Career tips for working womenTurn Your Passion into Your CareerBy Kim Joo-yeon(Business Books, 13,000 won)Being a working woman in Korea isn’t necessarily easy, especially when you are in your 20s and 30s.There are tough decisions to make between your career and family, and promotions and salaries to worry about. Being on good terms with everyone at work can be a challenge.For any working woman wh

Growing up in a port cityChinatownBy Oh Jung-hee(Jimoondang, 5,000 won)Set in the port city of Incheon in the 1950s, author Oh Jung-hee’s novella “Chinatown” explores the theme of growing up in post-war Korea.The narrator is a 12-year-old elementary school girl who has recently moved to Incheon with her family after the Korean War. Her family settles in Incheon’s Chinatown, where the streets are s

The further they get from Jane Austen, the better the zombie mash-up books become.Enter “Dreadfully Ever After” by Steve Hockensmith, book three in a zombie trilogy that started with “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies,” which was a combination of Jane Austen’s classic novel of manners set in the early 1800s and contemporary zombie movie mania.The first in the series was “Dawn of the Dreadfuls” by Ho

Singer-songwriter’s new book tells story of fictional English composerJohn Wesley Harding is Wesley Stace.That is, Wesley Stace is John Wesley Harding.That is, they’re the same person. Folk-rocker Harding ― intelligent, bardic songwright ― is the nom de rock of Wesley Stace, novelist, whose splendid new book “Charles Jessold, Considered as a Murderer” is out now.As usual, all sorts of things are a

Upcoming film tells a touching yet comical tale of a North Korean officer during the Korean WarJust about two months ahead of the Korean War, a young communist military officer (Kim Joo-hyeok) and his soldiers arrive in a secluded country town in Chungcheong Province.Amid the intense political turmoil, the town, Seokjeongri, is peaceful. It is so remote that its people don’t even take the war rumo

Popular Longquan ware found in sunken ship off coast of Sinan shows beauty and culture of 14th century AsiaThe National Museum of Korea is holding a special exhibition featuring about 90 pieces of 14th century Chinese celadon ware found in a shipwreck.The featured pieces are known to be from the Longquan region of China’s southern Zhejiang province, where the most superior kind of Chinese celadon

MBC’s new singer survival program is mired in controversy as its participant Kim Gun-mo ― who was eliminated in the first cut on the episode televised on Sunday ― was given a special offer to compete in the next round. The decision to keep Kim in the next episode breaks the rules of the show.The show, “I Am A Singer,” pits a total of seven real-life, big-name singers in Korea ― Kim Gun-mo, Baek Ji

The Cultural Heritage Administration on Friday signed a contract with MACCA (the Multifunctional Administrative City Construction Agency) to collaborate on a series of projects to digitize Korea’s cultural heritage.Under the contract, the two institutions will together build a museum that specifically offers digitized heritage exhibitions with 3-D features by the year 2016. Starting this year, the

Dooman River (Korea, France)Opened March 17Drama. Directed by Zhang Lu. Chang-ho (Choi Geon) is a young ethnic Korean boy living in a Chinese province that shares its border with Hamgyeong Province in North Korea. His mother works in South Korea to support the family and Chang-ho lives with his grandfather and his older sister, a mute. He likes to play soccer and is extremely protective of his sis

Growing up in nearby Compton, Ava DuVernay fell in love with movies thanks to the passion and nurturing of her aunt, Denise Sexton.“She was a registered nurse and a community theater actress,” recalled DuVernay, 38, who has had her own public relations agency in Los Angeles since 1999. “She was a huge film buff. She wasn’t married and didn’t have a family, but her nieces were a big part of her lif

Actors love working on animated movies because it’s so easy: Just say a few lines into a microphone and pick up your check.That wasn’t the case with “Mars Needs Moms,” where filmmakers used a process called motion capture to create the animation. Instead of just speaking, the actors had to perform every scene. Film of those performances was used to make computer-generated images.“This was the hard

A man torn by history Land of BanishedBy Jo Jung-rae(Jimoondang, 5,000 won)A heart-rending tale of a man warped by the hardships of the Korean War, Jo Jung-rae’s “Land of Banished” vividly portrays a victim of Korea’s checkered history.Mahn-seok, the protagonist, is born into a family of landless peasants in the late 1920s Korea. All the members of his family are servants of a nobleman called Choi

Journalist takes readers back to future Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live in Now Our Culture, Our Politics, Our EverythingBy David Sirota(Ballantine Books, $25)Ah, the 1980s. Those carefree years spent spinning the gears of Rubik’s Cubes, popping Pac-Man cartridges into Atari consoles, slipping on legwarmers or parachute pants, and checking out the latest episodes of “Fam

A restlessness in her soul would not let Gloria House be.She was a graduate student in 1963 studying French at the University of California at Berkeley.But how could she study when four little black girls were blown to bits by dynamite that tore through their Birmingham, Ala., church? And when the bodies of three boys ― two white, one black ― who’d gone south to help black people, were found burie

Poet shares his view on Korea’s 2008 candle-lit protest and its significancePoet Kim Ji-ha thinks Korea’s 2008 candle-lit protest against U.S. beef imports was a crucial moment in world history.“It was the very first protest that was initiated by the most marginalized in the patriarchal society,” Kim said at a literary circle meeting held at the residence of Swedish Ambassador to Korea in Seoul, T

Almost 300 royal books from the Joseon Dynasty, looted during the 19th century French invasion of Korea, will make their official return to Seoul on a permanent lease starting March 28, the National Museum of Korea said Wednesday.Officials of the National Museum signed an official pact on the return of 297 royal book with the National Library of France in Paris, where they are currently located.Th

More than 140,000 Korean cultural artifacts are currently in overseas countries, the National Research Institute of Cultural Heritage announced on Tuesday.Last January the research institution drew up a list of Korea’s missing cultural assets that have been located in foreign countries. At the time, the list had concluded that there are a total of 116,896 Korean items located overseas. The newly r

Im Kwon-taek’s ‘Hanji’ features ‘moon-like’ beauty of traditional Korean mulberry paperAfter making a series of films that were “replicas of Hollywood films” in the 1960s, director Im Kwon-taek set one solid goal in his mind.“The films I made in the 1960s were solely created for box-office profits and audience appeal,” Im told The Korea Herald on Monday. “But I wanted to get away from that America

In the upcoming movie “Battle: Los Angeles,” L.A. represents the last stand for humankind in a fight against invading aliens.The action-packed film, however, was mostly shot in the other LA: Louisiana.Having Baton Rouge and Shreveport stand in for Santa Monica, California, and L.A. might seem as preposterous as aliens attacking the city.But several factors drew filmmakers to the Bayou State, chief

Red Riding Hood (U.S.)Opening March 17 Fantasy. Horror. Directed by Catherine Hardwicke. Valerie (Amanda Seyfried) is a beautiful young woman torn between two men. She is in love with a brooding outsider, Peter (Shiloh Fernandez), but her parents have arranged for her to marry the wealthy Henry (Max Irons). Unwilling to lose each other, Valerie and Peter are planning to run away together when they