Culture
[Visual History of Korea] Completing Christmas with Korean fir tree and remembering first Korean Catholic priest
Dec. 25, 2021
Germans started it, but it was the Americans who perfected the celebration of Christmas in the 20th century. No Christmas would be complete without a Christmas tree, and a native Korean fir, locally called “gusangnamu,” is the preferred choice of Christmas tree in homes across the US and Europe. First encountered by Father Emile Joseph Taquet (1873-1952), a French Catholic missionary, on Hallasan, the main mountain on Jeju Island, in the early 1900s, famed botanist Ernest Henry Wil