Jihan Lee's Telescope and Kaleidoscope

For a long stretch of his time in Caesar's De Bello Gallico, Jihan Lee translated the way most students do at that stage: word by word, reorganizing after the fact, correcting when the sense came out wrong, which it usually did. Then came the passage on Ambiorix's betrayal. Something in it made him realize that Latin was less an obstacle course than a puzzle, formulaic, almost mathematical, in which recognizing one piece let him predict the shape of the rest. He stopped translating word by word and started reading.

The record since has been unusually steady. Gold at the Beginning level on the 2024 National Latin Exam. Gold at the Advanced Prose level in 2025. This year, a Perfect Paper at the Advanced Poetry level, the highest distinction the exam confers. Two Gold Medals in the National Latin Vocabulary Exam accompany it, along with a place representing South Korea in the NJCL Latin League's run to the Super-Regionals, a Bronze Award in the SCRIBO writing competition, and a High Commendation in the Classics category of the Minds Underground Essay Competition, the only entrant from Korea to place in it this year. He was inducted, this year as well, into the National Latin Honor Society.

Distinction has not confined itself to Latin. Jihan has represented Korea for two years running on the national debate team, the KWSDC, and took a Gold award at the Korea Science and Engineering Fair for his development of an eye-coordinated communication board, work that went on to earn him an Honorable Mention representing Korea at the GENIUS Olympiad. At his own school, he was awarded the English Distinction Award, given to a single student per grade, for bringing Classical ideas to bear on English seminars and free writing, and he was elected to Student Council for three consecutive years while founding and editing the school newspaper, Phoenix Journal. His faculty recognized this range with the Phoenix Scholarship, awarded to the student judged to combine the greatest academic promise with leadership and character.

The habit of mind has traveled well beyond the classroom. Jihan was selected for Archaeospain's summer program, joining a working excavation of the Roman fortress of Pulpon, near Cuenca, Spain. Closer to home, he founded Dream in Humanities, through which he lectures the children of migrant workers on Korean historical heritage, Latin's usual audience widened, by his own initiative, to people who had never been offered it. He also plays clarinet in his school's Auditioned Band and, after taking first at the American Protege Woodwind Competition, performed at Carnegie Hall.

He describes Latin as both a telescope and a kaleidoscope: a lens into ancient history, philosophy, and culture, and a wonder worth staring into on its own terms. He plans to major in Classics.