Almost every Saturday for the last twenty weeks or so, my friends and I took a stroll down to Gwanghwamun Plaza in downtown Seoul to join the protesters. We were young, awkward, and clueless. It ...
https://koreaexpose.com/young-people-political-consciousness-south-korea-park-geun-hye-scandal/
Seated at a downtown coffee shop dressed in business casual, Woo Seung-yep looked more like an office worker than a war prepper as he calmly explained how he became the best-known South Korean en...
In one comedy sketch, an overweight woman wearing sparkling jewelry and a comely black dress scarfs down food. A man acting as her manager yells, “Min-kyoung, wake up! How many times have I t...
Seen from the back of a high balcony, pastor Kim Sam-hwan cuts a small figure. “Amen!” he calls into two microphones suspended on long wires from the ceiling above. “Allelujah!” respo...
Meet Yiombi Thona , one of South Korea’s highest-profile refugees. He came to South Korea in 2002 after fleeing his native Congo under fear of arrest. As a member of the Congo intelligence serv...
https://koreaexpose.com/damunhwa-multiculturalism-refugee-life-korea/
She calls herself the maid to Park Geun-hye’s princess. She’s the fringe to Park Geun-hye’s mainstream status. Park grew up in a castle: the president’s official residence that her fath...
https://koreaexpose.com/sim-sang-jung-superwoman-south-korea/
Perhaps the world’s best-known Korean adoptee today is Adam Crapser . After living in the U.S. for almost four decades, Crapser was deported to South Korea late last year because his adoptive...
https://koreaexpose.com/korean-adoptees-resist-infantilization/
They call their gatherings the “Taegeukgi Rally,” after the South Korean flag. They say their flags represent a growing fire, the true fire of patriotism and democracy, countering the suppose...
https://koreaexpose.com/taegukgi-rally-conservatives-defend-democracy/
The National Assembly impeached her. The Constitutional Court stripped her of presidency. Prosecutors have summoned her for questioning. She is now holed up in her house in Gangnam, not seen af...
https://koreaexpose.com/guide-south-koreas-presidential-election/
> This concern was in my heart, > but I lacked the ability to see these dreams to fruition and spent > the last year in regret and guilt. If I ask you to guess who th...
https://koreaexpose.com/candlelight-effect-kim-jong-un-apology/
Sulli is an interesting figure in the K-pop world. She entered the world of South Korean celebrity at the ripe age of 11, debuted as a member of girl group f(x) four years later in 2009, and rose...
I am from South Korea, but I make it a point not to write or speak in Korean about this country. That my Korean language skills have ossified from disuse is only one reason; it is more that my br...
https://koreaexpose.com/ethics-south-korean-journalism-fails/
My halmeoni — “grandmother” in Korean as she is affectionately called — never studied beyond elementary school. In her family, education was reserved for the eldest male child; she helpe...
https://koreaexpose.com/south-korea-poems-halmeonis-literacy/
In the sixth straight weekend of rallies in South Korea, a record number of protesters gathered in Seoul and across the nation Saturday, calling for the ouster of president Park Geun-hye. Accordi...
https://koreaexpose.com/top-five-sightings-anti-government-protests/
There’s a stairway on the outskirts of the hip Haebangchon area in Seoul — one that doesn’t really merit a second look. No impressive characteristics beyond its steepness, nothing spectacul...
https://koreaexpose.com/haebangchons-past-108-stairway-shrine/