- Moon Geun Young in traditional Korean Costume, handbok It was freezing cold in Korea on the last lunar new year day - Jan.26, 2009 - not only because the temperature was way below the freezing point, going around -5C to -10C ( 23F to 14F), but because the world has become more harsh to those who already don't have much. On their biggest holiday, Koreans were shivering, thinking of those who got displaced or had to give up their means of living due to the government re-development plans, and got killed while searching for fair treatment. But there were a couple ...

My family's seollal* events have been gradually scaled down since my mom started to go to church twenty years ago. Her church argues that religious service to the deceased -a big part of seollal - is superstitious and my relatives didn't appreciate it much. My mom decided to follow her church rules and eventually our seollal has become more of family-gathering, not a huge holiday gathering with relatives. We still keep the good elements of the tradition that is irrelevant to any religious beliefs and doesn't have patriarchal poison of the holiday. We have tteokguk, play ...

Special Commandos Needed for Protesters in Yongsan Seoul Six people, including one policeman, were killed and 23 injured on Jan.20, 2009 after Seoul's special police commandos moved in to the top of the building to quell a strike against Yongsan re-development project. A shipping container carrying about 100 commandos was landed on the roof top of the building where the protesters built a 16 feet - about 5 meter - observation tower. About 40 minutes later, a fire broke out in the watch tower, soon engulfing the whole area. The protesters, who once were tenants of the building, opposed to ...

Underground Bunker During the Korean War, when North Korea occupied about 70 percent of South Korea, my late grandfather, who lived in a small city Kumi, had to hide himself in an underground bunker not to be caught. He stayed there for a while and was able to avoid being a bullet bait for the North Korean army. That's how I understand of an underground bunker. You hide yourself or your loved ones from enemies. Or a bunker can be a place where you make top secret strategies in urgent circumstances such as war-time as the name suggests. ...

Korea's "Internet economic president", or the doomsayer Minerva got arrested in Jan. 10, 2009. Puzzled Korean Internet users are trying to figure out why. Was it because Minerva revealed national secrets that KOSPI would go down to 500 and won-dollar exchange rate would soar soon, I mean, obviously? Was it because Korean president Lee Myung-bak was afraid that Minerva was more popular than he was? So was it because his pride got seriously damaged and he wanted to get a revenge on him? Or was it because President Lee Myung-bak wanted Minerva to give his dump economic strategists some crash course trainings? Was it ...