The stationery and toy shops of Changsin-dong in central Seoul were once largely the domain of children and parents. These days, office workers in suits and job seekers carrying backpacks have joined the crowd. Many stop in front of displays piled with “mallang-i,” soft, often food- or character-shaped toys made for repeated squeezing and kneading, and “wakppu-bol,” or wax-crushing balls — palm-sized tactile toys with a thin, hardened wax-like outer layer. Squeeze one between your fingers and th

Jjorongi, a rescued kestrel who lives at the Hangang Wildlife Conservation Research Center in Hanam, Gyeonggi Province, flew onto a visitor’s hand for a piece of meat during a visit Sunday. Just slightly larger than a good-sized fist, she has round, fluffy features and wide black eyes that make her look more cute than fierce. Her sharp talons and hooked beak tell another story. After all, Jjorongi is a raptor. But being a predator does not make her immune to city life. Injured raptors regularly

When foreign musicians look to Korea for inspiration, K-pop is often the obvious starting point. But not everyone is listening to chart-topping idols. Some are instead drawn to everyday sounds that most people scarcely notice, or to genres that have slipped from the mainstream. When Max Adoubleyou, a 32-year-old artist and producer from Rotterdam, the Netherlands, visited Korea in March, one sound kept catching his attention: the chime that played every few minutes as cars exited the parking gar

At Korean convenience stores, the liquor aisle's most valuable real estate is changing hands. Eye-level shelves once dominated by 500-milliliter beer cans and green soju bottles are increasingly filled with colorful ready-to-drink cocktails and bottles of lower-alcohol flavored soju, as Koreans drink less and seek lighter options. "These days, more customers buy RTD (ready-to-drink) products and flavored soju with lower alcohol content," a convenience store owner in Seoul said. "Sales of traditi

Technology’s brightest light too often bathes those already abundantly served. The newest phone gets a sharper camera, the already capable car inches toward autonomy, the fridge learns another trick. Yet for someone who cannot lift an arm to put on a jacket, or for a child living beside a vast but undrinkable lake, the question is simpler and more urgent: Who does technology serve? Two professors at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology are each attempting to answer that questio

North Korea’s latest answer to chocolate does not start with cocoa. Choson Sinbo, a pro-Pyongyang newspaper in Japan, reported last month that researchers at Ryanggang University of Industry had developed chocolate made with “purple beans” instead of cocoa powder. The report said the technology had been registered as a North Korean patent and that the product had been put into production at a food factory in Ryanggang Province. While the report touted the bean-based chocolate as an achievement,

A squid game is afoot. Not on Netflix or in the playgrounds but in the high seas. And much more is at stake. Unlike the squid game played by children in Korea — made internationally famous by the Netflix series of the same name — the future of a staple seafood, human rights and environmental issues are at stake. While squid is staple seafood in Korea with myriad different recipes and forms, the country is relying more and more on squid caught far from Korea's shores — and from its regulations. W

At 11 a.m. Monday, Seoul was placed under its first heat wave advisory of the season. Summer has officially arrived. The Korea Meteorological Administration expects a hotter-than-average summer this year, with heavier rainfall. The monsoon has not fully settled in, so weeks of rain are likely before the summer heat takes over in July. However hot, sticky or humid it gets, every Korean summer seems to leave behind a story worth telling. To mark the start of the season, we’ve gathered seven of the

Wedding planning in South Korea comes with its own notorious ritual: A bundled package of studio photography, dress rentals and professional makeup known as “sudeume” in Korean. It means dealing with a sprawling network of planners, venues and vendors while paying hefty upfront costs. Yet today, a growing number of young Koreans are taking a DIY approach, cutting costs on what many deem an overpriced tradition. A 2025 survey by Embrain found that nearly 70 percent of unmarried adults aged 19 to

Many Korean men used to describe mandatory military service as a suffocating period spent confined to barracks, bound by rigid routines and largely disconnected from the outside world. Conscription was widely seen as an involuntary pause in youth, rather than a continuation of the lives they had been building. But for Woo Tae-hyun, his 18 months in the military were the exact opposite. It was a strategically planned step toward his future goals. Discharged last December, the 22-year-old, current