Adventures in Kimchiland
The ramblings of an Australian living and working in Seoul, South Korea. Here you'll find my observations of the weird and wonderful things in this beautiful and fascinating country.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
... The Land Down Under
Monday, August 16, 2010
Beating the Heat
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Ummm
Cute as like me...See the world as a beautiful place and it's just what I like...Looking for the something special?Sweet whisper, feeling scent, touch, embrace.That is love.. That is Yes!
Friday, May 14, 2010
Cabaret - North Korean style
Monday, May 3, 2010
Jang Yeong-sil
Sadly, the end of Jang's life was not as celebrated as his time as a regal scientist. He was tasked with creating a ceremonial sedan chair, which broke while transporting the king. Jang was held responsible and was expelled from the palace and jailed. From this point there is nothing known about the rest of his life, including the date of his death – hardly a very prestigious ending to a life of scientific pursuit!
Life lesson: if you're going to do some building for a king, it's best to over-engineer.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Hope for reunification
Friday, April 23, 2010
Hwaiting!
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Spring in Seoul
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
The origin of Hangul
I’ve almost been here in Korea for one year and a question that I seem to be getting the most at the moment is “how are you going with learning the language?”
Sadly, my Korean is not as good as it could be (though I can certainly get by with what I call tourist Korean). My reading is OK, though. I can make out words, but I have no idea what they mean…
The Korean alphabet is extremely simple. There are only 24 characters – 10 vowels and 14 consonants – and the language is written completely phonetically. It is one of the easiest written languages to master (I actually learned all the basics of it over a weekend and I don’t really have a head for this stuff).

The Hangul alphabet was created in the 15th century under the reign of King Sejong (now one of only two former rulers to have received the title of “The Great”).
King Sejong ruled between 1418 and 1450 and heavily promoted learning. He was anxious that the largely agricultural society progress by embracing a written language and the Chinese pictographic alphabet of the day was considered too complex to learn without years of study. Sejong promoted the development of a far simpler script that could be learned quickly and easily by anyone. If my experiences are anything to go by, he succeeded. His statue sits in downtown Gwanghwamun (just a few metres from Admiral Yi Sun Sin), where he can be seen leafing through a book.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Protecting the shrubs
