Sep 16, 2014 | Writing
SEOUL, South Korea — “It’s not fair!” complained a South Korean sex industry aficionado, a former “consultant” for a large call girl website. “The tax men are hurting business! Cracking down on company cards!” The consultant, a 32-year-old, chiseled and rakish figure...
Sep 11, 2014 | Writing
UIJEONGBU, South Korea — Growing up in hardship in this once-poor Cold War outpost, the young Kim Kyeong-sun decades ago met a job recruiter who promised her housing and a paycheck to support her family. Her real job? A sex worker for American GIs. In a former...
Sep 8, 2014 | Writing
SEOUL, South Korea — By North Korean standards, Yeonmi Park, 20, grew up in affluence, the daughter of a party loyalist who traded in gold and silver with Chinese customers. Accustomed to privilege and security, in the mid-1990s her family suddenly found themselves...
Sep 2, 2014 | Writing
SEOUL, South Korea — Every year an untold number of dogs, raised in cramped and inhumane commercial breeding grounds known as “puppy mills,” make their way from South Korea and elsewhere into your local kennel for re-sale at premium prices, a GlobalPost investigation...
Aug 22, 2014 | Writing
SEOUL, South Korea — For more than a year, the world has watched the bold economic experiment known as Abenomics, once exalted as the saving grace for two decades of economic torpor in Japan. An elderly workforce, rigid economy, soaring national debt, and youth...
Aug 18, 2014 | Writing
SEOUL, South Korea — It’ll smack you in the face the instant you walk into any decent Korean restaurant: the pungent smell of kimchi — the piquant pickled cabbage whose bold tanginess is increasingly exalted by Western foodies. For newbies, kimchi is a masochistic...
