Thanks to my distrust of weather forecasts, I found myself shivering in Seoul last week. Though various weather sites predicted lows of 1-degree Celsius, I still insisted on dressing up like it was spring, foregoing heavy socks and tights in favor of loafers and cotton leggings.
It’s 4 a.m. in foggy Gangnam, and I’ve just found out that I’ve missed Psy’s monumental free concert at Seoul Plaza by a few hours. The irony isn’t lost on me, but it matters little. After all, I’ve finally arrived in the very place that the South Korean rapper’s sensational dance single has, quite literally, put on the map.
Hundreds of millions have watched the dance and listened to the song— most without understanding a word—but very few have any idea what “Gangnam” is and what, if any, particular “style” it might have.
Shadowed by the high-rises of Seoul’s wealthiest Gangnam district, Kim Bok-Ja, 75, pulls her trolley of folded cardboard through a shanty town that sits uncomfortably in one of Asia’s most developed cities.
It was from a weekly news magazine that I first learned about the saga of Cheonggyecheon, a stream in downtown Seoul.
A tourist visiting Seoul for the first time will be struck by the unbearable cuteness of the city, and the ubiquity of cafes. Forget run-of-the-mill coffee chains, Seoul is populated with quirky coffee shops, with menus handwritten in chalk on artful slabs of wood and pastries as pretty as the decor.
A huge surprise was the discovery a portfolio of drawings by Urban Sketchers Philippines, an organization affiliated with Urban Sketchers, an international nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering the art of on-location drawing. It is a nonprofit organization dedicated to “raising the artistic, storytelling and educational value of location drawing, promoting its practice and connecting people [...]
