Mourners form a long line near Itaewon Station Exit 1, just a few meters from where over 150 people died on a horrific Halloween night out on Saturday. One by one they get a white chrysanthemum from a makeshift table, which they lay down at a memorial altar for the victims set up nearby. The flowers have been brought by Kim Seo-joon, a 31-year-old man who runs a flower shop in Gangnam-gu, southern Seoul. He brought more than 300 white chrysanthemums to Itaewon on Wednesday morning to give aw

Paula Nascimento, a 31-year-old Brazilian female office worker, is suffering from depression and anger after witnessing the nightmarish scenes in Seoul’s Itaewon Saturday night. “My mind kept straying back to when I saw emergency rescuers and citizens performing CPR on people lying unconscious on the street. What terrifies me the most is the faces of teenagers in the crowd screaming for help,” she said. Psychological trauma affects many people, in-person witnesses like Nascimen

The news of a horrific crowd crush in Seoul’s foreigner-friendly neighborhood of Itaewon has left foreign communities here in shock and grief. Many interviewed by The Korea Herald spoke of receiving calls from worried families and friends back home, while others said they were trying to be of any help to the victims who were killed or injured in this foreign land. “My family members were all shocked when they first heard about the incident. I called them and said I’m doing okay

Restaurants and cafes near the site where over 150 people died in a fatal stampede in Seoul’s Itaewon on Saturday night will close for a three-day mourning period for the victims, a police officer said Sunday. “Some stores have already stopped operations. Whether the temporary closure will extend depends on how the situation unfolds,” a police officer who wished to remain anonymous told The Korea Herald. The closures are voluntary and some businesses have opened as usual. On Sa

The area around Itaewon in Yongsan-gu, central Seoul, full of excited Halloween partygoers on Saturday night, turned into a catastrophic scene in an instant. At least 153 people died and dozens were injured in a crowd crush that took place in a narrow alley near the neighborhood’s famous Hamilton Hotel. The celebratory scene quickly turned into a nightmare as screams and cries for help erupted from the crowd, and the sounds of ambulance sirens mixed with thumping music that continued to fl

When KakaoTalk was down and suffered extended service malfunctions last month, rumors quickly swept through social media platforms that the messenger app’s multi-profile function had gone haywire, exposing users’ profile photos to groups which were not intended to be shown. People with secrets to keep, such as extramarital affairs, became particularly concerned about the rumor. A blog post on Daum acted as a warning to other adulterers who created a secret relationship profil

Tattoos were once considered a badge for gangsters in Korea, but they have become a medium of self-expression or a fashion statement among younger generations. Many are not reluctant to show off their inked skin in public or on social media, but there still persists a societal stigma surrounding the body art. A sports center in Seodaemun-gu, Seoul, has recently put up a notice that restricts entry of tattooed members. The no-tattoo policy was introduced after complaints from nontattooed member

  The following is part of Seoul Subway Stories, a Korea Herald series exploring the subway stations and surrounding areas across the city. -- Ed.   A roughly five-minute walk from Exit No. 7 of Mullae Station on Seoul subway leads you to a village with two faces. Greeting visitors first are the boisterous sounds of machinery and workers cutting and welding iron bars and slabs inside small factories and metal workshops. But soon, one can hear jazz and classical music being played somew

Alarmed by a rapid rise in drug offenses, the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety said Tuesday it supports a legislative proposal to ban references to narcotics in food advertisements as something irresistibly good. “Using drug references to promote food can have a negative effect on children or adolescents,” a ministry official said. “Once the proposed bill gets passed by the National Assembly, the ministry will take measures, including drawing up an enforcement ordinance to curb

Dance cover videos, created by fans to imitate idols’ moves on stage and in music videos, have been an essential part of global K-pop fandom culture. On platforms like TikTok, YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels, one can easily find short clips where amateur dancers from both here and abroad replicate the choreography with incredible attention to details. These videos are often shot in places such as on the street or in a public park. Recently, one particular locale in Seoul has risen a

  Over 30 percent of international schools in South Korea have been using textbooks that refer to the East Sea, a body of water between South Korea and Japan, only as the Sea of Japan, a lawmaker said Tuesday. As of August 2020, 12 of 38 international schools were using textbooks that solely use the Japanese name. The number of those textbooks with the Sea of Japan reference marked 24, according to the office of Rep. Ahn Min-seok of the opposition Democratic Party of Korea. The office refer

South Korea needs to bring in more professional foreign workers to cope with a continuous decline in the working-age population, a think tank said Friday. According to a report published by the Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade, educators, researchers, engineers, artists and highly-skilled workers accounted for a mere 10 percent of last year’s total 406,669 foreign nationals with employment visas. The rest were mostly low-skilled workers in agriculture, construction and

On Sept. 18, a teenager’s cartoon satirizing President Yoon Suk-yeol won a top prize at a local cartoon contest. No major news outlets gave it major coverage. The work was displayed for three days until Monday at the Bucheon International Comics Festival. It drew some attention, and mixed comments, on social media. Then on Tuesday, a day after the exhibition’s end, the work was thrust into the national spotlight when the Culture Ministry issued a “strong warning” against

With cooler and crisp air, the season of university fall festivals has arrived. Since mid-September, major universities across the country are holding their biggest and most exciting campus event of the year. During the past two years of the pandemic, university festivals had faced a hiatus, like many other in-person events. But with social distancing rules and the outdoor mask mandate lifted, the festivals are back in all their glory, with their typical elements of K-pop, student-run food sta

As South Korea struggles to reverse a falling fertility rate, Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon has come up with a new idea: Open up the border to foreign nannies to relieve the child care burden of working parents. “Parenting should be socially respected, and measures are needed to enable mothers and fathers to raise their children together,” he said via Facebook on Tuesday. “The introduction of foreign babysitters is a policy focused on parenting, and it would be good news for those

Sporting a dark formal suit and a hint of smile, the man in the photograph gives off an impression of a kind person with a decent office job. But the 31-year-old named Jeon Joo-hwan is the prime suspect in the murder of a female subway attendant at Seoul’s Sindang Station earlier this month. The picture, which appears to have been digitally altered, was released along with his name and age, following a decision by a joint police and civil panel on the public disclosure of the identity of

Jason Basulto, a 27-year-old American tourist, visited Guryong Village, one of the last remaining shanty towns in Seoul, in April this year. He had been curious about Seoul’s not-so-shiny side, like the semi-basement homes featured in “Parasite.” "Urban slums are visible not only in Korea, but in many other countries, because the wealth gap is a global issue. But the scenery of Guryong Village in the middle of high buildings was striking,” he said. For those who ar

A farmers’ market popped up at a corner of a street in Seoul’s Seongsu-dong neighborhood on Sunday. Among the vendors at the touring market dubbed Marche@ were Lee Ji-sun, 42, who brought herbs, vegetables, and eggs from her family’s farm in Gapyeong, Gyeonggi Province. “Our farm does not use any synthetic chemicals and we hatch chicken eggs naturally,” she said proudly. Marche@ is not an ordinary farmers’ market. Started by a group of city farmers committed t

For those unacquainted with Korean cuisine, kimchi can taste and smell a bit strong. But don’t let that first impression scare you off from the amazingly rich, versatile and savory world of kimchi, says Son Jong-won, executive chef of L’Amant Secret, a Michelin-star restaurant at L'Escape Hotel in Seoul. At a cooking demonstration on Tuesday with 20 foreign guests, the chef showcased how the fermented cabbage, which has a varying mix of pungent, sour and spicy tastes, can ta

Tashi Choden, a Bhutanese social media influencer who was crowned this year’s Miss Bhutan, was 15 when she first realized she was "different." “I first came out as a bisexual person to my friends, but soon realized that my affection tilted more towards women,” Choden, now 23, told The Korea Herald in an exclusive interview. “After doing some research on gender identities, I found out that I was a genderfluid lesbian.” Being gender-fluid means that one&rs