Category: Blog

  • Brief Encounters with Businessmen

    Part One: MOULARD PUZZLE CAFE, ILSAN — I am seated outside piecing together the last of the Starry Night puzzle’s frame. A puzzle cafe is exactly as it sounds, a cafe where you may sip a coffee of something a bit stiffer while assembling a myriad variety of puzzles. The drinks are mediocre, though the…

  • On: The Hogwon

    Most people outside of Korea might guess that the word “Hogwon” is the Korean word for a hog farm or the name of some kind of hog-based commodity. I’ll admit I didn’t have a clue about what a Hogwon was until I started working for one. Even now that I am working for one, I…

  • A Diamond in the Rough

    Summer vacation came and went this week and, given that we have not yet seen a pay day, we decided to explore our suburb’s parent city, Seoul. We toured the Changdeok Palace in Seoul. Rich with history, it is among the most beautiful structures in all of Seoul. It brought back memories of Beijing’s Forbidden…

  • Now Podcastable

    When most people who know what a podcast is think about podcasts they usually think of a downloadable radio show, but podcasts can have many different files embedded within their code, including PDFs. Since we’re generating a PDF “printable version” of our site anyway, we decided to make it easier for you to receive our…

  • One Man’s Trash

    The trash piles on the ground floors of apartment buildings in Korea are veritable gold mines for the visiting foreigner looking to furnish a studio-size room. Everything from kitchen supplies to living room furniture, can be easily found lying on the ground left by the latest resident to move out, into fresh digs. The Urban…