Recent Blog Posts
Chuseok Train Booking Opens on New SRT/KTX Unified System
South Korea's two high-speed rail operators completed their merger on September 1, folding SRT into Korail under a single KTX brand after a decade of running as separate systems. Chuseok ticket sales open days later, making this the first major holiday travel period booked entirely through the merged network.
SRT trains are being renamed KTX-Sancheon, and every booking now runs through one app, Korail+ (코레일+), rather than two separate systems with two separate seat pools.
BIFF's Grand Prize Now Reaches the Oscars
The Busan International Film Festival unveiled the full lineup for its 31st edition on September 1. The lineup includes 246 official selections from 59 countries, 95 of them world premieres, making this year's slate the festival's biggest since 2019.
The announcement matters beyond the numbers. This is the first edition since the film festival became eligible to send a winner straight to the Academy Awards, a status that changes what happens to whichever film takes the festival's top prize in October.
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Korea's Q2 Household Income Rose, But So Did the Squeeze
Korea's average household income rose 4.5 percent year on year in the second quarter of 2026, reaching 5.29 million won ($3,810) a month, according to the Ministry of Data and Statistics (국가데이터처)'s quarterly Household Income and Expenditure Survey (가계동향조사), released August 27. Household spending grew 3 percent over the same period, to 3.99 million won.
Korea ticket scalping ban takes effect
Enforcement decrees for South Korea's ticket scalping (암표) ban took effect on August 28, closing the loophole that let scalpers escape punishment whenever they avoided automated purchasing software.
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Drone-and-Robot Delivery Experiment Continues in Jinju
The Korea AeroSpace Administration and the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute ran the test from August 24 to 29 at the Centum River Park apartments in Jinju Innovation City. Drones carried packages from the Eunhasusoo Toy Bank and a children's library, crossed the river, and dropped them at a hub near the apartment complex.
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Gyeonggi Launches Real-Life Teacher Protection Officers
Gyeonggi Province officially deployed 300 dedicated teacher rights protection officers across the region on August 22, a nationwide first, months after a fictional version of the same idea became one of Netflix's most-watched Korean dramas of the year. Local press has been blunt about the connection, calling the new corps "참교육, made real."
Should You Learn Korean Through Japanese? | Into Korean
I want to know about your experiences – have any of you ever tried learning Korean through Japanese, or vice versa? What was it like, and what advice would you give to someone else attempting the same thing?
I used to do this when I was first learning Korean and had some difficulties with it, so I wanted to make this video to summarize what you should expect, what you should avoid, and how you can make the process more effective.
Why Dancing Can Still Get a Korean Venue Shut Down
A two-month business suspension against a small indie club in Busan has reopened a decades-old argument over one of the stranger corners of Korean regulation: whether a restaurant's customers are legally allowed to dance. Ovantgarde, a live-music venue near Kyungsung and Pukyong universities, played its last show before the shutdown on August 22, and by the following week supporters had filed a National Assembly petition asking lawmakers to rewrite the law behind it.
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Jeju Missing Persons Case Puts Police System Under Scrutiny
A Jeju District Court issued an arrest warrant on August 25 for a police officer accused of falsely closing missing persons cases, including one belonging to a 37-year-old woman whose body was found 104 days after she disappeared. The officer, identified only by his surname Bu, is suspected of closing roughly 200 missing persons cases at his own discretion, and investigators have so far identified about 10 in which he used an identical, apparently fabricated justification.
Seoul Declares Shade a Basic Right for Pedestrians
Seoul has formally adopted "the right to walk in shade" (그늘보행권) as a core principle of its urban planning. City officials made the announcement on August 19, folding shade requirements directly into the city's master plan and living-zone plans.
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Korea's Senior Poverty Rate Is the Highest in the OECD
An infographic ranking countries by senior poverty rate has been circulating this week, with South Korea at the top by a wide margin. The number holds up. Statistics Korea and the OECD's own Income Distribution Database agree that 39.8 percent of Koreans aged 65 and older lived on less than half the national median income in 2023, the highest rate among all OECD members and more than two and a half times the OECD average.
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Legalities and Practicalities of Sperm Donation and Egg Freezing in Korea
Access to a sperm donor, to egg freezing, or to government help paying for either comes down to three separate systems: the law itself, the medical guidelines hospitals actually follow, and the subsidy programs that decide who gets reimbursed. The three don't agree. The Bioethics and Safety Act does not explicitly bar unmarried women from receiving donor sperm, but a medical society guideline effectively does, a gap that has shaped some of Korea's highest-profile fertility cases and is now, finally, the subject of an official government review.
How to Find a Stylist for Curly Hair Salon in Seoul
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당황 or 황당? How Are They Different? | Korean FAQ
Do you know the difference between 당황하다 and 황당하다, as well as other versions like 당황스럽다? I break down how they’re different, how it’s not simply the syllables switched (they’re different meanings), and how you can use them with examples.
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Why Young Koreans Are Returning to the Sauna for Detox
Inside a jjimjilbang (찜질방) on a weeknight, phones stay in a locker at the door, the heat climbs past 80 degrees Celsius, and the crowd skews younger than it has in years. Searches for "sauna" among Koreans in their 20s and 30s rose 31 percent year over year in March, according to Naver DataLab, even as searches from people in their 50s fell over the same period.
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Dating Reality Boom in Korea Sparks a New Ethics Debate
SBS's newest dating show hands each contestant a countdown clock instead of a rose. On Love Against Time, which premiered August 4 and quickly reached Netflix Korea's top 10, contestants in their 20s and 30s who have survived or are living with a terminal diagnosis divide 100 minutes a day among the people they're interested in.