29 May 2010, Posted by Matt in Art & Culture, Buddhist Temples, Festivals & Holidays, Seoul, 3 Comments

Seoul’s Lotus Lantern Festival

The Lotus Lantern Festival began centuries ago. Today, the tradition of making and hanging lanterns as symbolic offerings of light and compassion in a world too often filled with darkness and suffering continues.

08 Nov 2009, Posted by Matt in Food & Drink, Historic Korea, Seoul, Video, 10 Comments

Seoul’s Best Cafés, Part 1

Many may assume that Korea is a tea-based culture. Indeed, Korea has an indigenous tea culture that goes back centuries. But ever since King Gojong became the nation’s first and best-known coffee lover in the late 1800’s, coffee has taken the nation by storm.

More recently, the wildly popular TV drama, “Coffee Prince” captured Korea’s love of java. Today, global giant Starbucks competes with local brands like Holly’s, Ediya and Café Pascucci. But while you can get a decent cup of joe at any of these places, paying 5,000-won or more is a small extravagance. So, why not enjoy your bitter brew at one of Seoul’s best cafés?

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01 Oct 2009, Posted by Matt in Festivals & Holidays, Food & Drink, Gyeonggi, Seoul, 3 Comments

Happy Chuseok 2009!

The onset of autumn each year in Seoul often means an uncharacteristic calm and quiet in the city. No, it’s not that over 10 million residents decide to slow down to watch the leaves change. It’s because late September or early October marks Chuseok (추석), Korea’s annual thanksgiving holiday that’s among the most important dates on the Korean calendar.

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05 Aug 2009, Posted by Matt in Seoul, Transportation, Video, 3 Comments

Seoul Metro’s New Golden Line 9

One of the best things about Seoul is its efficient and inexpensive public transit system. It’s a mind-boggling number, but the metro rail system facilitated over two billion passenger rides in 2008. Seoul’s network is the world’s third most heavily used, behind only Tokyo and Moscow.

Today, the massive system consists of 15 lines, with two more to open in the next year. On June 24, 2009, the inaugural journey of Metro Line 9 began at 7:00 am from Gaewha Station (계화역) in western Seoul for its 25.5-kilometer journey to Sinnonhyeon Station (신논현역), in southern Seoul.

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21 Apr 2009, Posted by Matt in Buddhist Temples, Festivals & Holidays, Food & Drink, Historic Korea, Seoul, 4 Comments

Seoul’s Lotus Lantern Festival 2009

The Lotus Lantern Festival (Photo courtesy of Festival organizers)

Can you tell it’s festival season in Korea?

Well, if this is news to you, starting on April 24, Korea’s Buddhist community will celebrate the birth of the Buddha with an extravagant, 11-day festival of light called the Lotus Lantern Festival (연등축제). Buddha’s birthday is celebrated on the eighth day of the fourth lunar month, which, this year falls on May 2nd.

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24 Feb 2009, Posted by Matt in Art & Culture, Buddhist Temples, Chungcheong, Gyeongsang, Seoul, 0 Comments

Korea Travel Expo 2009

This past weekend, southern Seoul’s COEX center hosted the sixth annual Korea Travel Expo.

The historically weak Korean won and global economic crisis has many Koreans looking at domestic travel destinations instead of holidays in Southeast Asia or the U.S. To meet their needs, this past weekend the Korea Travel Expo 2009 (site in Korean) hosted its sixth annual event at the Atlantic Hall of the COEX center in southern Seoul.

Nearly 500 booths representing 280 different regional governments, transportation companies and local festivals took part in the nation’s largest expo promoting domestic tourism. This being Korea, several booths offered free samples of indigenous liquor.

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03 Dec 2008, Posted by Matt in Best of DK.com, Festivals & Holidays, Food & Drink, Hotels & Resorts, Jeolla, Nature, 13 Comments

Boseong’s Green Tea Fields

Tea was first cultivated in China over 2,500 years ago, but shortly thereafter it was introduced to Korea. Boseong is viewed by many as Korea’s tea growing capital.

14 Sep 2008, Posted by Matt in Festivals & Holidays, Food & Drink, Gyeongsang, Seoul, Transportation, 1 Comments

Chuseok: The Full Moon Festival

During Chuseok, my family conducted an early morning ancestral worship ritual. Afterwards, everyone enjoyed a feast!

The Korean calendar is a hybrid one. It’s a mix of the Gregorian calendar, which begins on January 1st, and a luni-solar calendar that begins on the first new moon of the year. The result is a mix of holidays- so, while Korean Independence Day always falls on August 15th, a traditional holiday like the harvest festival Chuseok (추석), occurs on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month, which means sometime in September or early October.

This year, Chuseok, which is also known as Hangawi (한가위), falls on September 14th. The days before and after are combined to create one of Korea’s four main traditional holidays. This weekend, tens of millions of Koreans are returning to their ancestral hometowns to be among family and friends. Traditional rites include an early morning ancestral worship ritual and the tending of family tombs, called beolcho (벌초).

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