Does the name “J. Y. Park” ring a bell? If so, chances are that you have brushed shoulders with the K-pop industry. While not a household name outside of K-pop fandom circles, this Korean songwriter and entertainment CEO also maintains the almost unexplainable role of “weird dad of the K-pop industry” – from overly-autotuned and […]
Tag: Korea
Not My Child: Parental Pressure on Teachers in South Korea
In South Korea, suicide is the leading cause of death among teenagers. It is the number one cause of death for young people since 2017, and the number of deaths continues to rise. Popular media and expert surveys pin the blame on the country’s rigorous educational system. Students are not only weighed down by long […]
Korea and Japan Struggle for an Escape from Another Quagmire of History
Present a map of East Asia to Koreans and then to the Japanese and you will soon find that they each use different names for the same territory. What Koreans call the “East Sea” is the “Sea of Japan” for the Japanese; the Japanese will refer to a tiny island in that sea as “Dakeshima,” […]
An Olympic Thaw, or Not
The opening ceremony of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics was a symbol of hope. Dressed in all white, athletes from North and South Korea marched together under the same flag. The Olympics have long been a site of international sportsmanship, but the last time the two Koreas marched together was in the Olympics of Winter 2006, under the […]
The “Scourge of South Korea”: Stress and Suicide in Korean Society
“Suicide is everywhere,” says South Korean author Young-ha Kim, referring to modern Korean society, in his op-ed for the The New York Times. Countless others have documented what some call “the scourge of South Korea” – the fact that people of all classes, ages, and genders are committing suicide at exceptionally high rates. South Korea […]