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Kim Ji-myung

Seoul Craft Museum

Just on the northeastern corner of Anguk-dong Intersection on the site of Poongmoon Girls' High School, construction is underway. In a year, Seoul will add one more 'must see' attraction on this intersection between the traditional Bukchon residential area and the commercial quarters of bustling Insa-dong.

Na Jeong-ju | 2020-01-10 17:22

Grandpas in kitchen

Hanging in the kitchen of my countryside home is a plate that reads: “Danger! Men Cooking.” The phrase serves as a handy test question for visitors. A six-year kid laughed reading it, while her father stood dumbfounded, not knowing what was happening.

2019-12-13 17:23

Magic of translation

“Without it being written in English and spread on internet, even a truly attractive or valuable story of Korea would move the minds of only a handful of people on earth.” This has always been my personal belief. The success of Korean idol groups, dramas and films abroad owe much to excellent translations. But it is not only contemporary Korean popular culture that benefits from translations.

2019-11-15 17:38

To be guilty or not

Is the recent Cho Kuk chaos drawing nearer to a close with his resignation from the justice minister's position? I'm afraid not. People, including the opposition party, are still very wary of this powerful man second only to the president. Although much of his and his family's criminal charges haven't been cleared up, he may remain a threat until his possible entry into the National Assembly or even as a presidential candidate in the next election.

2019-10-18 17:52

Archive to revive 1907 Korea

While I was finalizing my dissertation in November 2017, UNESCO decided to list on the Memory of the World Register the very documentary archives I had been researching - the National Debt Redemption Movement Archives. Those thousands of historical records, handwritten letters and newspaper articles from of 1907 to 1910 attest to the first nationwide voluntary fundraising movement by the Korean people.

2019-09-20 17:38

Korea's UNESCO man

On July 26, 2001, my conference organizing company ConvEx Korea was selected as the planner-organizer for the “ICOM Seoul 2004” conference by the organizing committee of the event. I attended the bidding urged by my high school friend Dr. Lee, who was a director of a college museum in Seoul then. She is an expert in Roman glass from the Silla period.

2019-08-23 17:33

Translation professionalism

On Sept. 1, 1979, the Graduate School of Simultaneous Interpretation had its first matriculation ceremony on the campus of Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (HUFS) in Seoul. As it was the first master's degree course in Asia to train professional conference interpreters in nine languages, fully financed by the government, it seemed quite an overshot at that time.

Na Jeong-ju | 2019-07-26 14:44

Foods unite two Koreas

The book “Traditional Foods of Korea” (Joseon Minjok Eumsik) introduces the authentic foods of North Korea. Published by the Foreign Language Publishing House of the DPRK in 2018, this 118-page catalog in English printed in color is impressive by any standard.

2019-06-28 17:30

Missionary history in Daegu

Old photos of Korea in modern times fascinate me. The first photos taken by Westerners bring us back to the lost and never-seen land of the past.

2019-06-02 17:10

15,000-year-old rice

In a lecture on Korean history for foreign CEOs in 2011, I showed a photo of a few samples of the earliest cultivated rice grains which were discovered in 1998 at Soro-ri, a small village in central Korea. Common sense had it then, and still in 2019, that rice farming moved from China to Korea and Japan.

2019-05-05 17:44

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