Musings
by Ty Pak
About me
Born in Korea shortly before World War II, Pak witnessed Japanese colonial rule, Korea’s liberation from Japan in 1945, its division during subsequent U.S. and Soviet occupation, and the trauma of the Korean War in his early childhood and adolescent years, receiving his law degree from Seoul National University in 1961. In 1957 he started working as a reporter for The Stars and Stripes, and in 1958 for the Korean English dailies The Korean Republic and The Korea Times, until 1965 when he emigrated to the United States.
After earning his Ph.D. in English from Bowling Green State University, Ohio, in 1969 he taught in the English Department at the University of Hawaiʻi from 1970 to 1987. His first collection of short stories, Guilt Payment (1983), has been used as a textbook at many US colleges. His other books include Moonbay (1999), in the UCLA English syllabus, Cry Korea Cry (1999), A Korean Decameron (1961, reissued 2019), Dear Daughter: On the Eve of Her Wedding (2018), The Polyglot: Union of Korea and Japan (2018), serialized in English and Korean by the Korean New York Ilbo Daily from Jun 1, 2019 through Jun 5, 2021, The SEE Creed: Sex Equality and Emancipation (2021), which champions the matronymic surnaming of children to alternate with the patronymic, The Global Federalist Manifesto (2021), a pamphlet urging all sovereign states to surrender their sovereignty, a toxic relic, to the United States of the World, and Lucy Wong, the Guardian Angel for the USW: United States of the World (2022), a novella where Lucy Wong turns out to be Xi Jinping’s daughter.
Recent
Follow up on Easter Musings
A reader has called to declare that the so-called Immaculate Conception of Jesus is such a jumble of irrationality that any discussion of it like my theory of improbability regarding the birth of Jesus is pointless waste of mental energy, noting: His mother Mary must have shown the usual symptoms of pregnancy resulting from sexual […]
Easter Musings
On April 5, 2026, Easter Sunday, my wife drags me to a Korean American church in North Jersey. Spread out among the pews are about 30 people. A loud praise band of 4 is the orchestra for the 5 female singers lined up against the back wall of the stage, at the front center of […]
Despair
Truly mind-boggling is the enormity of the Universe, the totality of 2 trillion galaxies, one of which is the Milky Way with half a trillion stars, our Sun with Earth and 7 other planets one of them. Am I, an advanced octogenarian quickly approaching the terminus of my earthly existence, any wiser as to the […]
The Korean Diaspora
Posted Apr 21, 2017: The Polyglot Adds Another Dimension to the Korean Diaspora, typakmusings.com, now typakmusings.net Koreans are all over the world. Not too long ago I read a moving story about a dynasty of Koreans in Cuba whose progenitor had been an indentured farm laborer, a slave, that is, sold to a plantation in […]
Earl Kim, one of the world’s greatest composers
This is my email, dated May 30, 2024, to Ty Kim, Emmy winning Director-Producer of the documentary, Earl. Dear Ty, Your magnum opus, Earl, puts Earl Kim among the world’s greatest composers through the interviews with his luminary peers like Itzhak Perlman and John Harbison and selected performances of his music, thus immortalizing him and […]
Contact me
If you have any questions, comments, or just want to say hello, feel free to reach out to me at typakmusings.com@gmail.com – I’m always excited to connect with my readers!