Forty four years ago, a small black-haired boy with bangs held his three year old sister’s hand in a protective grip and embarked on a journey over the Pacific Ocean. This began another immigrant’s life in Canada. The parents he didn’t recognize met him: parents who had months […]
Relatively speaking, Korea was an unchartered, unknown land to Canadians. Of course there were stories here and there; many Dutch traders, ‘Hwa-ran’ as they were called by the Koreans, floated upwards to Korea caught up in a typhoon since the 17th century CE. Many of them settled and […]
I sent my mom to the grocery store for bean sprouts to add to kimchi jigae but she accidentally picked up mung bean sprouts. (Our Superstore and Sobeys regularly carry mung beans, but only have bean sprouts on a fluke once in a while). To be honest I thought they were the […]
The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently … and Why By Richard E. Nisbett 288 pages, Free Press, 2004 ISBN: 978-0743255356 Reviewed by Glen Choi Korea-Canada 50th Anniversary Blog Imagine you are the manager of a company and have to make a decision about an […]
Korea and Canada are familiar friends, especially when it comes to trade. The friendship, as we all know from our life experiences, is not born out of vacuum, but built through repeated interactions, common interests and mutual efforts. Look around you and into your friends list on the […]
Qu’est-ce qui combine la fougue du cirque, la richesse musicale d’un concert et la fascination l’interprétation théâtrale? Une comédie musicale vous l’aurez deviné. Mais avez-vous déjà assisté à un spectacle qui, en plus de réunir tous ces aspects, fait participer le spectateur et étale les beautés de la […]
South Korea has some great companies that earn more and more prestige over their efficient business development strategies. Lately, Canadian businesses see South Korea as a model to follow in the automotive and new technologies sectors. Indeed Korean brands are a household name in Canada and around the world. Everybody knows about Samsung, Hyundai, […]
The twinkle lights around Ottawa are still emanating a soft glow even though most of us have started to hunker down for the harsher winter months that lie ahead. In between Christmas and New Years, I started sketching out a list in my head of resolutions for 2013. I have always considered the beginning of a calendar year […]
In Romeo and Juliet, Juliet asks Romeo, “What’s in a name?”. She then answers her own question with “That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet”, referring to the fact that she loves the person who is called “Montague”, not the name […]
Ahhh yes, a typical sight on the streets of Seoul. Clusters of customers gathering around food vendors day and night. It’s truly one of the most wonderful cultural aspects of the city. Today we gather around the mixed skewer. Some of Korea’s most beloved and traditional street foods […]
When we lived in Korea, our family (My mother in law, father in law, sister in law, husband and I) would spend an afternoon, a couple of times a year, to make homemade mandu (dumplings), and oh they were good. We would usually end up making about a […]
With a brand-spanking new year comes some rather recycled goals and resolutions: some want to become more productive, others more positive but the majority of the Western world wants to get fit, lose weight or at least work off the chocolate that was consumed over the holidays. Whatever […]
PART ONE OF TWO HallyuCon 2012, held on December 9th 2012 at the KCCA in North York, was the first large-scale event created by the non-Korean staff of the Toronto Korean Music Group to promote the love of KPOP and the Hallyu wave in Toronto. Selling over 500 tickets, […]
Korean Izakaya in Downtown Toronto If you are a Canadian living in downtown Toronto, you’ve probably been to an Izakaya – a Japanese “bar”. Today, I’d like to introduce you guys to a Korean “Izakaya” or more authentically speaking – Pojangmacha – that I came across while exploring […]
Every year on Seollal/설날 (Korean Lunar New Year), Koreans eat ddeok guk/떡국, which is a rice cake soup. While living in Korea, we would travel to Osan to my husband’s grandmother’s house where we would prepare special New Year’s foods for two days. The main dish, and arguably the […]
Doengang Jigae is the easiest and quickest soup for me to prepare (and just happens to be my favourite too!). We usually eat the regular version but once in a while, we make the delicious thick version! Oh yum! We often steam some cabbage, put a bit of […]
Korean is a pretty tough language to learn. Or maybe it isn’t so much a problem of language, but rather the fact that for us native English speakers learning other languages and getting rid of that characteristic twangy gringo accent of ours seems to be genetically impossible. We […]
