On June 30th, during the 42nd session of the World Heritage Committee, it was unanimously decided to add seven South Korean Buddhist temples that date back as far as the seventh century to the UNESCO World Heritage List, bringing the country’s total number of heritage sites to thirteen. The seven te
18th-century Korean painter Shin Yunbok is known for his genre paintings. In his famous work titled Jusa Geobae, meaning having a drink in a public house, we see how a public house worked in the late Joseon Dynasty era. Held in the collection of the Gansong Art Museum in Seoul, the painting depicts
Lee Geum-ja is a 63-year old woman born with dwarfism, who stands at 102cm tall and 32kg. For the past ten years, Lee has been collects discarded paper cups and milk packets, and selling them to raise money for helping the needy and paying scholarships to students from low-income families. "As you c
The Choi family of Gyeongju is known for having many admirable ancestors, but arguably, chief among them is Choi Guk-seon. In the mid-1600s Choi’s father who accumulated a large amount of wealth through land development, allowing him to enter the upper classes. However, following his father’s death,
A new housing market is appearing within Korea consisting of apartment complexes that provide hotel-style breakfast services, as the hectic lifestyle of many in modern society gives many people little time to prepare their own. A number of apartment complexes who found their property prices falling
Seonjae decided at age 24 to became a Buddhist nun, and now at age 61 she has dedicated half of her life to developing recipes and raising awareness about the necessity of a good diet through cooking classes and counselling for parents with picky children. She has even written a thesis on Korean tem
When Korean President Moon Jae-In attended the 2016 memorial ceremony of the Gwangju Democratization Movement he gained a lot of attention for the worn-out shoes he wore, which many felt exemplified his image as a ‘common man’. Moon bought this specific pair of shoes back in 2012 from a social enter
Few people like to harm other lives. However, animals on Earth have been destined to maintain their lives by consuming other lives. Many people refuse to eat meat because they do not want to hurt other living beings. A woman who retired from school was one of those people. She tended a vegetable gar
Within all of us is a true self that is the heaven itself. Buddhists call it ‘Buddha’ and Christians ‘Jesus Christ’. It is also called ‘a true being’ in Yoga and ‘a true human’ or ‘Heaven Being’ in Zen. Essentially, these all mean the same thing - that not only in human beings, but in all beings, th
