Korean philosopher-manqué with an Oxford accent. Told a story at dinner about an emperor who had accomplished three great things. Spent the whole time on the first one. When someone asked about the other two: “Oh, those didn’t matter.”
Webb School classmate — same boarding school as me, same class of 1984. Spoke with a proper Oxford/Korean accent. Full professor of history at the University of Missouri–St. Louis. Published Sublime Dreams of Living Machines (Harvard University Press, 2010) on the history of automata, and later The Melancholy of Untold History (William Morrow, 2024).
He served in the Korean army in the mid-1990s. Was posted on the front line during the 1996 North Korean submarine incursion. “At night, the weasels come.”
Before that, we incorporated Prospero Electronic Publishing together — a California corporation meant to keep him in the US, with Fred as President and Minsoo as Editorial Assistant. The attorney was named Bonaparte. The visa didn’t come through. He went in anyway and eventually came back and built an academic career.
He once suggested I consider a formal Freudian analysis. I built this archive instead.
At some dinner with Britt present, he asked her — in his proper Oxford accent — if she was moist. Purely to tilt her. It worked.