The Month of May in Korea is often called Family Month. There's Children's Day, Parent's Day, and Teacher's Day. Korea takes Mother's Day to a whole different level! On these days you give your Children, Parents and Teachers gifts to show them how much you appreciate them. Children often benefit the most with candy and money being popular gifts. Teachers get quite a lot of gifts as well as they have many students and parents to receive gifts from. And that's why the month of May is called Family month in Korea! Well... did you learn something new about Korea? If you did, you'll be glad to know that you'll learn cultural tidbits in every single lesson at KoreanClass101.com! In every lesson, not only will you learn Korean that will... Show more

 Subways in Korea. The Seoul Metropolitan Subway is a thing of beauty. It's quick, efficient, and cheap. The subway itself also divided into three separate but similar entities: Seoul Metro, Korail, and SMRT (Seoul Metropolitan Rapid Transit corporation). Where have I heard of SMRT before? Our diligent 현우 has posted a nice introduction to to Seoul's subways in this forum post. Note the loudspeaker - each stop is announced in both English and Korean. It is very foreigner friendly in that regard. The air conditioning doesn't hurt, either :) 1000 원 buys you up to 6 miles worth of track and 100 원 for every additional 3 miles. Not bad. Actually that's more than not bad - that's a great deal. Remember the post about the size of Korea?... Show more

Visa regulations. Ever changing and always with controversy it seems. I should point out that to apply for a visa to go to Korea, one must go through their local Korean consulate. The three most common reasons to visit Korea are for traveling (tourist), teaching (English), and business (international). For this blog entry, we will focus on the first one. Next week will focus on the E-2 teaching visa. Visa application information changes somewhat frequently so it's important to check with official online resources prior to making plans. This post is intended to provide an overview from a strikingly handsome American citizen's point of view. Below is a breakdown of the tourist (C-3 90-day) visa. Information was pulled from the... Show more

Hi, 현우 here. Did you all have a nice weekend? 모두 주말 잘 보내셨어요? I went to 경복궁 (Gyeongbok Palace)  with Michael, also a listener to KoreanClass101, who was with visiting from New Zealand for a few days before he starts studying in Korea next year, and also some other friends of mine. We went to 용산 in the morning to see what's new at the electronics market and then went to 경복궁 where we were supposed to meet up with my other friends. And we were REALLY lukcy - not only had the rain stopped just a few minutes before we entered the palace, but also this fantastic re-enactment of the wedding of 숙종임금 (King Sukjong: 1661 ~ 1720) and 인현왕후 (Queen Inhyeon: 1667 ~ 1701). And here's the video! (It might be better if you watched it... Show more

안녕하세요. 현우예요. How was your week? I hope you had another exciting week!! ^^ Today I'd like to share a video that I took in the Summer when I was in Jejudo - Jeju Island/Province (제주도), the biggest island and the southern most province in Korea - a beautiful place! 정말 예쁜 곳이에요. It's a very short video, but I hope it will help you feel refreshed a bit ^^!! It might be better if you clicked on the video and watched it in high quality. :) 감사합니다.