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Park Moo-jong

This is the season of going home for family reunions, particularly between children working in big cities and their parents living in rural villages.

2018-02-14 16:18

Plastic-free campaign

Just 19 years ago in 1999, there was a unique government-led campaign to put a stop to the then unchecked use of plastic bags and other one-time-use items such as disposal cups, dishes and wooden chopsticks. The then Kim Dae-jung administration (1998-2003) rolled up its sleeves to help prevent our national soil from being contaminated by these objects that do not decay for centuries. In some aspects, the Republic of Korea was somewhat of a leader in the world at that time in discouraging the use of such items that do not decompose for a long, long time.

2018-02-08 15:38

'Syndrome Syndrome'

An English medical word, “syndrome,” is enjoying a heyday in explosive popularity in Korea today far away from its home. It is a piece of cake to find the word “신드롬” in Korean (pronounced sindrom) in newspapers and on the tube of late. They are “Chung Hyeon Sydrome,” “Park Hang-seo Syndrome,” and “Hyon Song-wol Syndrome,” to name a few. And the title of this column, “Syndrome Syndrome,” means a “syndrome to call any social phenomenon or fever, even bright and desirable, a syndrome.”

2018-02-01 16:58

Busan Opera House

What music to our ears! The Republic of Korea will have a gorgeous seaside opera house like Sydney three years from now. Busan city government announced last week that the construction of the Busan Opera House will start in the first half of this year to be completed by 2021 at a cost of 250 billion won ($214 million).

2018-01-25 15:52

Let's rekindle Olympic spirit

The second Olympics on the Korean Peninsula are just around the corner as the Olympic Flame from Olympia, Greece, is crisscrossing South Korea before it lights the cauldron to mark the opening of the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Games on Feb. 9. The relay of the torch, dubbed here, the “Sacred Flame,” to herald the first-ever global ice and snow festival in Asia outside of Japan is taking place once again in this part of the world, just three decades after the 1988 Seoul Summer Olympics.

2018-01-18 15:58

Diplomats armed with '3S'

Koreans and Japanese, among other peoples, have something special in coining neologisms, using specific Roman alphabet letters like “3D,” “3S,” or “3B.” Most well-known of them must be the 3Ds of Japanese origin, that stand for dirty, dangerous and difficult, referring to any sort of blue collar jobs such as those of a construction worker or a production line hand.

2018-01-11 16:48

'I will' and 'I will not'

Five days have passed by so fast since the start of the New Year of the Dog (that actually begins on Feb. 16 in the lunar calendar).

2018-01-04 20:00

Fight illegal parking

It was a September day in 1982, 35 years ago when I visited Bern, the capital of Switzerland, on my way home from my first overseas trip to Scandinavian countries. The small Swiss city was a surprise to me because of its traffic.

2017-12-28 18:01

The Year of 'Fight for Right'

A group of college professors have chosen “pa sa hyeon jeong (파사현정:破邪顯正)” as the four Chinese-character phrase for what they say best describes Korean society in the year of 2017.

2017-12-21 16:56

K-pop & Bangtan Boys

The yuletide talk of the town is Bangtan Sonyeondan (BTS), a K-pop boy band, which is translated as “Bulletproof Boy Scouts.” The Korean hip-hop boy band, composed of seven lads aged 20 to 25, ranked 10th in the Billboard's year-end rankings of the overall top artists of 2017, the first Korean singer or group to join the coveted list.

2017-12-14 15:22

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