Meaningful Resonance

By Kim Ji-soo

Culture Editor

``Bibbidi-Bobbidi Boo,'' is the incorrigible sentence uttered by top stars Jang Dong-gun and Rain at the end of a commercial for a local carrier.

At first I thought I had misheard, but after several more viewings of the same commercial, the words just stuck in my ear. It doesn't mean anything, but the words or rather sounds, evocatively ring through my brain from time to time. No wonder; it's a famous song from Disney film ``Cinderella'' used by the company.

Last year, the all girls' group Wonder Girls put out such songs, like "I'm So Hot" and "Nobody Nobody But You." These numbers largely comprise of simple refrains of "I'm So Hot'' and ``Nobody, Nobody But You.'' They were wild hits, with a unique addictiveness of their own. There is another, more recent one: ``Gee,'' by another girls group, Girls' Generation.

As you might have expected, there is a lot of ``Gee'' in the song, making it simple and fun to sing along. The ``Gee'' takes after the Gee in English, for exclamation purposes.

It's not only K-pop. Superstar Beyonce has a similar song titled ``Single Ladies.'' A nice song, but towards the end, it's filled with mind-numbing, and once again, addictive lyrics…``Single Ladies.''

Songs usually provide a lift to our weary hearts, and songs with these repetitive refrains add an extra lift. In the past week, another phrase took the nation by surprise. ``Thank you and love each other.'' They are none other than the last words of Korea's first Cardinal Stephen Kim Sou-hwan, who passed away last Monday at the age of 86.

The simple words of a great spiritual leader rang through our brains, minds and hearts for the past week. Touched by the words and the memories of the late Cardinal, hundreds of thousands of Koreans lined up to pay respect as he lay in state at Myeongdong Cathedral.

The cathedral was where he unwittingly became part of history when he denounced the dictatorship of former President Park Chung-hee in the 1970s, changed the course of the pro-democracy fight when he said in 1987 that the police must first step over him, then the priests and then the nuns before they took away the protesting students who had sought refuge at the cathedral at the height of democracy rallies.

His name, his last words, as well as the words spoken through his life, were like an incantation of hope descending on the gloomy skies over the Korean Peninsula. He was a brutally honest person, who admitted in his 2000 memoir that he constantly wanted to flee from priesthood when he was young; that he sometimes gently touches to feel out the "thicker'' of envelopes that the people donate for mass (this was said in a meeting with church officials in 2005); and who likened himself to an ``idiot.'' His honesty went straight to the heart of many suffering from the latest economic turmoil. We have yet to find another leader who would come forth and speak as honestly as the late Cardinal did. His courage is well recorded in the tumultuous political history of Korean democracy.

We Koreans living in a much more democratic country than several decades ago take some things for granted. But looking back to those politically turbulent 1970s and 1980s, it must have been no easy job to speak out as he did.

I remember that I spent many days of my freshmen year in 1987 and junior year in 1989 debating whether just to take part in the student boycott of classes to call for democracy, when other friends went out to the streets and joined the demonstrations in Myeongdong.

Thus, to speak out nationally was an action on a whole different level. So, it's natural that people took time out to pay respects to an icon of honesty and courage, and hopefully that the strange pull of his departing words ``Thank you and love each other'' may resonate ― at least longer than those songs ― in the days to come.

[출처 : 코리아타임스]