You may recall the X-men movie series. In my column, “X-man” denotes someone who hides his or her identity. This word is derived from a TV show focused on finding a person who hides his identity. Nowadays, X-men are becoming an issue. When freshmen are just starting university, they often enter an online group chatting room. In this room, some seniors hide their identities and pretend to be freshmen. This fake trick has become an issue because it makes some freshmen feel uncomfortable. Some say they felt betrayed. They were deceived by the X-men and treated them like the rest of the freshmen.

Recently, I have received a reply mail from a professor about the course’s policy regarding grades. The content of the mail I sent was requesting for score on my reports and final exam, because I was very unsatisfied with the grade I received. However, the answer I received in return was that it was the course’s policy not to reveal the scores to individuals. This led me going on to check the school’s regulations to see if there were regulations making it mandatory for professors to release the scores. There was not a single statement mentioning professor’s role of such. Postechians are famili

Happy New Year. In the new year, people make new resolutions and have new wishes. For these, some people visit religious institutions, while others take the trouble to visit sunrise spots. As POSTECH dorm director, I would like to express the following wishes for our students living in the dormitory.Keep healthy. It is a cliche but if you are not healthy, nothing will be achieved. Without health, you are unlikely to feel happy. In order to maintain health, abstinence and regular exercise are essential. Though situations have improved much better compared to the past, there are still some stude

Suppose you are buying a new smartphone. You will make some effort to consider every feature and weigh values of utility and style in order to make the best choice. Theoretically, you will value efficiency more than the appearance of a phone, because the thing you are going to buy is machinery, not an ornament. But, efficiency is not always more important than appearance, unless you are going to buy a pipe to repair your conduit.Balancing efficiency and aesthetics is important. Both aspects contribute to a person’s choice. The problem is, when designing a business, there are limits to how much

I recently attended a lecture called “Economics for Natural Sciences and Engineering” delivered by Professor Sung Tae-yoon of the Economics Department of Yonsei University. As I am just starting to know the very basic, superficial knowledge of Mechanical Engineering, which is the major that I study, I often come to think of the inter-link between science and economics. Sincerely to say, though, I think the money-making relationship between economics and sciences is a cliché topic which the majority of POSTECH students are already aware of. Instead of money, I would like to talk about the relat

The Postech Times had its sudden start as one of the globalization plans of former President Sunggi Baik. I worked for three years at The Postech Times, participating in the first 34 issues. At that time, a meeting for the next issue looked like declaring a war upon our livings. Without system, we spent a lot of time and money rewriting articles and editing illustrations. Human resources were scarce. Sometimes only three reporters published an issue. I do not think The Postech Times was comparable to newspapers of other universities. We had no system, standard, database or know-how. I am proud

One of the most treasured experiences we keep in our memory is the times we have spent with the people we love. In this case, it would be the people I worked with as a reporter. But what made my experience even more invaluable is that it was the root cause that changed my perspective.As reporters are the ones who come up with ideas to write about in the articles, I started to search for events and issues in our school. My primarily focus was on the cause of campus issues, and what opinions or feelings students would have. This perspective brought out my curious nature. The beauty of being a re

Last May, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) announced that they would abolish almost all alternative services for military service, including the Technical Research Personnel (TRP), in phases. Because MND did not understand advantages of TRP system well and its plan was ridiculously tight, many people and organizations including research focused colleges like POSTECH, Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (MSIP), and Ministry of Education (MOE) strongly opposed to the MND’s plan. MND, faced with great opposition, announced that nothing was determined and that it had not shown any a

When I was a freshman, the reason I decided to join The Postech Times was very simple; the group clothes were so wonderful. They were a unique compared to others. However, after entering The Postech Times and hearing Professor Park Sang Joon’s talk about the opportunity as a reporter when he was a professor editor, I decided to be a good reporter. He said that reporters have to meet many opinion leaders using the name of the press, reporters have to be T-shaped people who has a deep knowledge of their major and broad knowledge of other subjects, and finally, reporters have to experience things

Surface Plasmon (SP) is a collective electron oscillation at metal dielectric interface excited by an incoming light. The resonant interaction between the charge oscillation and the electromagnetic field of the light at surface constitutes the SP and gives rise to its unique properties. Interest in SPs has been renewed because of the recent advances in nanotechnology that allow one to fabricate and characterize metals on the nanometer scale.One of the aspects of SPs that has attracted researchers in the field of optics and science is the possibility in which one can use SPs to concentrate and

On Oct. 25, President Park acknowledged that she had received advice on some of her speeches from her old friend who does not hold any official position. The advisor, Choi Soon-sil, a daughter of a cult leader, has been accused of interfering in almost all government affairs. She has received heavy coverage in the mass media the last few days, and many other corruptions associated with her have come into the open. As a citizen of this country, I felt anger at the current situation, but shame at the same time because I have not concerned myself with many political problems. I think my political

This column should be the last column I write. It has been two years since I first entered The Postech Times. Every writing class in POSTECH, I have taken finishes with reflective writing. This column will be my reflective writing. Before I started writing this column, I collected all the articles, mails, and photos I have written. My first article was ‘ New Reporter’s Resolution’ in The Postech Times No.81. Every reporter who enters The Postech Times writes this column. I read the article again, and it gave me a special feeling. I wrote that I wanted to become a Chief Editor with incessant ef

South Korea’s Copyright Act (established Jun. 28, 1957) followed the tracks of Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (established Sep. 9, 1886) that protected the literary and artistic creative works. It also approved for both authorship rights and intellectual property like Copyright Act made in France. In the early days, the prominent feature of Copyright Act was to impose the duty to return the present enrichment with the sole intention of protecting the infringers with good will and no faults. (Art. 66 of Copyright Act; Para. 432 of the legislations) On Dec. 31

When I have free time such as between classes or before I go to sleep, I usually go on Facebook, Twitter, or read some news on internet. I have fun with these contents, but sometimes I become embarrassed when I see some netizens fighting with each other, or writing hate message, and get hurt. For a long time, I thought that they are wrong and offensive that our society needs to punish them, but, after reading Nonviolent Communication (NVC), I think we need to talk with them and be empathetic.Many of us are unfamiliar with empathy because we were grown in the environment following and judged by

On June, this year, I joined POSTECH-KAIST Science War preparatory committee. I was the leader of the Supporters team which worked for supporters for POSTECH-KAIST Science War. This was the first time I worked for Science War, however; I was confident for this work as a team leader because I had some leading experiences in other groups like Gae-Geun-Sung, which is bicycle club in POSTECH. Meanwhile, I led an E-sports team of preparatory committee for Sunrise Festival in the last semester. That was another reason for being confident in leading a team in preparatory committee of POSTECH. Support

The Barclays’ prosperity map gives a composite index score for each region in UK. Its 2016 report shows that no region is less prosperous than a year ago and all regions surpassed London in terms of GDP increase. Yet on June 23rd, a majority of Britons voted to leave the European Union in a referendum dubbed as “Brexit.” In a nutshell, it was a non-binding referendum borne out of a miscalculated electioneering gone awry.Early in 2010, the Conservative Party succeeded in winning the largest number of seats but was forced to form a collation government with the Liberal Democrats (LD). In the 201

Yet, I am waiting for Cell Broadcasting Service (CBS). Current time is 11:50 p.m. Three hours have passed since the earthquake with magnitude of 4.5 occurred. We were shivering in anxiety right after the earthquake. One week has passed since the earthquake with magnitude of 5.8, which is the greatest magnitude over all time, broke in Korea. During this week, professionals detected almost 400 aftershocks. This is one of the most unpredictable and long-lasting disasters that have ever happened in South Korea. What damages did we have? How did we cope with them?First of all, damages in POSTECH we

A Korean drama ‘Reply 1988’ which had been broadcasted on television in 2015 is recollected as one of the most popular Korean dramas in the history, recording a viewing rate of 19.5 %. One very reason for its popularity was the fact that it drew a nostalgic mood among viewers to let them miss the good old past. Then, why were the viewers inclined to miss the 1980s, the symbolic period of poverty?It is true that our life has become better off in terms of materials. Most prominently, from 1988 to 2015, the GDP of Korea increased from USD 4,692 to 27,7663, almost by seven times. The average month

Claiming ‘this is not an advertisement’ ironically induces significant advertisement effects, and this is the path that advertisements tread. While customers are getting better at avoiding advertisements which ‘seem like advertisements’, companies still have no choice but ‘advertise’. The reason being, the connected world has arrived, but that world still has originally been molded by Capitalism. The change starts from the fact that individuals can possess media. ‘Crazy Friday on colleagues’ was in fact a more fascinating subject than ‘Morning Dramas on TV’, but the former lacked the method of

Major change in this year in POSTECH was that the period of summer vacation has been increased. Main reason is SES (Summer Experience in Society) program. Until now, five times of vacations had been given to me. And I am sure that this vacation was the best one ever.SES was a valuable experience for me. I work at BME, abbreviation for Biomedical engineering, laboratory in Asan Medical Center, in Seoul. (BME studies the fusion of medicine and engineering. Typical example is a surgery robot.) Actually, I had no experience for utilizing my knowledge. It is ironic that I study hard to stack knowle