Welcome to the New World

For the past twenty years, on December 6th, I sit down and watch The Hunt for Red October.

It’s my personal tradition—one that goes all the way back to 1990, when I boarded a flight to Korea for the very first time.

 

The movie was playing on the plane. It was the second of two movies. The first was Days of Thunder, which I had already seen earlier that summer.

 

Somewhere over the Pacific, I drifted off before the second movie started. But just before we landed, I woke up—bleary-eyed and disoriented—and caught the final scene. Sean Connery, as Captain Marko Ramius, calm and resolute, quoted Christopher Columbus:

“And the sea will grant each man new hope, as sleep brings dreams of home.” 

Then Alec Baldwin, as Jack Ryan, turned to him and said the words I’ll never forget:

“Welcome to the new world, Captain.”

That line hit me.

 

Maybe it was fate, maybe coincidence, but in that moment it felt like the universe was speaking directly to me. I was half a world away from everything I knew, stepping into a life I couldn’t yet imagine.

 

Korea was my new world.

 

At the time, I had no idea what kind of adventure awaited me. I thought I was simply going overseas for a while—another chapter, another experience, before eventually returning home. I could never have imagined the life that would unfold from that moment: the years spent in classrooms, the streets, and neighborhoods that became as familiar to me as the ones I grew up with. Korea revealed itself season by season—spring blossoms, humid summers, the gold light of autumn, the quiet stillness of winter. 

 

Somewhere along the way it became more than a place I was living. It became a place I was writing about, thinking about, trying to understand. The stories I’ve written, the memories I’ve set down on paper, the life I built here—all of it traces back to that flight across the Pacific and the quiet moment when a line from a movie seemed to welcome me into a world I didn’t yet know would become my own.

 

About fifteen years later, I began a small ritual. Every December 6th—the anniversary of that flight—I watch The Hunt for Red October again. Each time it takes me back to that airplane cabin and the strange feeling of crossing an invisible line between one life and another.

 

The movie itself, with all its Cold War tension and submarine drama, has become more than just a favorite film. For me, it’s a time capsule. A marker in time. A reminder of the moment when everything quietly began.

 

Thirty-five years later, I’m still here.

 

What began as a journey into the unknown became the great adventure of my life.

 

Funny how a movie you barely saw the first time can stay with you forever.