A Korean acting couple, Choi Soo-jong and his wife Ha Hee-ra, have joined an organ donation drive by Korean Organ Donor Program. According to the organization, Choi and Ha pledged support for organ donation on its “Day of Organ Donation,” which fell on Saturday. The couple, together with 100 volunteers of Shinhan Bank, also campaigned for organ donations at an entrance of Mt. Dobong. Korean Org...

U.S. actress Demi Moore is in Nepal after joining a global campaign to root out human trafficking. She is there as part of CNN’s Freedom Project, a worldwide network which works to eliminate trafficking of women and sex slavery, the Press Trust of India reported Friday. The 48-year-old actress is there without husband Ashton Kutcher to work with Maiti Nepal, the country’s biggest anti-trafficki...

With awareness of healthy eating greater than ever, people are on the search for food with fewer calories and less sugar. “Sugar Stacks" (http://www.sugarstacks.com/) is a website that lists the amount of sugar contained in popular foods. The website may help in preventing the unintentional consumption of too much sugar. By Kang Yoon-seung (koreacolin@gmail.com) Intern reporter Edited by Joh...

Chic boxed fare for the park In a perfect world, picnic-goers would wake up early in the morning to pack hampers full of freshly baked homemade goods. Come weekend, the overworked and exhausted may groan when faced with such a daunting feat yet still want a tasty spread for the great outdoors. Enter the grab-and-go feast as dreamed up by catering veterans who have mastered the art of the packe...

Biker club cares for safety, fellowship while enjoying majestic countryside Driving a motorcycle in Seoul is an enthralling real-life trip into the depths of one’s resolution, courage, patience, motor skills and coordination. In a country with one of the highest traffic death rates in the world, the challenge becomes a daunting case of one near miss after the other. Putting all that aside, ver...

Korean novel “Please Look After Mom,” written by Shin Kyung-sook and translated into English by Kim Chi-young, is making an impact internationally, entering the top 40 bestselling books on Amazon.com. The book was brought out in the U.S. market for the first time on April 5 by big name publishing house Alfred A. Knopf, and it ranked 34 on the list of Amazon.com’s 100 bestselling books as of 2:30...

Exhibitions “Koo Bohnchang”: One of South Korea’s most renowned photographers, Koo Bohn-chang, is holding a solo exhibition at Kukje Gallery. Not only parts from his different series but also his personal collections of eclectic objects are on display, giving the viewers a hint of Koo’s youth, attitudes towards photography and more. The exhibition runs through April 30 at Kukje Gallery in Sogyeo...

What is the line between being a ghoul and a do-gooder when it comes to visiting a recent disaster area? It’s a question to be asked again when the crisis in Japan finally abates. But what is an appropriate waiting period to visit a country hit by a magnitude 9 earthquake and 20-foot-high tsunami that killed thousands of people in northeastern Japan and created a nuclear radiation crisis? In na...

Insider’s account of city politics Politics and Pasta By Vincent “Buddy” Cianci Jr (St. Martin’s Press, $30) In the fall of 1974, a few days after he was elected mayor of Providence, R.I., Buddy Cianci sipped beer with a few reporters and joked about the “Philistines” he had ousted from city hall. The denizens of the Democratic machine that had run the city for 30 years had trashed the place...

Andre Dubus III does not look like a man on a journey. Instead, sitting at an outdoor table at the Standard Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, the 51-year-old author appears, finally, to have arrived. That may seem a stretch, considering his 1999 novel “House of Sand and Fog” was an Oprah Book Club selection and a finalist for the National Book Award, but Dubus has never had an easy road. The son of...

Of all the classic noir writers, perhaps none has been as tarnished by the brush of genre as James M. Cain. That’s because Cain was not just a great hard-boiled novelist but a great novelist, period, whose vision of 1930s Southern California is as acute and resonant as anything ever written about that time and place. His first novel, “The Postman Always Rings Twice,” published when he was 42, is...

JW Marriott Seoul On April 22 and 23, DJ e_qnx will throw a “Shaky Night” party at Bar Rouge in the hotel from 7 p.m. to 2 a.m. His live DJing will mix trance, progressive house and synthesized 70s and 80s retro from 9 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. A b-boy team performance and lucky draw for restaurant certificates will lead into midnight, and a hip-hop and electronic DJ mix will power the dance floor from...

Tteokbokki was the most popular food sold on the streets among foreigners living in Korea, survey showed. In a survey conducted by Kyung Hee University Institute of International Education, Tteokbokki (rice cakes in hot sauce) was the No. 1 street food foreigners liked to eat (31.1 percent) followed by dak-kkochi (skewered chicken grilled with spicy sauce) with 29 percent and sundae (pig’s in...

More than half of Koreans still believe penicillin can treat colds There was a time when antibiotics were used as “magic drugs” to cure any illness or disorder. From treatments for small inflammations to coughing, people wanted antibiotics. But antimicrobials are often associated with various side effects and invite resistance ― some diseases such as multidrug-resistant tuberculosis are now unt...