Best High School in the World

  • In his Radio Interview with me,
    Doug Llewelyn asked me why my high school in Korea was the

  • Click here for my other TV and radio interviews.

  • When I was a graduate student and a post-doc at Princeton (1958-62), my friends reacted to me contemptuously when I talked about what I learned during my high school years in Korea.

    If they still have active brains, I would like to invite them to look at this table:

  • During those years (1958-62), Korea did not generate good news to the world. My American friends used to tell me

    1. The best solution to the Korean problem is to give the country back to Japan. They did not (still do not) know the history of East Asia before the Pearl Harbor Day of 1941. When Americans opened the eyes to East Asia in 1941, Korea was a province of Japan.

    2. You cannot become a professor in USA, because your skin is not white. I remember the names of those who said this to me, but I cannot find them in the world of webpages.

  • These days, every year, more than 1,000 Korean students receive PhD degrees from the universities in USA. This is the true strength of Korea.

    I do not know how many Americans become PhDs every year. The number could be many more than 10,000.

    On the other hand, the number for Japan should be less than 100. I do not see Japanese students on American campuses. In Japan, you should be a graduate of Todai (Univ. of Tokyo) to be counted. This is Japan's most serious problem.

    I have many Japanese friends. When I tell them their Todai should be closed down, they laugh and agree with me. They seem to know their problems.

  • Thus, there are many Koreans (including me) who say Korea soon will become ahead of Japan. They are not joking.

    All we need next is the collapse of the peculiar form of government in the northern provinces of Korea. This will also come soon, I hope.

  • When I came to the United States in 1954, Americans started waking up from their deep-rooted isolationism inherited from George Washington. These days, the United States is clearly the leading country in the world. I was able to witness their process of waking up from their isolationism.

    1. What is America's isolationism? When George Washington was the president of the United States, Europe had a continuous history of wars, battles, and conflicts. Washington wanted his country isolated from the European continent, and let Americans live peacefully. The Atlantic Ocean separates the American continent from the European countries.

    2. How about the Pacific Ocean? Americans knew about China, but only from the books published in Britain. Until December of 1941, not many Americans knew about Japan. They could not understand how Japanese could build submarines.

  • When I was a student and post-doc at Princeton (1958-62), Americans talked often about their isolationism. During this period, they were waking up from their deep-rooted isolationism.

  • These days, the Untied States is playing the global leader, and everybody respects the this country. However, in the past, Americans had to fight three major wars on the Pacific front, namely the Pacific War against Japan (1941-45), the Korean War against North Korea and China supported by the Soviet Union (1950-53), and twenty years of Vietnam War (1955-1975).

  • The Pacific Ocean became as important as the Atlantic Ocean to Americans. For Americans, it is essential to keep China and Japan separated in order to keep the Pacific Ocean under their control. This is the reason why Americans maintain military units in Korea.

  • Vietnam was under French rule but was divided into the South and North in 1954, after the French army was defeated by Ho Chi-Min's pro-Chinese communist army. Vietnam became one communist country in 1973, after the prolonged Vietnam War. However, this communist country became friendly to the United States against China.

  • There is every reason to believe that North Korean rulers dislike Chinese, as in the case of Vietnam. They want to be friendly to the United States. However, Americans do not like their nuclear weapons, and the NK rulers have no intention to give up their nuclear programs. I do not know where the solution is.