Ultra fresh seafood and photo ops galore on this beautiful island paradise. After a two week quarantine in Korea for my two daughters and myself, a pleasant surprise was awaiting us. My mother had booked a trip to Jeju Island! My girls were definitely excited. “Isn’t Jeju Korea’s Hawaii? Will there be palm trees? Can…
There was a funny scene in an episode of the hit Korean Canadian sitcom Kim’s Convenience, where the father asks his daughter’s date when the Korean War started, just to test the suitor’s Korean-ness and make sure he is worthy of a date with his daughter. Passing a test like this may not be a…
Interspersed in Michael ByungJu Kim’s captivating first novel Offerings are delightful Korean proverbs called sajaseong-eo. In the old days, these wise words written in Chinese characters were recited by scholars and noblemen, and eventually many of these sayings were adopted into the everyday vernacular of the common folk. Sajaseong-eo literally means four character proverb, and…
Doljanchi 돌잔치 is the first birthday celebration for a Korean child. Dol 돌 means birthday and janchi 잔치 means banquet or feast, so technically doljanchi means birthday party. Though there’s no need to worry that a doljanchi is anything other than a first birthday party, you will sometimes see this event called “cheot” dol, 첫돌, or “first” birthday. For the doljanchi,…
In 1995, when I read Chang-Rae Lee’s impressive debut novel Native Speaker, I was inspired to read every new novel written by a Korean American as it was published. That was not such a difficult task in the 90s, but in the course of the new century, there has been such an explosion of excellent…
NAPABA has established pro bono legal resources to ensure that local communities have legal resources to address the most egregious hate-fueled attacks against our community. NAPABA is the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association, an organization of 50,000 Asian Pacific American attorneys, judges, law professors, and law students. Led by their Hate Crimes Task Force,…
Korea Independence Movement Day, or The March 1st Movement [Samiljeol (삼일 운동)] first occurred on March 1, 1919, and was one of the earliest recorded public displays of Korean resistance to Japan’s colonization of Korea from 1910 to 1945. Celebrated as a holiday today, this day was a pivotal turning point in Korean history. Origin…
As a mother of two young (not yet school-age) boys with the attention spans of a gnat and an exceptional ability to make our house feel twice as small, I have serious reservations about buying them new toys. But I don’t have the same qualms when it comes to books. Our house is cluttered with…
The first 100 days, or baek il, of a Korean child’s life used to be a very somber and anxious time as the infant mortality rates in Korea were once alarmingly high due to disease and malnutrition. It was also a time for the mother to recover from the trauma of childbearing. Other than close…
Happy Korean New Year! Celebrating the New Year is a serious matter for Koreans. So much so that we often celebrate it twice a year – first on the Gregorian calendar New Year’s Day and second on the Lunar New Year’s Day. I still remember clearly celebrating this day back in Korea when I was…