A Media Design Project Dedicated to by Belated Grandfather
After I was discharged, I wanted to interview my grandpa, who was fighting through cancer at the time. I wanted to write a piece chronicling his life before he was gone. I wanted to record him reflecting the 70+ years that went past by him and catch every single one of his mannerisms and facial expressions. For his grandson whom he gave unconditional love and trust, I almost felt it was my filial duty to sit down with him for an interview, to ask the questions about his different sides that I did not fully know.
However, I was too afraid to get into a messy argument with him again, as our conversations often transformed into a heated debate on everything that we disagreed with. I wasn't courageous enough, and I never got to do the interview I should have done.
At his funeral, I got to read his journal collections, a thick book of his poems, essays and letters he wrote throughout his life. As an engineer, his writings rather felt coarse and unnatural sometimes, but they were still powerful. They showed who he was. It almost felt like a well-drafted note of a journalist preparing for a feature story. He interviewed himself.
That's why I decided to write a biography on him, when I had the chance to do so over this quarter for a journalism class. I designed this interactive story on my grandpa's life and his funeral from his grandson's perspective. I could not write an objective reporting piece without any in-person interviews with him, but this is my belated effort to remember his legacies and what he left behind. It is my way of fulfilling a rather very Korean but irresistible filial duty for my childhood hero.
