Pickled garlic (maneul jangajji) is a staple side dish in Korea. The garlic cloves are first soaked in a vinegar brine for a few days and then pickled in a soy brine. Through this two-step process, the garlic loses much of its pungent bite and becomes slightly sweet and tangy. It’s important to use fresh garlic for pickling. Pickled garlic lasts a long time, and the longer it matures the better i...

Ulsan Grand Park Rose Festival Ulsan Grand Park Rose Festival has launched its 11th annual rose garden festivities. Held every year since 2005, this year’s festival exhibits roughly 3 million roses in a 44,737-square-meter rose garden. Visitors will have the opportunity to marvel at a wide range of premium rose species, which have been planted throughout the park’s expansion garden areas includi...

Mountain Cry (China) Opened May 25 Directed by Larry Yang A new family moves into a remote village with a tight-knit, traditional community. After the sudden death of the family’s father and husband, the widow, a mysterious mute (Lang Yueting), begins to tell her story wordlessly. Sing Street (Ireland) Opened May 19 Directed by John Carney A teenager (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) livi...

Sometimes words just can’t express how you feel when you “speak” to someone on a mobile messenger app. Instantly, you go through different emoticons offered by the messenger service and choose what fits your state of mind, sending them without saying a word. Emoticons have become a crucial part of modern communication. They facilitate the new form of mobile communication in which senders and re...

When lost on the streets of Seoul, there is one foolproof way to find your way home: just keep walking in one direction on a main road until you hit a subway station. Sprawled underneath the mega city with over 300 stations on a dozen different lines in the metropolitan area, the subway system acts as a way to navigate the city with ease. There are no major destinations in Seoul that cannot be ...

Imperial Palace Seoul Hotel relaunches ‘Familia’ Imperial Palace Seoul Hotel’s buffet restaurant Familia has reopened after three months of extensive renewal process. The buffet is equipped with upgraded facilities, and has been relocated to the first floor for easier access. The seven live stations -- grill, sushi, dim sum, pasta, pizza, deep fried and oriental noodles -- provide divers...

This variation of gimbap is made with canned tuna (chamchi in Korean). You can make the tuna filling the way you make tuna salad with mayonnaise and other ingredients. I added a bit of dijon mustard, lemon juice, and diced celery. A bit of diced onion will be nice as well. You can add any typical gimbap ingredients such as egg, eomuk (fish cake), pickled radish, carrot or spinach. In this recip...

As most places around the world that experience four distinct seasons, springtime is symbolic as a time of rebirth or awakening after the dormant winter months. There is no better representation of this than in the first plant shoots that emerge from the cold soils and trees as young and tender sprouts ready to bring in a new season. In Korea springtime, is a time to enjoy the season’s culinary...

MIAMI BEACH, Florida -- This just may be America’s sexiest city -- a symphony of sand, surf and sherbet-colored sunrises set to a sassy salsa beat. It is palm trees and pulsating nightlife; torpid days and tropical nights; shimmering pools and shimmying revelers. Can you imagine a less glamorous city spawning “Miami Vice’s” Sonny Crockett and his linen suits or “C.S.I. Miami’s” Horatio Caine an...

Everland Rose Festival The nation’s largest outdoor amusement park, Everland, is hosting its annual Rose Festival until June 12. The theme park, located in Yongin just outside of Seoul, is celebrating its 40th anniversary and is currently flooded with roughly 1 million roses scattered throughout the park’s luscious garden areas. This year’s Rose Festival is highlighted by the newly establishe...