Archive for the ‘ History ’ Category
Throughout the soccer World Cup in 2002, joint staged on this peninsula, large banners followed the national team on their adventure towards the semi finals. The banners spelt this country as COREA, and not KOREA. Certain t-shirts sold for the recent edition of the World Cup in South Africa had messages like “Again COREA…2002″ on them, not to [ READ MORE ]
I’ve been home for nearly a month now and I’ve been asked the question time and again: “What’s South Korea like?” As predictable and justified as the question is, I still haven’t an answer for it. How to summarize an entire nation, especially one as dynamic as this? Every country has its points of interest I [ READ MORE ]
The Korean War began 60 years ago to the day yesterday and has never formally ended. The legacy of these two divided family members has painful foundations, but living in the South, one couldn’t feel less connected to this tension. This is true from both a foreign and Korean perspective. The North, despite the DMZ being [ READ MORE ]
If you know nothing about Korean history, you’ll know nothing about May 18th, or 5.18 as they like to call it here. The Gwangju Democratization Movement was a popular uprising in 1980 against the military dictatorship of Chun Doo-Hwan. The citizens armed themselves with weapons and took control of large parts of the city for [ READ MORE ]
Five-eighteen (5/18) — it is a date of immense significance in Korea. You see, on May 18th, 1980 the Gwangju Democratization Movement began. It was a civilian uprising in Gwangju against martial law, and a flagship moment in the history of South Korean democracy. But it was also a brutal period of government suppression of popular will. At [ READ MORE ]