The American lunch meat has a special place on dining tables halfway across the world, from the Philippines to Japan to South Korea – and now, on the tables of Asian communities in NZ. How did this happen? Jihee Junn investigates. Believe it or not, but Spam and Seolnal (or Lunar New Year as it’s … Read more
Sam Hammington was discovered after raising his hand on a whim to be an audience participant at a comedy show. Now he’s one of the biggest names in Korean television. In 2013, a fan approached Sam Hammington for a selfie on a crowded street in Itaewon, a cosmopolitan neighbourhood near the centre of Seoul. It … Read more
Māori language revitalisation researcher Dr Rachael Ka’ai-Mahuta explores what lessons can be learned here in Aotearoa from the current explosion in popularity of Korean culture. Earlier this year, I met an Aucklander whose teenage passion for K-pop sparked an interest in the Korean language and culture in general, and led to them learning Korean as … Read more
What happens when New Zealand’s queen of K-Pop rallies a room full of kids to become homegrown popstars? You get TVNZ On Demand’s K-Pop Academy. Korean pop music – or “K-pop” – is, arguably, the biggest musical genre on the planet. BTS is its most famous name, but South Korea is home to plenty of … Read more
Over the last few days, reports have emerged of people travelling from New Zealand and testing positive for Covid-19 upon arrival at their destination. First in South Korea and now in Australia. Dr Siouxsie Wiles explains what these positive tests could mean. They’re false-positives As Toby Morris and I have explained before, there are different … Read more
With Bae Suah’s novels, two translators bend language to speak the unexplainable. When I was at primary school I was given a tiny doll in a match box. On the matchbox were printed the words Mon Ami. “It means ‘my friend’,” explained my next-door neighbour who was at high school and probably the coolest person … Read more
The widespread use of the imperial flag suggests that New Zealanders’ knowledge of the second world war is incomplete, writes Rebekah Jaung. For many people from Asian countries it is a symbol of hate akin to a swastika, yet every couple of months I see a local person or company brandishing it. It’s been used … Read more
South Korean President Moon Jae-In this week completed a successful visit to New Zealand. Rebekah Jaung explains where New Zealand-Korean relations are today and what we can do to help restore lasting peace on the peninsula. If you took a walk through Auckland Domain on Monday morning, you may have noticed some commotion outside the museum. … Read more
From hand-rolling bliss balls to exporting to South Korea, Maria Slade spoke one half of Tom & Luke about taking their healthy bars and balls global. Tom Dorman may be one half of the duo giving its name to Kiwi healthy snacks success story Tom & Luke, but he is not a 50 percent kind of … Read more
A cult leader arrested in Korea has been accused of forcing devotees into slave labour in Fiji. And the Fijian government is staying tight-lipped about their own links to the Grace Road Church. Jamie Tahana writes for RNZ Pacific. There’s an apocalypse coming and only one place will escape it: Fiji, the so-called “centre of … Read more
Mukbang is a South Korean video craze in which a host eats huge amounts of foods while interacting with their audience. Comedian and mukbang superfan Rose Matafeo decided to make her own mukbang, so she bought $60 of takeaways from Double Happy in Te Atatū South, west Auckland, and got to work. The Spinoff’s food … Read more
Hyper-sensalitionism clouds the true gravity of the moves towards reconciliation on the Korean Peninsula, write Korean New Zealanders Angela Suh and Rebekah Jaung. What is the biggest historical event that you can fathom taking place in your lifetime? For most Koreans, unification or the alternative of catastrophic conflict on the Korean peninsula are high on … Read more
Last night North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean president Moon Jae-in met for the first time, pledging a new era of friendship between the two countries. In today’s Cheat Sheet: is peace finally about to come for the people of Korea? What’s all this about then? The leaders of North and … Read more