Naming a child in Korea

    My full name is kyoung-bok, Lee. Lee is just my family name and 'kyoung-bok' has a meaning. Actually, when I was a baby, Koreans usually used Chinese letters for names. Therefore, the pronunciation of my first name is Korean, but it has a Chinese meaning. Actually, I don't know exactly what my name means. However, I really cherish my name because my parents made it.
    By the way, nowadays, in Korea, our naming trends are changing. When I was a child, most koreans used Chinese letters for names. However, it is complicated, and some people don't know exactly what their names mean, like me. Therefore, there are new trends in naming children. Recently, many Koreans have been using our Korean language for names. For example, koreans sometimes use the name 'Mi-Ri-Nae.' It means the Milky Way. Actually, we don't use this word very well. That is, 'Mi-Ri-Nae' is an archaic word. Koreans are trying to find our traditional words. Also, we are adjusting the names we give our children. I think it is very important to find our archaic traditions. 

Advertisements for children

    Nowadays, we live in a flood of advertising. In a lot of advertising, we also can find advertisements for children. Most marketers who try to sell to children usually put ads on TV because children are easily interested in devices. Marketers usually show their products on TV after animation programs. Also, they use famous characters to entice children to buy. Most children who watch that advertising want to buy the product. Then, their parents reluctantly buy the toy or game machine for their children.

Designer Babies

If all parents require one kind of sex, we will experience an asymmetrical rate of sex. What if all parents just want a boy? We will soon suffer from a lack of girls. It will get harder to get married little by little. Also, we might face more sexual crimes.

What my friends think of the death penalty

Andrew from India supports the death penalty. He thinks the death penalty just applies to cruel criminals such as murderers and people who cause carnage. He asked me if I could stand it if someone killed my family. He maintains that the death penalty is the only way to prevent cruel crimes.


Rino from Taiwan thinks the death penalty is not necessary. He said that murder, rape and those kinds of crimes violate the Ten Commandments, but we cannot punish and kill those criminals. He thinks the regime should imprison these criminals for life. He said that life in prison is a punishment that is exhorted widely.

My opinion of the death penalty

I think the death penalty is necessary. I support it. I think that it is a good way to prevent other crimes. Also, it is unfair to let the killer, who is responsible for killing someone, live. Someone was killed by a murderer. If murders were allowed to live I could not stand it. Definitely, I support the death penalty because it is a good way to prevent other murders.

The Child Obesity

Here is an interesting article about obesity: 'The Fast Food Trap: It explains how commercialism creates overweight children. In this article, the writer analyzes the causes of child obesity. He says advertising by corporations makes children overweight. Corporations regard children as consumers and their advertisements make children eat fatty. It's an interesting article, but I think the role of parents is more important because they can control what their children eat.

Folk Tale - A Lazy Boy-

A long time ago, there was a lazy boy who really hated to work. He just wanted to sleep all day long without working. That’s why the people in his village called him “Lazy” instead of using his real name.


One day, his mother was really sick. She couldn’t even stand up, so she asked her son ‘Lazy’ to bring her a glass of water. “Lazy, Can you bring a glass of water?” Of course, the son who really didn’t like to move refused to get the glass of water for her. ‘Lazy’ started to get annoyed at his mother who was always trying to make him move. Eventually, he thought “Being a sleepy cow would be much better than being a hard-working human”, so he decided to run away from home.


The lazy boy started to walk without any destination. When he was walking alone crossed a path, met an old man who had a cow shaped mask in his hand. ‘Lazy’ started to tell his story. After the boy finished his story, the old man said, “Don’t you really want to work? If so, put on this mask. When you put this on, you can be a cow.” The boy was fearful, but he put it on his face because the old man said that he could become a cow if he put it on. Right after the boy put on the mask; he became a real cow and discovered that he could only make ‘moo’ sound. The old man took the boy, now is a cow, to a market, and sold him to a farmer with saying, “Do not give him turnips, If you give him turnips, he will be died.”


After the boy was sold, he had to work really hard because the farmer whipped him if he didn’t. Lazy thought “I’m not a cow, I’m a human. If he could go back home, I will work really hard, but if I can’t, it will be better to die than to live like this.”Suddenly, the boy remembered the talk between the old man and the farmer. He started to look for turnips so he could eat them and to die, but he couldn’t find any. A few days later, he found a cart filled with turnips. Seeing the turnips, ‘Lazy’ ran toward the cart and ate them. “Mother, I’m so sorry, I was wrong.”


The moment he swallowed the turnips, he felt something hit him. It was a dream! When he woke up, he realized the he had had a dream when he took a nap. ‘Lazy’ started to cry because felt so relieved. The boy promised himself to work hard from then on.


From that day on, ‘Lazy’ became a completely different person. He started to work harder than anyone else in the village, and people called him “Hard Worker” instead of his first nickname, “Lazy.” Finally, when he went out to work, he said, “I’m going to work hard.”

Foreign Language

Nowadays, we really use many foreign words instead of words from our native language such as radio, TV, computer, and lighter. Actually, a few people protest against this, and they have tried to preserve our own language. However, they have failed because the global wave was irresistible. I think global influence is natural in a situation where there are exchanges between different cultures. Of course, there is a difference according to the power of each country. If we don’t accept influences from other countries’ cultures, we export our culture to others.