact the stock market. A perfect example of this is the ‘Donghak Ant Movement’. This movement started with the fluctuation of the stock market from COVID-19. This naming was originated from the ‘Donghak Peasant movement’, which was a revolution in the late 19th century. This origination symbolizes the huge social movement of the powerless, which are the ‘ants’ described above. Some analysts insist that they are worried that the second IMF crisis

(Korea once had an IMF crisis in 1997) or the second Great Depression would come, by comparing data with that during the Great Depression. On the other hand, some thought that individual investors, ‘ants’, would be available to invest on the stocks which became extremely cheap. Since the stock prices of large-cap stocks, including Samsung Electronics, are going up and down like bitcoins, many investors interpreted this as a chance. In fact, deposits placed in securities accounts by individual investors reached a record high of 45 trillion won on March 29 2020, compared to 20 trillion won in February alone. In other words, 45 trillion won (400 billion dollars) worth of capital is in the current stock market. In particular, as the number of people starting investing in their 20s and 30s who have not been interested in stocks before has increased significantly, this movement widely spread with support from the younger age groups. There are some similar examples of the ‘Donghak Ant Movement’ in the past. The cryptocurrency movement in the middle of 2017, there were huge amounts of trading cryptocurrency since it has been very popular due to the exponential increase in Bitcoin p r i c e . S i m i l a r i t i e s b e t we e n t h e Cryptocurrency and the Donghak Ant movement was in the active involvement of the young and middle


SEUNGHO HAM YEAR 12 income and these irrational acts were based on the huge wave of the social movements. On the other hand, the main reason for the rise of the cryptocurrency was in the broad social ‘economic’ depression, whereas the Donghak ant movement was because of the ‘non-economic’ social pandemic crisis. Cryptocurrency incidents ended up with huge amounts of losses. This result of the current social movement will let us know whether the Donghak Ant movement could face the same result. To sum up, the Donghak Ant movement started when the economic crisis from the COVID-19 was at its peak. This background led many young people to bet their money on the cheap stocks since they lost their part-time jobs or their salaries were reduced a lot. This social phenomenon was called the Donghak Ant movement, and this movement actually contributed to the cycle of the economy and let 45 trillion won worth of capital pour into the stock market. From the case of the cryptocurrency precedent, this phenomenon is expected to melt the frozen Korean economy and contribute to the overcoming of the great lockdown. We will wait and see or discover if it is a scam.


The Meritocratic Society Behind my Window

To know about how the inequality problems and the richpoor gap unstoppably widens, as a fellow Young Geographer, it was my pleasure to read about ‘The Meritocracy Trap’. This book is written by Daniel Markovits who is a professor in the Law School of Yale University. For like the United States and Republic of South Korea as they are extremely advanced capitalist societies, most people would agree that they are recognized as much as one’s ability. I was especially surprised how Daniel Markovits, the self made man of success, criticized the meritocratic society as the elite professor in Yale. He first pointed out that there were also disadvantages for the world to change from hereditary nepotism society to meritocratic society. From the 1960s to 1970s, the most important factors of going into elite universities, like Harvard, depended on their family’s race and wealth. Therefore, Harvard and Yale students weren’t clever enough to be in their positions, thus a lot of old Americans even said it’s a place to learn how to play and be merry. So, Markovits concluded that because the rich were incompetent, they needed a lot of supporting troops - since Chief executive officer was lazy the role of vice president and rest of the hierarchical system became important. This was the reason why there was a great growth of the middle class in the past. However, moving onto 1980s and 1990s, the profile of Harvard and Yale students changes. Only the system of selecting academic achievements and credits was implemented. Therefore, people with a good work ethic started to join the elite schools’ alumnus. Since they are used to being good at their work, companies started to scout them. So, in the old days, it used to be a ‘CEO’ who would distribute work to the middle class, but now it’s turned into a ‘CEO’ who would do the work of the middle class on their own. This remarkable analysis is also interpreted as the change from ‘aristocracy’ to ‘meritocracy’. By moving onto the meritocratic society, the rich became very competent and diligent in their work in which it eliminated the jobs of the middle class. Then, let’s talk about the gentrification that happened in South Korea. Most of the rich inherited from their parents their factories or land. So, society had to turn around in such a way that a rich man lived in the centre of the factories, and

all of the middle class were scattered around its centre. But, when the society turned meritocratic, the gathering of smart people began to increase. Elite villages began to emerge and those people began to live collectively in such places like New York or Seoul. Therefore, the lives of the elite and the middle class have completely changed - different schools and different brands. This caused the middle class and elites to be no longer at ease. This is why the Future Integration Party (representing the rich) and the Deomocratic Party (representing the poor) in South Korea can’t have easy conversations together. The most serious rich-poor gap in the modern society is between the middle class and the elite, and among the elites within that one percent, the rich-poor gap can be found to be polarized. Therefore, the lives of the middle class become much similar to those of the poor, which amplifies anxiety and anger of themselves. Last of all, how does this mechanism affect our society? In the past, because there were no people who earn billions of dollars by their own success through elite universities and companies, there was a wide range of career choices. For instance, one could choose to be a teacher or a banker. However, because the banker’s wage is nearly 20 times that of the teacher, society has been transformed into one where people change jobs as long as they can become a banker even if one wants to be a teacher. Also, since teachers’ wages are too low, their status is also found to be low which is a serious problem. Then, the question is addressed to the rich people, “are they happy with their lives?” And, surprisingly, the answer is no. In the old days, the rich could enjoy their own life because they ran a factory full of hard working middle classes. However, today’s society has changed the way inheritance is handed down in which it leaves with very high intensity training. So, I get to question myself, “maybe I’m living a life of exploiting myself without knowing my ideals”. Therefore, I say unto my friends and neighbors, that this meritocratic society created a very unhappy elite,


BY SM CHUNG, YEAR 11, SARAH

but also a very poor middle class. As much as our country, there are only a few societies where people work hard to prove themselves and achieve high certificates through studying. As a Young Geographer who attends a very prestigious school in Jeju island, it was an opportunity for me to reflect on what kind of social structure our obsession with proving our identity through studying has created.


The PHENOMENA in

y ph o s o Phil

The notion of whether phenomenal consciousness can be given a straightforward explanation remains a controversy today. The majority of people argue not. They claim that there is an ‘explanatory gap’ between physical or intentional states and processes, on the one hand, and phenomenal consciousness, on the other. I believe that since we have purely recognitional concepts of experience, there is indeed a sort of gap at the level of concepts; but this need not mean that the properties picked out by those concepts are inexplicable. The dispositionalist higher-order thought (HOT) theory can reductively explain the subjective feel of experience by deploying a form of ‘consumer semantics’. Firstorder perceptual contents become transformed, acquiring a dimension of subjectivity, by virtue of their availability to a mind-reading (HOT generating) consumer system. Phenomenal consciousness is a form of state-consciousness: it is a property which some, but not other, mental states possess. More specifically, it is the property which mental states have when it is ‘like something’ to undergo them (Nagel’s famous phrase, 1974). In other words, phenomenally conscious states carry distinctive subjective emotions and

some would say they have qualia. Phenomenal consciousness is to be distinguished from creatureconsciousness. On the one hand this is the property which creatures have when they are awake, or when they are aware of properties of their environment or body and also from other varieties of state-consciousness. On the other hand it includes a number of forms of functionally definable access-consciousness, where states may be said to be conscious by virtue of their accessibility to reasoning, or to verbal report. Most people think that the notion of phenomenal consciousness can only really be explained by example. So we might be asked to reflect on the unique quality of the experience we enjoy when we hear the timbre of a trumpet-blast, or drink cocktails in the pink and orange hues of a sunset, or sniff the heady sweet smell of a rose. In all of these cases there is something distinctive in which it is ‘like’ to undergo the experience in question; and these are all cases of states which are phenomenally conscious. As Block (1995) puts it: phenomenal consciousness is experience. Explanations by example look somewhat less satisfactory, however, once it is allowed there are various types of non-conscious


HYENA STELLA YEOM, YEAR 12

experience. A variety of kinds of neuropsychological and psychological evidence suggests that we possess at least two (perhaps more) functionally distinct visual systems, for example – a conceptualising system whose contents are conscious (realised in the temporal lobes of the brain), and a sensorimotor system charged with the detailed on-line control of movement, whose contents are not conscious (and which is realised in the parietal lobes). Thus movement control is possible for those who are blindsighted, or whose temporal lobes are damaged and who are otherwise blind. Such control can take place more swiftly than conscious experience in the normally sighted; and sensorimotor control is not subject to the various distinctive illusions which affect our conscious experience. And while it might be possible for someone to claim that both sets of experiences are phenomenally conscious (although only the products of the conceptualising system are accessconscious), this is a very unattractive option. It is very hardly credible that within blindsight subjects, for example, there are phenomenally conscious visual experiences which the subject cannot be aware of. At any rate, for the purposes of the exploration, here I shall assume that only states which are access-conscious can be phenomenally

conscious. Nevertheless, we must always remember that there are constant developments and changes made to a certain theory and not one theory has remained the same from the past. The dispositionalist higher-order thought (HOT) theory is an assumption that has been formed from recent research, and different views can be formed for people who analyze it distinctly even in the field of philosophy. In the end of the day, the reasoning and the constant debates that are open to discuss this complex matter are meaningful, not the theory that holds the golden trophy a few years from now. Thus, this is a phenomenon in the world of philosophy as the title shows as it makes researchers, scientists and philosophers try to find the ultimate fact or conclusion.


Phenomenal JUCHEOL JAMES LEE YEAR 12

Aid agencies have been warning for weeks about the potential impact of the coronavirus on the Rohingya refugees who live in congested conditions and have limited access to clean water. Dr Shamim Jahan said "Now that the virus has entered the world's largest refugee settlement in Cox's Bazar we are looking at the very real prospect that thousands of people may die from Covid-19," Covid 19 spreads faster in densely populated areas. This is a known feature. And in the camp, the first corona19 case has been confirmed. The worst group infection is a concern because more than 1 million people live in narrow and poor spaces. This is at least 1.6 times the population density on board the Diamond Princess cruise ship, where the disease spread four times as fast as in Wuhan at the peak of the outbreak. Subsequently, The World Health Organization announced on the 14th of May that a Rohingya refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, had a male refugee and a local male living near a refugee camp who tested positive for corona19. Britain's BBC broadcast said that 1,900 refugees are now being quarantined and are due for inspection. In the Cox's Bazar Refugee Camp, more than 1 million Rohingya refugees have fled the bloody crackdown of the

Myanmar military in August 2017. It has been isolated from outside since March 14, when the Corona 19 crisis was issued. Experts on virology believe that large scale infections are inevitable as many people in the camp don't have enough clean water and sanitation. Neighbouring Bangladesh gave them shelter, “settling the fleeing Rohingya Muslims in what has now become the world's largest refugee camp”, Save the Children's health director in Bangladesh, manish Agrawal, said in a statement. He continued "this pandemic could set Bangladesh back by decades" because when asylums are accepted, the refugees could cause a massive outbreak in Bangladesh. This is a heartbreaking phenomenon, as currently the most service against COVID crisis is targeted on main cities of each country, and the Rohingya refugee camp is the most susceptible area compared to the cities due to lack of sterilisation and sanitation. On the place where COVID could spread most rapidly, the least supply is supported to the camp, and it’s hard to isolate the infected people. The refugees cannot do anything, but only can suffer from the upcoming outbreak. Until 22nd of June, the asylum seekers won’t receive

additional consent from countries near the camp. What experts are most concerned about is that some asylum seekers could cause another outbreak when they enter a new country, delaying the acceptance of refugees. I have found this phenomenal because of the rapid spread of disease amongst people who have already suffered a lot.


VISUAL PHENOMENA SEOHYUN LEWINA MOON YEAR 8, MULCHAT

Visual phenomena are a type of phenomena that has visual events occurring in isolation that are in the absence of altered consciousness, d e m e n t i a , o r p hyc h o s i s . V i s u a l Phenomena is well known for optical illusions. An optical illusion is the image that deceives your eye that looks realistic however it is not as it seems. There are three types of optical illusion: literal illusions, cognitive illusions, and physiological illusions. Don’t misunderstand that the optical illusion doesn’t mean to trick your eye or make your brain stupid, but it’s fascinating! Literal Illusions, also known as ambiguous figures are the images that you see differently. Think about the reverse figure, if you turn around the picture 180 degrees, then you’ll see a different picture. For example a painter called Rex Whistler designed ‘Cinderella and her Fairy Godmother’: you can see the figure of Cinderella, but if you rotate 180 degrees, then you can see another figure of godmother. The physiological optical illusions, also known as distorting illusions are the images that have so much light, movement, color, size, and dimension that it makes your brain confused. For example, painters like Akiyoshi’s Rotating Snakes used some movements on the painting. Because

the title of this painting has the word ‘rotating’ so it has the movement of spinning. If you look at the painting, it seems like it’s moving or rotating but it actually does not. The cognitive illusions are quite similar to the literal illusions. They are the images that you can see different from the object in the picture and the background. It is the most complex type of trick the eye can play on the brain. For example, a necker cube is a design that has one kind of gold Rubin vase and has a white background. But if you change the color of the vase completely white and the background color into dark black, then you will see a different picture which is two faces that are facing each other. There are other interesting painting examples about optical illusions. A painter called Escher, the Dutch graphic artist, painted an artwork called Sky and Water which has two different pictures in one piece to make people look interesting. There are two different animals: fish and bird. Birds represent sky and fish represent water. They merge into each other, much like the sky and sea merge at the horizon. Carefully consider the images your eye is transmitting to your brain because the image may not be all it seems. Make sure you understand the knowledge before using it.


You Are

NOT SO SMART:

The Anchoring Effect Imagine yourself going shopping. Shortly, you find a pair of jeans that seems perfect - until you check the price tag: $259.95. A saleswoman approaches as you stand astonished by the expensive price and tells you that the jeans are on sale this week only for a 30% marked down price. Now you think, ‘That’s perfect!’ and proceed to buy it although it still costs more than 180 dollars - a pretty high price for a pair of jeans. Didn’t you notice something strange? This phenomenon is called the anchoring effect. The anchoring effect impacts your everyday life and is especially prolific in the markets. Anchoring is a cognitive bias that describes humans’ tendency to rely too heavily on an initial piece of information offered - the “anchor” to make subsequent judgments when making decisions. Once an anchor is set, all future estimates, arguments, negotiations, etc. are made in relation to the anchor by adjusting away from it and there is a bias interpreting other information around the anchor. There is a substantial body of experimental evidence proving the hypothesis that individuals’ valuations of goods can be influenced by anchors. In a typical experiment conducted by a behavioural economist Dan Ariely, each subject was first asked

whether he or she would purchase a certain product at a stated price that is arbitrary and then asked to state the maximum willingness-to-pay (WTP) value and the minimum willingnessto-accept (WTA) for that good. The results showed that valuations are positively correlated with the arbitrary anchor price. These findings may be used to intensify the efficiency of retail markets for two reasons. First, if individuals’ purchasing decisions can be affected by irrelevant anchors, companies may be able to use mechanisms to manipulate the decisions made by consumers. Second, many policies aimed at maintaining the competitiveness of retail markets rely on consumers’ ability to find the lowest prices; the existence of anchoring effects raises doubts about the effectiveness of this mechanism. The anchoring bias is prevalent in the marketing world. For instance, the initial price offered for a used car becomes the standard for the rest of the negotiations and any price lower seems more reasonable even if they are higher than what the car is actually worth. This mechanism applies for salary negotiations, too. You might hesitate to make an initial offer, but research suggests that being the first one to lay your cards down on the table is the most beneficial for you, since


MINSEO CHA YEAR 12 that first offer will be the starting point for all future negotiations due to the anchoring effect. Along with this “initial price setting” method, “multipleunit pricing” is a good example of the anchoring effect. Psychologists Brian Wansink, Robert Kent and Stephen Hoch investigated how multipleunit pricing increased supermarket sales. In the experiment, the same bathroom tissues with the same price were displayed differently: “On Sale, 4 Rolls for $2” vs. “On Sale, $0.50/roll.” As a result, the multiple-unit pricing performed a 40 per cent increase in the sales volume than the single-unit pricing. Another study by Wansink, Kent and Hoch looked at how setting “purchase quantity limits” changes buying behaviour. Signs like “Limit 12 per customer” implies to many people that the limit is there to protect the store from being wiped out of the sale item. When the researchers designed a field study using displays to advertise Campbell’s soups for $0.79 per can and then displayed a sign stating “Limit of 12 per person,” the results of this exercise clarified that purchase limits can increase sales. Buyers who bought soup from the display with no limit purchased 3.3 cans of soup on average, whereas shoppers with limits of 12 purchased an average of 7 cans of soup. The brain anchored with the number

12 and adjusted downwards. The degree of anchoring is heavily determined by how salient the anchor is. The more difficult it is to estimate the value of something, the more people tend to rely on anchors, and the more relevant the anchor seems, the more people tend to adhere to it. This explains why anchors often get involved when thinking about currency values or stock markets. The anchoring effect has a powerful impact on the choices we make, from decisions about the things we buy to daily preferences about how to live out lives. While there is a misconception about human psychology that people rationally analyse all factors before determining a value or making a choice, the truth is that individuals’ first perceptions linger in their mind, affecting later perceptions and decisions. Thus, the next time you are making an important decision, pause for a second, and give a thought to the possible impact of the anchors on your choices. Are you giving enough consideration to all of the available information and possible options, or are you basing your selection on an existing anchor point?


“A book is a dream that you hold in your hands”.

This is a quote from a famous novelist, Neil Gaiman. Since a very long time ago, humans have made their own languages and characters to deliver their thoughts and wills to others. They soon began to write these letters as a pile of papers, and as the time passed by, it has been advanced into a book that we now know these days. Until now, books were thought of as one of the most efficient and useful media we can use to gain information and also as an indoor hobby for numerous people. Like we all have experienced, there was a Covid-19 outbreak very recently and people are recommended to stay in their homes and prevent physical contact with others as much as possible. This has caused many people to feel isolated, and depressed, which is called “corona blue”. To get rid of this corona blue, the CDC (Center for disease control and prevention) has recommended some ways that people can feel less isolated. One of the recommended ways that can prevent the Corona blue was to have a mentally relaxing time, such as reading books. Then what phenomenal, interesting books are there? These phenomenal facts about the books might engage you to be interested in some books, and enjoy during your social distancing at home. The number of copies of the book sold is aneasy to tell whether that book has been loved by many people, or not. It also can show what the people take the most value of. Then what would this book be, a famous novel of a legendary writer? Or maybe a study that contains a huge idea that gives a solution for one of the major problems over the world? Surprisingly, the book with the most copies sold is known as “The Bible”, followed by ‘The Holy Quran’ in second place. There are approxi-

mately 5,000,000,000 copies of the bible, according to the Guinness world record. Moreover, the bible even takes the first place as the most read books, too. The bible is a Christian scripture and it consists of the old and new testaments. This is an example that effectively shows how religion is taking such a huge part in numerous people’s lives. The first copy for the bible is the Gutenberg bible, which is currently housed in the New York Public Library. Then how has the bible taken the first place as the most read and copied book? To understand the reason, we need to know how the religion has been developed and how it has affected the people in the past. About 84% of people on Earth are known to have a religion and 2.3 billion people are Christians. Like this, the religion has been closely related to humans throughout the development of history and, even now, an uncountable number of people are having their religious beliefs. The bible is a necessary item for the Christians. Therefore we can see why the bible is the most read book in the world. To move on, let’s talk more about some of the most phenomenal books. Novels are steadily loved by the readers by how it can throw a huge message with concise, but deep literary, expressions. One of the shortest books in the world, is a powerful example that shows how a writer can deliver a massive impression to the readers with minimum words. This short novel is written by a legendary writer, Ernest Hemingway, who is also known as a writer of “The old man and the sea”. The following story goes like this: “for sale: baby shoes never worn.” It is only formed with six words, but


makes the reader feel what exactly the story is about. This short story is about the baby that was stillborn, and the parents are trying to sell the baby products, which were never worn or used. Such as this, books can deliver sometimes impression, happiness, sadness only with the words, but not with any visual materials. This shortest novel makes us feel that the writers, who can illustrate everything in life, truly deserve the title of ‘magician of words’. Along with the shortest novel, what would be the longest one? The longest book that’s recorded is called “Remembrance of things past (À la recherche du temps perdu)”. It was written by a French novelist, Marcel Proust. This book is well-known for its length, which contains 9,609,000 characters. Also it sometimes gets named as one of the best books written in that time. His literary style was famous for long sentences with a massive amount of beautiful metaphors. There was this episode that the editor sent a letter saying, “I don’t understand why we need over 30 pages just to describe the main character tossing and turning before he falls asleep”. The ‘Remembrance of things past’ is the author’s autobiographical novel. Therefore it has an abundant amount of realistic experiences that he has felt during his life. He was very passionate about this book, he even stopped the printer to modify the manuscript to write what emotions he felt just before his death. After he was dead, the rest of the series was finished by his brother. The story starts with a middle-aged man during the period right after the first world war, casually gets to eat a madeleine with a cup of tea, which leads him to his memories from a long time ago. This character of the man has many things in common

with Proust, that they want to be, or are writers, they write a story, and both lived during the world war. By this, we can infer that the main character is pretty much reflected in Marcel himself. Now this book is recorded as one of the longest books in the world, on the Guinness world record. There are endless piles of books that we can read, and every single one of them delivers us impressions and knowledge. Reading books can be one of the best hobbies for people, especially when we are indoors. Knowing about, and being familiar with some of the phenomenal books might make you feel closer to the books than before. There are various types, genres, sizes, and lengths of books in the world. However, they all have the commonality that they can provide us with knowledge and messages that others have discovered. How about discovering more about the books and have a new hobby during your social distancing term? They will be the best chance to fill yourself with rich ideas and knowledge that other people have discovered and felt themselves.

BY SUNWOO HEO, YEAR 9, NORO


BEING A BETTER VERSION OF OURSELVES:

al n e m o Phen

BY JEONGHYUN SOPHIA PARK, YEAR 9, JEOJI


We only live once. Although this is a popular belief, many do not act like this. Doing things that we regret is one of the examples. Like this, in life we should try to make the most of our actions. One of them is to make a huge impact on others so that they can remember good things about you. One type of person is called a phenomenal person. So how can we be one? Before we learn how, let’s see where we are currently at. Most of us would be currently normal. By the word ‘norma’,l I mean what you think as normal. Some may think that helping others is the most kind deed while others think differently about it. In the past, we would have performed some actions that are hurtful to others. These hurtful actions could have been something so hurtful to some people that they can’t even change their mind about us while some may just think of it as a joke and move on. Also, there would have been some grateful actions, when someone is having a hard day, you could have just moved your chair and started to listen to what they are saying. These types of actions would be considered as a nice and friendly move to people near you. The people you had a positive impact with would remember you and it could have been something so little to you, yet it could have been something so important and valuable to others. However, the people who gained pain, would not think the same way. If those actions become constant, those people may think of you as a nightmare. But we don’t want that to happen. What we want to be is a better version of ourselves and if we think that we are good enough, we should always try more because no one really is perfect. I believe that the first step starts with being a great listener. We have one mouth and two ears. This is because we should listen more than talking to others. It is great to reduce some words, and listen. Of course, there would be people wanting to speak more. Even with those people, do not correct them and say that since I heard your story you should listen

to mine, just listen more. In other words, just keep on listening. Later on, when you meet people within the same group, you would have much more of an impact as a person who always had wide ears to listen. During this process, it is even better to be empathetic. Everyone has a bad day. In these bad days for someone, if you were to sit there and agree with her situation, it would make an even stronger impact on them. But this is not compulsory so it is okay, but it is even better to emphasize with others as you listen. Secondly, we should spread happiness with others. Although happiness is not the most important emotion of all of the emotions, it feels better when we are happy rather than being sad. Therefore, try every single day to plant a smile on the faces of others. For that to happen we should smile more ourselves. By being cheerful in ourselves, it easily spreads to the people near you. Other people mirror your expression so smile and the smile will return to you. In this process, it is important not to force others. Other people have feelings too, and it is okay to be sad. Sadness is also an important experience to have. But, if they seem like they are worrying a lot, try to make them happier by spreading positivity. Try to be the ones who give their hand when others are in the dark. For people who stick through thin and thick are the ones they would most likely love being with. Also, it is important to be kind to others. Help maybe just one type of action to demonstrate kindness. It is important to help others. However, do keep in mind that some hate to feel helped. The people who hate to feel helped think like that because they think that others are demeaning themselves, lowering the people’s ability to do things. In this case, it is easy to examine their face, which expresses their emotions, showing all the things that one means. Those who are wanting to say help me have a lot of puzzled looks and seem like they are exhausted because even if they try to keep everything inside, it rarely works and, as a result, would be shown on their faces.

If we help people in this situation, they would be thankful, and you could also make a remarkable memory for them. While it is important to try some new attitudes that show kindness to others, always remind yourself to treat yourself. Doing all these jobs is hard, just for one day. But to do it for a long time is even more difficult. It is more important to make a habit of these such as meditating, playing sports, reading books so that, as time flows, it would just come out like your second skin. Always compliment yourself for having a great day, be grateful for the things that happened. Do not just read this and pass on to the next page. Close your book, and help the next person who needs help. Smile to one feeling sad today. These little steps could help you be a phenomenal person.


Architecture b Amore P headqu

David Chipperfield has agonized over two major factors, how to create a building that can contribute to the urban landscape and, while doing so, a building that reveals Amorepacific’s ideology. The surroundings change very quickly in Yongsan. At the time of the plan, it was not certain how the surroundings would change, but it was possible to speculate that there would be more skyscrapers later. When Yongsan Park is completed in the longer term, the entrance to the new building will serve as an entrance from the city to the park and further expand the park’s role. He also agonized over the standard of beauty suitable for the new office building of cosmetics company Amore Pacific. Korean moon jars have become the motif of this moderation. This is because while the white porcelain is restrained, its presence is strong. Of course, the moon jar is not exactly the same as the head quarter. The moon jar is close to the ideal Chipperfield was trying to pursue. When discussing the starting point of the project with Seo Kyung-bae (CEO of Amore Pacific), the white porcelain became the basis for forming a consensus on “this is what beauty we seek.” Throughout David Chipperfield’s career he emphasized that space can have various roles and purposes. He preferred community space where people interact and play various roles such as restaurants and kindergartens. He thought space in a cube was appropriate to build this multipurpose space. And this large space of 2,000 square meters was divided into smaller pieces so that it could be used for each purpose. His goal was to use a Louver or expand the volume in four stages, and to make it a small step scale that people could recognize through the opening. The first stage of Amore Pacific headquarters was built with an extended atrium. David Chipperfeild was attracted by the fact that atrium is a space with a public character. It lets people flow in all directions naturally. He pursued forming this space where not only employees but also local residents can perform various functions such as cultural exchange. Hardware will always have to be able to respond flexibly and cope with the changes in people’s way of life as society develops. At the same time, it needs firmness to


beyond its use, Pacific uarter BY TAEHWAN LEE, YEAR 11, NORO withstand the changes of the times. Atrium is an independent space that is not related to the company’s work, but it is a flexible space. I think that through these spaces, the building itself becomes a permanent and universal alternative, and continues to be used as a social space for people. Chipperfeild’s meticulousness extended even to the external appearance of the headquarter. In fact, it is challenging to express the weight of a building made of glass. However, he secured a sense of weight by using louvres that act like folding screens. It adds depth and cheerful details to the exterior. Also, since it is a glass building, the amount of sunlight is inevitably high, but it uses aluminum-based rubbers to prevent glare caused by direct sunlight and shade the building to lower the heat load. It is a matte-finished louvres that makes the oblique reflection of light larger and increases the amount and quality of light entering the room. In addition to the louvres, he includes a courtyard within the huge block of construction. Attracted by the courtyard of a Korean traditional house, which has an open yet privacy-friendly character, it was drawn into the building to design the Loop Garden. No matter where employees work in the building, they can breathe closely with nature, feel the change of seasons, and communicate and relax comfortably. Since the three large opening spaces open toward the city center are connected with the external environment, they capture not only the city but also the distant mountain scenery to establish the direction and identity of the building. In other words, it is a window and frame that connects to the city.​ David Chipperfeild, a phenomenal architect, designed Amore Pacific headquarters with its use as an office space. His conscientious construction gives a comforting place for one to work. However, beyond its use, the design enables cultural exchange and a place where community can mingle.


Historic recurrence, is it a phenomenon or a pure coincidence? Does History repeat? Approximately a billion years have passed since humanity emerged on Earth, which has been recorded by different forms of media, from texts to the movie, from fossils to stone cuts. However, despite the long history of humanity, historians point out that historic recurrence is constantly occurring regardless of the timeline. While some similar events could be seen after a year, some similar events happen after decades. However, some historians point out that this reoccurrence is just a pure coincidence that involves similar events happening, and people misunderstanding it as a reoccurrence. Is this idea of historic recurrence a valid observation, or did it just resulte from chance? The idea of historic recurrence first appeared as the phrase “Rufus Historiae” by the English novelist George Eliot in the 1800s. She started to sense that there were some similar events that constantly happen, regardless of location or gaps of time between them. She first named these similar events happening irregularly as historic recurrence. However, the historians’ opinions are divided, as while some claim that this recurrence is a considerable phenomenon with various factors contributing, some claim that the repetitive events are only a pure coincidence that seems to be similar to the previous events. Various examples of historical recurrence could be found in various countries’ civil wars. Until the 21st Century, the major civil wars that happened had common elements, especially the ideological conflict of two sides. For example, the American Civil War started due to the ideological conflicts over whether slavery should be maintained and legalized. While Lincoln and his United States of America agreed to abolish slavery and recognize African-Americans as their own citizens, General Lee and the Confederate States of

America still needed to maintain their slaves for their agricultural industries. This ideological conflict of slavery became the underlying factor that caused the start of the American Civil War. This led the entire USA to be divided into two separate states: the United States of America, and the Confederate States of America. Despite the initial trend of the Southern Army leading the war, the Northern Amry started to regain control of the Civil War after winning the Battle of Gettysburg. This Civil War later ended in 1865, by the surrender of the Southern Army, which led to the complete abolishionof slavery. However, this war is considered to be the first national conflict that occurred as a domestic war between people with identical nations. However, the same event happened again in 1950, when the Korean War occurred. This war also was a civil war among two identical nationalities, along with the independent nations being formed. The Korean War was caused due to the ideological conflict which argued whether the Korean Peninsula should be ruled by a capitalist or communist government. This became the underlying cause of the Korean War as North Korea invaded South Korea on the 25th of June. Despite the initial trend of North Korea almost conquering the entire Korean peninsula, the UN army, and the remaining South Korean army started to regain control of the peninsula by successfully ending Operation Chromite, which took over Incheon and cut the supply lines of the North Korean Army. This success ended in the war is almost over, as the UN army and South Korean army almost reached the end of North Korea. However, this also caused China to intervene in the war by sending supplies and an army. As a result, the war reached a stalemate, until it was ended by dividing the Korean Peninsula into two countries: the Republic of Korea, and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. These two Civil Wars are often stated as an example of historical recurrence since these two events have sig-


nificant common features. These two events both occurred between people in one country and from ideological conflict. The result of the war being maintained until the 21st century and the involvement of surrounding countries also became the main reason why these events are considered to be a historical recurrence. These events also involved the initial trend or leading side of the battle not gaining complete victory after the war. These two events are further stated as historical recurrence, as they both involved some foreign interventions, such as the UK in the American Civil War, and the US and USSR in the Korean War. However, some historians point out that these two events are not historical recurrence since these two events happened due to different ideological conflicts and the Korean War involved countries regardless of regions, while the American Civil War was only limited to America and European countries. These foreign interventions were also undertaken in a significantly different method, which was economic trade regulations and supplies in the American Civil War, while the UN army mainly directly intervened in the war and sent the army in the Korean War. Another example of historical recurrence could also be found by comparing issues regarding the anti-refugee between 1780 and even now. Starting from 1780, various authorities, including Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and American president, started to claim that they need to prevent refugees from entering their countries. In 1780, John Jay, first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, claimed that “Papist immigrants are wrecking our economy with their fecundity. We must erect a wall of brass around the country!” This quotation was in his speech which he claimed America should not allow refugees to ruin their domestic economy. In 1920, similar events also occurred in Germany. As this time period involved Germany being controlled by Adolf Hitler’s author-

itarian state and anti-semitism ideologies, Nazi propagandas also stated that they should prevent other refugees along with Jewish people taking a major role in the German economy. They claimed that due to the extremely high number of Jewish and other refugees, the German domestic economy couldn’t manage itself. This ideology also is happening now, especially by Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States. He claimed that the Mexican refugees are ruining the American economy by refusing to assimilate and taking away the jobs that American citizens need to take. As a result, he literally built a large wall in order to prevent Mexican refugees from migrating to American states. Regardless of the time period and the background environment, the anti-refugee ideologies constantly occurred and were stated as another example of historical recurrence. Since this ideology was mainly claimed by the people from the countries that already have a stable domestic economy or are already receiving economic aid from other major powers, some historians claim that this is just a limited example of countries with similar economic situations, rather than a phenomenal recurrence. However, this is often used as an example of historical recurrence, since this ideology managed to be maintained regardless of the happenings of other events, such as World War 2 or Cold War.

Based on these two examples, do you think there is a historical recurrence? Or is this just a coincidence that is limited to a few countries?

BY SUNGHYUN TOM LEE YEAR 13, HALLA EAST


THE STOPPAGE OF ALL SPORTS BY IAN YOON, YEAR 10, NORO

Recently, there was a disastrous pandemic disease that shocked the world, Covid-19. Phenomena is an “observable fact or event” and the stoppage of all sports is a great example of phenomena. We can observe that there are no major sports being played. Our TV live sports slots are filled with games we already know the results of. Not quite the same experience. People, including your author, who watched sports at least twice a week, now feel very weird, awkward, and also realize how heavily sports entertained us and took an inordinate amount of time in our lives. This essay will focus on the phenomenon ‘stoppage of all sports” caused by Covid-19 and how it affects our daily lives. To begin with, I want to talk about the biggest issues these days, Covid-19. The pandemic started in Wuhan and spread as quickly as it could all around the world, especially more so in Europe and America. To connect with the topic stoppage of all sports, Europe and America are the places in the world where sports are very popular such as baseball

in America, and soccer in Europe. The Premier League stopped on March 13th and it has been nearly three months since the last live play. In addition, the Champions League was stopped in the round of 16 which is only the second time since world war 2. Major League baseball was also ready to have the opening series on March 26th but they couldn’t manage it mainly because the American government didn't deal well with the disease. Secondly, Coronavirus is a virus that can easily spread through contacts by people so this is also a major reason why all the sports have stopped. For example, in our school, we play football for cca and this time we played non contact soccer which is to not tackle or 1v1 during the match. In addition, Rugby is a sport that involves the most contact among all the sports and unfortunately, it is also stopped too. However, recently the premier league decided to resume the league from the 17th of June as there wasn’t any infected person in the teams so they decided to resume. Thus, these were the situations that happened be-

cause of the COVID-19 crisis and the sports are all closed but getting better. All in all, by the COVID-19, people all over the world have felt the enormous amount of time we spend on sports because nowadays we feel really bored and lonely. Especially in Europe, the heart of football, they probably feel more bored than us. The COVID-19 also has changed our daily routines and forced us to stay at home without any sports or events. To conclude, the stoppage of sports by COVID-19 was a very rare experience and it made people think about how important sports were in our lives.


MONUMENTS OF

PHENOMENON BY EUGENE JEAN CHO, YEAR 8, MULCHAT 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 ris-

es 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.


26 Phenomenon


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