Free Subject : Let's Discover Korean food!

Let's Discover Korean Food!

Today I am very happy to present you my Free subject article which will be about an amazing thing :KOREAN FOOD! I will try to focus more on everything I tested myself and to describe as much as possible the food! Enjoy !

The most famous side dish served in nearly every Korean restaurants is ... the KIMCHI !

Korean kimchi is a traditional side dish made from salted and fermented vegetables

 It is very spicy, and this isn't my favorite but it is part of the Korean food culture and you have to try it once!

Now let's move to some main courses : the bulgogi, this is one of my favorite korean dish.

Bulgogi

This is made of Marinated beef or pork, in a noodles soup along with vegetables, onion and a side rice. The taste is really good and it is very cheap.

Dumplings said as "cogi-mandu"

My favorite korean food is certainly this one, the taste is close to japanese "gyoza" but the mix inside seems to be different. It isn't spicy and it is cheap. Let me welcome you the korean Dumplings.

This is a korean version of the chinese "dumplings" filled with a mix of vegetables and beef or pork.

Korean BBQ

Have you ever heard of the famous Korean BBQ? There are restaurants every where in the world, but not as good as in South Korea for sure! This is pork or beef (the quality differs from restaurant to restaurant). Such dishes are often prepared at the diner's table on gas or charcoal grills, and alot of side dishes are given for free too. Some korean BBQ are unlimited which means you can enjoy hours of good meat with friends!

And now something less healthy for you, but if you are like me a Cheese-aholic you definetly need to try this one once in your life : Jiimdak  (with cheese topping!)

Jiimdak with Cheese topping

This is something you want to share with your friends and not order it alone. It is made of boneless chickens pieces, vegetables, potato, dumplings, onions, noodles cheese, rice cakes with an awesome sauce.

And to end this article about food I'll present you something to drink, because you may be thirsty after this Cheese Jiimdak! The most famous alcohol of Korea and South Korea is No. 1 in hard liquor consumption in the world, just because of this alcohol, since they drink only little of whiskey or others hard liquor. If you want my advice, pick the Grapefruit one or the blueberry, they are the best according to our international students and to me this semester !

Different flavors of Soju

The flavored one are usually between 13 and 25% of alcohol while the others can go up to 40% which is incredibly high. In 2006, it was estimated that the average adult Korean (older than 20) had consumed 90 bottles of soju during that year.

Most significant news story concerning politic

The 19th South Korean presidential election was held on 9 May 2017, after the impeachment of incumbent Park Geun-hye. The election was decided in a single round on a first-past-the-post basis.

The election was originally scheduled to be held on 20 December 2017, but was moved forward after the decision of the Constitutional Court on 10 March 2017 to uphold the parliament's impeachment of Park Geun-hye.

Moon-Jae-In from the democratic party won the 9th may 2017 national South Korean election with 41.08%.

Moon Jae-In

13,423,800 voters selected Moon Jae-in as their preference for President. 

Moon Jae-in also moved his office from the Blue House, the presidential palace became the symbol of a power "bunkisered" and inaccessible: he now works in the same annex as his team. And he finally talks to the press: journalists have the right again to ask questions not prepared in advance.

This seems quit surprising from an Western point of view but this was the reality of South Korea. 

The South Korean people remain euphoric one week after the election of their president, the latter reacting to each of his gestures, and this one has a very high popularity. 

Regional and External conflicts or tensions

Hello everyone,
North Korea-US tension is growing and it is a threat for South Korea too.
North Korea launched a ballistic missile the 9th April from near its submarine base in Sinpo on its east coast, but the launch was the latest in a series of failures just after liftoff, according to American and South Korean military officials.

North Korea’s missile launch comes just a day after a huge military parade in Pyongyang

North Korea has defied Donald Trump’s demands for it to abandon its nuclear and missile programmes.
 However, the test appeared to fail. The attempt came hours before US vice-president Mike Pence was due to arrive in Seoul. Mike Pence, who has been visiting the region, warned the North not to test Washington and said the US "era of strategic patience" with Pyongyang was over .

Mike Pence Vice-president of the US

Since North Korea doesn't listen to the US, his ally China tried to make north korea chill about the growing tension. "China is unswerving in its commitment to realising the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula, maintaining the peace and stability of the Korean peninsula, and continue to solve matters through dialogue and negotiations."

Vice-Foreign Minister Han Song-ryol

But even though North Korea said, "If the US is planning a military attack against us, we will react with a nuclear pre-emptive strike by our own style and method" Vice-Foreign Minister Han Song-ryol.
 

The conflict remains total and nobody knows what the future helds. Let's hope that the US don't start military moves that may leads the Korean peninsula to the World War III, it would be a human disaster for sure.

Geopolitics / News

The Republic of Korea is a democratic republic that operates with three principal branches of government: executive, legislative and judicial. The country has experienced a number of transitions in government structure since Korea was divided into two occupations zones in 1945.

Flag of South Korea, called Taegeukgi.

 Recently there has been many marchers in the street, which was very impressive and occured during our Seoul field trip. Our bus couldn't bring us back on time because of that. I wanted to learn more about the reason since Koreans in my university dont talk alot about politics.

Park Geun-hye

"South Korea’s disgraced former president Park Geun-hye has been arrested and jailed over high-profile corruption allegations that already ended her tumultuous four-year rule and prompted an election to find her successor" Park is South Korea’s third head of state to be jailed after leaving office. (Theguardian.com)

 She has been arrested few days ago because of her corruption problems. The date of National holiday for election has been changed and it is now the 9th of may.

Social Rituals

Today we went to Jamsil, in order to visit the Olympic Park of Seoul which held the 1988 Olympic Games.

Olympic Park Entrance

After an afternoon in this awesome park we went to Hangang riversides to have some rest and enjoy the beautiful weather. I did a little timelapse of the sunset to change from the traditional photos I publish everytime, i am still beginning with photography so be kind aha. This week end is Cherry Blossom festival and it will be amazing!

University Profile / Geopolitics

Last saturday we went on a Seoul Trip with Ajou Global Ambassadors (AGA), I just found out I didn't explained you before what AGA was standing for :D

I chose trip number 5, starting with National Museum of Korea near Itaewon during the morning, which was really interesting about the past of Korea, and Asia countries such as Japan and China.

National Museum of Korea

After a spicy lunch with my finnish friends, we went to Gyeongbokgung Palace located in the center of Seoul.

Gyeongbokgung Palace

We had the opportunity to see guards walking to the beat drums which was impressive which happens only on special time.The view was truly amazing with the mountains just behind this.

Guards

We spended one hour or so enjoying this beautiful palace inside seoul, near buildings and then we went to Hanok Village to wear traditional korean clothes. It was so fun, since I was wearing something like a mexican hat but the lady told me that it was for the old korean kings wearing this hat so after all it was fine.

Hanok Village

This day was amazing and we ended up at the Namsam tower but it was night and we couldn't see a great view from there, I guess i will go back once to enjoy Namsam's view by afternoon.

We had a special surprise during our trip, with so many protestant in the street which cause delay to our way back to Ajou University. I'll let you know about this in a special geopolitics article.

University Profile

Hello everyone,
It has been more than ten days since I arrived in South Korea, especially in Ajou University Campus in Suwon.
The AGA members had a warm welcome for us in order to make us feel more confortable about arriving in a foreign country without knowing anything about it.

We had two orientations days at the end of february, and we had the opportunity to visit the campus with our dear AGA buddys. Here is a picture of the statue from the main gate of Ajou University Campus.

Ajou university campus holds more than 14.000 students, with engineering department, business administration, or medecine. There are four different dormitory on the Campus, I am in the New International Dormitory which was built three years ago and is very clean. I took a picture of my room before the arrival of my Korean roommate. I'll do my best to take a picture with him to show you how nice he seems!

On our arrival we were recommended to go to a welcome party the next wednesday to get to learn more about koreans and international exchange students that will share the semester with us. It was organized in a chicken & beer restaurant which is a very common place in South Korea. Here is a small picture taken with Korean friends & few ESDES friends that shared this nice welcome party with me.

This party was really fun, I learnt about korean habits and social differences such as how we must pour drinks depends on the age of the person towards you. We have a Seoul trip soon I'll let you know about how it was§