I can't underscore enough that these early pieces are sites that won't make the final list of best places. The following continues the serialization of Chapter 6 from SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Humanity.
My Seoul Dinner with Two Kims and a Chun
In 1990, wearing my vice-president for development hat in service to the Pacific International Center for High Technology Research, I went to Seoul, Korea to discuss cooperative ventures. I had frequently been to Korea, so the trip in itself was not supposed to be particularly memorable, but I earlier mentioned something about my dinner with a former president of the country, so here it is.
An intermediary arranged for me to meet with some “important” people from his country at the Hilton. The information was sketchy as to the purpose of the gathering or who was to attend. The Lotte, where I was staying, was no more than a couple of miles from the Hilton, so I attempted to catch a taxi at 6:30 for the 7PM dinner.
While traffic at 6:30PM can be a problem in Seoul, I had not in the past had difficulty. Well, it was raining, so that was a complication. The taxi stand had, perhaps, 25 people waiting, and after ten minutes, all of one cab showed up. I then walked to the street to try to hail one down. All the taxis were full. Nearly sopping wet, I came back to stand in line, which had grown. It was now 6:45PM.
I remembered that the hotel had a limousine service, so, at ten to seven, I arranged to be dropped off at the Hilton. The cost was manageable. The traffic was terrible, and if you have tried to navigate away from the Lotte, you might remember that you have to traverse through two full circles, to finally head in the right direction. At 7:35PM I finally arrived at the Hilton, and with some help from the staff, found the special room in which the dinner was to be held…..45 minutes late and somewhat bedraggled, being still wet.
Till today, I don’t know if I, somehow, got shown into the wrong room, and these dignitaries were waiting for someone else. Certainly, they must have wondered why it was so important for all three at the same time to have dinner with me.
I never did see the KIA Kim, nor ex-President Chun, again, but in 1996 he was sentenced to death for the Gwangju massacre. Korean presidents have historically gone through this charade, for Chun was pardoned by President Kim Young-sam, just before Kim Dae-jung replaced him as president. Chun had two decades earlier sentenced Dae-jung to death.
Perhaps there was some good reason for that dinner, as I did get to become good friends with Kim Kee Hyong. He had obtained a PhD in materials science at Penn State University and at a very young age was summoned back to his country to become a Minister. He later became chairman of the board of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, and was a key architect of technology development for his country. He came to Hawaii on several occasions and served on one of my advisory boards.
One of our later lunches was held at the Renaissance Hotel in Seoul, where, Kee, Kiryun Choi (a professor from Ajou University who at one time signed most of the research contracts for his government) and I came up with the Renaissance Project. You can go to Chapter 3 of Book 1 for some details on this hydrogen competition. Kee and I, until very recently, had dinner once or twice a year to discuss the future.
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The Dow Jones dropped all of a point to 10,302, while world markets were mostly up. Gold jumped $9/toz to $1225 and crude oil remained at $75/barrel.
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