2019/07/07 16:00 Closing Remarks by APTIF 9 Chief Organizer Prof. JC Kwak

Ladies and gentlemen,

During the past 3 days, you might have presumed that as the organizing committee chairman, I must be very busy and preoccupied with many things. But sorry, no. On the contrary, I spent very happy and comfortable 3 days. Why? Because my task had been completed before the opening ceremony and my colleagues and volunteer students were working so hard. So many thanks again/ to them.

During the past 3 years, however, I was busy, sometimes very busy, sometimes quite busy. Sometimes I was sad, frustrated, angry, desperate, heartened, anguished, despaired, and what not. After all, here is the short history of APTIF9.

I met Dr. Henry Liu in Moscow in 2015 when he was FIT President, during the CIUTI G/A and when I told him I happen to be President of KATI, he exhorted me to join FIT. KATI became FIT member later that year. At the end of 2015, TAC, represented by Yang Ping, my dear sister there, the fantastic dancer, asked me to host APTIF9 in 2019, when I will have retired a year before.

The idea hit me as one of the first students of GSIT that 2019 shall be the year of the 40th anniversary of GSIT. GSIT would be able to co-host APTIF 9 with KATI! Among the faculty, there were pros and cons but ayes had finally prevailed and we decided to host the event.

In the summer of 2016, I was in Xi’an for APTIF8 and our bidding was accepted. It was the beginning of my passions for 3 years. Today is the last day of my agony and sufferings. 3 years ago, first of all, when I wanted to start preparing for the Forum, we had no money. KATI was a small, low-budget organization and my school was also in deep financial difficulties.

After a few days of deep deliberation, I decided to call for some contributions from my former students, the alumni of GSIT. Yes, I wrote a beautiful and heartbreaking letter to them, calling for 100 US$ per person. In two months, some 40,000 dollars were amassed and I could start preparing for this Forum. Here I thank them again. When other than English language majors joined the donation campaign early this year, more than 180,000 dollars were collected, and this place is the result of their contributions. And the coffees, lunches, dinners, etc. of this event.   

I have so many things to tell you, but I will not do that. Only that I thank you all again to have come here and be with me at this moment. And that I have done my best for APTIF 9 for more than 3 years. Now, I am leaving the office of the organizing committee at the end of this month.   

Some of my associates say I may be workaholic and autistic. But because I am autistic, I had decided to host APTIF 9. Now I am closing 3 days of APTIF 9 and 3 years of organizational service for the Forum. When I joined this school, GSIT, in 1979, it was the fulfillment of all of my boyish hopes and dreams. I liked foreign languages and interpreting was most fun. The T & I world has turned over many times since I entered GSIT as one of the first students here. And the hopes and dreams have long since vanished, but I still remember the refrain of the most popular barrack ballads of the US, quoted by General Douglas MacCarthur in April 1951, just two years before my birth, in his farewell address to US Congress. He proclaimed most proudly that "old soldiers never die; they just fade away."

And like the old soldier of that ballad, and General MacCarthur, I now close my official career and just fade away, an old interpreter who tried to do his duty/ as the calling had given him/ the light to see that duty.

Old interpreters never die, they just fade away. Thank you & God bless you.