A nation centered on people and nature co-existing, based on the ideas of a Mr. Minn Byeong-do back in the 60s, has transformed a once desolate island into a very prosperous endeavor. At only 63 kilometers from Seoul and accessible via a shuttle bus from Insa-dong or Jamsil, the subway, a normal bus from East Seoul Terminal or car it’s an easy day or weekend trip away from the city. After a ...

Getting into the spring flower madness that takes over Korea, a group of friends and I headed out to Icheon this past weekend to take advantage of the flowering Sansuyu, Japanese dogwood trees, Festival. There is a village in Icheon with “thousands of Japanese cornel trees that are 100 to 500 years old” according to their brochure. Icheon is a perfect destination for a day trip awa ...

Take two. I’m going through the process to get my F6 visa here in Korea. Up until this point, I had gathered my passport, my Korean marriage certificate and through a slight debacle hadn’t yet gotten it translated, notarized and authenticated at the US embassy. So, here we are… After going home to the States and coming back at the end of January, I wrote the addresses of th ...

After two wedding ceremonies and a month vacation in the States, we finally made it back to Korea and after a week of resting from the vacation got our rears in gear to get everything filed for the F6 visa. We had started the process a few months ago, but after Jae-oo inadvertently made me make an uneccessary trip to the American Embassy I pushed everything aside until we were definitely ready t ...

“I have a curious regard for the history of art. My painting practice is unusual in that, I seek to undermine both the Renaissance perspective and the flatness of Modernism by combing both.” Alternative Space Loop in Hongdae is currently exhibiting a very vibrantly colored display of works by artist Lee Jin Han. It’s a great space for the art and in a location surrounded by ...

Tutankhamun is ending his time in Korea in a couple weeks. The pharoah, unknown to the world prior to the discovery of his tomb in 1922, came to Korea about four months ago. King Tut was born in 1341 BC in the Armana Age and took the thrown from his father pharaoh Akhenaten around 1333 BC when he was still a child and reigned for 9 years. The exhibit, though stocked with reconstructed origi ...

Guinsa is the headquarters of the Cheontae school of Buddhism located just outside of Danyang, South Korea. Cheontae is the Korean version of China’s Tiantai teachings which were brought to Korea and firmly established during the time of Uicheon, a Korean Buddhist monk who was the son of Emperor Munjong of Goryeo, between 1055 and 1101. It had a major impact on Goryeo Buddhism, but then ...

There are two places in Hongdae that offer up one of my favorite meals in Korea, but since I was in Busan last week I got to eat the stuff where it came from. Some years ago I was introduced to dwaejigukbab, or pork stew, and haven’t been able to get enough of it since. This meal, I was told, isn’t generally eaten by girls because the smell can be strong, or foreigners, for the same ...

I arrived in Korea after a month away and immediately, after stopping home to unpack and pack again, took the KTX down to Busan to have my first Lunar New Year with my new Korean family. The Lunar New Year is a major holiday in Korea where families travel long distances to their hometowns to pay respect to their ancestors. This year it fell on January 23. In years previous, this holiday was me ...

The third annual Seoul Lantern festival is lighting up the Cheonggyecheon Stream once again with lanterns depicting everything from fish to transformers. This years theme is “Stories of Seoul’s Past through Lanterns”. At the beginning the theme is right out there in the open through a half scaled model of Namdaemun gate that you can walk through and Korean fables through lant ...