Dear Reader,

March is my favorite month of the year: it’s not quite spring yet, but I know that it’s on its way. Everyone patiently awaits spring to fully blossom while appreciating how the afternoon air becomes warmer by the day. I have something that I can clearly look forward to: the cherry blossoms, the strawberry parties, the late-night walks that aren’t freezing cold anymore. A new, colorful season is advancing inch by inch to us — I enjoy that feeling of anticipation, being sure that a new start is to come. To me, it doesn’t feel like a “new year” until spring comes to restore liveliness on earth.

This sense of a “new start” isn’t only a personal one. This month’s Herald is full of articles that portray how, from as close as our school campus to as far as countries several-hour flights away, everything has been entering a new stage — whether or not it be an awaited one for everyone. KAIST is having its first offline semester in two years; students are now able to enjoy “real” university life, although stained with the fear of a surging Omicron variant. On March 9, as Yoon Seok-yeol from the People’s Power Party secures a narrow victory in South Korea’s 20th presidential election, the country enters a new stage of politics with the comeback of a conservative administration. Globally, with Russia launching a full-scale invasion into Ukraine on February 24, the years-long geopolitical struggle in the region has evolved into a bloody one, and the escalating tensions are felt all around the world.

In such tumultuous times, I open my news app on the phone every morning with a mild sense of dread, as I cannot expect at all how much the world would have changed while I was asleep. Even while I was editing the articles for this month’s issue of Herald, I had no clue when our articles would become “outdated”. Our reporters meticulously arranged the right words to deliver the complex (and too often controversial) nature of current events, just hoping that the unforeseeable future will turn for the better.

Whatever happens in the future, the one fact I can be certain of is that Herald will keep on publishing, just like the many media outlets that continue to report in the most dangerous regions of the world — because solving the problem starts from knowing that it exists. The more uncertain the world gets, the power to know becomes ever more important. And that’s what the Herald exists for, to inform about what is happening both inside and outside the boundaries of the campus. Our reporters and editors spend hours working on each article — although we are unsure of how many people will actually read these words — because we know that it is important to keep providing the outlet to inform and express. Simply knowing that the Herald exists for the students, we hope, can be a source of power and relief for the people that we aim to represent.

In this period of uncertainty, it is a pleasant feeling to be sure that something good is ahead. Perhaps that is why anticipation of spring is one of my favorite feelings. Even in the craziest times, the flowers will blossom — just like it did the year before, and how it will the year after.

Waiting for spring,

Jisun Lee

Editor-in-Chief