Intro to Episode 2

The transcription discusses the role of storytelling in capturing the audience's attention. It then transitions to the biblical story of creation and raises questions about the existence of suffering and the abandonment of humanity by God. The author relates these questions to the Korean people's struggles, particularly during times of colonial oppression and civil war. The overall theme is the impact of US missionaries in Korea, with the second installment focusing on the places they traveled to and their influence on their research. Every good story starts with a single line, a hook, a blanket of prose to wrap its audience in and get them prepared for the journey on which they are about to embark. Some start with fantastical scenery, others with an epic battle sequence, some still with a storybook once upon a time, but ours is a genesis. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. On the first day, God separated light from the darkness, then water from sky, oceans from land, the sun, the moon, the stars. The fifth and sixth days saw animals of all kinds populate the seas and the shores, humans emerged from dust, and on the seventh, on the seventh he rested. Maybe it seems like some inconsequential and artistic representation of our creation, but it is in this brilliant cliché that humanity has uncovered some of its deepest and most foundational questions. On what day did God create famine, poverty? What day did God rest on his laurels and allow human suffering on a scale unimaginable to most? When did he start condoning the atrocities of armed conflict after intervening before? If free will is the cause of human pain, what of natural catastrophe? Was the decision of some distant relative to eat a fruit really the font of all of that misery and generational torment? On what day did God abandon us? These questions are exactly the kind that arise in the most shocked and grief-stricken moments we experience, in war, in slavery, in incomprehensible terror, the kind the Korean people grappled with for much of their more modern and more turbulent history. These are the questions missionaries struggled to give them closure on, especially in the wake of brutal colonial oppression and violent civil war. But it was in this fear, this state of horrifying transition, that U.S. missionaries and missionary families truly shaped their legacy in Korea. Hello, my name is Jacob Stroll, and this is the second installment of a three-part series, U.S. Missionaries in Korea, A Lasting Lifestyle. Hello, everyone. If you can't tell, we recorded that bit in the dark. Yes, we did. Now, still here in the dark. Yes, we are, and it's quite lovely. So, if you didn't tell, we're going to get a little bit more serious this episode. Just a little bit. Just a little bit. The first was all about missionary work, and what we learned while in Korea, and what we learned before Korea. Now, we're going to learn about the different places that we traveled to, and their influence on us and our research while in Korea.