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. ...

One of the good things about living outside Korea is that I'm rarely called 'ajumma'. I guess I've just admitted that I don't want to be called ajumma. However, believe it or not, I don't have strong resistance against being ajumma - because I am, but I'd be still surprised a little bit if someone bluntly calls me ajumma in a market or café. I'm not quite ready for that yet only because I haven't experienced it a lot. Am I making it too big a deal to be called ajumma? Maybe. Am I subconsciously fearful ...

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 ...