The Korea Times

The Korean president's foreign wife

Who gets to be called Korean was the subject of one of my recent pieces. And it feels like a powerfully modern topic, with globalization, multicultural families, returning adoptees, visible North Korean defectors, and many more people from all walks of life making a claim for being part of the collective Korean identity known as “woori.” We saw the German-born Jens Castrop representing the Korean national football team at the World Cup this year, though his inclusion was largely overshadowed by the fallout that has followed the rather disastrous campaign and investigations into former coach Hong Myung-bo. But go back to the start of the Republic of Korea, 78 years ago, and the country’s first first lady was a white woman from Austria who claimed Korean citizenship and wore hanbok. It’s outrageous to think that a Korean president today might have a “foreign” wife. It simply wouldn’t be allowed, I don’t think. Even the idea of a president spending an extended time abroad might be too much for people to take. Maybe that’s why so little is known about Francesca Donner-Rhe

Aug 1, 2026By David A. Tizzard

Opinion

How NewJeans stole London's underground

I must confess, I probably couldn’t name all the members of NewJeans. And if the members were scattered amongst a sea of contemporary female K-pop idols, I probably wouldn’t be able to pick them out of a lineup. But that doesn’t really matter for me. I’ve long explored K-pop for the music. I observe the trends. Study the songwriters and producers. Delve into how everything actually gets made. I like putting respect on Kenzie and teaching my students that the K in K-pop might just as well stand for her name rather than Korea. I love uncovering Teddy Park and G-Dragon’s role in shaping the most influential generation on K-pop. How rather than being an underdog, Bang Si-hyuk actually earned his spurs as "Hitman Bang" working with JYP on the Wonder Girls and helping them become the first K-pop group on Billboard. When I listen to K-pop to understand what’s happening, I will often search for playlists and mixes rather than the catalogue of one artist. House is generally my go-to and, for that reason, recent K-pop has been pretty good to me as many of the current acts are leaning

Jul 25, 2026By David A. Tizzard

Opinion

Who gets to be called 'us' in modern Korea?

I recently had to serve as the MC for an important event, placed on stage in front of a large crowd of important Korean people. As we began, everyone was asked to stand, face the Korean flag, and sing the national anthem. With hundreds of eyes on me, I was faced with a question: Do I put my hand on my heart like every other Korean in the room? Or does my foreignness exclude me from that? I had but seconds to decide. It wasn't really about etiquette. It was about whether I was expected to perform belonging or acknowledge exclusion. Korean people will often jokingly remark that I’m more Korean than them. It happens so often that I’m sure anyone with a reasonable grasp of Korean will have experienced it, too. It happens when I’m wearing my Korean football top, drinking sanghwacha, lecturing on Korean history and culture, and so on. They say it in jest but also with feeling and respect. And it’s okay because we both know that what they say is not really true. It’s like when a tourist stumbles through ordering a coffee and the owners smile and compliment them on speaking Korean s

Jul 19, 2026By David A. Tizzard

Who gets to be called 'us' in modern Korea?

Opinion

The subversive optimism of 'Castaway on the Moon'

Contemporary Korean cinema and dramas have become synonymous with a certain brand of high-octane bleakness. Color-graded trauma porn, 4K nightmares about gapjil, psychological torture, zombies, rape and an omnipresent sense of societal rot. Then, there is Lee Hae-jun’s "Castaway on the Moon (2009)." To watch it is to experience friction against modernity. You will be immediately struck by the wonderful blues and greens. The color and cinematography by Kim Byung-seo is fantastic. As is Jung Jae-young’s face, which gives you fear, disbelief, happiness and boredom all perfectly. But most importantly, I love that it is a film that refuses to treat mental illness as a commodified set-piece. It doesn’t want to you suffer. It wants you to heal. It dares to approach the fragility of the human condition with color, jazz, humor and, perhaps most radically, a genuine empathy that warms the heart without ever becoming marshmallow-sticky. It is a masterpiece of gentle subversion — the religious metaphors and social criticism stand alongside the numerous poop jokes. It tells you that boredom

Jul 13, 2026By David A. Tizzard

The subversive optimism of 'Castaway on the Moon'

Opinion

The Korean dystopia is a Western coping mechanism

Journalists love to get Korea wrong. Some are paid to share explosive takes that feed into the subsconscoius orientalist views of the wider world; others just do it for the social media clout. And you only realize how wrong they are when you get off the internet and spend an afternoon in Sokcho, Daegu, or Chuncheon. For anyone that does this, something becomes immediately apparent. Korea isn’t actually that bad. (Or great). The people get along. The kids go to school. The young people date. And everyone drinks ice americano. There is a weird sensation that comes from watching someone deliver a sociological autopsy of a nation in a 14-minute YouTube video essay. Perhaps it’s just the new era where the average internet user is operating under the delusion that a Netflix subscription is functionally equivalent to a PhD. However it arises, the narrative they’ve constructed is a sort of paint-by-numbers cyberpunk dystopia. The chaebol function as overlords, capitalism has been cranked up to some terminal level of suffering, and joy is lowkey against the law. Every Korean male is a to

Jul 4, 2026By David A. Tizzard

The Korean dystopia is a Western coping mechanism

Opinion

Latte Stage Capitalism

To talk about the café economy in Seoul is to talk about an architecture of disappointment. A noisy and rumbunctious ever-moving organism of tents, ajumma, toasts, street hawkers, and fake goods has been usurped by air-conditioned coffee shops, all playing the same music, offering the same drinks, and providing the same service. (Admittedly, however, only one of them has recently been forced to issue a groveling apology for not knowing anything about Korean history or, perhaps, knowing too much about Korean history). Latte is horse Korean people are often traditionally associated with tea. My friend Brother Anthony has written books on the subject and proudly offers anyone who visits his office to drink from a wonderfully small cup as he creates concoctions of herbal goodness. And we’re not talking the British kind of “white with two sugars please, darling.” Korean tea is a rainbow of flavors. The southern regions of Boseong and Jeju produce the famous green tea. Yuja tea is made with citron and honey and always given to those with a cold. Boricha (barley tea) is a daily herbal r

Jun 27, 2026By David A. Tizzard

Opinion

Can plastic surgery hide national history?

I’ve spent over two decades living here and seen just how good Korea is at the glow-up. It’s a nation that loves looksmaxxing. Things get shiny. Polished. Airbrushed and tucked. From celebrities’ faces to citizens’ ID cards, everything gets cleaned. Including the history. The industries of memory have been working on the national identity with the same clinical precision as is applied to noses and eyelids. Korea remembers itself primarily as a victim while forgetting the moments when it exercised power over others. On June 23, 1965, South Korea struck an agreement with Washington to send its troops into Vietnam. They contributed approximately 325,000 troops to the Vietnam War, the second largest foreign military contributor in the conflict. In doing so, they earned an estimated $5 billion dollars. The Miracle on the Han River, the hardworking Koreans in the textile factors, fields, and foreign lands is true. But it would not have likely happened without war. A war that created the country. A war that divided the country. A war that funded the country. All of them demarcated as

Jun 20, 2026By David A. Tizzard

Can plastic surgery hide national history?

Opinion

The tiny invisible Korean bow

There’s a bow in Korea that’s so small I’m sure it’s probably imperceptible to most foreigners. If you don’t know it’s happening you won’t be able to see it. It happens in a fraction of a second and involves the head dropping but a couple of millimeters. (Actually most of the time the head seems to go forward, horizontally from the neck across the shoulder blades, rather than down). If you pay attention most of the normal bowing protocol still applies in that the eyes shift down and the eyebrows raise slightly. Some, the braver and bolder in society, will maintain eye contact during all of this however. This bow, this tiny invisible Korean bow, doesn’t really have a specific name. And it doesn’t have a name for the wonderfully paradoxical reason that it’s so damn ubiquitous. It’s literally everywhere. And like the story of the fish who don’t know what water is or how I had to try and come up with a term for the Korean culture or leaving phones and laptops on tables to mark space, the things which most fill our daily lives are often the least described. The tiny

Jun 6, 2026By David A. Tizzard

Opinion

Because Trump dropped bombs, the Korean government bought me my bananas

I’m now at the stage where I’ve been living and working in Korea longer than many of my university students have been alive. I remember the toilets that were little more than holes in the ground. The aggressive street-level sounds of men hawking bootleg DVDs and low-sheen neckties from folding tables. The pachinko parlors that lined Jongno. The high-temperature public anxieties of mad cow protests. Individual cigarettes sold illegally out of cardboard boxes at local pharmacies. And the constant wet throat-clearing soundtrack of old Seoul. My god, the spitting. Much has changed since then. I’ve developed a great burning love for the people and the culture. I throw myself at it – the history, the music, the social concepts, the politics, the art, the food, and the language. While I often give my university lectures in English, I spend my days talking to people in Korean. Discovering the nuances and battling through my own difficulties with the grammar and the vocabulary. Even when uttering a simple hello or thank you, people now look at me with an eye raised: “Where are you fr

May 30, 2026By David A. Tizzard

Because Trump dropped bombs, the Korean government bought me my bananas

Opinion

Searching for the Korean Buddha

On Monday, the people of Korea get a national holiday. No work. No school. No rush hour traffic and packed subways as people scramble to their offices. Just a nice long weekend as the weather turns beautiful. Sun. Mountains. And iced-coffee. And it’s all for Buddha’s Birthday — or more literally “Bucheonim osin nal” meaning "the day when the Buddha came." During my time here I’ve come to understand how Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism differ from the monotheisms back home. With things like Christianity and Islam, there’s a god. And you believe in that god. People of course have varying degrees of belief and this waxes and wanes during their life. But ultimately, someone’s association with the religion is defined by their belief. It creates a dichotomy. You either believe or you don’t. You can’t really be a Christian and a Muslim because that would be to believe in two different stories and your belief in one would go some way to discredit your belief in the other (generally, of course). But East Asian worldviews are more like a philosophy than a religion. They fun

May 23, 2026By David A. Tizzard

David A. Tizzard

Read more

The Korean president's foreign wife

How NewJeans stole London's underground

Who gets to be called 'us' in modern Korea?

The subversive optimism of 'Castaway on the Moon'

The Korean dystopia is a Western coping mechanism

Latte Stage Capitalism

Can plastic surgery hide national history?

The tiny invisible Korean bow

Because Trump dropped bombs, the Korean government bought me my bananas

Searching for the Korean Buddha

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