Queen Amy : This is a drawing of my wife, Amy, and our 9 1/2 month (as of March 1st, 2003) boy, Sun Su. The final drawing you see turned out a little different than I had originally planned. Amy liked the penciled sketch so much she said she was going to put it up in her office at work for all to see when it was done. Upon which I laughed and said,

"You know I'm going to draw a giant Corean robot in the background, right?"

Amy wasn't too enthused about the robot idea, so I left it out this time. She would have probably gotten pretty tired of people asking, "Is that a giant Corean robot in the background" anyways.

 

Amy is dressed in the ornaments and hair style befitting the greatest of Corean empresses, Empress Myongsong, or Queen Min, wife of King Kojong. Queen Min was the last empress of the last Corean dynasty and arguably the most influential woman in Corean history. (There was even a very successful Broadway show about Queen Min, The Last Empress.) Her shrewd intelligence and political savvy were matched only by her international charisma. In her short life she single-handedly formed alliances with China, and other European countries, while also believing in opening the then Hermit Kingdom of Corea to the West. As mentioned in one article,

"Queen Min (1851-1895) was especially sagacious and had a high vision for the future course of Korea. Villetard de Lagueril, a correspondent of Le Temps dispatched to the Far East, concluded in his book published in 1898 that Queen Min was the only leader who could lead Korea to prevent a Japanese takeover. A similar view was shared by an aide who worked for the American minister in Seoul."

Queen Min was brutally assassinated by three Japanese government sanctioned assassins prior to the occupation of Corea a few years later. Two other women in her palace were murdered at the same time, just to be sure.

Perhaps if Min had lived, she would have garnered enough support to prevent Imperial Japan from taking over the Corean peninsula. Then the Soviets would never have moved into northern Corea after declaring war on Japan in 1945. The country would never have been divided into the estranged North and South Coreas after the war. The communist military regime of North Corea would never have been put in place. And we wouldn't be in the sorry state of world affairs we are in now.

And we'd probably still be spelling Corea with a C, as well.

Now you know why I wanted to put that giant Corean robot in the background.

 

[Technical detail: The flower in Amy's hair is the mugungwa, the Corean national flower, or hibiscus.]