Dr. Woo Seong-hoon is a young 28-year old scientist working at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), who specialises in spin electronics, ‘spintronics’ for short, the study of the intrinsic spin of the electron and its associated magnetic moment. Recently, he has earned international attention as one of the thirty young people to have been named in Forbes’ latest annual list of ’30 Under 30 Asia’ in the category of Healthcare & Science. According to Moore’s Law, the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years, consequently allowing them to halve in size. However, as the components in electronic devices are able to become smaller, they are also required to deal with a rapidly increasing amount of information, making them less energy efficient as a result. Attempts to combat this have been stumped repeatedly due to the limits imposed by power consumption. Looking for a way around this obstacle, Woo began working together with
Actor Park Hae-jin has donated 20,000 trees and began a tree planting project with his fans in China to try and help combat the growing issue of air pollution caused by fine dust, which often blows over to South Korea. For his efforts he became the first Korean to recieve honorary Chinese citizenship. In a press interview, he explained that “as the issue of fine dust becomes more serious around the world, I realized just how precious the freedom to be able to breath really is.”
For many foreigners coming to Seoul, one of the main things they notice is the distinct lack of large natural spaces, replaced instead by a jungle of concrete towers, roads, and sidewalks. Therefore, it may be shocking to discover there are a large number of beehives hidden on rooftops across the city. Urban Bees Seoul is a group dedicated to caring for honeybees and enriching the nature and environment of the city, as well as providing job creation and economic growth through their beekeeping by-products. Unlike many beekeeping enterprises, the goal of Urban Bees Seoul is not the production of large quantities of honey to sell for maximum profit, but to create an environment for bees to live happily and healthily, and promote ecological awareness. For this reason, they take only a minimal amount of honey to sell, leaving the rest for the bees to eat themselves, and try to avoid any artificial intervention such as pesticides, antibiotics, and feeding extra sugar to the bees to promote
As relations between North and South Korea continue to improve following the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, the South is planning to send a group of over 150 musical artists to perform in concerts in the Northern capital of Pyeongyang between March 31st and April 3rd. These artists already include big K-Pop stars like Red Velvet and SNSD’s Seohyun, but the South Koreans are also trying to convince the North to let them send a man even those who have never even heard of K-Pop will likely know: Psy. We already know that the global reach of Psy’s Gangnam Style did not escape the attention of the South’s notoriously closed-off Northern neighbours, as the North Korea-linked propaganda channel Uriminzokkiri at one point published a video of the previous South Korean president Park Geun-hye’s head pasted onto someone performing the famous horse-riding dance move. Unfortunately, according to some unsourced reports, the leader of the North Korean delegation initially opposed the inclusion of P
In September 2013, South Korean President Moon Jae-in was attending an event commemorating the nation’s Coast Guard in Incheon, a port city to the west of Seoul known to most foreign visitors for being the site of the country’s main international airport. As the journey from the Blue House, the official residence of the South Korean head of state located in central Seoul, would have taken over an hour by car, President Moon arrived at the event via a ten-minute helicopter ride instead. However, following the event, Moon decided to forego the helicopter in favour of returning home by car, despite the considerably longer journey. Many citizens were confused by this choice at first, but the reason soon became apparent. As it turned out, Moon was due to leave the event at Incheon at 10:23am, only four minutes before students across Korea were due to take the EBS English Listening Comprehension Test at 10:27am. Had he travelled by helicopter, Moon would have been flying above Seoul directly
South Korean President Moon Jae-In recently embarked on a diplomatic visit to Vietnam, but he did not go alone. Joining him on his presidential jet was Korea’s first Winter Paralympic gold medallist Shin Eui-hyun and his wife Kim Hee-sun, who is Vietnamese. Kim first met Shin in 2006 when she was 19-years old, after his family urged him to go to Vietnam to find a wife. The year before, Shin had been involved in an accident that left him with both legs amputated below the knee. As he spent most of his time locked within his room in despair, his family hoped marriage would bring him back out of his shell. Though Kim had no real plans for marriage any time soon, the strong impression Shin left on her led her to decide to marry him the day they met, despite being able to speak little Korean beyond “Thank You” and “Hello”. This difficulty in communication led the two to fight regularly, but she resolved to make the relationship work as it was her choice to come to South Korea. Over time, sh
