Reflective Essays and Poetic Musings by Condemiang + Stories About the World

  I told my two friends to meet me at Exit 3 of Hongdae Station—without even knowing where that exit led. I hadn’t decided on a place, and the only number that floated into my mind was 3. Rushing out of the exit, I was greeted by an unwelcome rain—an early evening drizzle on a late summer Saturday—that began to torment my glasses. And when my glasses suffer, so do I. Wandering aimlessly in search of a place to settle, I finally found it: a small craft beer bar with a terrace, where travelers sat watching the world go by. Beside their chairs were backpacks, resting for a while—each one heavy with the burdens of life. Like them, I too took a seat in one corner of the second-floor terrace. There I watched the pink sky—so much like my own heart—above a row of quietly glowing storefronts, trees that stood tall without stealing the spotlight, golden lights scattered like brushstrokes, and cars and people weaving through it all. A street scene, just right in every way—just red enough, jus...

What an inspiring duo they are. Jeong Tae-chun and Park Eun-ok* embody the life of artists who actively engage with real-world social issues. Even under the ruthless Fifth Republic, they never backed down—they sang their convictions, embedding their thoughts into their lyrics. These are no ordinary people. Jeong Tae-chun's warm, earthy vibrato and Park Eun-ok's clear, pure voice resonate deeply with the heart, stir the mind, and have the power to move people from reflection to action. Their lyrics—woven with gem-like poetry and prose—have, since the late 1970s, consistently and unwaveringly stirred both body and soul, and they continue to do so even today. Korean version:  https://deposo.tistory.com/123

Annotation #0007 I totally get why he was hugging that horse with a heartbroken look on his face—honestly, same. But of course, people just said, “Yup, he’s finally lost it.” Well… to be fair, he  did  show signs of madness after that and eventually passed away. It’s pretty fascinating that Nietzsche —a nine-letter German word—can be pronounced in just two syllables in Korean. What kind of sorcery is that? If you're not careful, you might overdo it and read it in a pompous way, like “Ni-e-cheu-she,” pretending to sound sophisticated. In the early 18th century, Immanuel Kant’s philosophy completely scrambled people’s way of thinking. It was notoriously difficult. All I really remember is that he flipped the relationship between the subject and the object of perception. In other words, the subject's way of perceiving determines how the object (be it a thing or existence) is understood. Depending on how the perceiver thinks, even the universe itself could be a completely dif...

Summary Karl Marx was born into a wealthy Jewish family, and his comrade Engels also came from affluence. Their theory of communism arose as a critique of capitalism’s exploitative structure. However, no country has faithfully realized the ideals of communism; even after revolutions, power often shifted to a new elite that continued to oppress the masses. Whether in capitalism or communism, sustaining the ruling class inevitably involves exploiting either other nations or one’s own people. Today, even in so-called advanced nations, the majority of citizens suffer under relative poverty and systemic inequality. Political systems are riddled with division and deception. What we need is not another revolution, but the ability to hold political abusers accountable and elect leaders who genuinely share the people’s realities and values. Marx’s  Das Kapital  is notoriously difficult to understand and has failed to serve as an accessible guide for the working class. Instead of being ...

Anarchism was mistranslated as “no-government-ism” in some countries lacking cultural literacy, and people unthinkingly adopted that term. But in truth, the original meaning is much closer to “anti-authoritarianism” or “anti-power-ism.” Once you understand Robert Michels’ “iron law of oligarchy” and take a hard look at history, it becomes clear why one might choose to be an anti-powerist. Personally, I believe Jesus was a quintessential anarchist—he rejected all forms of authority and power except that of Yahweh.

He’s one of the people I respect the most. Especially when it comes to the concept of the absurd —this man was in a league of his own. He hurled sharp, relentless critiques at the absurdities we constantly sense and suffer in everyday life. But what exactly is absurdity? It’s not some lofty philosophical abstraction you need a PhD to understand. Even people who live on mental cruise control can feel it when something just doesn’t make sense—when logic collapses, when cause and effect fall apart, when the world contradicts itself and no one seems to care. A lot of folks think absurdity is just about politicians, bureaucrats, or corporate corruption, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Absurdity is vast, familiar, and it shows up constantly. And what’s worse, when we’re caught in it, we tend to dress it up as “fate” or excuse it as something inevitable, trying to justify not only our own condition but the absurd society that produced it. Ironically, Camus died in the very kind of s...

Tipasa in Nuptials (Noces, 1939) Albert Camus’s essay collection Nuptials ( Noces ), published in 1939, consists of four essays: Nuptials at Tipasa , The Wind at Djémila , Summer in Algiers , and The Desert . Among them, Nuptials at Tipasa ( Noces à Tipasa ) is the most well-known. Here, “nuptials” does not refer to marriage between a man and a woman, but rather to a sensual union between human existence and nature, between life and the world. Tipasa is depicted as the sacred space where this union is realized—a literal wedding ground and sanctuary of being and nature. Nuptials at Tipasa – The Unity of Nature and Being In his youth, Camus visited Tipasa, a coastal city on the Mediterranean Sea in Algeria. There, amidst the sunlight, stones, sea, Roman ruins, and the scent of wild herbs, he experienced a profound sense of fulfillment—not through reason or divine revelation, but through the body and the senses alone. “Here, I was overcome with the certainty that the world is beau...

I grew up used to seeing Jesus as a white man—with sleek golden hair and glowing porcelain skin.  I honestly thought that’s what he looked like. Even the angels, and those Jews and Gentiles from the Bible? Yeah, I thought they were all foreigners—white people from some faraway land. That’s how I spent my early, unripe fruit days—blissfully unaware, soaking in a Sunday school version of the world. But eventually, as my brain ripened and started stewing in a mess of thoughts, temptations, trivia, and growing pains, I came to realize: Wait a minute... that’s not how it was at all. Lo and behold, I learned about the brutal, heartbreaking history of the Jewish people—a small, marginalized group often dismissed as primitive in the grand narratives of empire. Turns out, they weren’t blonde Europeans with British accents. Who’d have thought? https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=147634977961987&set=pb.100081464553989.-2207520000&locale=gl_ES Sometime in early 2001, the BBC...

  When we express hope as a “dream,” it somehow takes on the feeling of a goal that's hard to reach. The subtle differences between similar words offer a kind of obsessive satisfaction—like fixing a minor misalignment that only the writer notices. Readers don’t usually dissect things with such precision. And even if they do, they don’t see it as a serious flaw. It’s just the writer’s ambition, a private pursuit of self-contentment. The world feels like that, too. It’s not nearly as harsh as the amount of worry and stress I pour into it. There are always far more good people around than we think. There are always plenty of reasons to feel joy and gratitude, too. But instead, we focus all our energy on what makes us uncomfortable—making life harder for ourselves, and even more so for those around us.

This gentleman was the one who got me interested in sexuality from an early age.  Back in 9th grade, I was constantly holed up in the school library, utterly absorbed in his brilliant case studies on psychotherapeutic treatments using association techniques. A truly great man. He argued that most psychological problems stem from sexual issues.  And honestly, given the atmosphere of Victorian Europe where women were forced into extreme modesty, it seems quite reasonable—almost historically empirical—to suppose that such issues arose from women’s repressed sexual freedom. Or at least, that’s the kind of conclusion I think I might be inclined to possibly agree with. Maybe. But the "woman problem" isn’t just a women’s issue.  Problems of a particular class don’t stay confined to that class.  Society is an organism—when one part breaks down, the effects ripple across the whole.  Ignore it like it’s none of your business, and you’ll end up with a metaphorical smack in...

Born in Prague, in the Kingdom of Bohemia, which was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He was mainly active in Germany and died in Switzerland. His full name was “René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke.” It sounds like one of those absurdly long, tongue-twisting names no one could possibly remember. With a name this long, there can’t possibly be another person on Earth with the same one. When his older sister Maria died at an early age, his mother, yearning for her daughter, shoved ‘Maria’ into Rilke’s name even though he was a boy. He fell head over heels for Lou Salomé, a Russian-born writer and psychoanalyst who was fourteen years older than him, and followed her around like a little duckling. Most likely a case of maternal love deficiency. Even when Lou Salomé entered a marriage that was marriage in name only, he went so far as to visit her home and begged to live with her—a pure-hearted romantic? A stalker? Mentally unstable? It’s said that Salomé was the one who told h...

  I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve watched these performances by now. To be honest, I was never someone deeply immersed in classical music—not in the past, and not even now. But ever since I encountered this pianist’s performance, something in me began to shift. Even when the pieces weren’t immediately moving or familiar to me, I found myself overcome with emotion, shedding tears more than once while listening to music I once thought inaccessible. And I know—this emotion I feel is, in part, shaped by the visual stimulation of the videos, by the contagious admiration expressed by others, and even by my own self-image, swept up in that shared appreciation. Yet despite all that, his playing—so natural and expressive, so clearly flawless even to someone like me—is undeniably extraordinary. The power and passion, the response from the orchestra and the audience… it’s impossible not to recognize the greatness of these performances. Many of the works he plays are among the most icon...