Prof Sonku Kim
Prof Sonku Kim is now teaching in the Seoul National University, his alma mater. Prof Kim won the Education Prize award in Seoul National University in 2011. The prize was established to award faculty who developed creative teaching methods or with extraordinary enthusiasm, inspiration to the students and faculty colleagues. He joined HKUST in 1992 and he has fond memories of Hong Kong and HKUST …
Prologue:
Episode 1: A very funny and still puzzling thing happened on my first day in HK in July 1992. Two months prior to my arrival in Hong Kong, I had given my last lecture at UCLA, and then was bedridden for several days due to an unusually high fever. At the time, I was about to wrap up my 7-years residence in LA (6 years as a Ph.D. student and 1 year as a lecturer) and prepare to move to HK.
It was chickenpox, which I contracted from my 3 year-old son. It was so serious that there were almost one hundred rashes on my face and much more on my whole body. When I came to HK about two months later, I still had some blackish red spots on my face as a legacy of that disease, and the biggest one was on the center of my forehead. How big? V~ery big! On my first day in HK, after I unpacked my luggage in the university staff quarter, I went off the campus for a pack of cigarette. While I was walking along the road to Tai Po Chai, I saw a monk or fortune-teller walking towards me. He didn’t pass by, he actually stopped in front of me and asked to shake hand with me. Oops! A stranger was asking me to shake hands on the street! To be honest, I was a bit scared. At that time, I was fascinated by Hong Kong gangster movies (while in LA, I watched almost all HK movies, and the most familiar Cantonese phrase to me was “Kuh Ming Ah! (Help me!)”), I had the impression that HK was a city of gangsters with guns and high crime rate. But, surprisingly, he whispered to me with broken English and walked away, not even asking me for any token money. He said, “You have a very nice face and you will be a very important person in the future. Especially, the mole on your forehead is the sign.” Ha ha ha! That mole was not any birthmark but a souvenir of chickenpox which would gradually disappear. Now, I don’t have that mole and of course I am not even near to being any important person in Korea.
Episode 2: When I joined HKUST, I was in my mid 30’s. But the university was much younger (even younger than my 2 year-old youngest daughter), and was in the stage of dramatic expansion. At that time, I believe, I was the only Korean in the whole university, and for that I was a bit famous among the faculty members. Every Wednesday night, a group of faculty members gathered in the gymnasium and played basketball together. On my first day in that group, I found a nice looking and gentle but slightly older professor who played actually very well compared to his age. In the break time, he approached me and asked with a gentle smile, “Which department are you in?” So I introduced myself to him. He immediately responded, “Oh! You are that Korean. I heard about you.” Then, I thought I also had to ask him about himself as a courtesy. So I asked, “Which department you are in?” He answered with a gentle smile again. “Um….. I am the president.” Yup, he was Professor Cha Wei Woo, our first president at HKUST, and this is the way we met with each other. After that, I had a feeling that this university would prosper because the president was trying to communicate with faculty members and even with students in such an open manner.
Epilogue:
I stayed at UST until the summer of 2000, and then I returned to Seoul National University and stay until now. I visited UST twice in Sept to Dec. 2001 and from Sept 2007 to July 2008. In December, 2104 I came to HK for three days and visited the new Business School building. I witnessed the important monuments of how a new university grew up to world-class level. I must say that I was very happy in HK and especially at UST. Being a part (actually a very small part) of establishing a renowned university and helping youngsters become the back-bone of the Hong Kong society of today, was truly a very unique and pleasant experience, and I am now very proud of that.