Winners
In the Category of High School Students
First Prize_ Hong Heun-eui (Junior, Songwon High School)
Second Prize_Koh Jun-ho (Freshman, Chosun University High School)
Third Prize_Kim Young-in (Junior, Dongsung High School)
Fouth Prize_Choi Young-hun(Freshman, Salesio High School)
Choi Li-sa(Junior, Soongil High School)
Lee Mun-kyoung(Junior, Songwon Girls’ High School)

In the Category of CNU Students
First Prize_Park Yeong-seon (Senior, dept. of German Language & Literature)
Second Prize_Lee Gye-hwa (Senior, Dept. of English Language & Literature)
Thrid Prize_Kang Hyun-jeong (Graduate Student in Ph.D. Course, Dept. of Philosophy)
Fourth Prize_Jang Sung-eun (Junior, Dept. of Korean Education)
Lee Gwang-young (Junior, Dept. of Communication)
Madhan Subramanian (Graduate Student in MA Course, Dept of Veterinary Medicine)

University Festival Culture Could More Be Done?

By Park Yeong-seon, Senior, dept. of German Language & Literature

    Middle school and high school students often consider university as paradise. It is because they tend to think that they no longer have to study hard once there. In addition, they often think about exciting things like university festivals. It is true that these festivals are places where students enjoy themselves and display their talents to others. However, I am not completely convinced that Korean universities have such a good festival couture, one which students are satisfied with and where they can find something meaningful that lasts after the festivals have finished. In this essay, I will examine the festival culture of Korean universities, and discuss a possibly better direction for university festivals.
    As I mentioned above, university festivals allow wonderful opportunities for students to express themselves. In fact, they study very hard in order to get good grades and they are under immense pressure to get a good job. They are often really stressed and need a way to relieve this stress. University festivals can play a role here, as one of the ways to help students fell relaxed and free. However, I do not think they fulfill their roles very well because they have become too commercial and materialistic and there are too many events which are a bit too frivolous.
    As with every year, the CNU festival took place on campus in September, but I wonder how many students really enjoyed themselves at this festival. There were dozens of both funny and meaningful events on campus at that time. For example, the students from the Veterinary Department tried to interest other students by holding a competition to drink milk quickly. Sister’s Bookstore, a reading club, held a timed-writing of impressions of a book after reading it near Bongji pond. There were many other meaningful events, but many students did not seem to be interested in the festival. Quite the contrary, many students complained about the noise outside of their classrooms and others said that they did not have enough money to really enjoy the festival.
    To illustrate this point, I will deal with some of the problems in detail. First of all, almost every university now invites top singers at exorbitant fees, and this is much too expensive. At the same time, we can see stands selling company products such as cell-phone devices. Even though universities should be free from commercialization, it is getting harder to participate in the festivals without a certain amount of money. For instance, there are the Jumaks (traditional Korean taverns), where students sell alcohol and food they make themselves. The cost of the food is not that high, but because of the small quantities served, people need to reorder several times. The idea of sitting on the ground and talking with friends is great, but I cannot help asking, where does the profit go? Maybe the students who run the jumaks get it and use it to supplement the budgets of their clubs or departments. Still, I do not know why students should pay almost the same amount of money as in regular bars.
    Second, the events are so focused on fun that they are futile afterward. For instance, though there were some efforts to make the festival more fruitful at CNU in 2006, there were still many events which were quite frivolous, such as throwing a balloon full of water at someone or drinking milk quickly. Some other universities have tried to solve this problem. Specifically, Kyunghul University drew students’ attention to the idea of donation by asking them to donate just one hundred won. Seoul National University students took to some traditional ways of making rice cakes, and they tried to place some importance on Korean traditions. In these ways, some universities have tried to make their festivals more meaningful, and I think that this is the direction we should aim for.
    In conclusion, to better the climate of university festivals, we need to think of some ways to donate the profits from the events to our society as a whole, because the true meaning of university festivals is to share what we have with others who do not have as much. Next, we need to look for more meaningful activities which will have an influence on us in a good way for a long time afterwards. Finally, we need to be the main participants ourselves, instead of highly-paid entertainers, and we should nurture a greater interest in our festivals because the actual culture of university festivals is created by ourselves. When we make step-by-step efforts to make the festivals better, we can hand over a real university culture to the next generations of students to come.

I Am Happy

By Park Yeong-seon, Senior, dept. of German Language & Literature

    I took a walk around campus this morning thinking of what to write about my feelings on winning first prize in the English essay contest hosted by Chonnam Tribune. My thoughts were quite complicated because I had so many things to write. Then, as I was walking under the leaves changing red, seeing small, puffy clouds floating by, I just could not think of anything but the fact that I was happy. It is a beautiful fall. I could find beautiful creatures everywhere I turned my head. Were I a poet, I would write a poem like “The Wild Swans at Coole” by Yeats. Were I a composer, I would write a piece of music like Beethoven’s “Destiny Symphony”. But I am nothing but an ordinary student, so I just smiled and felt happy.
    Actually, I am not normally a simple-minded person. I used to be jealous of others who applied for the essay contest and won the prizes. I never tried it myself. However, this time I wanted to prove myself, to show that I could do something that I wanted. That is why I applied for the essay contest.
    In fact, I was not interested in the festival this year. When I thought about the events which had occurred on campus during the festival season, I was rather fed up with their similar patterns year after year. They need to be changed to meet the different expectations of various individuals. That is why I chose to examine the problems of university festivals and to present some ways to solve them.
    At the beginning of this semester I thought to myself that this semester would be a small gift for my life. I decided to soak up the atmosphere around me and inscribe it deeply in my heart so as not to forget my school days. I wanted to have some beautiful memories to turn to whenever I looked back on my university days. I think that the university festivals are always going to be an integral part of students’ lives. For the next generations of students to come, I want them also to have indelible memories of this important time of their lives.

My Reflections on Teenagers’ Preference for Brand-name Goods

By Hong Heun-eui, Junior, songwon High School

    As a second-year student at a typical Korean high school, I lead a very busy life because my school begins early in the morning and finishes late at night everyday except Saturday and Sunday. That means I do not have enough time and opportunities to observe my surroundings. Despite the hectic life I have, every now and then, I see some friends of mine with expensive, brand-name cell phones and MP3 players. Actually, I do not have any of these. I, sometimes, think I am kind of behind the times in keeping abreast with the changing pace of fashion and technology. In addition, I sometimes become envious of these friends and want to have certain cool products such as a Samsung phone or an Apple i-Pod.
    Personally I understand people’s desire to have good quality, expensive designer goods. It seems quite natural that we like to have the best things the world can offer. Needless to say I am one of those who wish to buy and show off the best clothes, phones, etc. But who pays for them? If I earn the money needed to purchase them, I think I am entitled to own and display them. My parents are working hard to support us and do not seem to have what they want themselves. They have a modest residence and a modest car. It is impossible for them to buy any luxurious goods.
Sometimes, I hear that some people in Korea, especially around Seoul, only carry brand-name goods. They are said to prefer such things as Gucci handbags and Louis Vuitton accessories. When they cannot find what they want in Korea, they take the trouble to go out of the country to buy them. I often hear that an industry specializing in making counterfeit goods in thriving in Korea, to meet the local demand. However, hard the authorities try to eradicate such illegal production, it seems they are unable to do so.
    Then, why do people desperately insist on having these luxurious and snobby goods? Basically, I think their desire to have good things is not to be faulted because everybody wants to have good things I think it is just natural that we want to have better goods which are within our means. But the problem is people want to have what they cannot afford. In pursuit of luxurious goods, they sometimes do certain unlawful things like stealing money, making sham products and they fail to concentrate on what really matters life.
    While writing this essay, I have come to dwell on why teenagers seek luxurious goods.
    First, they do not have an established set of values about things around them. Their ability to pass fair and equitable judgment on what happens around them is yet to be formulated. On account of that, they are apt to be influenced by the winds of changing fashions just as reeds in fall move at the whim of the varying breezes. For example, one of my friends is wont to have the very latest modern gadgetry. Some months ago, he was showing-off an expensive cell phone and making a lot of phone calls which I thought weren’t worth the bother. To my surprise, the other day I saw him with another brand-new dazzling phone. I asked him if he had lost the old one, to which he said that he just changed it for a new one because it was out of fashion and kind of obsolete.
    Second, we teenagers are under the control of the mass media and celebrities. If we see stars on TV wearing a particular accessory or using a fashionable good, we like to imitate them. Similarly, if one friend has a brand-name product, others follow suit. Here, I see a domino effect, which describes the phenomenon where on incident brings about successive similar events.
    Third, it appears that teenagers prefer luxurious goods to low-quality ones in order to compensate for their monotonous school life because, in that way, they can enrich their simple life. For instance, if they buy a cheap Korean music player, they are bound to get disappointed with the product in the near future because it is of poor quality. High quality goods seem to satisfy their need to have a variety of goods. If they have no choice but to use run-of-the-mill goods, their desire for a colorful life will not be met.
    Lastly, high-end, expensive stationery imported from Japan and Germany are simply too good to ignore. I had been using Korean Monami ball-point pens for a long time until I discovered that certain pens manufactured in Japan wrote so well that I made up my mind to use them. Some Korean pens cause my writing to be dirty and blurred after a certain amount of time, but the Japanese ones help me write clearly and neatly.
    I think it is deep in our instinct to like well-known goods better. If they are affordable and do not deplete the resources which you could otherwise use for better purposes, I think there is no trouble. You can afford to buy an imported pen whose price is 1,000 Won instead of a domestically made one which costs 700. Writing tools are student necessities. But, if you decide on buying an MP3 player with a price tag of a half-million Won when you can buy one which costs only 50,000, it is a totally different story.
    As long as the nice goods we teenagers want to have are not beyond our means, which is to say, if we can buy them with our pocket money, I think it is absolutely OK to have them. But I think we have to refrain from owning goods which are too expensive and fashionable. It is not recommended to seek products simply because others carry them. It does not make any sense for you to try to purchase a well-known brand even though you can buy a lesser-known product with better quality. Additionally, we have to beware of false brand name goods with dubious quality. Shouldn’t we be spending more of our energy and finances on replenishing our brains than on embellishing our physical appearances?

Some Spice to My Daily Routine

By Hong Heun-eui, Junior, songwon High School

    On the night of November 7th, 2006 I picked up the ringing telephone at home. A sweet lady’s voice on the phone told me that I won first prize in the Chonnam National University (CNU) English essay contest. I was so surprised that I became speechless and happy. Never did I dream that my essay would get me that kind of honor. That moment was a refreshing and pleasant distraction from my daily routine high school life.
    The next day, at the beginning of an English class at my school my English teacher said to my friends, “Give Heun Eui, a big hand because he got first prize in the Chonnam National University(CNU) English essay contest.” I am sure this event will be remembered as one of the happiest moments of my high school days.
    This essay contest is very meaningful to me. The reasons are as follows:
    First, this attempt to write something long in English is just a beginning. I have been writing down some short compositions, but this kind of long essay on a serious topic was a new challenge to me. I have gone through the nervousness and tension people experience when they try to do something new. I think I will now feel easier when I try to write something in English.
    Second, this kind of essay writing will increase my interest in social issues. The topics for this contest were quite controversial and there are many debates about them. I think I will have more interest in current social issues and will express my ideas about them.
    Finally, I came to realize that trying to write something in English everyday is really important. Thanks to my daily efforts to write even short sentences, I was able to write this essay. I will sharpen my writing ability by learning new phrases and about social issues. I hope his opportunity will help my fellow high school students in Gwangju and the Jeonnam area have some interest in English essay writing. Again, I want to tell my high school friends that writing is a totally different matter. Give it a try, then you will see how fast your writing ability improves. Every now and then, try to write something on whatever subject you choose and have someone who is good at English check it.
    I would like to thank my parents and everyone who supported me and the people in Chonnam National University(CNU) who gave me this opportunity.

Only practice Guarantees Improvement

By Na Hee-kyung, Assistant Professor, Dept. of English Language & Literature

    Writing an essay in a foreign language is certainly one of the surest ways to verify the level of one’s proficiency in the given language. Quite a few students were willing to test their proficiency of English by participating in the ‘2006 English Essay Contest’ held by Chonnam Tribune. While we, judges, carefully read the applied essays to select ‘the best ones,’ we had a feeling that each of the applicants earnestly attempted to find a proper thesis for the given topic, to ponder upon it, to find appropriate English expressions for it, and to organize it into a coherent essay. Despite such a passionate effort exerted by them, however, we regrettably felt that most of the participants were not sufficiently equipped with certain basic writing skills with which to compose a powerful essay in English.
    Among others, we found that most of the applicants failed to offer an insightful and creative view on the topics they had chosen. In other words, they could not find an impressive topic sentence or an original thesis with which they could develop their arguments. Others neglected the basic principle that one had better clearly suggest the main idea of his or her argument at the beginning of the writing. One must keep in mind the fact that potential readers of an essay may not be so patient as to wait for the revelation of the thesis until they almost reach the end of the essay.
    It takes painstaking and continuous practice to write a persuasive and well-organized essay in English. Therefore, I would like to strongly encourage my students to keep on reading, thinking, and expressing in English. We don’t have to get frustrated by the limitations which we face in our attempt to make a ‘well-wrought urn’. We can safely believe that practice guarantees improvement.

An Advice to Hopeful Young Writers

By Roh Seung-hee, Associate Professor, Dept. of English Language & Literature

    Writing a formal essay can hardly be a common daily practice for today’s youth, growing up in a world of fast food and even faster communication. Given these circumstances, it is not very surprising that this year’s Tribune essay contest, despite the lush prize on offer, attracted only 18 entries in the university category and 32 in the high school category.
    Ordinarily in a writing contest, the fewer the entries, the easier is the judges’ task. Unfortunately, however, it was not so with us this time. A small number of the essays submitted in both categories had the basic elements of formal writing: a title relevant to the subject, thesis, and coherent structure. A still smaller number of them only showed anything similar to the qualities of a good prose essay, such as articulate expressions and persuasive arguments. In short, we judges might not have been able to find a suitable candidate for each prize category if we strictly followed the general rules of writing.
    After hard deliberation upon what should be the ethics in selecting winning essays, we therefore agreed that the promotion of a writing culture in schools and encouragement for the participants’ future development ere more important that the improbable search for an ideal essay. Winning a prize in an essay contest hosted by a respectable institution like Chonnam Tribune -especially with handsome money along with it – can no doubt be a strong boost for a young writer. With such ethics in mind, we selected prize-winning essays in each category from first place to fourth.
Writing a good essay is not a skill that one can achieve in a day or with little effort; it requires continual writing practice. Additionally, reading many good prose texts helps to improve writing. Remember, every good writer is also a good reader. I hope to see a positive increase in the number of submissions as well as finer essays, awarded prizes in the contests over the coming years.