The Journal, page 7
A place to learn about hanbok and Korean celebrations, at your own pace.
Page 7 of 9.
- Recipes
What Korea Has Been Cooking
The rice cooker is on. A bowl of aged 김치 sits on the counter, ready to be cut on the cross-grain. Mrs. Lee lifts the lid on a small 뚝배기, and the smell of 된장…
- Recipes
What Korea Eats on August Fifteenth
On August fifteenth in Seoul, the 떡볶이 carts run late into the night. Steam rises off pans of hotteok, sugar syrup blistering the dough. Someplace on a Jongno…
- Recipes
How Many Kimchis Are There, Really
How Many Different Kinds of Kimchi are there? Kimchi is the dish a Korean grandmother teaches first. Cabbage rubbed with salt, drained, mixed by hand with red…
- Recipes
The Cart on the Corner in Seoul
Korean street food is what you eat between meetings. Tteokbokki at four in the afternoon when the sun has gone soft. Hotteok pulled hot from a flat iron in…
- Korean Culture
What to Bring to a Korean Home
You are invited to dinner at a friend's parents' house in Palo Alto. The mother has been cooking since morning. You arrive with a small box of Jeju hallabong…
- Korean Culture
Five Korean Styles You Can Borrow
A woman walks out of a cafe in Seongsu wearing a pleated wool skirt over black leggings, chunky loafers, and a cropped cardigan buttoned only at the top. The…
- Korean Culture
What Korean Women Wore in 2020
Late spring 2020, a woman crosses Garosugil in an oversized ivory blazer, straight-leg trousers, and a bucket bag with a silk twill scarf tied to the strap…
- Korean Culture
The Quiet Detail at Her Ear
A pearl drop the size of a grain of rice, set in matte gold, hangs from a client's ear at her daughter's dol. It catches the paper lanterns overhead. No one at…
- Korean Culture
What Korean Jewelry Looks Like Now
A single gold norigae rests on a friend's dresser, catching the morning light. The tassel is fresh silk. The pendant is antique. Together they look at once…
- Korean Culture
What K-Pop Is, Underneath the Songs
From IU to BTS, we’ve all seen their stardom rise and watched them capture the hearts of millions around the globe. This article dives behind the limelight to…
- Korean Culture
The Gift That Carries Respect
A shopping bag rests on the entryway floor of a Seoul apartment, folded fruit paper visible through the handles. The host waves it off. The guest insists, both…
- Korean Culture
How Korea Became a Gaming Nation
Korea built one of the world's largest gaming cultures inside a country smaller than Indiana. PC bangs (computer cafes) on every corner in the early 2000s…
- Korean Culture
Why Korean Horror Stays With You
In A Tale of Two Sisters (2003), the camera lingers on a wardrobe door for six seconds too long. Nothing appears. The dread lives in the wait, in the pale…
- Korean Culture
The Korean Holidays Worth Knowing
The persimmons on my mother's tree turn in late September, which means Chuseok (추석) is close. She starts pulling out the pounded-rice mold for songpyeon a week…
- Korean Culture
From the Brush to the Loom
Korean craft has a particular character. The Joseon-dynasty white porcelain that holds its shape against the kiln without painting. The ramie weave that…
- Korean Culture
The Gift That Says You Know Them
Gift giving in Korea is a small art with strict rules. A white envelope at a wedding. Fruit at a hospital visit. Tteok at a housewarming. The choice tells the…
- Korean Culture
The Twenty-Five K-Dramas That Made It
The first K-drama our household watched all the way through was Autumn in My Heart, on a boxy tube television in Daly City. My mother cried at episode fourteen…
- Korean Culture
Ten Korean War Films That Stay With You
The 38th parallel cuts through my grandmother's memory the way it cuts through the map. She was ten when the trucks came south. Every November she still stops…
- Korean Culture
The Korean Zombie Movie Canon
Kingdom, season one. A magistrate in a black gat stands over a rice-paper door as the dead press against it from the other side. The horsehair brim catches the…
- Korean Culture
Seven K-Dramas Worth Your Weekend
Mr. Sunshine (2018), episode nine. Ae-shin lifts a rifle at dawn in a white jeogori, and the scene holds its silence longer than a network drama should dare…
- Korean Culture
The K-Dramas We Couldn't Stop Watching
Ri Jeong-hyeok in the North Korean officer's greatcoat, standing in a Swiss meadow at dusk, hearing a piano piece he wrote as a boy. Crash Landing on You gave…
- Korean Culture
The Dramas That Kept Us Up
Reply 1988, the final episode. Deok-sun's father walks her down a Ssangmun-dong alley in the dawn light, carrying her suitcase. Neighbors watch from doorways…
- Korean Culture
How K Drama Took the World
September 17, 2021. A green tracksuit landed on Netflix in ninety-four countries at once. Within a month, Halloween costume racks in Ohio were emptied of white…
- Korean Culture
The Ghost Stories Korea Inherited
In The Wailing (2016), the mudang begins her kut. Drums quicken, a rooster is struck, and the mountain village stops breathing. Na Hong-jin films the ritual in…