NEW POLICY AND NEW ADMINISTRATOR INA CHANGING SOCIETY - A YULGOK Lecture -

Abstract

First I want to pay my respects to President Choe of Seoul National University and, of course, to Doctor Lee, the Dean of the Graduate School of Public Administration. I couldn't help but jot down a note or two after that introduction by Dean Lee. I always thought that distinguished scholars like Dr. Lee were interested in the pursuit of truth, but after I heard that introduction I realize this has no bearing on his life at all. He's a writer of fiction. And not only that, I would call him the Bob Hope. How would you like to be introduced as the man who took ten years to get through college, and then in the next breath be told that he is a scholar? How would you like to be introduced as one who is eminent in politics, only to have somebody say that when he ran for office the first time he failed, and then when the grand prize was up, he failed? How would you like to be up here and be told, what a self-reliant individual you are, and then have somebody say that his wife put him through college? It's only because of my deep affection, may I say, for Korea and this great national University that I am willing to take all of this. But there was a ray of hope here and there. I did finally get through school. I had to go home and get married first though. As I said today at Korea University, I got my own scholarship. I did not go waiting for the government or anything. I went out and married her and proceeded to get her a job so that she could put me through school.