Do you know 'Cheonggukjang' ?

“Cheonggukjang” or fermented soybean paste is famous for its anti-cancer properties. As an organic seasoning agent, it is rich in high quality protein, carbohydrate and fat. Cheonggukjang is also a great source of calcium, iron, magnesium, and other vitamins. Pollock cooked in cheonggukjang is a great complete dish that includes the fish meat, kimchi and the bean paste.




Ingredients (serves two)

You will need 140 grams of pollock, 20 grams of “Misutgaru” or a powder of mixed grains, 20 grams of starch, 80 grams of kimchi, 60 grams of cheonggukjang, 20 grams of onion, 20 grams of leek, salt and pepper


Step by step

1. Season the fish with salt and pepper. Cover it with starch and misutgaru and fry it in a pot

2. In a separate pot, boil cheonggukjang with diced kimchi, onion and leek to make the sauce

3. Put the fried fish in a new pot, pour the sauce over and cook until the sauce seeps well into the fish



Cooking tip

Pollock can be replaced with other white-meat fish. You eat the fish on top of steamed tofu or steamed squash. Misutgaru allows for the sauce to seep in even after the fish has been fried.


Nurungji chicken cutlet

``Nurungji,'' or Korean scorched rice at the bottom of a pot, is used often in recipes for cancer patients – however, it is often boiled in water to make soup. This recipe offers a unique way to cook nurungji with chicken to make a dish rich in protein.

Ingredients (serves two)

You will need 80 grams of chicken, 20 grams of onion, 20 grams of paprika, 20 grams of cucumber and cooking oil

For seasoning sauce for the chicken: 5 grams of cooking wine, salt and pepper.

For the frying batter: 40 grams of nurungji, 40 grams of egg, 10 grams of flour

For the sauce; 5 grams of starch, 40 grams of ginseng tea powder, simple syrup, vinegar, water, salt, chopped ginger

Step by step

1. Dice the chicken and season it with cooking wine, salt and pepper. Cover the pieces in batter made with flour, egg and nurungji pieces. Fry at 170 degrees Celsius

2. Chop onion, paprika and cucumber into bite size pieces

3. Add ginseng tea powder, syrup, vinegar, ginger and salt into a pot with water and boil. Add starch until you get the consistency you want

4. Pour the sauce over the fried chicken

Cooking tip

You can make nurungji by frying a thin layer of steamed rice on a pan until it turns yellow. You can make more than you need for one dish and store the leftovers in the freezer.

Super Junior's newly-released 6th album “Sexy, Free & Single,”

They are Sexy , we all know this !


Members of the Korean idol group Super Junior pose at a news conference held to promote their newly-released 6th album “Sexy, Free & Single,”/ Yonhap


SM Entertainment, home to such stars as Girls’ Generation and Super Junior will hold a concert at Jamsil Olympic Stadium, southern Seoul next month.

The concert scheduled for Aug. 18 will feature not only Girls’ Generation and Super Junior but also BoA, SHINee, f(x) and Kangta, according to the agency on Thursday.

“SM Town” is the name used by SM Entertainment for their seasonal compilation albums for performers currently signed to the firm. Tickets for the tour will go on sale from July 12 on Gmarket (http://ticket.gmarket.co.kr).

The company also offers a special tour package for overseas fans that includes souvenirs and an invitation to an SM Art Exhibition, fan meeting and welcome party. The packages are available for purchase in 20 countries including China, Thailand and Japan through SM C&C (www.easternrooms.com).

The tour kicked off at the Honda Center in Anaheim, Calif. on May 20th and then headed to Hsinchu County Stadium in Taiwan on June 9th. There will be concerts at the Tokyo Dome in Japan on Aug. 4 and 5. 

SM Town concert to feature Korea’s top artists

They are Sexy , we all know this !


Members of the Korean idol group Super Junior pose at a news conference held to promote their newly-released 6th album “Sexy, Free & Single,” . / Yonhap


SM Entertainment, home to such stars as Girls’ Generation and Super Junior will hold a concert at Jamsil Olympic Stadium, southern Seoul next month.

The concert scheduled for Aug. 18 will feature not only Girls’ Generation and Super Junior but also BoA, SHINee, f(x) and Kangta, according to the agency on Thursday.

“SM Town” is the name used by SM Entertainment for their seasonal compilation albums for performers currently signed to the firm. Tickets for the tour will go on sale from July 12 on Gmarket (http://ticket.gmarket.co.kr).

The company also offers a special tour package for overseas fans that includes souvenirs and an invitation to an SM Art Exhibition, fan meeting and welcome party. The packages are available for purchase in 20 countries including China, Thailand and Japan through SM C&C (www.easternrooms.com).

The tour kicked off at the Honda Center in Anaheim, Calif. on May 20th and then headed to Hsinchu County Stadium in Taiwan on June 9th. There will be concerts at the Tokyo Dome in Japan on Aug. 4 and 5.

Korean artists make their way overseas

Source: The Korea Times



Yee Soo-kyung's "Translated Vase — the Moon" and Park Young-Sook's "Moon Jar" are on display at at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia in Sydney as a part of 18th Biennale of Sydney. / Courtesy of Gallery Hyunda

With the local art scene thriving, more Korean artists are also being recognized overseas.

In June, Korean artists Yang Hae-gue, Moon Kyung-won and Jeon Joon-ho were invited to dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel, Germany, one of the largest contemporary art events in the world, for the first time in 20 years and more offers are coming from the other side of the globe.

Artists Park Young-Sook and Yee Soo-kyung are participating in the 18th Biennale of Sydney themed “All Our Relations.” The two artists presented a collaborative work “The Moon Project” at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia in Sydney.

The project combines Yee’s “Translated Vase — the Moon” and Park’s 12 “Moon Jar” pieces. Park’s work reinterprets Korea’s traditionally round white porcelain jar while Yee’s “Translated Vase — the Moon” is a large sphere created from ceramic trash from Park’s failed works for over 10 years. The piece presents the ceramic artists’ yearn for perfection through contemporary art as well as the beauty of Korean porcelain.

Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane, Australia, announced that it will purchase Korean artist Gim Hong-sok’s “Canine Construction.” The resin work is shaped like a dog and made from black plastic bags as part of Gim’s public project “Public Nature.” Gim transforms ordinary objects such as plastic bags and paper boxes into public artworks.



“Canine Construction” was exhibited at Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art’s “Memories of the Future” in 2010 and was presented at Frieze Art Fair in London in 2009 and Art Basel Miami in 2010.

“Art+Auction,” a U.S.-based art magazine, announced the “50 Next Most Collectible Artists” in their latest issue and Jung Yeon-doo was listed as the sole Korean entry. Jung mostly works with photography and video and portrays fantasies stemming from everyday objects.



“Six Points” (2010), a stop-motion-like video portraying six ethnic minorities in the United States, was presented in a solo exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution. His works have already been collected by prestigious institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York and Japan’s Fukuoka Asian Art Museum.

Photographer Choe Won-joon was named as the winner of the Quai Branly Museum’s photographic artistic creation aid grant and Choe will present new documentary “Black Monument,” about monuments and the architecture of African dictators constructed by North Korea, at the Quai Branly Museum next year.

Choe is currently a resident artist at Samsung Foundation of Culture’s Cite Internationlane des Arts and Le Pavillion, an arts residency program at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris.

More Korean artists are holding exhibitions abroad as well.

Lim Min-ouk is showing “Heat of Shadows” at Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minn. She is the first Korean artist to have a solo exhibit at the renowned contemporary art museum.

Winner of the Hermes Korea Art Prize in 2007, Lim interprets the agony of the individual and the community inherent in the modernization process of Korea through sculpture, installation and video. The exhibition runs through Sept. 2.

Chun Kwang-young has a joint exhibition titled “The Poetry of Materials” with Anselm Kiefer and Gotthard Graubner at Kunstwerk, Eberdingen-Nussdorf, Germany, running through Sept. 16. He is known for his works using small triangular Styrofoam covered in “hanji,” or Korean mulberry paper, and the thin yet durable material portrays the ups and downs of Korean history.

Korean girl groups are taking center stage now a days

Wonder Girls
By Rachel Lee

Power K-pop girl groups such as Wonder Girls, 2NE1 and T-ara are returning to local stages this summer.

2NE1 will release their new single “I Love You” on Thursday. The New Evolution world tour will start at the Olympic Gymnastics Gymnasium in southern Seoul on July 28 and 29. The girls will head to 10 cities in seven countries including Japan, the United States and Hong Kong.

The Wonder Girls new EP “Wonder Party” came out last month, and they will be in concert at Jamsil Indoor Stadium in southern Seoul on Saturday. The five-member group, managed by JYP Entertainment, is one of the few K-pop acts that have broken into the U.S. market.



T-ara, a five-member group known for “Bo Peep Bo Peep,” also follows suit by holding a first solo concert at Jamsil Indoor Stadium in southern Seoul on Aug. 11.

Girl groups have been at the forefront of the K-pop scene thanks to their musical talent and the diversity and popularity of their music.
“Korean girl groups have consistently worked hard on their albums and performances,” popular culture critic Jung Duk-hyun told The Korea Times.

He said girl groups such as the Wonder Girls, known for hits “Tell me” and “Nobody,” are the ones who have led the K-pop boom around the world.

“They have built up their own competitive advantage over the boy bands. 2NE1 and Girls Generation, for example, stand out from male performers due to the diversity of the tracks and their exceptional musical talent, which can be seen in their performances.”

Asia-Pacific linguists open conference in Seoul

A poster for the Asia and Pacific Communication Association conference to be held in Seoul, July 6-8
The Pacific and Asian Communication Association opens a three-day conference at the Law School Building of Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul from today.

This is the 9th biennial international conference, with a post-convention tour to Gyeongju City, the most historical and traditional area in Korea, from July 6 to 8.

Delegates from Pacific Rim countries will meet and present scholarly papers on the subjects of communication and culture.

Participants will have opportunities to interact with their counterparts from Malaysia, Indonesia, Korea, Japan, China, the Philippines, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific Islands, Canada and the United States.

They will also honor and remember the late Donald W. Klopf, founder and first president of the Communication Association of the Pacific (CAP), the World Communication Association (WCA) and the Pacific and Asian Communication Association (PACA), who passed away two years ago.

“Don’s life-long efforts and devotion to society as well as his untiring zeal and consuming curiosity in studying intercultural communication, made a most striking impression upon us,” said Park Myungseok, a professor emeritus of Dankook University.

Park said, “We will forever miss his commitment to the society and his academic presence,” adding, “We were also lucky and grateful to have had such a precious and faithful friend in Don. We will surely cherish the dear memories of him for a long time deep in our hearts.”

Park established the award for outstanding papers on intercultural communication in 2007. A special committee of distinguished scholars will pick the winners who will receive a citation and $10,000. Professor Baek Seon-gi of Sungkyunkwan University heads the Pacific and Asian Communication Association.

Kim Jun-young, president of Sungkyunkwan University; Carolyn Calloway-Thomas, president of Indiana University; Caroline Hatcher , professor of Queens University in Australia; and Adbul Muati Ahmad, professor of the University Putra in Malaysia, will deliver congratulatory addresses.

Korea Foundation takes Korean music on tour

Korea Foundation



Members of Noreum Machi, a Korean percussion group, perform in this photo. The group will travel to two South American countries to perform the essence of Korean music along with Gorilla Crew, a b-boy team.



The Korea Foundation is taking the essence of Korean music and share it with audiences in Central America and the Caribbean.

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties with the Dominican Republic and El Salvador, the Korea Foundation will host joint performances by Noreum Machi and Gorilla Crew throughout next week.

Noreum Machi is a Korean percussion group that engages in traditional music with a modern twist. Established in 1993 by artistic director Kim Ju-hong, the band shot to stardom after playing in the soundtrack in the hit movie “King and the Clown” (2005). At this occasion Noreum Machi will present “Binari” (Blessing) and “Pan Gut.”

Gorilla Crew is one of the top b-boy teams in Korea and is known for dynamic choreography and excellent breakdance skills. The team premiered “B-boy and Ballerina,” a popular non-verbal performance here. They will present hip-hop music and popping dance, which is an original funk style of dance that came from streets in California during the 1960s-70s. There will also be a joint performance with Noreum Machi, combining Korean traditional music with energetic dance.

Dominican and El Salvadoran ambassadors to Korea watched a demonstration of the performance in Korea in June and said it presents traditional and modern aspects of Korea.

“Noreum Machi and Gorilla Crew represent very different parts of Korean culture and we expect them to show the diversity of Korean culture in the Dominican Republic and El Salvador, where Korea is less known,” an official of KF said.

The first performance is due today at Restoration Hall, Cibao Grand Theater in Santiago, Dominica and the second performance is at Bellas Artes in Santo Domingo on Thursday. On July 9 and 10, the performance is held at the auditorium of Fundacion Empresarial para el Desarrollo Educativo (FEPADE), an educational institution in San Salvador.

For more information, visit www.kf.or.kr.