CORRECTIONS David Lehman
An article on Feb. 25 about President Kim Young Sam of South Korea erred in identifying him as an ex-playboy who was known as the Falstaff of Seoul because of his girth, his jollity, and his appetite for vast quantities of imported beer. The article should have described him as a well-respected man about town doing the best things so conservatively. Mr. Kim's speech, in which he apologized for his "youthful indiscretions," was not, as reported, preceded by the playing of the opening bars of Wagner's Walkyre. Mr. Kim has a preference for Rossini's "Thieving Magpie Overture" for state occasions. In addition, the article mistranslated one of Mr. Kim's remarks in some editions. The President said, "I guess all young men have oats to sow," not "I was a young buck with cojones."
A related article on Feb. 27 misstated the opinion of Sam Young Park, a professor of English at Martha Washington University, who specializes in Shakespeare's history plays. Mr. Sam was reported to say that Mr. Kim's remark, as originally mistranslated, alluded to "the macho ideal as Henry V practiced it and Hemingway codified it." He said no such thing. Mr. Sam, who, contrary to published reports, has seven nephews and is bald except for a shock of white hair, said Mr. Kim's speech did not propose concrete measures for dealing with Korea's problems; he did not say that it did propose such measures.
The Personal Health Column last Wednesday, about the hazards associated with the amino acid homocysteine, gave an imprecise figure for the amount of folic acid supplement prescribed for people with elevated levels of homocysteine in the blood. The correct amount is one milligram of folic acid daily, not one milligram.
A chart on Sunday listing people who had stayed overnight in the White House during the Clinton Administration incorrectly described Sam Young Park as an illegitimate son of former baseball great Slammin' Sammy Young. According to the chart, the young man changed his name to Sam Young Park in order to trick his Korean in-laws into bestowing their parental consent when the lad was wooing their daughter, Sue, an exchange student studying the amino acid homocysteine at Martha Washington University in Bethesda, Maryland.There is no evidence at all for this hysterical flight of fancy.
Because of an editing error, an obituary for the playwright Kim Chadwick appeared in yesterday's paper. Ms. Chadwick did not die in her home last Thursday. The cause of death was not pneumonia resulting in cardiac arrest. Ms. Chadwick's daughter Esther did not discover the body. Ms. Chadwick had written eleven plays, not eight. She had dropped out of Bryn Mawr, not Smith, taken up with a musician named Pablo, not a shipping tycoon named Tom, and favored quiet meditation and sewing rather than boisterous games of Trivial Pursuit. Her first marriage, to the financier Maxwell Park, did not end in divorce. Mr. Park and the couple's three daughters are not properly to be considered survivors, since Ms. Chadwick (who retained her maiden name) is still alive, though we did not know this when we published her obituary, which had to be written in advance, like all our obituaries. Nevertheless, that is no excuse, and we know it.
In Stanley Kowalski's review of Kim Chadwick's new play Wild Oats, "Let us not hear that Ms. Chadwick has proved her critics wrong" should have read "Let us note here that Ms. Chadwick has proved her critics wrong." Mea culpa.
