Tales of love and loss

Well, one one of the following links is a tale of love (and loss), and might have better been posted yesterday, as an anti-Valentine (though the ultimate anti-Valentine would be the lonely, bitter, obviously well-off guy in Shanghai who started a movement to buy up all of the odd-numbered seats at movie theaters on the evening of Valentines Day).

First up is F5 Waeg's tale of 'John Stone,' a USFK military contractor who fell in love with a Korean woman, bought a bar together, and then... came the loss.

Next is 'Ashes,' the tale of the death of a friend and visit to a crematorium, told at 'Sweet Pickles & Corn: Shots and Sauces on the Tongue of Korea,' a fairly new blog with several contributors, and well worth checking out if you haven't yet.

Last is an interview with Kevin O'Rourke, an Irish Catholic priest and scholar who arrived in Korea 50 years ago and who I remember for his translations of poetry in the Korea Herald back when I had a subscription in 2001-2002. In the interview, he laments the loss of what Korea was like in the 1960s, when Koreans were happier and "folks were much easier going even when they had less."