South Korea has lived through a series of disasters and tragedies, but the sinking of the Sewol ferry with the loss of over 300 passengers and crew nearly 10 years ago left a lasting mark on Korea's collective psyche. The failure to save hundreds of people trapped in the slowly sinking ship, shown live on TV, and learning that it was another humanmade disaster caused by corruption, incompetence and a chronic insensitivity to safety enraged and saddened South Koreans to the point of what f

On the night of March 26, 2010, an explosion was heard by crew members on a South Korean Navy corvette which had been patrolling off the country’s west coast near Baengnyeong Island in the West Sea. Five minutes later, the 1,200-ton Pohang-class patrol ship named the Cheonan was broken in half, and the rear half sunk into the ocean, killing 46 Navy personnel inside. “I heard a loud bang at 9:22 p.m. that night, with which the ship tilted to the right, and my body was flung up in the

When Alvaro Trigo Maldonado came to South Korea in 2012, he only spoke basic Korean. Having studied Arabic and East Asian studies in Spain, Trigo did a master’s degree in Korean history and culture at the Academy of Korean Studies in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, at the time, and completed a two-year program at the Literature Translation Institute of Korea. He then did his Ph.D. back in Spain, writing a thesis on Korean novelist Chae Man-sik (1902-1950), and is now teaching Korean literatur

The average annual cost of sending a child to what is called an autonomous private high school in South Korea amounted to 8.62 million won ($6,649) last year, data released by an opposition lawmaker on Sunday showed. The total expenses including tuition, admission fees, room and board and after-school program fees for the most expensive autonomous private high school came to over 30 million won per student, Rep. Lee Eun-joo of the Justice Party said, citing data she received from the Ministry of

Joining the rush for half-priced king crabs, the price of imported snow crabs has also plunged as US and European bans on Russian seafood imports, together with declining consumption in China, have led to increased supply here. According to local seafood sales platform The Pirates on Thursday, the average price of Russian snow crabs has dropped to 57,200 won per kilogram, down 23.7 percent from a high of 75,000 won on Sep. 29. The online exclusive sale price has more than halved compared to two

HERALD INTERVIEW Yale University was the only Ivy League school that didn’t have a Korean studies faculty member, other than Korean language lecturers, until 2018, when it hired Kim Hwan-soo as a professor of religious studies. Kim, a Buddhist monk and professor of Korean Buddhism and culture, received his doctorate in the colonial history of Korean and Japanese Buddhism from Harvard University and previously taught at Duke University. “Students at Yale had called for a Korean stud

A man has been booked for child abuse after security footage showed him pushing a small child on a swing too hard, causing her to fall off, suffering abrasions. The man was her father, apparently angered after a fight with his wife, Channel A reported Monday evening. A neighbor who saw them at a playground of an apartment complex in Gangseo-gu, Seoul, on Oct. 24 reported the incident to the police. In the footage broadcast by the cable network, the toddler is shown sitting on a swing alone. A

LOS ANGELES -- Stephanie Baldonado first came across Korean food in 2006 during her deployment at a US military hospital in Afghanistan, where she shared a camp with counterparts from the Korean military. She instantly fell in love with it. Years later, her daughter Marlene “fully immersed” herself into the world of K-pop and Korean dramas. Marlene is the captain of a K-pop dance group at San Diego State University. The mother and daughter are both taking online Korean language lesso

NEW YORK -- Portrayals of shaman rituals or shrines in Korean dramas often give off a spooky or menacing vibe. But 22-year-old Laurel Kendall felt none of that when she first encountered a shaman ritual, or “gut,” in the early 1970s in rural Korea. “I was struck by how vibrant, colorful and exciting it was. The place was packed, and it was of course very intense,” the adjunct professor of anthropology at Columbia University and curator of Asian ethnographic collections at

NEW HAVEN, Connecticut -- Grace Kao got into BTS and K-pop by accident. In April 2019, the sociology professor at Yale University was deeply impressed when she saw the Korean boy band on Saturday Night Live, a TV show that she had watched since she was a child. “SNL was around from the ’70s. I always remembered the musical guests, and they never had Asians. I really enjoyed the performance by BTS, and Googled them a bit,” Kao said in an interview with The Korea Herald at her of

The more time high school students spent talking with their parents, the more likely they were to study medicine, education, art, music or physical education in college, a study showed. According to an analysis of a state-funded inquiry that tracked 1,297 students who were in their second year of high school in 2016, the more conversations they had with their parents about school and majors, the higher the probability of them going to college and choosing those majors over humanities, social a

As an increasing number of Koreans are ditching traditional rituals to honor their ancestors, an authority on the rites on Thursday said it is OK to put fried chicken and ramen on the jesa table. A committee that settles ceremonial issues under the Confucian educational institute Sung Kyun Kwan reduced the minimum number of items on the jesa table from the previous 15 to eight in its latest set of guidelines meant to simplify the jesa menu. Following up on its recommendation last year that jeon

LOS ANGELES -- A Volvo Trucks commercial featuring actor Jean-Claude Van Damme doing the splits, stretching his legs between two reversing trucks with Enya’s “Only Time” playing in the background, is shown to a classroom full of nearly 100 undergraduates at UCLA. Professor Ju Hui Judy Han asks the students what are the first words that come to their minds as they watch the clip. Some say “masculinity” while others mention “physical ability,” “contr

LOS ANGELES -- John Duncan, a historian and former director of the UCLA Center for Korean Studies, is one of the most admired contributors to the growth of Korean studies in the US. Over the 30 years he taught at UCLA until 2019, he researched and wrote about mainly the Joseon era, trained a generation of Korean studies scholars and built bridges between academics in the US and Korea. In honor of his contributions to the study of Korea, he received the Korea Foundation Award in 2009 and the Yong

HERALD INTERVIEW Clark Sorensen, who just retired as professor in June from the University of Washington, won this year’s Korea Foundation (KF) Award last month in recognition of his contributions to Korean studies over the past 25 years. As professor of international studies at the university’s Jackson School of International Studies since 1992, Sorensen has taught a number of courses on Korea such as “Task Force: Rethinking US Military Bases in Japan and Korea,” &ldqu

Jeon Cheong-jo, the con artist whose bizarre stories shook up South Korea this week, had used photographs of himself surrounded by bodyguards to trick his victims into believing that he belonged to a high-profile chaebol family, a local district councilor told The Korea Herald on Friday. Two days after Olympic fencing medalist Nam Hyun-hee announced on Monday that she would marry Jeon in January, a local celebrity news outlet disclosed court verdicts that showed Jeon had been sentenced to jail t

About 20 years ago, a soft-spoken, bespectacled man with a scarf around his neck showed the world how spellbinding South Korean dramas can be. “Winter Sonata,” a television drama series starring Bae Yong-joon and Choi Ji-woo, dazzled countless Japanese women, some 6,000 of whom gathered at the Tokyo airport to catch a glimpse of Bae in November 2004. Some of them -- mostly aged 43 to 65 -- were even injured while pushing through the crowds to get a better view of the actor, whom they

The rise of Korean as a popular choice among foreign language learners around the world has become common knowledge in recent years, but the working conditions of those who teach it are far from encouraging. Korean language instructors’ wages depend on the country and the institution where they are working, but their terms of employment in Korea are generally significantly below those of average workers. They are often not entitled to paid leave, maternity or paternity leave, basic insuran

Nestled in the foothills of Seongnam, just southeast of Seoul, the Academy of Korean Studies has researched Korean culture and traditions, and fostered scholars of Korean studies from around the world since 1978. The AKS also supports research by Korean studies academics from overseas, holds international academic seminars and publishes journals in English. But with the recent growth of Korean studies abroad, the time has come to take the academy’s international exchanges to the next lev

On the morning of June 13, 2000, then-President Kim Dae-jung flew to Pyongyang on a route that had not been used for 55 years. His arrival at Sunan Airport in Pyongyang for the first-ever inter-Korean summit since the 1950-53 Korean War was televised worldwide. "Whether (North Korean leader) Kim Jong-il would show up or not at the airport was the talk of the town,” recalled Choi Sung-jin, a former reporter and editor of The Korea Herald. When he did appear, the subsequent scene of