Kimchi Mamas

The Most Beautiful Man Alive

Won Bin

Where the Koreans Are

I live in Southern California, so you might think I would be surrounded by Koreans, but most of the Asians in Long Beach are from Cambodia and Vietnam. We have neither a decent Korean market nor a Korean restaurant of any kind. When we're craving kalbi we usually drive to Garden Grove, about twenty minutes away, or K-Town in L.A., which takes about forty minutes. Sometimes I think it would be nice to live a little closer to a Korean enclave.

I recently learned about this list of the U.S. communities with the highest percentage of Koreans. Although my city doesn't make the list, two nearby communities, Cerritos and La Palma, are number 2 and 3.

What's funny is that despite the scarcity of Koreans in Long Beach, our local Borders has a whole section devoted to K-dramas.

Did your community make the list?

--Weigook Saram

Korean Dramas

Do you watch Korean Dramas?  Do you have a favorite?

During jr. high and high school, I used to watch Korean Dramas with my family.  It was a ritual for my dad to go to the local Korean video store and swap the watched episodes with the latest released episodes.  I grew up in So. Cal so there was an abundance of these video stores.  We had those re-winding machines because the store wanted you to rewind them before returning and also because rewinding them in the VCR was "bad" for the VCR.

Anyway, my all time favorite drama is Sandglass.  Called Mo-Rae-Shi-Gae in Korean, the more correct translation would be "Hourglass."  Mo-rae means sand and shi-gae means watch/clock so I think that's how Sandglass came about.  I ordered the DVD set a while go as a present for my husband to help him learn Korean... and also for myself because I wanted to watch this series again!

-Mary

Eye on South Korea

CNN is running a series called Eye on South Korea, including a story on the Korean Wave. Check it out.

(Via Angry Asian Man.)

--Weigook Saram