Jeon Cheong-jo, the con artist whose bizarre stories shook up South Korea this week, had used photographs of himself surrounded by bodyguards to trick his victims into believing that he belonged to a high-profile chaebol family, a local district councilor told The Korea Herald on Friday. Two days after Olympic fencing medalist Nam Hyun-hee announced on Monday that she would marry Jeon in January, a local celebrity news outlet disclosed court verdicts that showed Jeon had been sentenced to jail t

Social Affairs Oct. 27, 2023

About 20 years ago, a soft-spoken, bespectacled man with a scarf around his neck showed the world how spellbinding South Korean dramas can be. “Winter Sonata,” a television drama series starring Bae Yong-joon and Choi Ji-woo, dazzled countless Japanese women, some 6,000 of whom gathered at the Tokyo airport to catch a glimpse of Bae in November 2004. Some of them -- mostly aged 43 to 65 -- were even injured while pushing through the crowds to get a better view of the actor, whom they

Hashtag Korea Oct. 25, 2023

The rise of Korean as a popular choice among foreign language learners around the world has become common knowledge in recent years, but the working conditions of those who teach it are far from encouraging. Korean language instructors’ wages depend on the country and the institution where they are working, but their terms of employment in Korea are generally significantly below those of average workers. They are often not entitled to paid leave, maternity or paternity leave, basic insuran

Hello Hangeul Oct. 8, 2023

Nestled in the foothills of Seongnam, just southeast of Seoul, the Academy of Korean Studies has researched Korean culture and traditions, and fostered scholars of Korean studies from around the world since 1978. The AKS also supports research by Korean studies academics from overseas, holds international academic seminars and publishes journals in English. But with the recent growth of Korean studies abroad, the time has come to take the academy’s international exchanges to the next lev

Hashtag Korea Sept. 30, 2023

On the morning of June 13, 2000, then-President Kim Dae-jung flew to Pyongyang on a route that had not been used for 55 years. His arrival at Sunan Airport in Pyongyang for the first-ever inter-Korean summit since the 1950-53 Korean War was televised worldwide. "Whether (North Korean leader) Kim Jong-il would show up or not at the airport was the talk of the town,” recalled Choi Sung-jin, a former reporter and editor of The Korea Herald. When he did appear, the subsequent scene of

Hashtag Korea Sept. 27, 2023

Ever since its inception in 2006, South Korea’s state-funded Northeast Asian History Foundation has conducted research and analysis on issues involving Northeast Asian history and the Korean Dokdo islets to develop policies aimed at promoting peace and prosperity in the region. “The foundation has held countless academic seminars with Japan and China, and made constant efforts for reconciliation, but the neighboring countries’ differences on historical issues have only gotten w

Hashtag Korea Sept. 25, 2023

Compared to the ancient and medieval history and archaeology of China and Japan, those of Korea have been substantially understudied overseas, with only a small number of scholars interested in the field. But the number has dwindled even more over the past years due to a lack of job opportunities and funding, according to Jack Davey, a US-based scholar of early Korean history and archaeology. A 2019 symposium on the archaeology of Korea, for instance, brought together just 12 scholars -- and s

Hashtag Korea Sept. 25, 2023

South Korea's official data on parental spending for their children's education has long faced criticism for overlooking two significant aspects: expenditures prior to the commencement of public education and those occurring after its completion. To address these concerns and better assess the financial burden on parents, the Ministry of Education plans to look into the cost of “private education” of preschool children and high school graduates who are studying to retake th

Social Affairs Sept. 24, 2023

While a growing number of college students abroad want to learn about Korea thanks to the country’s popular culture, most universities around the world still lack faculty, courses and textbooks for key areas of Korean studies such as pre-modern Korean history. Virtually all the Korean history professors that teach at universities such as Harvard and UCLA specialize in Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910) or post-Joseon Korea. There are no faculty specializing in ancient or medieval Korean history, w

Hashtag Korea Sept. 18, 2023

Over 70 million Koreans in both South and North Korea learn in school that Gojoseon, founded in 2,333 BC by Dangun, was the first kingdom on the Korean Peninsula. They are taught that from this point on, various early states like Buyeo, Okjeo, Dongye, Goguryeo, Baekje, Silla, Balhae and Goryeo flourished on the peninsula and in the now-Chinese territory of Manchuria, collectively shaping the early part of Korea’s five-millennia-long history. But virtually no universities outside Korea offe

Hashtag Korea Sept. 18, 2023

For non-native speakers of the Korean language, even the simple question "Have you eaten?" can be tricky. It is because of the complexity of having to choose different speech levels and honorifics depending on the person being addressed, resulting in distinctly different expressions like “bap meogeosseo (밥 먹었어?)” and “jinji deusyeosseoyo (진지 드셨어요)?” Sanjeev Kumar, who has an M.A. in Buddhist studies from Dongguk University in Gyeongju, North Gyeongsang Provinc

Hashtag Korea Sept. 10, 2023

After Russia dumped radioactive waste in the East Sea in 1993, South Korea continued to measure radioactivity at about 50 different points in its waters, but "no significant changes have been reported as of yet," a senior aide to President Yoon Suk Yeol said earlier this week. Lee Kwan-sup, senior presidential secretary for policy planning, made the statement on Wednesday at the National Assembly, saying that filing a complaint with an international organization against the Japanese go

Social Affairs Sept. 1, 2023

Peggy Gou is a superstar DJ doing tours around the world year-round. Her shows are always sold out across mostly European cities. Gou’s latest single “(It goes like) Nanana” has been on the UK top 10 singles chart for 10 straight weeks, and topped the charts in the Netherlands and Belgium over the summer. Although she may not be as widely known as BTS in her home country, Gou is a proud South Korean, born and bred in Incheon. “When people see other Asian performers and as

People Aug. 27, 2023

Korean will continue to be a popular choice for language learners around the world if it leads to ample job opportunities, said a professor and two lecturers at Ruhr-University Bochum in Germany. “There exists a ‘language hierarchy’ where learners prioritize learning languages that offer economic advantages. In other words, if an environment is created where Korean language learners can obtain economic benefits through their Korean proficiency, it will sustain a continuous inte

Hello Hangeul Aug. 24, 2023

In the US, the focus of foreign language learning is laid on enabling students to actually speak, understand and perform different tasks in the target language. Under the guidelines of ACTFL, an organization of language education professionals that provides testing for the US government, learners are tested on such real-life language skills. South Korea’s state-run Test of Proficiency in Korean (TOPIK), on the other hand, has often been criticized for measuring students' memorization

Hashtag Korea Aug. 22, 2023