Hi. 현우 here : )  Haha. You do see these pictures?  Yes, that's me in my military suit. Haha. So why am I wearing my military suit (=군복) again? Well I had to attend the annual reserved army training (예비군 훈련) this past Thursday, and I took a couple of photos before taking the uniform off. I'm sure many of you already have some knowledge about the Korean military system, but to briefly mention what it works like, every *healthy* man in this country has to serve the army for roughly 2 years (now it's getting shorter and shorter), and after the service is over, they have to attend the annual trainings for the next 5~6 years. It's *very* difficult to find somone who doesn't have any sweet memory at all from his military service, and... Show more

안녕하세요! Ah~ I feel like my recent wait for the things that were going to be released ended in a bit of an anticlimax. Boyband 東方神起 made their comeback with their 주문 -MIROTIC- MV, which you can watch here. I like the MV itself, but the song ... well, I don't hate it, but it's really not what I was expecting from them. It does have a slightly more mature and sexy edge to it but it could have been so much more impressive. R&B artist M also made a comeback with the release of his album, M RIZING, yesterday and the MV for 남자를 믿지마, featuring Big Tone. You can see the MV here! M RIZING was a bit of a disappointment for me. M composed a lot of the songs for his previous album, which I was really excited about, but sadly for this album... Show more

Full Immersion. We're talking 99% Korean input here and that's 100% scary. It's no joke - Americans are among the few countries that typically prefer an assisted-approach to language learning. Meaning we generally like to use L1 (our first language - English) to help explicitly learn L2 (the target language - in KC101's case - Korean). Most people who support this teaching model claim that the stress levels of the students are decidedly lower and that learning can take place in a comfortable L1-rich environment. Koreans are not the only ones who prefer full immersion (the exclusive use of L2 in the classroom) but since we are all students of Korean, let's focus on that for the moment being. However, I eagerly wait to hear from fellow... Show more

I don't know if it's just my strange perception of things, but I think the Korean music scene has been rather quiet these past couple of weeks. I think it's a case of timing - most groups that have had something come out recently are nearing the mid-way or even end of their single's promotion run, for some artists it's about time for them to switch to their album's second promotional track, for other's it's time for them to slowly fade back into the background while they prepare something new. But I also feel like it's a bit of a case of the calm before the storm, though that is just my own personal view of what's going on right now - I am, after all, currently holding my breath for the release of Epik High's new mini album Love Scream... Show more

Kinship terms. It's kind of hard to translate the concept literally but these titles are used quite frequently in Korean. Actually, here's a great lesson on just that. English can be quite direct at times. Whether that is a good or bad thing, indirectness is more favored in Korean. In English, we like to use names to be polite whereas Koreans prefer the use of titles like 선생님. Certainly there are times when Korean can express some of the most direct concepts possible, but on the whole, Korean functions in an indirect manner most of the time. One such way to be indirect is the widespread use of kinship terms. Here's a brief breakdown of a few select terms based on gender: These four terms are used widely and are quite... Show more