“The House in the Cerulean Sea” is an LGBT fantasy novel by Travis John Klune that explores the idea of finding one’s place in a tough and unforgiving world. The story follows a caseworker at the Department in Charge of Magical Youth (DICOMY), Linus Baker. His job as a caseworker is to investigate and file reports on orphanages registered under DICOMY’s supervision. The only peculiar thing about these orphanages is that they host magical creatures who allegedly pose a grave threat to normal peers if enrolled in a public school. The House in the Cerulean Sea is the most peculiar of all as it ho

Concerns about the environment have started to be an increasingly serious problem around the world, and this is no exception in South Korea. Although it has been some time since the concept of environmental awareness was introduced, most people do not see environmental concerns as directly linked to them. Jeju Island, the most popular tourist destination in South Korea, has suffered the consequences of negligence towards the environment, and the rate of waste accumulation on this island is steadily increasing. Due to the popularity of Jeju Island as a tourist destination, the number of tourist

The webtoon and web novel industry, which are integral parts of K-content, is suffering due to the infringement of intellectual property (IP) as the illegal distribution of content prevails. Webtoon platforms such as Naver and Kakao are responding in earnest by filing criminal charges. Still, critics point out that fundamental measures are needed as IP are often difficult to detect. According to the Korea Copyright Protection Agency (KCOPA)’s "Research Report on Copyright Infringement Investigation and Response Plan," the number of illegal webtoon sites has increased from three in 2016 to 107

Liking What You See : A Documentary, is a short novellette by Ted Chiang, released alongside others within the book, Story of Your Life and Others (2002). The story is narrated in the form of a documentary script, with interviews and speeches by various characters all talking about the central topic of calliagnosia, or calli for short. Calli is introduced as a fictional technology developed by neuroscientists that allows humans to stop judging the aesthetic quality of other humans. Using the fact that there are specific mechanisms within the brain that allow aesthetic judgment of human faces,

Professor June Huh at Princeton University is the first Korean American Mathematicians to receive the Fields Medal during the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) awards ceremony which was held in Finland in July. He grew up and graduated from Seoul National University, so an interest in the Fields Medal also increased in Korea. The Fields Medal is called the Nobel Prize of Mathematics, and Korean academia is paying much attention to it along with the Nobel Prize to be announced this fall.The Fields Medal was established according to the will of J.C. Fields at the University of Toron

Ever since COVID-19 became a worldwide pandemic, travel rates have steadily decreased and caused severe damage to the tourism industry. The prolonged pandemic affected all economic sectors, but due to the nature of tourism, it has arguably been one of the most negatively impacted sectors. According to the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC), the tourism industry’s contribution to GDP decreased by US $4.9 trillion in 2020, which is a 50.4% decline when compared with the previous year. However, as the COVID-19 situation was prolonged, in 2021, the contribution to GDP increased by US $1 trillio

The main character of Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) is Riggan Thomson, an aging actor trying to revive his fading career by becoming an artist on Broadway after his long-time role as a superhero in Hollywood. After receiving continuous criticism from critics and failing to obtain public attention, he is now directing and acting in a stage production.The film starts with Riggan levitating above the ground in the lotus position in his dressing room. Unlike his peaceful posture, a voice resembling his old superhero, Birdman, is constantly complaining in the background. He recrui

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) suggested that the global community should achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 to give the world a chance of limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5℃. The net-zero emission is broadly the same as carbon neutral: CO2 emissions are being generated, but they are offset by the same amount being removed by technology. At the current state, to reach net-zero emission, CO2 emissions should be reduced, but offsetting emissions are also necessary. Replacing fossil fuels with “renewables, hydrogen and nuclear” is the most urgent task for each count

The moon has been a source of curiosity for everyone living on Earth. From goddess worship to folklores about the moon, no one quite knew anything specific about the moon until fairly recently. However, it seems that another large step is being taken towards the future of humanity, because scientists have succeeded in growing plants in lunar soil for the first time. The moon soil used was a sample collected from the Apollo missions during 1969-1972, and to all the researchers’ astonishment, cress seeds planted in the soil sprouted after just two days. The next question that researchers harbore

Man’s Search for Meaning (1946), written by Victor Frankl, an Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor, is a vivid account of his harrowing experiences in a Nazi concentration camp and the psychotherapeutic methods that enabled him to retain control of himself and find meaning in life despite precarious circumstances.One may find themselves in the deepest pits of despair, but the scale of hopelessness and fear will probably be overwhelmed by the horrific realities of the Auschwitz camp in which Frankl was detained. Frankl was thrust into a world in which he was probably justi

The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism announced in 2021 that 72% of Koreans read online news from portals, a web-based platform that collects information from different sources. This figure was the greatest among the 46 countries that participated and more than double the average of 33%. The biggest problem with reading news from portal sites is that the articles are ranked by the number of page views (pv). Professor Young-Gi Joo of Hallym university media school stated that "When portals arrange articles in the number of pvs, understanding the context of the current society become

The biggest trend in South Korea these past few months has been Pokemon bread. Pokemon bread is a bread that is packaged with a sticker of one of the 159 characters from a famous Japanese anime, Pokemon. Pokemon bread was sold until 2006 after it debuted in 1998 when the anime was aired in South Korea, and it was reintroduced to the market this year on Feb. 24.Since its return, Pokemon bread has sparked a craze in South Korea, especially among the Millennials (people in their 20s and 30s). According to SPC Samlip, the manufacturer of the product, its sales surpassed 10 million within 43 days s

The Ministry of Economy and Finance (MOEF) said it held a meeting presided over by Minister Hong Nam-ki on April 15 and jointly approved a plan to promote the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) membership in writing. The government said it has prepared a plan based on the results of collecting opinions from all walks of life and analyzing economic effects on the CPTPP membership applications and will faithfully implement related procedures such as reporting to the National Assembly before applying for membership. In the process of negotiations, the go

Shoplifters (2018) is a Japanese film about a special family who lives in severe poverty. The story unfolds as the family encounters a young girl Yuri, whom the family brings home. The film has won more than 30 awards including Palme d’Or from the 2018 Cannes Film Festival.SynopsisIn Tokyo, there is a special family: Shota, a young boy who routinely shoplifts; Osamu, a day laborer who also shoplifts on his way home; Nobuyo, the wife of Osamu; Aki, who works at a hostess club; Hatsue, the house owner who receives a pension from her dead husband. Interestingly, no member of the family is biologi

Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT) are currently at the center of a rising hype for blockchain technology and a cryptocurrency-oriented economy. They are essentially a digital guarantee that one owns a certain digital or physical asset, encoded directly into a blockchain system such as Ethereum. Unlike its counterpart blockchain asset cryptocurrency, NFTs cannot be interchanged, hence “non-fungible”.Despite early concerns from various experts that it may just be a massive Ponzi scheme, NFT markets have been growing at sky-high rates. Nonfungible.com, an NFT data firm, alongside L’Atelier, a research fi

One of the keywords in Korea in 2021 was the inflation rate. Many consumers reported that the price of goods in markets increased significantly over the past few months. In 2020, the Bank of Korea (BOK), stated in their reports that the inflation rate was worrisome as it was too low. The inflation rate in 2020 recorded an all-time low of 0.54% due to a great fall in spending after COVID-19. However, things took a turn in 2021 as the average inflation rate soared to 2.5%, and from October 2021, the inflation rate exceeded 3% every month. The BOK announced at the end of 2020 that their primary o

Tragedies occur when they are least expected. They happen even to the best of us because none of us are free from life’s predicaments. It is those vulnerable times when beautiful works of literature provide consolations that no others can. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer is one such novel that contains a fountain of thought-provoking ideas, tear-jerking plot points, and a wholesome ending, all of which play out to conjure a majestically cathartic storyline. The story deals with the theme of boundless familial love and coming to terms with the loss of a loved one. Th

Think of an ambulance carrying an emergency patient. It successfully passed the suburban area with the help of the ground-traffic control center. However, in the urban area, the patient is running out of time due to traffic congestion. Dramatically, the C-ITS integrated control center manages the situation and changes all traffic lights on the ambulance route to the green. The patient safely arrives at the hospital on time. This is just an example of what the Cooperative Intelligent Transport System (C-ITS) does.The C-ITS is a next-generation model of the Intelligent Transport System (ITS). Th

Display technology has made a visible improvement over the past few years. Even though it took nearly 90 years for the introduction of the first color television, display technology recently experienced exponential growth, and companies are focused on bringing new features to displays. Until 2017, most commercial display products were focused on making the most accurate 2D display. Companies produced televisions with 16,000 resolution and tried to fit more pixels so that the displays were as realistic as possible. In 2022, devices as small as mobile phone internal cameras can record microscopi

SynopsisThis book is set in A.F. (After Ford) 632 (A.D. 2540). In the World State, citizens are assigned into predetermined classes based on intelligence and labor. They livepromiscuous life and are ashamed of words such as father and mother. World State citizens often consume a soothing, happiness-inducing drug called Soma to keep themselves peaceful and entertained.Lenina Crowne, a hatchery worker, is popular and desirable in all respects. In contrast, Bernard Marx, a psychologist, is shorter than the average of his high Alpha class. His work with sleep-learning allows him to disapprove of t