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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..