Hyon-Joo’s Everyday Life

Former Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun died in a suicide on May 23, 2009 Saturday at the age of 62. He jumped from a 100-foot (30 meter) high cliff behind his house in Bonghwa. Roh was rushed to a hospital in Busan around 8:15 am and died around 9:30 am (local time in Korea). In most English articles about his suicide that I read, his death was generally understood in this kind of context: Former South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun admitted that his wife and a relative received six million dollars from a business man Park Yeon-cha during his presidency. ...

Mt. Geumo (Mt. Keumo, Komosan) 3202 feet (976meter). Located in Kumi, Kyungsang-bukdo, S. Korea. The mountain is full of steep cliffs and rocks and hiking to the top can be tough even though it's only a 1.3 mile trail. At the end of the Goryeo dynasty, they built fortress walls, Geomo Sansung, to prevent Japanese invasion. Some of traces of the fortress walls can be easily spotted during hiking. For non-hikers, there is a cable car that runs every 15 minutes till sunset (in winter, till 17:30). I think the cable car runs to Myunggeum Watherfall, but not sure. ...

- 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 ...