The Curious Case of Prof. Kahp-Yang Suh's Death

When I looked at my intro to econs Prof for the very first time, I thought I had seen him somewhere. I had that exact same feeling where you know his face but you can’t remember and then you go “Arrergggggghhh” in the toilet sink and make weird faces in the mirror and pull your hair and shout “Arrrggghhhhh” again to recall on that face (ok that’s a bit too dramatic). And then….like a bullet into your head-with absolutely no gore visual effects and crying sound- it suddenly pops up.

Well, it turns out he looks exactly like my roommate. Yes the same old roommate, who has absolutely no idea that earphones/headphones exist in this world and that it’s not necessary to put his stupid K-pop music/drama on loudspeaker. I wouldn’t have given a fish’s tits about the sound as I have had the honor to share rooms with animals and gorillas and wild hairy monsters back in Budhanilkantha, BUT I have to admit his timing is pretty bad. At times when I really need to concentrate, he screws it up with “Babbby I amm soo lonely”. He is as annoying as Yun. Guess I need a speaker after all. *evil laugh*

Good thing he does not read my blog. or does he? I need to keep my fake ninja sword close to me while i doze off.

So as I was saying, he looks like somebody CTRL+c’d him and CTRL+v’d him on the Prof’s face. At least I could make that connection with our Econs Prof. Unfortunately, not much so for our Mechanical and Aerospace (MAE) Prof Kahp Yang Suh who recently passed away. I mean I hardly knew him but the fact that he is not present here and now brings out that weight onto my brain that I cannot really explain.

As much as this blog has been without any specific topic, death has been a topic of discussion a few times before. There was this one time when I talked about a friend of mine and then about the guy who used to live right below us but decided to jump out of the window. Death is sad, ugly and annoying but that’s an integral part of the system that we live in. I am sure we have all thought about dying and the after effects of it. A close friend of mine once asked me what I would do if she died. Since I was not really expecting a question at that very instance (nobody does), I casually replied that I would throw in a party. You can guess what happened after that.

The Prof taught my peers Heat Transfer last semester and that’s about it I know of him. I might have seen him in Jeju last year for the ISGMA conference, however, I was too excited about an impending beer party at that time to notice anyone specifically. Incidentally, it so happens that attending the same ISGMA conference taking place in Hawaii this year would prove fatal.

Initially nobody actually knew exactly how the Prof passed away. Nobody. They weren’t even sure where the incident took place. By talking to a few people who had been there at the conference, it looks as the though the Prof might have, sadly, drowned himself in the sea. There were rumors that he might have had a heart attack, but he was one of the younger professors in our department and the possibility of such an attack was half-heartedly dismissed.  Personally, I wouldn’t have been surprised if excessive drinking was the cause.

From a close source that I talked to, Prof was apparently not that good at swimming. He had training in POSCO but that was about it. Surfing should have been the last thing for someone not comfortable with water and the Prof might have misjudged uncharted waters entirely. That being said, it is of course, none of my business to comment on someone’s personal decision, especially who is much older than me. However, what annoys me is that we lost someone who could have been much more than what he already was. Not that I am trying to fake my way in and say nice things about a person who has stopped existing but I hear he was an assiduous and extremely talented individual. And when society needed people like him the most, they simply decide to disappear into another dimension.

What a loss. *sigh*

RIP Prof.