• East Asia

    Exhibition gives new views on Chuseok ritual table

    With the time-honored Chuseok holiday around the corner, there are new suggestions to update the traditional table set for the ceremony to pay tribute to ancestors.  Cultural foundation Arumjigi is holding a display of those ideas.  The display has three parts: ritual culture, ritual table and ritual cutlery.  Korean families set…

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  • East Asia

    Man fined W6 million over women’s toilet spycam

    A man in his 20s was fined 6 million won ($5,360) for secretly videotaping inside women’s toilets in North Chungcheong Province in May. The Cheongju Provincial Court made the ruling on Wednesday, finding the man, 21, guilty of violating the Sexual Violence Act. The court also ordered the accused to…

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  • East Asia

    South Korea: racist book about Filipinas banned

    Major book retailers have stopped selling an “obscene and racist” book about Filipinas. Online retailers, including Aladin, Yes24 and Bandi & Lunis, have removed the e-book, “How to Treat Bar Hostesses in the Philippines.” This move came after a tweet about the book was widely spread earlier this month. Many…

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  • East Asia

    Powerful typhoon approaches Korea

    Korea is on high alert as powerful Typhoon Soulik is set to batter the country with downpours and thunderstorms over the next few days. It is forecast to become the first typhoon in six years to make landfall on the Korean Peninsula Thursday night and pass through by Friday morning,…

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  • East Asia

    Three Key Figures in the Chinese History

    I call three modern Chinese figures as follows: “Mao Zedong is a mountain, Zhou Enlai is water, and Deng Xiaoping is a road.” Why is Mao Zedong a mountain? Why is Zhou Enlai water and Deng Xiaoping a road? Today’s China is a road created by crossing mountains and rivers.…

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  • East Asia

    The meaning of “jeong”

    “Coming to Korea as a tourist is vastly different from actually living here.” Some say you can only truly know a country once you’ve passed a tourist’s honeymoon phase. And for Frederic Heng who hails from Singapore, the veil of his first impression of South Korea was gradually lifted over…

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  • East Asia

    Dreaming big

    She’s bubbly and energetic; she’s twenty-five. But it’s scary opening up a new chapter in your life. Change calls for courage, especially when you’re young and things are unsure. Still, Lee Young Jae has always been sure of her love for books and writing. She used to look at her…

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  • East Asia

    PEACEMINUSONE, a Korean fashion brand

    Born on October 1st 2016, the fashion brand PEACEMINUSONE envisions “a world at Peace coming together (One) with a world deprived (Minus) as a crossover between the real and the ideal”. It is the materialization of pop-star G-Dragon and his stylist, Gee Eun’s combination of imaginations and their act of…

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  • East Asia

    The world through a different lens

    Yuna has been in Korea, now, for a year and a half, teaching English at a hagwon (cram school) to young students. It’s the typical rigorous academy that prepares students for the TOEFL exam and they are visibly stressed. But that could have been her. Back home in America, her…

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  • East Asia

    Trump’s strategy for North Korea

    Is President Donald Trump offering a tutorial on how to negotiate with the North Koreans ― reminding them of the riches and rewards awaiting them the moment they enter his magic kingdom? John Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser, came up with something like that in an interview on Fox, the…

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