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Opinion

Tue, November 13, 2018 | 10:27

Opinion > Blogs >

Troubled waters: Chinese fishing fleets in Joseon Korea

In the 1880s, they congregated in large numbers off the coast of Gunsan. Their nets were incessant, their crews were often violent and they were outsiders - they were the Chinese fishing fleets.

Walking in the footsteps of the past: The Standing Buddhas of Yongmi-ri

In the early 1890s, three Western missionaries, while traveling from Seoul to Pyongyang, rounded a corner of a rocky hill and were suddenly confronted by “two immense stone figures representing a Korean man and a Korean woman” perched high above them - they were the Standing Bu...

Joseon Korea's Russian-advised Army

At the end of the 19th century, Korea found itself in a wild vortex of modernization often inspired and frustrated by internal and external political pressure. The Korean military was no exception.

Notes from Seoul Fashion Week, October 2018

I have just finished covering Seoul Fashion Week and am now at Vietnam International Fashion Week to look at fashion there and Korean influence on it, which I have seen and been told is considerable. Rather than an extended prose description, I will allow the photos and caption...

Fashion field notes from Danang

As an ethnographer, I'm always thinking about people, the groups they see themselves as part of, and the way they define discrete cultures. As a visual sociologist, I think about our extremely visual culture in which identity and the very important economic acts of consumption ...

Multiculturalism: Korea's most obstinate 'iron cage'

I'm going to do something writers aren't supposed to do - lose the reader immediately. Well, that's not actually my goal, since I'm doing this deliberately with the goal of making a point. And the first line of this piece, along with the gob-stopping opening image, should be en...

Assessing the Pyongyang summit

President Moon's visit to Pyongyang and his summit with Chairman Kim Jong-un altered the cultural and political landscape of the Korean Peninsula even further than the Panmunjom summit, and most likely ushered in a permanent shift in how Koreans conceive of themselves. So deep ...

What do Koreans mean by 'revolution'?

I saw an television commercial for a Korean bank recently in which the word “revolution” (hyeongmyeong, 혁명, 革命) was repeated several times. It was striking that a term once associated with the far left is used now so prevalently in contemporary South Korea. But what exactly doe...

The paleontology of South Korean politics

The most remarkable moment in President Moon Jae-in’s visit to Pyongyang was his speech before 15 thousand North Korean citizens gathered in the massive May Day Stadium. The enthusiasm that radiated from this massive crowd was startling in its intensity and President Moon himse...

Me Cook? No, You Cook!

Years ago, I saw a birthday party ruined in spectacular fashion. An American friend, an advanced Korean language learner, was chatting with two Korean women who began ridiculing his pronunciation, repeating to each other “Mikuk” (not “Miguk,” which means American) several times...

14-year-old j.knife surprises Korean indie fans with folk-pop album 'Familiar Sounds'

When most Koreans are 14 years old, or 15 Korean age, they're studying hard in preparation for high school, and already readying themselves for the college entrance exam that will decide their entire futures. Jennifer Kim may not be much different, but she also somehow makes th...

We hear music all around us in our everyday lives. There is music, not played directly by us, in all sorts of public places such as shopping malls, cafes, restaurants, clothing stores and gyms, and we recognize it as a normal part of our social environment. However, is this mus...

The unbearable lightness of tech law

There are two ironic characters who love each other in Milan Kundera's famous novel "The Unbearable Lightness of Being." The relationship between Tomas, a talented doctor and notorious womanizer, and his wife Tereza is full of contradictions. Although meeting countless women, T...

Is Korean Crypto Valley possible?

Starting with Switzerland's Zug, followed by the U.K.'s TechUK and China's Lujiazui Special Economic Zone, the concept of a “Crypto Valley,” now existing in various locations, offers a variety of benefits for startups that nurture and develop blockchain and cryptocurrency-relat...

My life at a Korean law firm (part 38)

When my contract at Seoul City Hall expired in December 2004, my OECD Review team was dissolved and its members were dispersed to other departments. Seoul Global Center did not yet exist, and there was already another foreigner working in the area of international cooperation a...

My life at a Korean law firm (part 37)

When we lived in Melbourne for four years, Jimin taught Korean as a second language to people from heritage and non-heritage backgrounds. One of her students, a Chinese-Australian women married to a Korean man, visited Korea in 2004 and introduced us to a friend of her husband....

My life at a Korean law firm (part 36)

With this week marking the second anniversary of the start of the candlelight street protests that led ultimately to the successful impeachment of President Park Geun-hye, it made me think back to Korea's previous impeachment of a sitting President.

A North Korean defector's account of English speech contest

Saturday November 3 was a regular day for most people in the world, and it started that way for me too. I got up as usual, I got dressed. Then I headed out to be an assistant at the second English speech contest hosted by the Korea Hana Foundation, the government agency that as...

Why I escaped from North Korea

Cherie Yang, a Special Ambassador to the nonprofit NGO Teach North Korean Refugees (TNKR), was born in Hye Ryeng, North Korea. Through her employment at a resort near her hometown, she realized that the North Korean regime had been lying to its people. She fled North Korea in s...

The reality of overseas North Korean workers

A number of North Koreans are granted permission to work abroad. One such North Korean refugee escaped while abroad, arriving in South Korea a few years ago. She told her story on October 17, 2018, to a delegation of Americans visiting South Korea. Here is an extended excerpt o...

When color can be too much

I love color - sometimes too much. But there are times when color simply gets in the way of a good photograph. Bright colors can enhance, but they can distract. Often the better photograph focuses on tone and patterns. In such cases, monotone (black and white) photographs are t...

Finding your kind of street photography

If you ask serious photographers just what is “street photography,” you are likely to find many definitions. At times, street photography can resemble travel photography. But travel photography tends to be less artistic and more about personal documentation of one's experiences...

Festivals make great photos

Jongro-3ga, Lantern Parade. All photos by Tom CoynerTom CoynerWith the warming temperatures, come festivals and similar events. These colorful events are both challenging and rewarding. They can be confusing as a three-ring circus in determining what to photograph, and it can b...

Choking on worsening air pollution