Seoul has gone through a lot in the past century, from Japanese occupation to the Korean War, and rapid industrialization to prosperity. Seoul Museum of History is holding two separate exhibitions featuring Korea’s capital in two different time periods that offer a rare glimpse into how the city has been transformed into what it is today. One of the exhibitions, “Seoul 1953-1963” showcases phot...

The Korea Furniture Museum, which hosted luncheon for spouses of G20 leaders during the G20 Seoul Summit in November, launched an academic program on Tuesday for spouses of foreign ambassadors to Korea and expat CEOs to help them discover traditional Korean heritage. While spouses of foreign ambassadors normally spend about three years in Korea, their exposure to Korean culture is relatively lim...

Hong Ra-hee, wife of Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Kun-hee, recently returned to her post as director of Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art. Hong resumed to the post on March 16 and attended the opening ceremony of “Korean Rhapsody,” an ongoing exhibition at the museum, on the same day. “She planned to return in time for the Korean Rhapsody exhibition. But then the earthquake hit Japan and the ove...

This is a regular feature introducing associations and clubs for expats. This week, Expat Living spoke to Mark Chi of Busan Expat Sailing Club ― Ed. Name of Club: Busan Expat Sailing Club Location(s): Sooyoungman Marina in Haeundae, Busan Number of members: varies from 25 to 40 depending on the time of the year Started: 2008 Who is it for? It was started for expats, but we are open to every...

When it comes to full-contact sports, roller skates might not be among the essential kit that first comes to mind. But roller derby, soon to hit Korea for the first time, is no ordinary kind of sport. “Roller derby is a full-contact, all-female roller sport,” explained Elizabeth Egeland, one of the four founding members of Republic of Korea Derby, Korea’s first roller derby league. “There are g...

Hollywood icon Scarlett Johansson, 26, turned up at Reese Witherspoon’s March 26 wedding with Sean Penn, 50, new reports said Tuesday. “Turning up at a wedding with your boyfriend is definitely a huge statement, especially that wedding. What it’s doing is announcing to the whole of Hollywood that they are serious,” a friend of Johansson was quoted as saying in the CBS news report. Penn hadn’t...

A woman fired four bullets at her neighbor’s home after he refused to give her a kiss, news reports said. Helen Staudinger, 92, from Florida, was having an “affair” with her 53-year-old neighbor, Dwight Bettner. She maintained that the reason she fired the shots was because lying had soured the relationship, the reports said. However, Bettner gave a different story. According to him, the relati...

Two students in Busan were arrested Sunday on charges of causing a forest fire, police said on Monday. According to the Busan Haeundae Police, a 15-year-old high school freshman, surnamed Yoon, attempted to burn his old test sheets with a friend. Police said Yoon did this as a “ceremony” to make a new resolution for his high school life, as his grades during his middle school years were not so ...

Baseball, South Korea's most popular professional sport, will launch its 30th season this weekend, with all eight clubs in the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) in action across the nation. The 2011 KBO season starts Saturday with four games starting at 2 p.m. in four cities. The defending champion SK Wyverns will open at home against the Nexen Heroes in Incheon, west of Seoul. The Kia Tigers wi...

In a rare scene of cooperation, the two Koreas began a meeting of geology experts Tuesday to gauge the potential threat of a volcanic eruption at a mountain considered sacred by both sides. The meeting, which took place in this western South Korean border town of Munsan, came amid heightened concerns over natural disasters in the wake of a killer earthquake and ensuing tsunami that have driven n...