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Traditional fishing village welcomes foreign visitors

Galnam Village / Courtesy of RASKBBy Jon DunbarDevelopment has spared no corner of the Korean Peninsula, not even remote fishing villages on the east coast. The coastal fishing community of Galnam Village, south of Samcheok in Gangwon Province, is losing its vitality, as the country's fishing industry industrializes and relies increasingly on imports, and 70 percent of local residents are over 70 years of age. With seemingly no other options left, it is turning to tourism. It is following the course of nearby Jangho Village, which managed to transform itself into a tourist hotspot, but in the wake of widespread attention, a new cable car and “nude kayaking,” the once-charming fishing village has lost its culture. “When today's tourism tends to consume and extract the cultural and social assets of the community, can we come up with a narrative that highlights socially responsible tourism?” Daniel Oh, an urban landscape expert and professor of architecture at Korea University, asked in an online post. “And ultimately, how can we help to regenerate derelict

Oct 1, 2019By Jon Dunbar

Traditional fishing village welcomes foreign visitors

Yongsan Legacy Korea's postwar country music scene keeps kicking

Park Soon-hwan, "Jackie," left, and Kim Dong-seok of Western Jubilee perform at a U.S. military event in 2018. / Korea Times photo by Jon DunbarBy Kyung Lee As import and domestic pop variations like trot, rock and roll, folk, and disco flooded national airwaves and club stages throughout postwar Korea from as early as the late 1950s, Park Soon-hwan remained behind the walls of U.S. Army Garrison (USAG) Yongsan and other U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) bases. There, he would perform American-style country music in front of large crowds of homesick GIs. Park, who went by the stage name Jackie Park, joined the band Western Jubilee in the early 1960s. They played renditions of Jimmie Rodgers' “Mule Skinner Blues” and Johnny Horton's “All for the Love of a Girl” mainly in club venues on USFK installations in Korea.The band was founded by fiddler Kim Dong-seok, who also worked as a concertmaster for MBC Symphony Orchestra ― from the early 1960s to his retirement in the 2000s. Kim also took part in composing the “Letter” written in 1983 by the Korean pop group

Oct 1, 2019

[Yongsan Legacy] Korea's postwar country music scene keeps kicking

Foreign Line

Celebrate founding day in shamanistic styleThis Thursday is Gaecheonjeol, commemorating the mythical founding of Korea 4,352 years ago. It is an important day for Korean shamanism. David Mason, an academic specializing in spirituality and tourism related to Korea's mountains, is leading a visit to a major public ceremony honoring Korea's ancient founding king and a walk up nearby Mount Inwang, where participants have a good chance of encountering active shamanistic rituals. The tour costs 25,000 won, or 20,000 won for RASKB members. Visit raskb.com for more information.Songdo offers retro music festivalThe music festival season is not over yet, as Songdo's Caisson24 is hosting a free festival featuring live music, food trucks, a retro market and various hairstyling events. Bands include punk group Crying Nut, ska ensemble Kingston Rudieska, “kimchibilly” group Streetguns and Japanese band Runners. There will also be a swing dance party, barbers offering hair styling on site as well as a showcase, a punk style workshop and a screening of the 1990 musical romantic comedy &l

Oct 1, 2019By Jon Dunbar

Seoul City gives foreigners Korean names

The Seoul city government said Monday that it has launched a pilot program to give foreigners Korean names as part of efforts to promote the Korean alphabet, hangeul. The program, titled "Korean Names for Non-Koreans," is available to foreigners who reside overseas and are interested in Korean culture, Park Jin-young, a city official in charge of communication, said. The application form can be downloaded from the city's foreign language website and e-mailed to the city at english@seoul.go.kr. Of the applicants, five to 10 foreigners will be selected each month after considering their reasons for applying for Korean names.The city, in collaboration with hangeul organizations, will name the selected applicants in Korean. Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon will give the first successful applicant a certificate with the person's Korean name written by him, according to the official. (Yonhap)

Sep 30, 2019

Seoul City gives foreigners Korean names

15% of expats here are illegal immigrants: report

By Kim RahnNearly 15 percent of foreigners staying in Korea are illegal aliens, with Thais taking up the largest ratio, government data showed Sunday.According to the data submitted by the Ministry of Justice to Rep. Lee Eun-jae of the Liberty Korea Party, 370,889 foreigners were staying here illegally as of July ― 15 percent of total foreign residents.About half of them, or 164,135 people, entered the country through visa waiver programs and have not departed. The number of such people has increased since early last year when the government expanded visa waiver programs in line with the PyeongChang Winter Olympic Games in February.Thais numbered about 140,000, a threefold rise from 52,000 in 2015. The figure also made up about 40 percent of all illegal migrants.Although just a small section the total number of illegal aliens, the number of Kazakhs soared eight-fold from 1,337 in 2015 to 10,707 as of July.Rep. Lee also said that based on Korean National Police Agency reports, the number of drug-related crimes committed by illegal migrants was rising.In 2015, 80 illegal migrants were

Sep 29, 2019By Kim Rahn

15% of expats here are illegal immigrants: report

Korea Encounters Fighting segregation in Seoul's schools in 1969

Korea Times archive By Matt VanVolkenburgIn the spring of 1969 the Korean government decided to take a principled stand against the stigma associated with Hansen's Disease, also known as leprosy. Children at a leprosy rehabilitation center in southeastern Seoul known as Ettinger Village, which was established by the American-Korean Foundation in 1966 and housed “63 families of cured lepers,” usually attended school by hiding their identities. In March 1969, the Seoul Board of Education had five such children of cured leprosy patients enroll at nearby Daewang Elementary School and made it clear that the children posed no threat of contagion to the 853 other pupils. The parents of the other students rejected this, however, and on April 18 they all pulled their children out of the school, saying they would not return until the children from Ettinger Village were gone. The Korea Times published excerpts of the diary of the oldest of the five children, 12-year-old Noh So

Sep 24, 2019By Jon Dunbar

[Korea Encounters] Fighting segregation in Seoul's schools in 1969

Zandari Festa offers 118 bands from 20 countries

Rare Americans / Courtesy of Rare Americans By Jon DunbarZandari Festa is back for its eighth year, reviving the live music scene in the Hongik University area (of which Zandari is a historic name) for a three-day weekend of high-quality live music of various genres from Korea and around the world.The festival poster for this year depicts the past and present of the Hongdae area. This includes elements of the past such as the playground equipment removed a few years ago, a man selling makgeolli from a cart, and a punk lying on the ground. They contrast with the overdeveloped background, with construction equipment looming in the distance.Festival project manager Cecilia Soo-jeong Yi acknowledged gentrification in the area is “inevitable and uncontrollable now.”“However, even though the indie music scene seems dispersed and decentralized, Hongdae is still a center of music culture,” she told The Korea Times. “The trends of musical genres change, and Hongdae's music s

Sep 24, 2019By Jon Dunbar

Zandari Festa offers 118 bands from 20 countries

IPAC offers new form of dinner theater

A group photo at an IPAC event / Courtesy of Park Chan-ju By Howard H. HernandezIt's around 7 p.m. in Seoul's southern Seocho-gu and after having meetings all day, Park Chan-ju, owner of IPAC, a music academy and performance venue, prepares dinner for about 30 guests. The wine bottles are chilled. Chairs are arranged in an intimate setting. The setting is intimate.For tonight's performance, storyteller Kim Yae-na will perform a story from the Middle East, while percussionist Kim Min-seok, who studied Arabic-style percussion, will accompany Yae-na's story with various Arabic instruments. The two artists sit in the back waiting to start the show. Yae-na says, “Actually, I'm not that nervous because the setting is so homely that it doesn't feel too intimidating. The audience is really close to us, too. It feels more like we're performing more for a small group of friends.” Min-seok adds, “For me, I don't really think about much before these kinds of shows, but I do lik

Sep 24, 2019By Jon Dunbar

Busan companies in quandary over foreign workers' ever-increasing paychecks

Foreign workers in Korea. Korea Times fileBy Cho Hae-min, Park Si-soo The average per-capita monthly income of foreign workers in Busan was 2.46 million won ($2,059), data showed on Wednesday.The figure was based on a survey of 150 manufacturing companies in the nation's second-biggest city, the Busan Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI), which conducted the poll, said.The wage exceeded the average entry-level salary of Korean university graduates (2.32 million won), meaning the employment of foreign workers is no longer a lucrative option in terms of cost management, BCCI officials said. In particular, small and medium manufacturers feel increasingly pinched because a large portion of their workers are foreigners. Hiring young Korean workers is a tall order because they prefer working at big companies that offer them relatively high paychecks and better working conditions. Those who are paid between 2.5 and 3 million won accounted for 44.7 percent of the surveyed foreign workers. The second-biggest group was those paid 2-2.5 million won (39.3 percent), followed by over 3 million

Sep 19, 2019

Busan companies in quandary over foreign workers' ever-increasing paychecks

Book on labor union establishment, collective bargaining published in English

By Park Si-soo Two legal experts have teamed up to publish an English/Korean legal guide on how to organize a labor union, launch collective bargaining, action and settlement in South Korea, detailed with cases they have handled. They are Jung Bong-soo (labor attorney and Ph.D. in law) and Park Sang-yung (attorney). Their collective 223-page brainchild, titled “Labor Union Manual,” recently hit the shelves. Jung, in particular, has ample experience handing cases involving foreign-invested companies and foreigners. In 2009, he contributed to establishing the nation's first labor union for native English teachers. “This manual focuses on how to organize and run a labor union and was written largely based on first-hand field experiences and data,” Jung said. “I hope this book will help the reader ― Korean and foreigner alike ― set up sound, win-win relations between management and labor.” The book costs 30,000 won.

Sep 18, 2019

Global Community

Global Community

Traditional fishing village welcomes foreign visitors

Yongsan Legacy Korea's postwar country music scene keeps kicking

Foreign Line

Seoul City gives foreigners Korean names

15% of expats here are illegal immigrants: report

Korea Encounters Fighting segregation in Seoul's schools in 1969

Zandari Festa offers 118 bands from 20 countries

IPAC offers new form of dinner theater

Busan companies in quandary over foreign workers' ever-increasing paychecks

Book on labor union establishment, collective bargaining published in English

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