< 진로발렌타인스 사장 david.lucas@adsweu.com > 아쉽게도 이번이 나의 아홉번째이자 마지막 글이다. 그래서 이번에는 그동안 에세이를 쓰면서 떠올랐던 생각들을 담아보려고 한다. 처음 에세이를 써달라는 청탁을 받았을 때는 별로 힘들지 않을 것이라고 생각했다. 그러나 이런 내 생각은 완전히 빗나갔다. 독자들의 흥미를 끄는 글을 쓴다는 것이 얼마나 어려운 일인지 이번 에세이를 쓰면서 깨달았다. 아시아지역의 여러나라 위스키시장을 총괄하는 내 일도 만만치 않다고 생각했는데,매주 마감시간을 지키며 글을 쓴다는 것은 너무 어려웠다. 일주일 내내 원고 쓰는 고민을 안고 살았다고 해도 과언이 아니다. 이 글을 쓰게 된 것을 계기로 다른 언론매체에서도 원고청탁이 있었지만 한번더 생각할 것도 없이 두손을 들었다. 이 때문에 나는 신문기자들에 대한 존경심이 높아졌다. 독자들도 알다시피 기자들은 매일 글을 쓰는게 일이다. 그것도 자신의 단순한 경험이나 생각만을 바탕으로 기사를 쓰는게 아니라 여러분야를 취재하고 타이트한 스케줄에 맞춰야 한다. 데드라인에 맞춰 원고를 마감한다는 것이 얼마나 어려운지 새삼 깨달았다. 반면에 에세이를 쓰면서 기분 좋은 일도 많았다. 원고를 구상할 때마다 그간의 즐거웠던 기억들을 되새길 수 있었고,원고 집필이 한국에서의 뜻 깊은 경험으로 남게 될 것이기 때문이다. 한국에서의 경험을 바탕으로 에세이 소재를 찾는 일은 그리 어렵지 않았다. 몇 가지 주제를 다뤘지만,언급하지 못한 얘기가 더 많다. 글을 쓰면서 가장 어려웠던 점을 꼽으라면 한국말로 번역되었을 때 독자들의 흥미를 끌 수 있는 적절한 단어를 생각해 내는 일이었다. 아마 이번 에세이가 학창시절 국어시간 이후 처음 쓰는 글일게다. 그래도 마음 따뜻한 독자들이 내 글을 읽고 e메일을 통해 분에 넘치는 격려를 보내주셨다. 돌이켜 보면 최선을 다했지만 항상 기대에 만족하는 글을 쓰지는 못했던 것 같다. 그러나 내 글을 읽은 독자들이 적어도 '다이내믹 코리아(Dynamic Korea)'에 흥미를 느꼈길 바란다. 그리고 새해에는 모두 건강하고 다복하시기를 기원한다. ............................................................................. Unfortunately(or fortunately depending on your point of view)this is my ninth and last in this series of articles for the Korea Economic Daily and I wanted to record some thoughts that occurred to me whilst I have been writing these pieces. The first thing I must say is that my respect for economic journalists has risen significantly over the last few weeks. I thought it would be a relatively straight forward exercise to write a series of nine articles, but to be honest I actually found it much more difficult than I had imagined. As you know, this is their life and they are not able to write in bursts. Whilst they will obviously have more fertile areas to research and to cover than my simple story telling about my experiences in Korea, I now believe it is no easy task to write the articles they do every day and particularly whilst keeping the reader interested. I was also able to write my pieces from memory but I know many journalists have a significant amount of research to do in preparation and almost always work within very tight schedules. That too has been something I have found hard, to keep to the deadlines required for the printing. I know I also have a job to do and I am responsible for a number of countries, but the discipline of having to hit regular weekly deadlines is much tougher than I had expected. Having said all this, I must also say that I have enjoyed writing the pieces immensely. Each one has brought back many fond and varied memories and has highlighted some of the wonderful opportunities I have had whilst I have been in Korea. It has not actually been too hard to think of topics to cover over the last eight weeks mainly because my experiences in Korea have been so varied. I have covered some but there are many others I could have written about. If anyone has read these nine pieces and wonders why I did not covered a particular event, then I must apologies now, it is not because I have forgotten, it is just as time allows. The main difficulty has been the time it takes me to find the right words that give me a chance to make my story interesting, especially when it has to be translated into Korean. A few people have been kind enough to send some comments to me about the articles to my e.mail address and the words they used were much more generous than I deserve. It is actually the first time I have ever done anything quite like this, the only thing I can think of that would come close, would be from many years ago during English lessons at school. At that time it was much less fun and much harder to think of topics to write about than it is now, anyway that is sadly many years ago now (more years than I care to think about I should say). I would also like to record my gratitude to the Korean Economic Daily for asking me to do this project in the first place and for their patience with me over the weeks. I have tried my best but not always lived up to their expectations. As I said, I have thoroughly enjoyed preparing the pieces and I hope the many readers of the paper who found the time to read some of my articles found something interesting, at least another perspective about "Dynamic Korea !" Finally it only remains for me to wish everyone a healthy and prosperous 2004.