NAPABA has established pro bono legal resources to ensure that local communities have legal resources to address the most egregious hate-fueled attacks against our community. NAPABA is the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association, an organization of 50,000 Asian Pacific American attorneys, judges, law professors, and law students. Led by their Hate Crimes Task Force,…
As a mother of two young (not yet school-age) boys with the attention spans of a gnat and an exceptional ability to make our house feel twice as small, I have serious reservations about buying them new toys. But I don’t have the same qualms when it comes to books. Our house is cluttered with…
What is Baek Il? The first 100 days, or baek il, of a Korean child’s life used to be a very somber and anxious time as the infant mortality rates in Korea were once alarmingly high due to disease and malnutrition. It was also a time for the mother to recover from the trauma of…
If you are Korean or if you happen to like K Dramas or Kpop, learning Korean can seem like a fun and worthwhile thing to do. However, learning a language is far from easy and a personal online Korean tutor can seem out of reach and expensive. I have tried an exhaustive number of methods…
What is soju? Simply put, soju is a clear, distilled, rice based drink from Korea that has long been the world’s most popular liquor. It’s the No. 1 selling liquor by volume, and sales have only been growing in recent years. In terms of potency, Jinro classic soju is 20% alcohol and falls somewhere in the middle…
In theory, anyone who could pass state examinations had a chance of advancing their station in life. Education is a big deal in Korea. Korean students are known to spend endless hours outside the classroom in tuition centers, supplementing their normal curriculum with extra-curriculars and test preparations. It’s not uncommon for many Korean students to…
In the course of the modern and contemporary history of Korea, some foreigners have made remarkable contributions to our society and culture in different ways by undertaking a wide range of Korean studies and literature. Starting with the 17th century, Dutchman Hendrick Hamel published “Hamel’s Journal and a Description of the Kingdom of Korea 1653-1666”…
So you’ve been going steady with your Korean partner and it’s finally time to meet his or her family over a Korean dinner. You’re nervous because you want to make a good impression and show them that you care about Korean culture. You’ve been practicing your chopstick skills all week but you wonder what else…
August 15 is a very important holiday and historic day for Koreans known as 광복절 (Gwangbokjeol, literally meaning “the day the light returned”). This holiday celebrates the day that the Republic of Korea was established after South Korea was liberated from its occupation from the Japanese colonial rule. Today, we hang Korean flags outside buildings…
While dol ostensibly is a festive party centered around the birthday child, it is larger than that…It is a tribute to the generations who came before me and survived enough birthdays of their own to bring this very moment into life. For Korean parents, there are few events in their child’s life that take on greater significance…