SouthKorea posts

by Tom Johansmeyer (4 months ago)
Mar 8th, 2009 at 12:00PM: Korean Air and Asiana Airlines are followed by Air Canada and Singapore Airlines in routing flights around North Korean airspace. The change comes as a result of North Korean warnings that it "cannot guarantee the safety of South Korean passenger jets" if the United States and South Korea move forward with annual joint military maneuvers. This annual event yields an annual complaint.
The ...

by Tom Johansmeyer (5 months ago)
Feb 9th, 2009 at 9:00AM: Eyesore or art, graffiti is part of any culture's public dialogue. Vandalism is visual profanity, and we all swear in our own f---ing ways. I've been drawn to these wall scrawls for a while, probably since I read Holden Caulfield's concerns about the subject in Catcher in the Rye. My fascination gained momentum while I was stationed in South Korea. A soldiers' bar in Tong Du Chon (the Peace Club, ...

by Tom Johansmeyer (5 months ago)
Jan 29th, 2009 at 2:00PM: It's becoming pretty clear that the U.S. government equates golf with peace, freedom and stability. The best way to "ruin a good walk" is on its way to Baghdad's "Green Zone," which is what the comparatively safe part of the city is called. The Joint Contracting Command Iraq, Mission Support Division is trying to find the equipment necessary to construct a driving range on Phoenix Base in this ...

by Tom Johansmeyer (5 months ago)
Jan 13th, 2009 at 9:00AM: The small golf course in Panmunjom is often called the most dangerous in the world. Nestled between North and South Korea – which are technically still at war – sending a ball off the fairway means that it probably won't be retrieved. Welcome to the strangest place on earth. Panmunjom is the heavily militarized "truce" village straddling the Military Demarcation Line that cuts down the ...

by Tom Johansmeyer (6 months ago)
Jan 1st, 2009 at 5:00PM: Here's proof that the left hand doesn't know what the right is doing. Imagine a left hand holding nail polish while the right is rotting. The Shilla Seoul hotel is offering a "Shopping at the Shilla" package for around $205 a night through October 31, 2009. The duty free shopping trip includes plenty of stuff, such as a deluxe room, breakfast for two and a VIP Gold Card for the Duty Free Shop, ...

by Tom Johansmeyer (6 months ago)
Dec 20th, 2008 at 9:00AM: It's surprising; I know. There are competing accounts of how open North Korea is to outside tourists right now. Koryo Tours, as usual, is cutting through the rumor and gossip to give travelers as real a sense of possible of how, where and when you can go to North Korea. Border Closings? Stories have circulated that at least parts of the borders that North Korea shares with China and South Korea ...

by Josh Lew (6 months ago)
Dec 18th, 2008 at 1:00PM: It is a news headline you'd expect to see in a theocratic Islamic nation in the Middle East: "Actress given 8 months in jail for adultery." But, this time, the headline could refer to the case of South Korean actress Ok So-ri. The Korean adultery law was created in 1953 and has been upheld despite four major challenges over the past two decades. In Ok's case, the judges denied her arguement that ...

by Jerry Guo (7 months ago)
Nov 19th, 2008 at 8:30AM: In celebration of the latest James Bond flick (granted, it was Die Another Day that featured blatant stereotypes about North Korean goons) and a longish piece in this week's Harper's on North Korea's propaganda machine, I thought I'd give a history lesson into a period of time when North Korea was even crazier than it may seem today (for instance, did you know some 30 North Korean spies managed ...

by Iva Skoch (1 year ago)
Apr 23rd, 2008 at 8:10PM: All the smugglers out there should be very, very scared. South Korea has managed to clone their best sniffer dog and got seven cloned puppies.
The puppies have been created using cells taken from a labrador sniffer dog considered by customs officials to be "their best," BBC reports. The puppies were born last year after the country's customs service paid a biotechnology company to reproduce a ...

by Iva Skoch (1 year ago)
Feb 1st, 2008 at 12:30PM: Well, it hasn't taken a long time before the "most closely watched train" in the world may need to cut back its service.
Last month, North and South Korea started a symbolic rail service connecting the heavily fortified joint North-South industrial complex in Kaesong, just north of the border. Although the train served only to ship goods, it seemed like a start of some sort of communication. ...

by Justin Glow (2 years ago)
Jun 26th, 2007 at 4:09PM:
The next time you pull into the station for a fill-up, keep this in mind before you curse the prices: People elsewhere have it a lot worse than we do in America (and we tend to gripe about it the most, it seems!). Take Asia for instance -- Hong Kong averages a whopping $6.30 per gallon, with Seoul, South Korea, not too far behind. Europe also pays well above what we do in America. London, ...

by Adrienne Wilson (2 years ago)
Oct 17th, 2006 at 9:50PM: Mum, mom, mother and momma are not nicknames I've been blessed to have at this time in my life and I'm in no rush to obtain one of the variations either, but for all the proud traveling parents out there searching for a good place to go with baby I present you with this guide from the Korean Tourism site. I'm sure an extensive amount of planning is needed to figure how you'll be able to maneuver ...

by Adrienne Wilson (3 years ago)
Jul 2nd, 2006 at 8:00PM: Earlier I mentioned the cool film festival to check out in Korea if you so happen to be around. For the few with little to no interest in foreign films all because of the language barrier, get over it and read the subtitles! There are so many incredible movies to watch beyond our Hollywood summer blockbusters. Today's word is a Korean word used in Korea: mol-lah-yo - I don't know My past lessons ...