Chronic Introvert Jung Il-young
Kim Rieun: Professor Jung Il-young may well be one of the most famous Koreans in their sixties today. Two years ago, he appeared on Calm Down Man to teach French, and his practical advice for anyone facing unfair treatment—to demand to see the manager by yelling “get your patron out here”—went viral and became a meme. He feels like exactly the right fit with the times, given how dopamine-fueled our content-consumption habits have become. He’s a multidimensional “extreme introvert”* with extreme but satisfying lines like “If you tried your best and it still didn’t work out, blame someone else”—a short-tempered man who nonetheless can’t even ask for a refill at a restaurant. But before he got to where he is today, playing up his psychiatric evaluation for laughs (“anxious yet an impulsive speaker, shy yet oblivious”), he spent years as a part-time instructor battling depression and panic attacks. Forged under the vague weight of a life that promised him nothing, his way of speaking is more than just a hilarious dopamine hit—it comes with insight into life, free of rhetoric.

On his YouTube channel, Chronic Introvert Jung Il-young, he described the moment he was appointed a visiting professor just ahead of his retirement as when “five months eclipsed 65 years.” At age 50, he followed his dreams of becoming a singer and tried out on a TV audition show. Now, he’s singing onstage at campus festivals. But even as such long-held dreams come true, he’s chasing a new one—becoming a successful enough entertainer to buy a house outside the city and bring his 97-year-old mother there to live with him. It explains why, in a recent episode where he had the members of RESCENE on as guests, he wrote all of them a long letter and offered heartfelt words of encouragement. As someone still chasing his own dreams, he recognized their struggle in his own. He said that looking at them, he saw himself in his 20s, back when he was struggling to make his dreams come true, but in reality, Jung’s now a newcomer just like them. Whether he’s taking on CORTIS’ “REDRED” dance challenge or picking up a wax cracking ball for the first time, he chooses to take the first few awkward steps into unfamiliar territory rather than portray himself as a seasoned professional. Five months eclipsing 65 years doesn’t erase the weight of the 65 years he endured to get there, but sometimes it’s the very weight of the challenge that makes the new beginning bloom so brilliantly. And that’s why one romantic idea still holds true—the one that says youth is a season you can return to at any point in life.

*When he later took a test from his psychiatrist nephew, he found out he doesn’t actually struggle to get along with others—in other words, he’s not shy, he’s just an introvert who finds energy from within.

“Rolling Stone” (Luci Gang)
Kim Hyojin (music columnist): Effort betrays us. Life is a soft, fragile thing that crumbles the moment you try to work it into a shape, and it rarely shows you what you want to see. Still, if there’s one absolute truth about life, it’s that no pain lasts forever. Hardship is always followed in the end by joy. And just as joyous is that moment, so painful is the next. And so, life is like a rolling stone. Like passing endlessly through a revolving door of joy and pain.

Luci Gang’s latest album, “Rolling Stone,” touches on this very point. “EASY A,” the opener, comes at the fact with acceptance. She confesses to having walked a thorny path, then flips her perspective—“actually, maybe it was easy”—processing her thoughts on what life has handed her. Soon, the driving energy of “LEMON SQUEEZE” gives way to the restless, endlessly anxious churn of “Cycles.” Even so, she’s reminded that the anxieties that seep through the cracks of her daily routine can simply be put in a “HEADLOCK,” and how even when anxiety takes the form of rain and soaks her through, the same storm can wash her clean again, as she sings on “raincoat,” a remixed single featuring Hyelyn Joo.

What makes this message even more worth listening to is the range of genres represented across the album. Looking at Gang’s previous work, “C8H11NO2 CLUB” leaned mainly on electronic music, while “Home Sweet Home” saw her flexing her hip hop muscle. “Rolling Stone” seems to land somewhere between the two, with synth the central axis. Onto that she layers in a variety of sounds, including jerk, house, new jack swing, and more. Gang was never defined by a single genre to begin with—she’s always been defined by who she is. The diversity running through the album doesn’t get in the way of the listening experience. If anything, it’s exactly the reason to dive into her music in the first place.

Another interesting fact about life: Keep working at something soft and fragile long enough, and eventually it’ll take on the shape of your hands. Eventually, you find your own way to enjoy the pain and sorrow that find their way to you as you step through yet another door. “Rolling Stone” makes you want to trust in this straightforward aspect of life again.

“The Largesse of the Sea Maiden” (Denis Johnson)
Kim Boksung (writer): “The Largesse of the Sea Maiden” is Denis Johnson’s second and final short story collection. Johnson became known in the American literary world in particular for his first collection, “Jesus' Son,” which he put out earlier in his career. He finally returned to the form and finished a second collection but did so within a year of his death. Perhaps not surprisingly, the five rather long and winding stories in “Sea Maiden” touch both indirectly and at times rather directly on mortality. Johnson’s narrators very much reflect a 20th-century masculine writing style but with the maturity of an author self-aware about his flaws and his pending demise. The men who tell their stories reflect on the past, on their shortcomings, and on their hopes despite it all, in character sketches ranging from discussions around a kitchen table to a series of handwritten letters. These stories can be hard to follow and harder to digest, but they’re as witty as they are tragic, as poetic as they are unsettling. To the attentive reader, they reveal the meaningfulness of life, even at its most mundane.