Living in Korea will be more costly in the latter half of this year as public utility charges and dairy prices are likely to climb. Consumers will have to pay more for dairy starting within a week. Raw milk producers and processors reached an agreement to raise milk prices by 20 percent, the Ministry of Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries said yesterday. Processors will have to pay 120 won ($0.12) for one liter of milk ? 20.5 percent more than the current price. The price of raw milk has not seen a rise since 2004, when it was raised to 584 won per liter. The price of other dairy products, including cheese and baby formula, will increase by a similar margin. The subcommittee of the Korea Dairy and Beef Farmers Association agreed to the 20.5 percent rise last Friday during a 14th round of negotiations. This agreement now awaits the approval of the association’s board of directors. Although the association represents 27 percent of the country’s milk producers, their milk p...

Goddamn, sportsfans. With all the protests going on lately, it's been no wonder that no one's heard from me in a while. At present, I can only hope that this address can remain secure long enough for me to bang this out before the mob gets here and rips me limb from limb. The Korean Tourism Board was kind enough to pay for my last story but had no compunction about furnishing the rowdier elements with my whereabouts. In the past few turbulent weeks, I've been hounded, vilified and burned in effigy. Also, some very uncomplimentary things were said about my sweet, gray-haired mother. I will never attempt to defend my writing as I feel it is, on the whole, indefensible. What I will say is that I was more than willing to write a sequel to my previous article on the Korean martial arts and merely got distracted. This seeming snub to the male population of Korea was never intended and should not be seen as such. Crowds of men, women and children have been gathered outside my offi...

Pasta 12 has unknowingly become a default for satisfying impulse pasta cravings on a budget in Sinchon (신촌). I've visited the quaintly-decorated basement restaurant a handful of times, mostly for lunch, where you can order any dish on the menu for less than 6500 won. They'll even throw in a small salad, a beverage (cola/cider/hot coffee), and of course, sweet pickles (to cut the grease, according to Koreans.) Not a bad deal. The menu is oddly separated into "pasta" and "spaghetti" (hmm, I thought spaghetti was pasta?) and then conveniently divided by sauce type: tomato, tomato-cream, cream, Shanghai (insert question mark here), soy cream, olive oil, and demi-glace. (Where's the pesto?) But the real prize winner here is the soy cream mushroom spaghetti . Yes, I said soy milk - all the richness with a subtle nuttiness and half the fat (maybe), helping us all keep (or aspire to) the all important "S line" trend! Pasta 12 is located next door to ...

Hamhung Naengmyun - traditional North Korean mulnaengmyun in Yeongdeongpo-gu by Lily www.lunalil.com I am slightly obsessed with naengmyun (냉면) . It's one of my favorite Korean dishes. In fact I've been collecting information and pictures to write a giant post on this topic for over a year and a half. It's becoming more of a Wikipedia article than a blog entry. There are several types of naengmyun , my favorite and one of the more common types is mulnaengmyun (물냉면). Briefly, naengmyun is a cold noodle dish that originated in North Korea. There are two main varieties; bibimnaengmyun (비빔냉면) and mulnaengmyun. Personally I prefer mulnaengmyun over bibimnaengmyun. Most of my coworkers know how much I like naengmyun. A few months ago one of them suggested that go to Hamhung Naengmyeun (함흥냉면) in Yeongdeungpo (영등포). This restaurant is known for its authentic North Korean style of noodles, from the city of Hamhung (함흥시) . It was opened more than than 50 years ago by a former residen...

By Daniel Gray www.seouleats.com There are things that I miss about American Summer. I miss the jangling sound of "Pop Goes the Weasel" that drive little kids to beg, steal, or borrow change and then sprint towards roving truck dispensing frozen confectioneries. I miss huge cups at the 7-11 that I could fill with a mixture of exotic frozen Slurpee blends like Super Sour Watermelon, Arctic Blash, and Blue Woo-Hoo Vanilla. And I miss big hulking salads topped with the summer's plenty. Even though there are no Slurpees, ice cream trucks, or big salads in this country, there are plenty of other ways to chillax (chill and relax). As the Seoul sun has been heating up these days, I've made it my mission to find foods that fight the heat wave. Here are my top ten suggestions. 10. Kongguksu 콩국수: Kongguk is a chilled soy milk noodle soup. Traditionally, it's a refreshingly hearty bowl filled with wheat noodles, soy milk, cucumbers, and ground peanuts. There are variations...

Written by Matt Gross SOMETIME after midnight on a Sunday, the streets of the Myeongdong neighborhood in Seoul were quiet and cold. The young shoppers who flit from Adidas to Tommy Hilfiger to Club Monaco had gone home to study for December exams, and restaurant workers were setting barrels full of leftovers onto the curb to be picked up by early-morning garbage trucks. The city was going to sleep. But over near the subway station, in a little orange tent, or pojangmacha, a good night’s rest was on no one’s mind, least of all mine. Inside, a semipermanent kitchen was working overtime, cranking out hearty, salty, spicy dishes to warm the air and fill the bellies of the drinkers around plastic tables. Behind me sat a pair of university students practicing Mandarin; to my left were hip-hop hipsters in knee-length Nike parkas discussing, partly in English, how to pick up girls in Tokyo ; before me, a man in late middle age regaled a group of 20-somethings with stories and jokes. On ever...

http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=bf420910282dd36cf578dec6f198724ef790b30d Click on the link to see the Frugal Traveler from the New York Times on location in Seoul. Watch him with a special guest. I wonder who that guy is^^. Watch Matt Gross eat live octopus and steak in an ice cream cone. Dan P.S. I don't believe I said that spaghetti in an ice cream cone was "enjoyable."

It starts at 2:30pm and it is a tea party/birthday party for the fabulous Elinza Pretorius! Elinza will be making a multitude of cakes such as Lemon Meringue, Bundt, Chocolate, Carrot, and whatever else she can pull out of her...kitchen. I'll be taking care of savory dishes. Tomorrow I'll be making lemon herb pasta salad, Mama Gray's Potato Salad, Curried Egg Salad Sandwiches, Tzikiki Cucumber Sandwiches, Tofu Curry Sandwiches (vegetarian friendly), Red Curry Potato Salad, Celery with Peanut Butter, and whatever else I can put together tonight^^. Come one, come all. There will be tea and long island ice teas and lots of great company. The Orange Tree is located in Haebangchon across from the Kobawoo Supermarket. You can get there by subway by going out Noksopyeong Station exit 2 and walk down. Cross the road and take the road that veers left (across from the kimchee pots). Walk up and you'll find it about a block up on the left. It's on the second floor. It is W10,0...

During summer time you can find patbingsu (shaved ice with red bean) on the menu of almost every single restaurants and coffee places in Korea - even in Mcdonald and Burgerking. As each outlet tries to serve its own style of patbingsu, so they come up with multifarious new patbingsu's such as wine-bingsu, coffee-bingsu, and fruit-bingsu. While I enjoy these new styles of bingsu, it was getting hard to find old traditional style patbingsu. Surprisingly Japanese hamburger store 'Freshness Burger' serves very plain, yet tasty, patbingsu. However, it is not Korean style. There is no fruit, corn flakes, nor ice cream. This patbingsu comes with only shaved ice, red bean, condensed milk and small cubical rice cakes. Unlike most patbingsu places, which use canned red bean, its red bean is cooked in the outlet. So it is home made style. The red bean is not mashed and keeps its shape in the patbingsu. One of my friends comes to this place only for this red bean. The only thing I didn...

Seoul Eats: Eel in the City By Daniel Gray Freshwater eel is a summertime specialty. Slowly grilled, the flesh has a marbled quality like a fine rib eye steak, a silky texture that resembles lobster. It melts in your mouth seasoned only with salt, but when lathered with a soy glaze the smell simply wafts up to your hypothalamus and makes itself a permanent fixture. While I was making my excursion to “Jangeorang” in Hongdae, trying to convince my expatriate friends to come join me for grilled eel and soy marinated crab was like trying to pick all the red pepper flakes out of kimchi. When I approached my Korean friends, it was the complete opposite reaction. One of my friends even canceled a date in order to have a meal of eel. This differing reaction made me wonder. Why do some people have a prejudice against eel? I guess some people associate it with evil because it looks like a snake or maybe it’s the name: eel. It sounds like a murmur of disgust rather than the name of an epicurean e...

It's a shame I have to work, or I'd totally go to this. Dan "Cooking Class" ¯ Date: July 25, 2008 10:00 ~ 13:00 ¯ Venue: Rinnai Korea cooking room (Seodeamun-Gu ChangCheon-Dong 515-1 Rinnai Building L 3, Seoul ) ¯ Target: Foreigners living in Seoul, 30pax ¯ Fee: None ¯ The event will be held regardless of rain. ¯ Participation is limited to those who are above 8 years old. In this 2 nd cooking course organized by our centre, Bulgogi and Bibimbab are the two cuisines to be introduced to the participants. ™ Bulgogi Bulgogi is a Korean cuisine made by frying marinated beef with vegetables. ™ Bibimbab Bibimbab is a kind of dish where seasoned vegetables, meat, other spices are served on the top of rice and mixed with sesame oil and other spices. ¯ Event schedule Time Venue Contents 10:00 Rinnai Cooking Room Attendance confirmation 10:00...

Ichon-dong (이촌동) may be deemed Seoul's "Little Tokyo," but the name's a bit deceiving. Sure, there's a Japanese mini-mart or two, and even a few signs in Hiragana, but if you're really expecting, well, a smaller version of Tokyo, you won't find it here (as I discovered my first time around.) Rather, Ichon-dong is quiet, filled with residential high rises and a few smart looking cafes. And if you take a close enough look, you're bound to find some good eats. After hearing about Mitaniya (02-797-4060), a small Japanese restaurant in the basement of the Samik Shopping Mall, I went with 4 other pals (from Japan) to find it, and see if it'd pass the test. I have to say, they were quite pleased upon receiving the menu alone, seeing that it was 4 pages long, and in Japanese (of course, with Korean descriptions). It took us a while to figure out a plan, but as soon as the neighboring table's plates arrived, everyone confirmed their decision - the curr...