The Korea Times

Let's overcome this 'post-pandemic crisis'

By Lee Eung-taeWhen the outdoor mask mandate was fully lifted, I felt we were finally at the end of a tunnel. This pandemic has brought us tremendous pain and tragedy. It changed our culture completely in some ways. It has altered the way we work, socialize and relate to our neighborhoods and communities. Some of these changes have by now already become deeply engrained in our daily lives. Social distancing became our way of life, so we talk with others as far away from them as possible. Carrying masks is a priority whenever we go outside. So even after the lifting of the outdoor mask mandate, I am hesitant to abandon my mask.Culture is said to be like the air we breathe. We only notice it when it's gone. So I feel I have forgotten many aspects of daily life as it was before the pandemic. Even if we are somehow able to get rid of COVID-19 entirely, it will be hard to return to pre-pandemic ways. Today, we prefer to buy products through online shopping malls rather than in offline stores. We are so used to online chatting that we are often reluctant to join live meetings except for fa

Oct 10, 2022By Kim Ji-soo

Let's overcome this 'post-pandemic crisis'

Companies

'Menoelle' to be available throughout Europe by 2025: Schmick

Patrick Schmick, right, CEO of PhytoLife Pharma, poses with Dr. Jalid Sehouli, director of Gynecology at Charite Hospital Berlin, at Expopharm 2022. / Courtesy of Naturalendo TechBy Sah Dong-seokSales of Naturalendo Tech's “Menoelle,” a health functional food for menopausal women sourced from EstroG-100, have spiked in Europe since its launch there in 2019. The success has been verified from a recent interview with Patrick Schmick, CEO of PhytoLife Pharma, a Berlin-based company marketing Naturalendo Tech's products of the Menoelle brand in Europe.“The key to success is the mix of emotional marketing concepts, strong end consumer campaigns and the close cooperation with doctors and pharmacists,” said Schmick, who is also co-founder and part of the management of the Korean-based NaturaLife Asia Group. He says Naturalendo Tech's products are successfully sold throughout Germany under the Menoelle brand via pharmacies, drugstores and pharmaceutical online retailers. “Since last year, Menoelle has also been offered in the Netherlands, Austria and Switzerland

Oct 6, 2022By Kim Ji-soo

'Menoelle' to be available throughout Europe by 2025: Schmick

Travel & Food

Former hair designer shares life, art at L'art de la vie

The huge rock that forms the topography at the center of L'art de la vie complex in Icheon, Gyeonggi Province. Courtesy of L'art de la vieBy Kim Ji-sooICHEON, Gyeonggi Province ― Sitting for lunch at L'art de la vie in eastern Gyeonggi, one was left envying the trees that were “cut and designed” by retired hair designer Lee Sang-il. The big pine trees were neatly trimmed with just a little touch of flair ― a signature trait that the former hair designer used to demonstrate on his client's hairstyles.Then the envy grows when you realize that this person has created a world of his own. L'art de la vie is Lee's and his wife's residence, but also an open museum. Sprawling for over 3,300 square meters here amid the golf clubs and rice fields, the compound offers 11 spaces for accommodation, an art gallery, restaurants, a bakery, an art studio and a convention center. He bought the land 17 years ago before his retirement. When he retired in 2012 after 3 years as a top hair designer, to the despair of his clients, including this writer, he turned to build the cultural space comp

Jun 30, 2022By Kim Ji-soo

Opinion

Elon, the Twitter bodhisattva

By Jason LimThe legend of Elon Musk has only gotten bigger in recent days with his purchase of Twitter for $44 billion. What's really interesting about this purchase is that Musk doesn't do things for the sake of doing the thing. He does things for the sake of doing the vision. What I mean is that he established Tesla not to make electric cars but to use electric cars as a means to “accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy.” It says so on Tesla's webpage: “Today, Tesla builds not only all-electric vehicles but also infinitely scalable clean energy generation and storage products. Tesla believes the faster the world stops relying on fossil fuels and moves towards a zero-emission future, the better.” Basically, he's built an electric car company to change the ingrained habit of how we use energy. Similarly, SpaceX is not about making reusable rockets to bring down the cost of rocket launches. As Musk is quoted on the webpage, it's about, “You want to wake up in the morning and think the future is going to be great ― and that's what being a s

May 1, 2022By Kim Ji-soo

Opinion

Longing for normalcy

By Kim Ji-sooAs the world enters a third year of the COVID-19 pandemic, most of us have had our run-ins, from mild to severe to even fatal with the rampant coronavirus. The shock when COVID-19 first surfaced and spread; the angst when you went for your first PCR test; the joy when the vaccines rolled out; the fatigue of the pandemic prolonging; and the agony of people dying for lack of access to proper treatment, have all weighed heavily on people around the world. In addition, there was the sense of resignation when the Omicron variant turned out not to be a “Christmas gift” of peaking early as it did in South Africa and then tapering off, but continued its inexorable spread.During the past two years, much of the coverage of the pandemic had been about the numbers, the daily infections, severe cases and death tolls. But when Korea eased COVID restrictions in November, and the numbers then quickly soared into the 7,000s and the number of critically-ill patients recorded in the 1,000s, photos of medical staff in ICUS appeared more frequently. Then for me, COVID-19 struck c

Jan 5, 2022By Kim Ji-soo

Opinion

The taste of 'minari'

By Kim Ji-soo As the day of the 93rd Academy Awards Ceremony (April 26, 9 a.m. KST) approaches, there is heightened awareness of whether film “Minari” by the Korean American director, Lee Isaac Chung, will grab awards based on six nominations, including one for veteran Korean actress Youn Yuh-jung. Youn was nominated in the category of Best Supporting Actress, based on her heart-warming portrayal of the character of the grandmother in the film.In the movie, the plant known as “minari” in Korean, is planted by the grandmother, Soonja, as she adjusts to life in Arkansas, the United States. As many already know, the Korean American director has said that the movie is loosely based on his own family's story.In the film Youn shares a number of scenes with the character of her grandson at a creek bed she identifies as ideal for growing minari. The plant is one of the things through which they bond with one another and even sing together about it. She tells him that while he has been living in America, he hasn't had the chance to taste the vegetable. So she attempts

Apr 21, 2021By Kim Ji-soo

Politics

Hospital supplies and medicine for Laos

Figure 1 Korea Love Sharing Community Chairman Lee Eun-deok, left in front row, poses with Second Secretary Kham Ai Phoutthachit of the Laos Embassy in Seoul and others including corporate sponsors Choi Seong-ho of Kyungwoo System before sending $850,000 worth of medicine, and hospital beds to Laos, April 7. / Courtesy of Korea Love Sharing CommunityKorea Love Sharing Community Chairman Lee Eun-deok, left in front row, poses with Second Secretary Kham Ai Phoutthachit of the Laos Embassy in Seoul and others including corporate sponsors Choi Seong-ho of Kyungwoo System before sending $850,000 worth of medicine, and hospital beds to Laos, April 7. / Courtesy of Korea Love Sharing Community

Apr 13, 2021By Kim Ji-soo

Opinion

Deepening asymmetry between Korea, China

By Lee Seong-hyon I once received an apology from a Chinese woman who was enrolled in an MBA course at Tsinghua University, the alma mater of Chinese President Xi Jinping. After learning that she was from Guangdong Province, I mentioned that Wang Yang, then-Guangdong's party secretary, had recently visited Korea. I also said that there would be a Korea-China summit soon. It was a gesture to build rapport with her.The response from the Chinese woman was something unexpected. "Why would our leader go to a small country (xiao guo) like Korea? I think you heard it wrong.” What started as a casual conversation at a coffee shop in the College Boulevard in Beijing just ended there.Guangdong ranks first in GDP in China. In 2018, the province's GDP was already close to Korea's total GDP. The fact that the economic size of one Chinese province is similar to that of all of South Korea as a nation, warrants some soul-searching on the part of South Korea, given its symbolism in bilateral relations.At the time of establishing diplomatic relations in 1992, South Korea's economy was about equ

Feb 16, 2021By Kim Ji-soo

Deepening asymmetry between Korea, China

Opinion

The West's disappointing double standards

By Sun XiMore than a decade ago, when I came from China to study in the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, two political terminologies were deeply laid the seeds in my mind. One was the fantastic “human rights,” and another was the disgraceful “double standards”.I still vividly remember my then-Dean Kishore Mahbubani, an internationally renowned thinker and the former president of the United Nations Security Council, repeatedly shared his dedicated collections of the West's double standards on human rights, including numerous cases from the Middle East, Asia, Latin America and Africa. In his opinion, the reason behind such double standards was that “the West will take a moral stand only when its fundamental interest is not involved.” That has unfortunately been the hard truth.Today, I would like to add some new cases involving my homeland China to Dean Mahbubani's long list. The latest one is about two cartoons.This November, China was asked by Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison to apologize because of a digital illustration depicting

Dec 17, 2020By Kim Ji-soo

Politics

Won makes 'green' case for presidency

Governor Won Hee-ryong of Jeju Special Self-Governing Province holds a press conference near Mount Songak in Seogwipo in this Oct. 25 file photo, vowing to keep Jeju Island clean and green for the next generation. Courtesy of Jeju Special Self-Governing ProvinceTwo-term governor ‘s agenda centers around ‘reasonableness,’ defying Korea’s politics as usual By Kim Ji-sooJEJU ISLAND ― The seas off this southern island were tranquil Monday, as Seoul and the larger metropolitan area were dealing with a chilling rise in the number of coronavirus infections. It is exactly for that tranquility and the clean green environment that many pandemic-fatigued people still travel to the southern island to seek solace. If anything, the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the island's natural environment. Rising on that platform is its governor Won Hee-ryong, the governor who has declared his intent to run in the 2022 presidential election. As is the tradition in Korean politics, presidential hopefuls come to the fore around the fourth year of the incumbent administration's s

Dec 16, 2020By Kim Ji-soo

INTERVIEW Jeju Governor has 2023 world climate conference in crosshairs

Kim Ji-soo

Read more

Let's overcome this 'post-pandemic crisis'

'Menoelle' to be available throughout Europe by 2025: Schmick

Former hair designer shares life, art at L'art de la vie

Elon, the Twitter bodhisattva

Longing for normalcy

The taste of 'minari'

Hospital supplies and medicine for Laos

Deepening asymmetry between Korea, China

The West's disappointing double standards

Won makes 'green' case for presidency

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