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By Kathy Fidler

As you’ve probably noticed, it’s been raining A LOT lately, to the point where traipsing around unfamiliar parts of the city hunting for restaurants has become a temporarily unappealing prospect. My Korean acquaintances urged me to take the weather into account and sample the traditional rainy-day fare of pancakes and rice wine, so I recently took a trip over to Insadong to combine the experience with some shopping and gallery tours. It may not be the most adventurous way to spend a day off, but you can’t beat it for coziness, especially inside the fragrant wooden cocoon of Bori Koge Choo Euk restaurant.

By Iwazaru

Lake Naju

The cliffs rise proud and strong from Naju’s shores

where silence spreads into eternity.

The mountains are prostrate in servitude

to the timeless grace and beauty beheld

below in the wandering steel green waters

that have called to peasants, kings and poets.

A mighty muse softly wrapped and sealed away.

Fingers of wind stroke her shimmering skin

then disappear into the thick treetops

and off over the high eastern ridges

Words and pics by Hannah Stuart-Leach

With mornings free, I went to help paint science lessons on the walls of the nearby school he taught at. But instead of boarding a heaving bus for 30 minutes, as I had in Seoul to get to work, I was treated to 15 windswept minutes on a motorbike. The narrow, dusty road up the mountain, offered a spectacular view of the sheer drop into the clear, sun-tinted water below. It was an addictive start to the day.

One morning on my way back, I bumped into Erna, one of the women from the craft group, who invited me into her home, insisting I eat mounds of fresh watermelon, washed down with coconut milk. No matter what predicament they found themselves in, the Filipinos I met were always cheerful and endlessly hospitable. She told me the money from her first jewelry sale had gone to purchase the chickens that clucked their way underneath the stilts of her wooden house – rebuilt since a devastating typhoon had destroyed her previous one. She beamed with pride as she told me this, and the craft shop suddenly became a whole lot more meaningful.

By Rishika Murthy

After the government survey, Green Korea went out to the land and found a rare species of flower that the government had missed. Activists insist that this flower needs to be preserved in its natural habitat and that its discovery is proof of a thriving natural environment, but the government did not listen. They instead rooted-out the flowers for a collection and re-located them to an unnamed area for preservation

By Jack Dashwood

I clicked on a Web site the other day that was paragraph after paragraph of “stupid things Korean girls text to foreigners.” The gist of it was “hey look at this broken English this girl sent me. What a tard!”. To a certain type of person, this point of view makes sense. If for example, you’re the type of person who would spike girls’ drinks at your college fraternity parties, or if you taunted the one brown kid in your school for being a terrorist, then this style of humour might be rather entertaining. Let’s take a moment to look from another point of view though…

By James Barrowdale

Alas, I still can’t tell you. The game went on, and my boredom and drunkenness increased at the same rate, a very rare occurrence. The sun started to get low in the sky, but the heat remained as oppressive as ever. The players were toiling out in the middle, but that is their job. I was sitting down fanning myself with a paperback and drinking cold beer.

By Lee Scott
On the day of my daughter’s birth, my wife and I got to the hospital only to find the door locked (really). We followed a sign saying to go around back for emergencies. There was a very explicit sign showing the route to take after you leave the elevator, even going so far to say that the door was 2.0 meters in front of you (I found that to be excessive explanation.) We took the elevator up to the 4th floor, and found that door also locked. My wife and I both realized we had noticed an intercom phone down on the first floor by the elevator. We went back down the first floor and tried to use the phone. It didn’t work.

By Andrew Morris and Paul Malin

The Pentaport Rock Festival at Incheon Dream Park on Saturday had a lineup that was a bizarre mix, ranging from J-Pop to J-Thrash Metal via K-Rock and U.S. Punk-disco. There was also a range of DJs and dance acts to satisfy those who weren’t interested in the bigger acts, and for those who paid ₩70,000 and did not want to see the live acts, there was also a live feed showing the day’s Korean League baseball action. Something for everyone.

By Kathy Fidler
On the northwestern edge of Seoul, about halfway to Ilsan on subway line three, there is a suburb called Goyang that is home to a wonderful little cluster of farms and specialty restaurants. There’s an herb farm, a mushroom farm, the tipsily entertaining Baedari Traditional Wine Museum and makgeolli brewery, and outdoor grill restaurants specializing in just about any kind of meat you can imagine. Up the road from all of these locations is a complex called Beantown, housing a bean farm, a coffee house, a shop selling an impressive variety of homemade soybean pastes (doenjang) and chili paste (gochujang), as well as the only live turkey I’ve ever seen in the Seoul metropolitan area. Front and center in this delightful complex is a restaurant serving foods produced on the farm.

4) “I’m sinae..
your letter thank you^^
I like you. because,you promise obey..
I look first meet man..
carelessly not decision..
watch long long time~

I’m not english well
so,
I’m sorry always..

By Jennifer Stevens

My relationship with my Korean boyfriend seemed to be playing in fast-forward—minus the sex—until one day he said,“I make reservation at a hotel this weekend for us,”

“Oh, wow, really?” I responded. “Where is it?”

“It is really nice hotel near Seoul. We will cook for each other and then sleep in the bed together.”

My mouth fell open as I searched for something to say. “Can’t wait!” I managed to get out.

I immediately called every girlfriend I could think of who could give me sex advice at 11 o’clock on a Wednesday night, 10 a.m. U.S. time on the east coast.

Objectives:

by John Flynn

This isn’t to say that there aren’t great songs on this album. “I Wanna Rock,” “Vengeance is Mine” and “새벽2시(Two in the Morning)” just seem much more thought out than a lot of the other songs here. They allow singer Velvet Geena to stretch herself as singer and show some emotional depth in her voice. The songs themselves also offer a depth of songwriting that is lacking on more kitsch songs like “ZombieNight.” “새벽2시” creates a darker, more pained take on Rockabilly. The surf guitar, for once, takes a backseat and becomes more of a mood peace, giving the song a kind of paranoid 60s LA sound. The song shows the band stretching the parameters of their genre into brilliant new territory. Album closer “I Wanna Rock” is the shortest song on the album and has a visceral edge to it that is just lacking on the faster tracks presented. It’s a song that realizes the pastiche that this band trades in and just has fun.

By Mizaru

The persona of Velvet Geena, Tiger, Roy, Eddie Tarantula and Jack “The Knife” is both alive and inviting yet more than once I found myself looking away instead of zeroing in on the eye-contact that a small space like FF club invites… Perhaps I have never seen or felt the Korean blood pump and pulse in such unpretention. Loud rock ‘n’n roll can still be a scary moment. The greasy pompadour presence of the whole group wields out wildly like comic book heroes who are ready to cross the threshold of the stage, come to the rescue, give more life out to the audience then they can receive back. And in a rock ‘n’ roll or whatever to do on a Saturday night lexicon isn’t that the definition of charisma?

By Iwazaru

A Chinese businessman recently in Pyongyang reportedly snapped a picture of a propaganda poster that shows a naval soldier smashing a ship in half with the words below the image stating “Deom-byeo-deul-myeon Dan-mae-e!” (“Ready to crush any attack with a single blow!”).

Radio Free Asia reported the story and released the photo and comments from the businessman who wished to remain anonymous. In addition, the report referred to comments made by a South Korean military expert who said the ship isn’t just any random vessle but a corvette just like the Cheonan which was blown in half on March 26 killing 46 sailors. A multinational international investigative team presented evidence that pointed to a torpedo fired by a North Korean submarine, though intrigue has lingered along with North Korea’s denial of involvement.

By Jake Reed

As of now there have been five mass stabbings at schools in China. Every one of the killers seemed intent on maximizing the stabbing and minimizing our understanding of why they did it. The head count so far is “Seventeen people have been killed and nearly 100 wounded in the attacks.” As an ESL teacher in China, I’ve been creating scenarios in my head, mostly nightmarish: It’s a normal day in your kindy class.

by Jason Sander
On July 9, Canadian indie-giant Caribou came to V-hall to grace Seoul with a moment of live bliss—sans Aquanet. It’s safe to say that Dan Snaith, the creative genius behind the band, is not afraid to experiment and has proven with every album release that it is OK to change. Upon witnessing their recent performance, Snaith and the boys of Caribou proved beyond any cerebral stretch that dancey-pop on stage can be much more than an aging hipster simply turning his hat backwards and pressing “play.”

By Kathryn Fidler

If you’ve been watching Top Chef the last two or three seasons, you might be aware that American yuppies will suck down just about anything that’s grilled with an Asian sauce and wrapped in a romaine lettuce leaf. Here in Seoul, however, we can afford to be a bit more discerning about our barbecue. In fact, the new resident or visitor is often faced with the enviable problem of too many restaurants to choose from, with very little English-language guidance on the subject. It can be daunting to stare down a street full of establishments with nearly identical menus and try to select one, even more so when faced with a language barrier and/or dietary restrictions.

By Rishika Murthy

Green Korea United, or Green Korea as it’s called for short, is one of the main environmental NGOs on the Korean peninsula. It began in 1991. Originally, there were three separate groups who then united to form the current Green Korea.

This eco-action group has pressured current president Lee Myung-bak into abandoning his “Connect Korea” canal plan that would have created 1000’s of construction jobs by “straightening” Korea’s largest rivers and wreaking havoc on natural habitats along the way…More

By critic Jeon Bongho

A queer mapping of Seoul in this kind of homophobe environment is no walk in the park. Centering in Itaewon and Chongro, the gay culture of Seoul grew like a culture of germs in a petri dish; hidden away and in quarantine. Like in the case of theater and poet, these spaces were not growing on general estimation, tolerance or even recognition. In a heterosexual world, there is not room for the homosexual, since it would not show on any map of Seoul.

Showing a hypocritical relationship to sex, a typical characteristic of Confucian culture, homosexual space was firmly restricted to the shadows of society. Naturally, in the beginnings of modern homosexuality in the 1960s, the only gatherings were at dark theaters, leaving room only for commercial sex. Also the gay-bars, frequented in the 70s and 80s, spread surrounding these theaters. These bars, seated in the hollow emptiness of an abandoned downtown… More

By Justin Thoreau

“Ma. Hi it’s me. No, no, no, I’m in Cambodia. CAM-BO-DI-A!!!! Sorry, it’s a bit loud. I’m in a bar. Listen something happened. No, I’m not in jail. No, I’ve got enough money. Listen, we’ve kind of declined. We’ve gone back a few steps in evolution. How? I don’t really know how all I know is that Jim and I are now primordial ooze and we’re going back to where we came from so I don’t think I’ll be home for a while…

By Anji Shirai

The World B-boy Masters Championships (R-16) is a series of competitions where world-class B-boy crews (selected by the International B-boy Association) compete for the title of best crew. Starting in 2007 as an experimental performance event, the program has continued to gain international participation, with this year’s competition in Seoul marking R-16’s fourth anniversary.

By Gabriel Sylvian with Iwazaru

Last year, in honor of the twentieth anniversary of poet Gi Hyeong-do’s death (1960-1989), a collection of writings on Gi’s life, art and legacy was published by Munhakgwa jiseongsa, including essays by several who knew Gi personally: poets, friends, and colleagues. Not surprisingly, the words “gay” or “homosexual” make no appearance in the book’s 476 pages. Then again, one might say, neither do those words appear in any of Gi’s own writings. Does this absence justify the continuing taboo on discussions of Gi’s sexuality? Do attempts to recuperate a voice from pre-LGBT Korean history (pre-1990s) for a present-day LGBT politics make any sense? More

By Justin Thoreau

A half hour after we’d downed some slices of “happy” pizza, Jim and I found ourselves at the market in Siem Reap.

“You feel anything yet?” Jim asked me.

“Maybe, I can’t really tell,” I responded. “Give it another ten minutes.”

We were waiting for the worm to turn. With the sheer force of will we tried to summon the high, as if pure mental concentration would stoke the green flecks in our stomachs to life. Ten minutes passed, then twenty, still nothing. “I think we’ve been got,” I said, “like junior high kids purchasing a bag of Oregano. Smoke this and it will really get you out of your body.”

By Lee Scott

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by Finbarr Birmingham
Maybe it’s because I’m Irish (neither North nor South qualified), or maybe it’s because the quality of the football on show has been so piss poor, but the previous sentiment rings particularly true for 2010’s edition. This has been the most tedious World Cup in living memory. Granted, it has improved slightly as it’s gone on, but at the beginning, it was less like pulling teeth, more like having your legs ripped off by a giant, vengeful spider.

By Iwazaru

“GOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAL!” or NOT.
Late in the first half of its second-round game with Germany, England was behind 2-1 when Frank Lampard blasted a shot off the crossbar. The ball came down at least a foot inside the goal line, but referee Jorge Larrionda (now booted from the Cup just like England) called for play to continue. Replays (a tool rejected by Fifa so far) confirmed the ball was across the line in another embarrassing incident for the game.

By Lee Scott

In part one, I briefly described my (and my wife’s) experience with fertility treatment here in South Korea. It is my belief that my wife and I would never have conceived a child by natural means. Because of this fact, there is a school of thought that tells us that means that we should not have had a child. Of course, that doesn’t take into consideration alternative means of raising children—adoption, for example.

My wife and I talked about the possibility of adopting a baby; in Korea, it is highly unusual. Koreans have a very conservative view about biological relationships between parents and children.

By Andy Morris
In case you’ve been hiding in a cave for the last eight years, in 2002 Korea and Japan co-hosted the World Cup. Such a decision was surprising—no nation had co-hosted before—but what was more surprising was the performance of the national team. They powered through the groups, the knockouts and the quarter finals before losing to Germany in the semis. Now, some cynical people think that FIFA were lenient on the Taeguk Warriors because they were a host country. However, I’m a more optimistic person—I truly believe it was a combination of leniency and dumb luck that pushed the Korea national team through to the semis.

Whatever it may be, during that surrealistic run in 2002 the country was abuzz with nationalist, flag-waving fanaticism, the likes of which one almost certainly could not see in any other country in the world—aside from North Korea (though this was not a staged event for the agitprop machine)—where even procreation skyrocketed like a mini baby boom.

By Edward Elric

On the streets of Si Lom weekend markets are being held, where all the tourist swag and urban bric-a-brac are bought and sold at prices that now seem to be about making up for lost business. In the background lively music drones out and the hope is that people feel secure again and even have their normality back. I don’t mean to sound cynical as I’m overjoyed to be able to walk the streets again without worry about the army and the bullets. During the trouble I couldn’t get much further than my local 7/11…

This concert will raise funds for two non-profit organizations (NPOs), 꿈을키우는집, an orphanage in Suwon, and 우리집, a North Korean refugee center in Ansan.

꿈을키우는집 (Suwon) houses 98 children with limited access to native English teachers. 우리집 (Ansan) houses 10 children and sponsors 7 university students without access to English teachers and volunteers.

Representatives from both NPOs will attend the event.

ROK Concert-Fundraiser: Bands Battle with Molotov Vibrations

By Lee Scott

I love movies. I know a lot of people love movies, and I wouldn’t say that I’m any kind of special aficionado, but others might say that. I do tend to think about movies a lot, and I enjoy thinking about dialogue and recalling particularly favorite scenes. Sometimes, I have these little situations that remind me of situations that might happen in a movie, but I’m relatively boring, so those are few and far between. Here is a little anecdote, and you can tell me if you agree that it could have sprung from some “screw-ball” comedy—of errors? Possibly.

By Sue Rissberger

During the past few months as I’ve been delving into my own treasure chest of personal questions, I’ve asked myself, what if? What if I had the opportunity to meet my birth parents? I’m here, in Korea, there is no easier place in which to pursue a search and no better time. I’d recently been in contact at the beginning of the year with the agency in which my parents arranged my adoption to inquire about visa changes. They mentioned, “If you’d like to visit the foster home at some point, please let us know and we can look into whether it’s possible.” I cogitated on this for awhile. Months, in fact. While the opportunity seemed to present itself, I didn’t want to take it just for its availability.

By John Kay
Night on a hard wooden floor and mosquitoes on a mission. The nuns up and about the whole night reciting sutras and praying and burning incense. In the morning they shaved his head. In the small courtyard, the pudgy-faced young monk, now nun, who yesterday had a bucket, today held a razor. For a split second Oh panicked as he looked at the hand holding the razor, then reason took hold. Slowly with the razor she scraped clean every inch of his wizened scalp. Then he was given a set of clothes both grey and baggy.

By Iwazaru
Now that both Koreas have presented their cases to the United Nations Security Council regarding the sinking of the Cheonan, it is time to see if any kind of consensus and consequences will follow, though it already seems unlikely that it will matter.

North Korea, in typical form, threatened that its response to any punishment meted out by the UNSC “will be carried out by our military forces.” It continues to claim that it had nothing to do with the sinking and that the whole thing is “a complete fabrication from A to Z.”

Even the North’s ambassador to the United Nations, Sin Son-ho, oddly offered that he would lose his job if the UN weighs in favor of the South.

Actors Without Bard’ers Presents: Julius Caesar: Condensed. A selection of scenes from Julius Caesar, as well as a collection of Shakespeare’s sonnets.

**FREE PERFORMANCE**  presented by AwoB at Sindorim’s open air amphitheater.
When: Sunday June 20 6:00pm–Where: Sindorim Station (line 1 or 2) exit 2.  After you exit, do a short U-turn to your right.  The amphitheater will be straight ahead.