The snow made me do it. After much vacillation over whether to visit the US side of my family over Christmas or to stay in Seoul, I had finally resigned myself to spending the holidays at home. I had booked my flights months in advance, in hopes that the pandemic situation would improve with time. After all, vaccines that can protect against the virus that causes COVID-19, or at least lessen th...

That Kim is a photographer to celebrities is a well-known fact, but that he has, of late, been taking portrait photographs of ordinary Koreans is perhaps less well known. It began with a six-month project commissioned by Baedal Minjok, a delivery app company, to photograph workers in Euljiro area, once a vibrant neighborhood of small metal workshops and such. The area has seen its better days an...

One day, out of nowhere, a son receives a very generous, unexpected bequest from a stranger. One day, out of nowhere, a daughter receives a very generous, unexpected bequest from a stranger. The stranger’s will contained no conditions to the bequests. One day, the father announces that he is taking the bequests from his children. He declares that since the children are part of the family and h...

A cacophony of images, a riot of colors. That is what I saw at an exhibition in Itaewon, central Seoul, heralded as a hip show. It surely had all the elements of an of-the-moment show: Provocative images, saturated colors, all the glamour of glossy artwork. “Toiletpaper: The Studio” at Hyundai Card Storage in Itaewon is a literal replica of the photography-based magazine Toiletpaper’s Milan stu...

On a recent Sunday morning, I went for a leisurely stroll at Seooreung, a Joseon royal tomb in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province, just outside Seoul. Entering the compound of five royal tombs, my husband mused about his elementary school field trips to Seooreung. Pointing to the huge mound on which the twin tombs of King Sukjong and his second wife sit side by side, he said the kids would run up the mou...

For Seoulites, this weekend is a great chance to hike a somewhat challenging historical path in the northern part of Seoul. The 9th Hanyang Doseong Culture Festival under the theme “Sungseong: Embracing the Wishes” will be held both on and offline, including on-site participation for visitors. The festival begins Oct. 1 and continues for 10 days. Hanyang Doseong, also known as the Seoul City W...

In March, Yang returned with his second album, “The Genetics of Strings,” also with the Deutsche Grammophon. The title aptly captures the spirit of the album which explores the materiality and history of the string. The 11-track album starts with Yang’s own composition and improvisation based on vocal music by 12th century abbess Hildegard von Bingen, continues on to the Baroque period and skips...

Korean independent romance movie “Cinema Street” directed by Kim Min-geun takes audiences to enjoy beautiful scenery in the southern port city of Busan. In the film, Sun-hwa (played by Han Sun-hwa) introduces different locations in Busan, including Songdo Beach, Mount Geumnyeon and Minrak lighthouse, like a tour guide. However, she is not a guide. Sun-hwa is a location manager, responsible for ...

When I heard a friend who is a few years older say that she missed the chaos of the kitchen before “jesa,” or ancestral rite, I was incredulous. She described how the women of her family would line the kitchen floor with layers of old newspaper to prevent the cooking oil from splattering and set up an electric griddle on top of it. “I miss the sound of sizzling jeon and the smell of cooking oil ...

A photo of massive, foreboding, rocky mountains, barren except for a few bushes, with a truckload of soldiers carrying rifles is a lasting image I have of Afghanistan. I used the photo, clipped out of Time magazine, I think, to make a scrap book about various countries -- a middle school geography assignment. I don’t remember why I chose Afghanistan, among all the other countries that started wi...

Unsure if he had anything to put in the minus column, he talked about what he found to be positive about the pandemic experience. Reminding himself of his feelings when he started playing the piano at 8 and when he left for the US to study at 15 is something he would put in the plus column. He has become even more determined in his thinking that “music is the only thing that makes me stronger an...

Kang plans to be in Korea at least through the end of the year. From then on, he plans to expand to scope of his coverage to the rest of the Korean Peninsula and beyond. Once he is satisfied with discovering South and North Korea, he said, he plans to cover neighboring countries as well as the Korean diaspora, documenting the spread of the Korean people and its culture in different parts of the w...

The North Koreans came with rice that they had dug underground before leaving their residence as well as some vegetables and other foodstuffs. The wives from both sides prepared dinner. “It felt like a family,” Kang said. “We tried to overcome our difficulties, united like a family,” said Kang. “That transcended ideologies, states.” Thus began the four days living with the “other side” -- seven ...

Can the safety and health of the athletes be guaranteed? What is the point of having world-class athletes perform to an empty stadium? In a city where COVID-19 is raging out of control, would not the thousands who will descend upon it exacerbate the situation? These questions and more bothered me as countries debated whether to send their national teams to the once-delayed 2020 Tokyo Olympics. ...

The form of “Moon: Disentangle” bears witness to Seodo Band’s music roots in traditional Korean music. “Pansori is storytelling. In making the album, I saw a story,” said Seo. The band plans to issue future albums in a similar form. Such story-based albums could become the band’s defining identity, according to Seo. Already, the band’s music and performance styles are distinctly their own. Just...