Jun Michael Park

Aug 24, 2024 | nytimes.com | Mike Ives |Youmi Kim |Jun Michael Park

Cho Seong-hoan's father liked to say that the honeybees on his farm were lucky. Unlike typical South Koreans, they could cross into North Korea, as he had done before war divided the peninsula. "I also really envy them," Mr. Cho, 59, said over the drone of bees on a searing summer morning at the family farm he took over when his father died in 2022.

Mar 19, 2024 | nytimes.com | John Yoon |Jun Michael Park |Shawn Paik

The country's raucous fan culture will be on display when Major League Baseball opens its season in Seoul. Here's how to cheer and what to eat. Cheering squads guiding fans through chants and dances at a baseball stadium in Seoul on Sunday. In the United States, many Major League Baseball games feature long periods of calm, punctuated by cheering when there's action on the field or the stadium organ plays a catchy tune. But in South Korea, a baseball game is a sustained sensory overload.

Mar 12, 2024 | nytimes.com | David Belcher |Jun Michael Park

The hanok, a traditional home design, has been bypassed in Seoul's vertical building boom. But some fans are trying to preserve it. Boo YoungJin and Park GoodWon in front of their house, a hanok which took seven years to restore. The hanok, a traditional home design, has been bypassed in Seoul's vertical building boom. But some fans are trying to preserve it. Boo YoungJin and Park GoodWon in front of their house, a hanok which took seven years to restore. Credit...

Mar 11, 2024 | alumni.hbs.edu | Jun Michael Park

READ MORE Like so many South Koreans of a certain age, Michael ByungJu Kim (MBA 1990) lives in a country where the past lingers, ever-present, beneath a gleaming, high-rise surface. On a Sunday afternoon in late November, Kim, 60, climbs the pathways crisscrossing Namsan, the 269-acre park rising high above Seoul. Soft yellow ginkgo leaves carpet the ground. A man, decked out in a white tracksuit and bucket hat, strolls by with an enormous Afghan hound.