JALBOZA comes from the Korean phrase “잘 보자”: to truly see. Another Korean word shapes how I try to see: Mul-Kkeu-Reo-Mee (물끄러미), to look at someone quietly and for a long while.
The First Gaze
Because I carried a dream, my twenties became a time of wandering deeper than anyone’s. I longed for someone to look at me just as I was, and felt that this alone could help me live again.
So the first Mul-Kkeu-Reo-Mee I understood was the Accepting Gaze of Being: a gaze that does not try to change anyone, and that embraces a person’s being before any judgment. It lifted me up from my wandering and gave me the courage to look at the world again. From then on, I began writing under the names “Mul-Kkeu-Reo-Mee” and “Geunyang Geureoke” (just as it is), both born of that longing.
The Second Gaze
But this was a beginning, not the end. When I met one person who shook my soul, and came to see how God looks at people, I learned a second Mul-Kkeu-Reo-Mee: a gaze that refuses to imprison another within the net of one’s own thoughts.
Thoughts can become an invisible net. “That person is this kind of person.” The net does not look at the person, only at its own conclusion.
God’s gaze is different. When a woman caught in adultery was brought to Jesus, the people saw her sin first and defined her by it. Jesus saw the person first. He did not condone the sin, and He did not trap her inside that conclusion (John 8:3–11).
Jesus Himself became the way (John 14:6), and you and I walk that road together. The net of thought holds a person where they are now. The way of Jesus leads a person to God. So this gaze does not hold anyone in place. It leaves them free to follow Jesus toward God.
Now, Mul-Kkeu-Reo-Mee means this to me: to put away the net of my thoughts, to leave room for what God Himself will do, and to look at one being for a long time.
An Invitation
Nothing written here is meant to persuade you of my thoughts or to hold you inside them. Whether an essay is about faith, Korean culture, or everyday life, it is an invitation to set down the net for a moment and, on the road Jesus walked, to look quietly together at people and the world, sin and forgiveness, death and eternity, suffering and love, and the Word.
May you never be imprisoned within the net of human thought, but remain open to the infinite possibilities God has prepared for your being.