Korea Culture

Ji-Hye Kim sits scrunched on the floor of the packed auditorium in Koreatown, listening intently as Harvard Law School graduate Simon Lee gives pointers on how to succeed in college. Her son, Jason, is only a seventh-grader. But already she is preparing him--for Harvard. Jason, an honor student who plays the cello and reads Chinese for fun, recently completed Lee's seven-week course on study habits in anticipation of a long academic journey. Now, it's his mother's turn.

Suzanne Buchanan is a newcomer to the world of cross-cultural adoptions. She and her husband adopted a Korean baby only last spring. With James Hyun Soo Buchanan about to turn 1, the couple wanted to celebrate their son's birthday with some of the customs of his homeland. So on Saturday, the Buchanan family joined the hundreds of guests jammed into the Bethel Korean Church in Irvine for a dose of Korean tradition tailored for Americans who have adopted Korean children.

Oh Chol Hwang beholds the handcuffs and fetters, the clubs and swords, the gruesome wax dolls depicting Japanese military police torture techniques and declares himself a witness to history. "All these things I saw here today, I experienced myself," says Oh, 79, as he recalls life under Japan's 35-year colonial subjugation during a recent visit to South Korea's Independence Museum southwest of Seoul. "No matter how much the Japanese try to deny it, they can't erase the memories of Koreans."

To any Korean worth his salt, life without kimchi--the spicy pickled vegetables that appear at every Korean meal--is unthinkable. "Like marriage without sex," says Tong S. Suhr, a Los Angeles attorney and Koreatown gourmet whose love affair with kimchi spans more than six decades. "You just have to have it." Kimchi, unique to the Korean peninsula, has been around for centuries.

The first time I experienced a Korean spa, I was a youngster, visiting my grandparents in Taegu, South Korea. The shallowness of the oval tub reminded me of our local kiddie pool, except everyone was female, not a bathing suit was in sight and there wasn't an ice cream stand. In recent months, I have started visiting the \o7 mogyoktang\f7 , or Korean spa, in Los Angeles' Koreatown. Korean is the preferred language at the spa, but I don't speak it, despite my Korean roots.

On a recent warm afternoon, members of Hae Kyung Lee & Dancers splashed through the waterfall at downtown's California Plaza--for a reason. They were rehearsing for Saturday's performance of "Ancient Mariners." The troupe will incorporate the fountains of the plaza into the performance, which will include a full-sized boat, 300 floating balloons and fish. "Mariners" is billed as a meditation on the powers of water to transform one's life.

Six-hour traffic jams, nine-hour lines, five-deep crowds at crap tables and a mad dash for slot machines. Gambling fever has hit South Korea in a big way with the arrival of the nation's first casino for locals. "This is phenomenal, unbelievable," said Lee In Sung, manager of the new Kangwon Land Casino Hotel, which opened Oct. 29 here in Kangwon province. "I'm just delighted. We're breaking every record in the book."