After graduating from the Missouri School of Journalism in May 1984, my first job was as chief copy-reader (copy editor) for the International Desk of South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency. I’d gotten the job due to my contacts among Korean students in the J-School. One day, they asked me if I was interested in being a journalist in Seoul. I said, sure; I’d heard so much about their nation’s journalism from them, and I’d edited a Master’s Thesis by a South Korean student, about modern Korean journalism.

     The Korean-American professor who handled contacts in Korea for Mizzou J-alums was Dr. Won Ho Chang. He asked to see me, and I brought my resume along soon-enough. I’d also applied for a job at the Blue Springs (MO) Examiner, which they initially said I was hired for, but then they backed out of it.

     I went back to live that summer with my parents in La Crosse, Wisconsin, and received a letter from a beautiful German designer-friend at the J-School, Anne Schuh. The postage stamp was a Love Stamp, and she wrote next to it something like, ‘Red or Green, I Still Love You.’ After I went to South Korea, I never saw or heard from Anne again.

    When I returned to Columbia, MO, in August, Anne, David Johns, and Rahjib and Faridah Ab Ghani, my best friends from the spring semester, saw me off for my flight to Seoul. On-board my plane was Prof. Don Ranly, whom I sat next to. He had been my Journalism and Society teacher, and before we parted company at the St. Louis Airport, he said something to me, including the words, ‘Don’t forget what I said.’ Naturally, I forgot everything about our conversation except that phrase, and when I asked him about it last year, he said he couldn’t remember either what he’d said then.

     After my plane had refueled in Anchorage, our flight took off for Seoul. My plane arrived the next morning Korean Time, and Mr. Yang, a former Mizzou student and then a Yonhap Economics Desk reporter, picked me up. He first took me to the Hyatt Hotel coffee-shop, and told me over coffee that I should not mention to anyone that I took photos. I said I didn’t know about that, but knew I wouldn’t be able to keep my camera in my bag long.