Posts Tagged ‘Korea’
The Chaebol: Geoffrey Cain on corporate governance and politics in South Korea
“If you look at the history of Korea, and even its current events the entire Korean peninsula has a kind-of dark story behind it. I think that Koreans have been disappointed by their leaders a lot and they have been disappointed by their businesses too. But the culture there is that you have to tolerate things in the national interest…”
Read MoreDistant and Far Apart
Watching painters work was something I’ve always been drawn to. How they licked their lips. How their eyes never seemed to blink. How they paced alone in cluttered rooms, stared at things as if defusing bombs, and every breath was a hiccup from boom…
Read MoreA Universal Korean-Japanese Story
Lee opens this epic narrative of the lives of Korean immigrants to Japan in the fishing village of Yeongdo—“a five-mile-wide-islet beside the port city of Busan”—in 1910, the same year that Japan formally annexed Korea. She concludes it in Tokyo in 1989…
Read MoreGod in Pictures
I was baffled by her effort to pay homage to a large, framed (glass, metal) painted image of the mountain spirit (a wizened old man with a tiger and young attendant) that was up a pathway on the north side of Manisan Mountain peak, when we could actually at minimum address the spirits of the peak in front of us.
Read MoreA Small Restaurant on the Edge of Life
Dread clouded the joy that surged in Tomé’s heart when she heard the voice call out “Obachan, I’m back.” In May, 1945, the only pilots who came to Chiran were volunteers for the Special Attack Corps, boys who rammed their fighters into the American ships off Okinawa.
Read MoreMeeting With Sanshin: An Interview with Hiah Park, Lover of the Mountain God
Manshin is a title of respect identifying a mudang, a female Korean shaman. For centuries manshin had been openly persecuted, their practices disrupted and shrines destroyed, their artistry desecrated to entertainment…
Read MoreKim Keumhwa’s Everyday Shamanism
Kim Keumhwa, Korea’s renowned charismatic naramansin, “national” shaman, is already awake…preparing to greet the spirits lodged in her small sindang (spirits’ shrine room) next to her bedroom.
Read MoreHope for the East Asian Peace Process
With the human race as a whole increasingly threatened by global climate change, overpopulation and food scarcity, our very survival depends on our ability to overcome history-based animosities…
Read MoreDMZ Diary: Surviving the Future Past Tense
by Lauren W. Deutsch
How does one casually “visit” such an area as a tourist? Should I be afraid of potential for armed attack? Is there a protocol of safe, reverential behavior? Isn’t it more a place of pilgrimage? I had 50 kilometers in Seoul traffic to think about it.
Read MoreThe Korean Way of Tea
Korea has had a “Way” of tea but it hasn’t been widely seen, much less described or studied by foreigners. This new guidebook full of color illustrations, created by Brother Anthony and Hong Kyeong-Hee is a welcome edition to one’s tea or Korean culture library.
Read MoreKorean Protest Culture
In Korea, the traditional protest repertoire of marches, sit-ins, stones and Molotov cocktails is evolving; some of the new techniques remain confrontational, even violent. Others rely on technology, subtlety, inner strength and community…
Read More
