KoreanClass101.com Blog

The weather at my house has been very cold (by California standards) this past week. We have had snow several times, although it did not stick. Yes, that is my favorite kind of snow, the stuff that says hello and then leaves. The snow in my wife's hometown (여수시) is similar; it typically does not stick for too long. One thing that winter and snow do bring with them is skiing. I never learned to ski growing up as it wasn't very accessible, it was expensive, and my parents aren't skiers. We now live fairly close to a small ski resort and the local schools offer skiing every Friday during the ski season, so my children have all learned how to ski. The Korean children that we have had in our house have also been skiers, including the boy... Show more

Sorry for my lack of entry last Tuesday! I'm starting Uni in a few days, and last week I decided I would be clever and get ahead in the material, which sort of not-so-cleverly threw me off my schedule with everything else. But here I am, back again~ and this time, I thought I would "review" an artist that I really enjoy :D So, allow me to introduce you all to ... Drunken Tiger, or 드렁큰타이거. Drunken Tiger is a hip hop group that released their first album in 1999. With influential and even controversial lyrics, Drunken Tiger is often seen as being one of the pioneers of Korean hip hop, in a time when pop still heavily dominated the music scene. While not much has changed and pop is still perhaps the biggest seller, it was artists like... Show more

The local Korean grocery store can be a cultural connection that, for many, goes largely untapped. The most obvious link to Korea through the local grocery store is the food. The store can be a source for many spices and foods not found in a regular chain grocery store. These include the mundane like curry powder, red pepper powder, soy sauce, fish sauce (젓갈) as well as the more hard to find like 고추장, 된장, 쌈장, 미역, and Korean soda pop and 요구르트 (my children love that stuff). The best food stuffs to get in the grocery store are the prepared foods. Sure, you can get "Wong's Kimchi" as your local Raleys or Vons but it is horrible, pasteurized, and not much more than pepper and cabbage. Each Korean market will have different tasting 김치 because... Show more

Korean is not the easiest language to learn, and especially when it comes to vocabulary, the speed at which your vocabulary expands is never quite satisfactory. But when there's a will to learn Korean, there will always be a way to expand your vocabulary. Studying with our regular podcast lessons in various levels and using the review tracks and PDFs to study further details is a very good way of course, and here's another way of learning more Korean words that we'd like to suggest. We decided to call it "Korean Word Relay", and we've tried making a few of them, hoping that these videos will help you learn more Korean words and also give our listeners a chance to test their vocabulary! Please give us your feedback on this... Show more

Today I want to start sharing with you some of the "struggles" at the orphanage.  By that,  I mean the kinds of things that go on that I don't think would happen in a similar environment in the Western world.  Some of it is cultural for sure, but other things are just a function of the situation. The floor at the orphanage is dirty.  There is no other word to describe it.  They have a few dogs that do all sorts of unspeakable things on it (including the one that is currently in heat).  The kids are always eating in the living room and spilling things, leaving crumbs and the like for the next guy to find. It gets cleaned each day, but "clean" seems to have a very different definition.  It isn't cleaned with soap - ever.  Usually just... Show more