As virtual parties become the new normal and families opt to celebrate the holidays at a safe distance, why not gift a matching meal to your loved ones and indulge together on Zoom? Or, surprise them with sweet treats and share the experience together over a virtual game of Scrabble or Code Names. Here is my…
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…
South Korea has one of the highest suicide rates in the world, much of which is attributed to intense social pressures. Director Yoon Ga-eun’s debut feature film shows childhood isn’t so simple. Before we see them, we hear them: “Rock, scissors, paper. Rock, scissors, paper,” the soft thump of fists against palms as children pick…
Blackpink’s own original documentary film is now available to stream on Netflix! The film follows each member’s journey from their very beginning pre-training days all the way to their universal star status success today. The much anticipated film promises a humanizing glimpse at the tradeoffs made to achieve success, which includes a training program that…
The Walker Art Center hosts Director Bong Joon Ho interview two days after historic Oscar win. When Parasite won six Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director earlier this year, I thought we were doomed. Of course I loved the film and was thrilled about the Oscar coup for Director Bong, and for Korea,…
From figuring out first love to finding your way at college, the coming-of-age story is a TV drama staple. Whether you’d prefer to binge-watch dystopian high school romance “Love Alarm” or slice-of-life comedy “Hello My Twenties”, there’s something here for every K-drama fan. Many of these shows delve into the challenges young people face today,…
As you may have noticed on Korean dramas these days, Koreans have been working out! During my 3 years of living in Korea back in the 90s, I was struck by the Korean focus on ‘wellness’, but never saw men or women with the kind of muscles that looked like they spent much time in…
When our friends asked us to join a pickleball league back in May, I had never before heard of such a sport. Now just three months later, and no end to the pandemic in sight, I’m convinced this is all around the best sport to be playing right now and wonder who in the world…
Like most of you, I am holed up with my family, quarantined, isolated, missing man time. I’m missing 2:00 am kimchee jjigae with my boys in Koreatown after a night of drunken karaoke where we had just spent the last two hours singing love songs to each other because the wives had left at midnight.…
“The answer is on YouTube, where the Korean Film Archive (kofa) maintains a channel of nearly two hundred movies, from the nineteen-thirties through the end of the twentieth century, all free to watch and with English subtitles available.“ Americans are attuned to Korean film like never before. The awakening came with the dominance of this past…