Author: Reporter

No more elephant and monkey acts. No more death-defying motorbike stunts. No more singing or acting on stage. Several hundred spectators still clapped constantly when acrobats with Dongchoon Circus Troupe 동춘서커스단, South Korea’s last and 100-year-old circus, twirled on a long suspended fabric, juggled clubs on a large, rotating wheel, and rode a unicycle on a tightrope under the big top. “As I recall the hardship that I’ve gone through, I think I’ve done something significant,” Park Sae-hwan, the head of the circus, said in an interview. “But I also feel a heavy responsibility because if Dongchoon stops, our...

Prisoners of war held for decades after the fighting stopped. Civilian abductees. Defectors. Separated families. They are Koreans who symbolize the decades of division and bitter animosities between North and South Korea, which have been split by a heavily fortified border since the the 1950-53 Korean War. Koreans are not allowed to exchange visits, phone calls, or letters with their loved ones on the other side. July 27 is the 72nd anniversary of the 1953 armistice agreement, which ensured “a complete cessation of hostilities” to the Korean War. Interviews were conducted with Koreans whose pain and sorrow likely will...

After years of delay, South Korea has ratified the Hague Adoption Convention, an international treaty meant to safeguard international adoptions, highlighting a significant policy shift decades after sending tens of thousands of children to the West through an aggressive but poorly regulated adoption system. The government’s announcement in June came as it faces growing pressure to address widespread fraud and abuse that plagued its adoption program, particularly during a heyday in the 1970s and 1980s when the country allowed thousands of children to be adopted every year. Many adoptees have since discovered that their records were falsified to portray...