society
Sunshine Land: Where War is Actually a Game
On a crisp December Monday morning in Nonsan, South Chungcheong Province, city workers outfitted the students in Noh Min-hyun’s sixth-grade class with child-sized body armor, helmets, and orange pistol-shaped BB guns. Resembling mini riot cops, the kids, divided into two teams, skipped and giggled their way into the newly
We Need to Talk About Suicide Reporting
How do we find the optimal balance between our right to information, and the risks inherent in broad dissemination of sensitive information? Around 24 hours have passed since 27-year-old Jonghyun, a member of the popular K-pop group SHINee, took his own life. It’s already a huge story, both within
Nameless and Faceless
Last year, students at Pusan National University treated campus cleaning and security staff to a meal and some live music, in an event titled “We’re happy because of your effort.” Local newspaper Busan Ilbo was on the scene, and quoted someone from the university as saying, “We hope the
Broken Clocks, Rising Dust: Death of a Street
If the places with history all close one after the other, what will Insadong be? * Read our in-depth coverage about the end of the Insadong of the past: Insadong: Breathing Its Last
The Old Man’s Harbor
Everyday for the past twenty years, 78-year-old Kim Yun-sik has been going to Jongno in central Seoul. Around noon, he eats free lunch at the cafeteria where a Buddhist temple used to stand until the 1500s; until 5 p.m., he whiles away the time in Tapgol Park, and in
The Last Gulps of the Canary in the Itaewon Coal Mine
After climbing a dusty, graffiti-strewn staircase to the entrance to Seoul Pub, one encounters a handwritten sign hanging on the glass door: “No drunken, fighting, sleeping, bothering, picking up.” Inside the bar, owner Jung In-chul explains that the sign is an expression of his desire to maintain a family-like atmosphere
A Complex Issue: The Apart-ization of South Korea
Itaewon has a reputation as Seoul’s ‘foreign’ area. Standing next to U.S. Army Garrison Yongsan, it has long catered to the off-base needs and urges of military personnel, gaining a sleazy reputation in the process. Many South Koreans were afraid to set foot there until a few years