Most Popular
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1 in 3 Koreans live alone, family types becoming diverse
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Korea, Japan finance chiefs vow to tame rampant FX market volatility
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US 'incredibly concerned' about suspected NK-Iran military ties
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K-pop group's manager dismissed for setting up spycam in theater dressing room
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K-pop singer lost consciousness after being hit by foul ball, cancels show
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Korean Muslim YouTuber's plan to build mosque in Incheon goes viral
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[Kim Seong-kon] Democracy and the future of South Korea
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Why is Apple Pay struggling to get purchase in Korea?
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Yoon's office denies considering liberal figures for key posts
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Seoul says Fu Bao loan 'not going to happen'
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Blast from the past
Music bars take older crowd down memory roadThe familiar tune of Turbo’s 1999 hit “White Love” boomed out the doors of K-pop Music Club in Seocho-dong, southern Seoul. The song that should have seemed outdated for the streets of Gangnam in 2012 was fresh for being so unexpected.The music seemed to attract every passerby who had spent part of their teens in the 1990s. A group of women in their late 20s walking by squealed with joy and yelled “Turbo!” as they came close enough to hear the song.Th
March 2, 2012
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Blast from the past
Music bars take older crowd down memory roadThe familiar tune of Turbo’s 1999 hit “White Love” boomed out the doors of K-pop Music Club in Seocho-dong, southern Seoul. The song that should have seemed outdated for the streets of Gangnam in 2012 was fresh for being so unexpected.The music seemed to attract every passerby who had spent part of their teens in the 1990s. A group of women in their late 20s walking by squealed with joy and yelled “Turbo!” as they came close enough to hear the song.The
March 2, 2012
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Government to open K-arts, ballet and musical academies
Culture Ministry to spend 54.4 billion won this year to further expand hallyuThe Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism will form a 12 billion-won ($10.7 million) fund to support original South Korean musicals and establish a K-Arts Academy to help create new sources of cultural products. The Culture Ministry announced plans on Tuesday at Culture Station Seoul 284 to further expand hallyu, the Korean Wave, through Korean arts. It will spend 54.4 billion won this year toward the project and inc
Feb. 28, 2012
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Wealthy more likely to lie or cheat: researchers
Maybe, as the novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald suggested, the rich really are different. They're more likely to behave badly, according to seven experiments that weighed the ethics of hundreds of people. The "upper class," as defined by the study, were more likely to break the law while driving, take ca
Feb. 28, 2012
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Government vows to treat foreign tourists right
Culture Ministry announces plans to eradicate tourist rip-offs, increase number of licensed tour guidesA Japanese tourist who took a call van from Dongdaemun to Chungmuro, both in central Seoul, was taken aback when the driver demanded 330,000 won for the 2 km ride. The driver even locked up the protesting tourist in the car for five minutes. Another group of Japanese tourists was told to pay 50,000 won for one kimchijeon (a Korean-style pancake made with kimchi) and two bottles of beer at a cov
Feb. 27, 2012
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Culture Ministry awards centers in U.K., Kazakhstan
Culture Minister Choe Kwang-shik on Monday awarded Korean Cultural Centers in the United Kingdom and Kazakhstan the top prize for their contributions to promoting Korean culture. Han Jae-hyek, a counselor at Korean Cultural Center in Hong Kong also received a prize for his efforts in organizing “Korean Festive,” a large-scale event aimed at promoting Korean food, arts and culture. “KCC in London received the prize in recognition of its role in supporting war veterans who participated in the 1951
Feb. 27, 2012
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Click, unfriend: women more likely to do it than men
Women are more likely than men to delete friends from their online social networks and tend to choose more restrictive privacy settings, according to a study published on Friday.The study by the Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project also found that men were nearly twice as likely
Feb. 27, 2012
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Shipwrecked silver begins voyage back to Spain
A 17-ton haul of silver coins, lost for two centuries in the wreck of a sunken Spanish galleon, began its journey back to its home country on Friday after the deep-sea explorers who lifted it to the surface lost their claim to ownership.Two Spanish military C-130 cargo planes took off after noon fro
Feb. 26, 2012
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Bridge reaches across age groups
Enthusiasts enjoy social, mental benefits of old pastimeOn a cold afternoon inside an old building in southern Seoul, a group of people are playing cards. People of all ages cluster round square tables and chairs in a small room.At each table, four people sit silently, staring at their cards. “We play bridge here almost every day,” says Choi An-hee, chairwoman of Korea Contract Bridge League.Bridge is a trick-taking card game using a standard deck of 52 cards. It is played by four players with t
Feb. 24, 2012
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Cat-sized horses were the norm in a hotter past: study
WASHINGTON (AFP) - More than 50 million years ago, the Earth was a hotter place than it is today and horses the size of pet cats roamed the forests of North America, US scientists said on Thursday.These earliest known horses, known as Sifrhippus, actually grew smaller over tens of thousands of years
Feb. 24, 2012
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Work begins on black history museum
WASHINGTON (AP) ― President Barack Obama ― the first black U.S. president ― heralded a new national black history museum as “not just a record of tragedy, but a celebration of life’’ as he marked Wednesday’s groundbreaking of the long-sought-after museum on the National Mall.Obama said the National Museum of African American History and Culture “has been a long time coming.’’“It was on this ground long ago that lives were once traded, where hundreds of thousands once marched for jobs and for fre
Feb. 23, 2012
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Automaton at U.S. museum linkd to Scorsese’s ‘Hugo’
PHILADELPHIA (AP) ― The Franklin Institute’s automaton can’t help you find a good sushi place, direct you out of a traffic jam or check your bank balance.But the automaton, a mechanical doll animated by a complex system of spring-driven motors and brass cams, can write three poems and draw four pictures. And what might be most interesting about this 200-year-old curiosity is its ability to amaze a high-tech culture whose homes, cars and pockets are laden with all kinds of wireless, streaming, ta
Feb. 23, 2012
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Greek P.M. rejects culture minister’s ...resignation
ATHENS (AFP) ― Greek culture minister Pavlos Geroulanos’s offer to resign over a major robbery at a museum in the city of Olympia has been rejected by the country’s premier, an official statement said Wednesday.Geroulanos had submitted his resignation on Friday, after robbers made off with scores of artefacts including items dating back over 3,000 years from a museum in the ancient Greek city of Olympia.But in a meeting between Geroulanos and Papademos, the culture minister was told his resignat
Feb. 23, 2012
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Olympia theft worse than originally reported
Police in Greece say 77 artifacts were stolen by armed robbers last week at a small museum in Ancient Olympia -- the birthplace of the ancient games -- revealing that the extent of the theft was worse than originally reported.Police and the Culture Ministry had initially estimated that some 65 objects up to 3,200 years old were taken in Friday’s raid, when two masked gunmen tied up a museum guard and used a sledgehammer to smash display cabinets at the southern Greek museum.Most of the items on
Feb. 21, 2012
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Museum robbed at Greece’s ancient Olympia
ATHENS (AP) ― Two masked gunmen stormed into a small museum at the birthplace of the ancient Olympics in southern Greece on Friday, smashing display cases with hammers and making off with dozens of antiquities up to 3,200 years old, authorities said.It was the second major museum theft in as many months in debt-crippled Greece, and a culture ministry unionist said spending cuts have compromised security at hundreds of museums and ancient sites across the country. With unemployment at 21 percent
Feb. 19, 2012
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S. Korean maestro to meet with N. Koreans in China over orchestra performance
SEOUL, Feb. 17 (Yonhap) -- A renowned South Korean conductor plans to meet with North Korean music officials this weekend in China to discuss a joint orchestra performance in Pyongyang, an official said Friday.South Korea allowed Chung Myung-whun, who leads the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, to hold
Feb. 18, 2012
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Exiled Iranian cartoonist vows to fight regime with drawings
ANGOULEME, France (AFP) ― Iranian dissident cartoonist Mana Neyestani says drawing has been his salvation and a weapon to combat his own personal demons as well as Tehran’s hardline Islamist regime.Neyestani’s autobiographical comic book “An Iranian Metamorphosis,” a Kafkaesque story recounting his jailing in Iran over a cartoon depicting a cockroach that sparked riots in 2006, is due to hit stores on Feb. 16.“With this book, I wanted to share my experiences but also to forget my worst nightmare
Feb. 16, 2012
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German museums to hold exhibition of Korean relics
Major museums in Germany will hold a joint exhibition of Korean relics, offering a rare chance to appreciate Korean art from the 11th to 20th centuries, the German Embassy in Seoul said. The joint exhibition will tour four German cities, including Grassi Museum of Ethnology in Leipzig and East Asia Art Museum in Cologne from Feb. 17 to May 27. The touring exhibition will also be held at museums in Frankfurt and in Stuttgart, the embassy said in a statement. A total of 10 museums in Germany broug
Feb. 16, 2012
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Curtain falls on landmark Hong Kong opera house
HONG KONG (AFP) ― Hong Kong’s last dedicated Cantonese opera theatre is holding its final performances before it closes this week, in what some art lovers see as another nail in the coffin of a 300-year-old tradition.The 1,000-seat Sunbeam Theatre has been synonymous with the operatic heritage of China’s southern Cantonese-speaking minority for 40 years since it opened in 1972.It has earned landmark status on Hong Kong’s art scene, standing in stoic defiance of the former British colony’s transf
Feb. 16, 2012
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Philippine swordsmith has Hollywood touch
POZORRUBIO, Philippines (AFP) ― Filomeno de Guzman does not know Sparta from medieval Scotland, but the Philippine swordsmith is an expert at replicating ancient warriors’ tools for killing each other.A stubby ex-military sergeant who has never set foot abroad, de Guzman and 15 rice farmer-neighbors who moonlight as blacksmiths craft old truck leaf springs into things of terrible beauty.The business feeds an overseas market for replica swords of Roman gladiators, Greek infantry and Japanese samu
Feb. 16, 2012