Lifestyle - The Korea Times

Learning to cook Korean food

Cover of the book “Traditional Holiday and Seasonal Korean Cuisine” by Sohn Hong-sook / Courtesy of KwangmoonkakBy Yun Suh-youngIn order to understand a culture, people say learn about its food first. Food carries the culture and history of a country or ethnic group, embedded with tradition and the philosophy of the people.In understanding Korean culture, it may be easier to approach Korean cuisine first.The recently released "Traditional Holiday and Seasonal Korean Cuisine" by Professor Sohn Hong-sook of Soongeui Women's College makes an effort to explain the history and tradition behind Korean cuisine through several of the dishes it introduces.Categorized into traditional holidays and seasons, the book introduces recipes for foods such as "ttoekguk" (rice cake soup) for New Year's Day, "paganghoi" (vegetables rolled in green onion) for April's seasonal food, and "toranguk" (taro soup) for Thanksgiving.The book is in English and is published by Kwangmoonkak. The price is 28,000 won.Here is one recipe from Sohn's book: "Tteokguk" (rice cake soup): A p

Sep 4, 2015

Pursuit of dream beyond Goldman Sachs

Brokerage firm Goldman Sachs building on Broad Street in New York's Financial District/  Korea Times fileThe cover of “A Girl Leaves Dream Job at GoldmanSachs to Follow Her Dream”By Kim Jae-heunCho Yea-eun, 29, a motivational speaker and writer, was once the envy of her friends and people around her. After she graduated from a top university, majoring in French and business administration, Cho found a job in finance. For four years, the writer was the proud child of her parents, making great income, and holding a name card that read “Goldman Sachs.”However, what she appeared to be was different from what she was inside. Cho had no life. From morning to night, with the same take-out lunch every day, the rookie financier constantly checked emails and monitored the stock market. After office hours, she joined her co-workers and boozed it up until late into the night.The same daily office routine continued in Cho’s life until she got fired on the day she marked a year at her first job. It shocked the young businesswomen as the company showed no mercy. T

Aug 28, 2015By Kim Jae-heun

'One Economist's World View': A compilation of Dr. Hwang's weekly columns

By Choi Yearn-hongThe cover of “One Economist’s World View”Dr. Hwang Eui-gak, an economist, retired after a long teaching and research career in Korea, the United States, China and Japan. Also a columnist of the Mirae Hankook Weekly (Future Korea Journal) for the past 10 years, he has compiled his essays into “One Economist’s World View,” a 476-page book. Each of his essays reflect his ideas on various subjects in the changing times, so this book is a reflection of his views of Korea and the world in the past decade. The date of original publication appears at the end of each essay. In addition to being a renowned economist and faculty member at Korea University, he was an eloquent writer and essayist.His economic essays were focused, so they were easy for the general public to read and comprehend. He wrote about South Korea’s economy in the framework of the world economy  in many ways. For example, South Korea’s energy consumption patterns became worrisome with the dwindling energy resources and political and economic crises in th

Aug 28, 2015

'One Economist's World View': A compilation of Dr. Hwang's weekly columns

Chinese character's origin questioned

Cover of novelist Kim Jin-myung’s latest work “Geulja Jeonjaeng (Letter Wars)” / Courtesy of SaeumBy Nam Hyun-wooNovelist Kim Jin-myung’s latest work, “Geulja Jeonjaeng (Letter Wars),” raises a provocative question — where did Chinese characters originate?After it was published in early August, “Letter Wars” quickly climbed the list of the top 10 best-selling books in Korea, proving that Kim is a chart-topping writer here and his stories — mostly focusing on national secrets or hidden bits of Korean history — are entertaining.So is “Letter Wars.” As the author’s previous books did, the book starts with a simple paradox: China claims all Chinese characters (called “hanja” in Korean) were invented by its people, but there are some letters that do not exist in the Chinese system but are actively used in Korea.Before Koreans used “hangeul,” its own alphabet commissioned by King Sejong of the Joseon Kingdom (1392-1910) in 1443, they only wrote in hanja. Thus, the invention of hangeu

Aug 21, 2015

Life lesson from leading manager Nomura

Cover of “Baseball Manager Nomura, The Weak Beat The Strong”Japanese baseball guru Katsuya Nomura/ Courtesy of Book-OceanBy Baek Byung-yeulIt has been six years since Katsuya Nomura retired as manager of the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB), but the 80-old-year is still regarded as one of the most influential men in the baseball-crazed country.Nomura recorded the league’s second-most home runs with 657 during his 25-year-long career as a catcher, and appeared in more than 3,000 games as both a player and a manager, a first in the baseball world.But it is not due to those numbers that he is so respected, rather the fact he has shown a distinctive talent for giving a fresh breath of life to struggling baseball clubs. Looking at his career as a manager, he only had two more wins than he lost, recording 1,565 wins, 76 draws and 1,563 losses while managing 3,204 games. Percentage-wise, he had a 50.03 winning record, but baseball writer Kim Sik believes Nomura’s record is one of the most prestigious feats in the N

Aug 14, 2015

Chung Mong-joon's vision as FIFA presidential candidate

Chung Mong-joon, a former FIFA vice president, speaks during a press conference at the Korea Football Association headquarters in Seoul on June 3. / Korea Times fileMy Challenge, My Passion’ traces tycoon’s journey in football communityBy Nam Hyun-wooMinutes before Chung Mong-joon, the former FIFA vice president, stood in front of reporters to drop the first hint of his bid for the presidency of the world football body two months ago, Chung’s aides hurriedly distributed a book written by the 63-year-old tycoon to the media there, saying it explained how well Chung understands FIFA.Even before recent scandals tarnished the reputations of FIFA and its head Sepp Blatter, Chung, who served as FIFA vice president for 17 years from 1994 to 2011, hurled barbs at the two in his 2011 autobiography, “My Challenge, My Passion.”As he stresses in the introduction to the book, “football taught me the how the world works,” Chung spends a sizable part of this 319-page memoir explaining how he got involved in the sport, why he is at odds with Blatter, and how

Aug 7, 2015

Chung Mong-joon's vision as FIFA presidential candidate

Unearthing forgotten royal women

The book cover of “Biographical Dictionary of Royal Women in Korea” / Courtesy of AKSBy Kwon Mee-yooIn Korean history, women in royal families are often described just as contributors of smoldering enmity with individual ability that goes unnoticed because the history was written from a male-oriented perspective. Even the term "history" has an androcentric notion in it, excluding "herstory."However, women's history has been rediscovered around the globe in the 21st century and Korea is no exception. In accordance with the international society, the Academy of Korean Studies (AKS) has published an encyclopedia of royal women in Korean history dating back to Korea's founding myth some 5,000 years ago.The "Biographical Dictionary of Royal Women in Korea" features 588 women in royal families, from Korea's first kingdom, Gojoseon (2,333-108 B.C.), to the Korean Empire (1897-1910). The range of women included in the book varies from queens and princesses to royal concubines and dowager queen mothers who were honored posthumously.Co-written by six historians, led by Kim Chang-ky

Jul 31, 2015

'Secret Garden' still all the rage

Artwork taken from the coloring book “Secret Garden” are on display at “Book by Book,” a cafe in Sangam-dong, Seoul. / Courtesy of KL Publishing Inc.By Kwon Ji-younThe coloring book craze has yet to lose steam.Since Johanna Basford’s “Secret Garden” was published locally in August 2014, the coloring book sections of bookstores have been teeming with fans of all ages, from teenage girls to middle-aged women. Copies of “Secret Garden” have been flying off the shelves, even more so since singer IU was spotted with one on the KBS drama “The Producers.”As of Thursday, some 300,000 imprints of the unexpected bestseller have sold in 2015, largely to office workers and students who are looking for a hobby that would help them unwind after work or school. “Secret Garden” claims to be an “anti-stress coloring book” after all.“It gets my mind off the stresses I’m under at work,” said Im Eun-yeong, a magazine editor. “When I’m coloring, I don’t think. It really speeds up

Jul 24, 2015

How situation can influence behavior

The cover of “Situations Matter: Understanding How ContextTransforms Your World” / Courtesy of KPI booksBy Yun Suh-youngOne of the common errors people make in their everyday lives is that they tend to look only at the tree in front of them instead of the entire forest. Rather than taking in the context and the environment that influences human behavior, people tend to hastily conclude a person’s personality based on what they see fragmentarily.In “Situations Matter: Understanding How Context Transforms Your World” by Sam Sommers, which was translated into Korean and published in May, the author, who is a psychology professor at Tufts University, intriguingly points out the many factors that people fail to notice about human nature.“People easily overlook how situations influence human nature. The core message of this book is that we tend to conclude too hastily about the nature of human beings,” says Sommers in his book, stressing the importance of how situations play a huge role in determining how we act, speak and think.“This book wi

Jul 17, 2015

Han writes about caring for mother

“I Live With My Mother” by Han Ki-ho, a highly acclaimed literary critic and head of the Korean Publishing Marketing Research Institute; Senior Time Press; 13,000 won / Courtesy of Senior TimeHan Ki-hoBy Chung Ah-youngKorea is an aging society where the population 65 and older has tripled over the past 30 years. The nation faces many challenges to cope adequately with this social dilemma. Taking care of aging parents is a daunting task, forcing children to make huge sacrifices and sometimes take on economic burdens.Han Ki-ho, a highly acclaimed literary critic, renowned for cutting remarks and merciless criticism, reveals how he cared for his mother, who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, in his new book, “I Live With My Mother.”Somewhat breaking away from his sharp reviews of literature and publications that have always been a guidepost for many readers and journalists, his book shows his warm side, along with various other inspiring books which are inseparable from his life.The book — consisting of five chapters of nursing diaries that were

Jul 10, 2015

Books