Most Popular
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Yoon sorry for shortcomings but insists policies were right
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1 in 3 Koreans live alone, family types becoming diverse
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S. Korea ‘strongly’ protests Japan’s claim over Dokdo in diplomatic bluebook
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Korea, Japan finance chiefs vow to tame rampant FX market volatility
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US 'incredibly concerned' about suspected NK-Iran military ties
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Korean won weakens amid heightened uncertainty
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Seoul says will cut power to porn festival planned on Han River
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Sewol victims commemorated on tragedy's 10th anniversary
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K-pop group's manager dismissed for setting up spycam in theater dressing room
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Chanel, Louis Vuitton see muted growth in Korea
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Encyclopaedia Britannica to end print editions
CHICAGO (AP) ― Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc. said Tuesday that it will stop publishing print editions of its flagship encyclopedia for the first time since the sets were originally published more than 200 years ago.The book-form of Encyclopaedia Britannica has been in print since it was first published in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1768. It will stop being available when the current stock runs out, the company said. The Chicago-based company will continue to offer digital versions of the encycloped
March 14, 2012
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Scholar talks patriotism, democracy
Historian Jang publishes new memoir ‘To Live My Way’Scholar Jang Byung-hye, who is also the daughter of Korea’s third Prime Minister Jang Taek-sang, said public apathy toward politics endangered Korean democracy at an event to publish her memoir “To Live My Way.”The 81-year-old scholar’s book is a collection of Jang’s thoughts on various issues, including the life of her father, tips and advice for young people, and Korea’s modern history and democratic development. “I see a lot of people consid
March 13, 2012
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Saturday humanities classes offer insights on various subjects
Nine renowned university professors are holding Saturday lectures on various subjects in the hope of boosting public interest in the humanities, according to program organizers.The program, “Lectures by Eminent Scholars in the Humanities,” offers free Saturday lectures on a first-come, first-serve basis. It is organized by National Research Foundation of Korea, with the support of the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology.Hanyang University professor emeritus Choi Mun-hyeong kicked off t
March 13, 2012
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Couple haunted by mistakes of youth
The Lost DaughterBy Lucy Ferriss (Penguin)If all the bad choices people made as teenagers returned to haunt them as adults, the world would be filled with fearful and guilt-ridden people.Most people get away with those bad choices with few repercussions, but in Lucy Ferriss’ novel “The Lost Daughter,” they come back big for Brooke O’Connor.Brooke lives in Connecticut with her husband, Sean, who is from a big Irish-Catholic family. But Brooke and Sean have only one child, a daughter named Meghan,
March 9, 2012
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Mirage of American dream
Gods Without MenBy Hari Kunzru(Knopf)Early in “Gods Without Men,” Hari Kunzru’s ambitious and wonderful new novel, a strung-out British rock star stares into the big night sky hanging over the Mojave Desert.“The stars were like pinholes in a cloth,” he marvels. “You could believe you were seeing through to some incredibly bright world on the other side of the darkness.”It’s a great image, in a book filled with terrific writing.But it’s also a pithy description of the dangerous American dream tha
March 9, 2012
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Introduction to colorful Joseon women’s pendants
Norigae: Splendor of the Korean CostumeBy Lee Kyung-jaTranslated by Lee Jean-youngEwha Womans University PressFor anyone who is familiar with Korea’s traditional costume, hanbok, the term “norigae” will ring a bell. A decorative pendant hung from the inner or outer tie of jeogori, the upper piece of a hanbok, norigae carries both aesthetic and emotional traces of women from the Joseon era (1392-1897).Scholar Lee Kyung-ja’s English-translated book, “Norigae: Splendor of the Korean Costume” offers
March 9, 2012
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Questions for … author Ellen Ullman
Ellen Ullman is the author of “By Blood” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, February 2012), a tale set in San Francisco in the ’70s, which involves an eavesdropper whose fascination leads to research into Heinrich Himmler’s Nazi Lebensborn program. Discoveries from her research for that book have touched her deeply.“The Bug,” recently reprinted by Picador, was a New York Times Notable Book and runner-up for the PEN/Hemingway Award, and the cult classic memoir, “Close to the Machine” (also reprinted by
March 9, 2012
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Children’s publisher developing app for e-reading
NEW YORK (AP) ― A leading publisher of children’s books is taking a big step into the electronic market.Scholastic Inc. is developing an app called Storia, which includes around 1,300 e-books and multimedia e-books that can be bought directly from the publisher or from retailers. Such favorite picture series as “Clifford the Big Red Dog’’ and “Ready, Freddy!’’ will be in digital format for the first time. The app also will feature games, quizzes, interactive stories, an e-dictionary and a virtua
March 6, 2012
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Garcia Marquez classic begins first e-sales
BOGOTA (AFP) ― Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez celebrates his 85th birthday Tuesday with a special gift: the start of sales of an electronic version of his masterpiece novel “One Hundred Years of Solitude.”“I do not know if it will be as successful as hoped but it is the goal,” Carmen Balcells, Garcia Marquez’s literary agent, said in an interview Monday with Colombian radio Caracol.This year also marks the 30th anniversary since Garcia Marquez received the Nobel Prize for Literature.“On
March 6, 2012
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‘Lost’ novel by dead Nobel laureate published
MADRID (AFP) ― A “lost” novel by Portuguese Nobel literature laureate Jose Saramago which he wrote in the 1950s before he achieved international acclaim has been published nearly two years after his death.Saramago sent the manuscript for “Claraboya,” which tells the tale of residents of a Lisbon apartment building, through a friend to a Portuguese publishing house in 1953 but never heard back from them.But in 1989, after the author had become one of Portugal’s best-selling contemporary writers,
March 4, 2012
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Battling for humanity and herself
PartialsBy Dan WellsBalzer & Bray Blame Suzanne Collins if you will. But the dystopian trend in young adult fiction isn’t going away. If anything, it’s growing even stronger in the run-up to the movie based on her book “The Hunger Games” as publishers rush in with their Next Big Things.Readers who enjoy headstrong feminist leads making their way through post-apocalyptic incarnations of major U.S. cities set in the not-too-distant future will find plenty to like in “Partials,” the kickoff to a ne
March 2, 2012
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[New Book] Crafty, fun spin on the werewolf genre
The Wolf GiftBy Anne Rice(Knopf)When Glen Duncan’s fabulously sinister and moving “The Last Werewolf” came out in July, it set an almost unreachably high bar for the lycanthrope subgenre, in much the same way Anne Rice’s 1976 classic “Interview With the Vampire” did for fang lit.Now here comes Rice with her own take on the wolf-man legend, “The Wolf Gift,” a fast-paced, heady romp that ranks with her best. I still give “The Last Werewolf” the edge, by the teensiest smidgen, because of its operat
March 2, 2012
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Introduction to Won Buddhism
The Moon of the Mind Rises in Empty SpaceBy Prime Dharma Master Kyongsan(Seoul Selection) Many foreigners will find Won Buddhism unfamiliar compared to other forms of Korean Buddhism. It was in fact founded in the 20th century, and is claimed to be a “reformed and modernized Buddhism” which combines Buddhism with Confucianism and Daoism.By picking up this English-language book written by the Ven. Kyongsan, who is the fifth Prime Darma Master of Won Buddhism, one can learn about the key ideas of
March 2, 2012
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Legacy for sale: Hemingway boyhood home on the block ― and under Wright’s shadow
In the world of legacies, Oak Park, Illinois, has a couple of biggies.The brilliant, scandalous architect Frank Lloyd Wright spent the first 20 years of his career there, leaving the western suburb with the world’s largest collection of buildings he designed.Then there’s the brilliant, scandalous writer Ernest Hemingway, who was born in Oak Park and spent nearly his first 20 years there, writing his earliest pieces, gaining an appreciation for nature and dreaming of worldly adventures.Frank Lloy
March 2, 2012
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[NewBook] Feldman casts a tale of abandonment, self-reinvention
Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic RootsBy Deborah Feldman(Simon & Schuster) From the materials of a life resembling one of the darker Grimm’s fairy tales, young memoirist Deborah Feldman gives us “Unorthodox,” a true story of abandonment, twisted caretakers, arranged marriage and sexual misery. Denied every kind of nourishment except the doughy, shimmering plates of food obsessively produced by her Holocaust-survivor grandmother, this proud, stubborn girl, nonetheless, heard and
Feb. 24, 2012
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[New Book] LaCour’s new work plays the soundtrack of young lives
The DisenchantmentsBy Nina LaCour (Dutton)The summer after high school is a time when senioritis gives way to the anticipation of life’s next chapter. For most middle-class high school graduates, that next chapter means packing up and heading to college. In Nina LaCour’s young-adult novel “The Disenchantments,” it involves a weeklong tour of an all-girl band (which gives its name to the book’s title), during which two best friends reconcile their disparate aspirations and affections for each oth
Feb. 24, 2012
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[Eye Read] North Korean refugee shares his life story
This is Paradise! My North Korean ChildhoodBy Kang Hyok with Philippe GrangereauTranslated by Shaun WhitesideFrench journalist Philippe Grangereau first met North Korean refugee Kang Hyok back in 2003 in Prague. Kang, who was 17 at the time, had been invited by the People in Need Foundation to the fourth conference of the South Korean NGO “North Korean Human Rights.” The young boy was asked to share his life story in North Korea with two other refugees in their forties.The journalist recalls Kan
Feb. 24, 2012
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Revolving trust: ‘Watergate’ dives inside inner circles of Nixon White House
Even the biggest secrets have secrets lurking behind them.And, Thomas Mallon suggests in his absorbing new novel “Watergate,” America’s biggest and dirtiest revealed secret was no exception.The 30th anniversary of the break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate Hotel is this June, and for many Americans, the cover-up and scandal that followed has become both a time marker and trivia.But the drama that led to the first and only resignation of a sitting U.S. president w
Feb. 24, 2012
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Rowling has deal for new novel for adults
NEW YORK (AP) -- Adult fans of J.K. Rowling can rejoice: She has a new novel coming, for grownups.The kids will have to wait and see.The author of the mega-selling ``Harry Potter'' series has an agreement with Little, Brown in the United States and Britain to publish her first novel for grownups. Th
Feb. 24, 2012
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US comic collection expected to get $2M at auction
A collection of some of the most prized comic books ever published is expected to fetch more than $2 million at auction this week in the U.S.Michael Rorrer said he thought his great uncle Billy Wright's comics were cool, but he didn't realize how valuable they were for months after finding the 345 c
Feb. 22, 2012