Spring. Cherry blossoms draping the country in a vivid pink, the sun bathing us all in a warm embrace, the winds enveloping the atmosphere in a gentle cool, and to top it all off, enough dust in the air to give us all smoker’s lung.Korean spring has been plagued for a very long time with what is known as hwangsa, or yellow dust. Dust from deserts in the west are blown over here by powerful w

On May 27, the second Daejeon Sports Day for International Students will take place. Hosted by the Daejeon Metropolitan City and organized by the Daejeon International Center, the event will last from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Daejeon Hanbit General Stadium and Chungmu Gymnasium and serve as a unique opportunity for the international community in Daejeon to get together and spend an entire day compe

International students received an email that they could not comprehend. They were told that they would be charged with student fees starting from May. Collecting student fees has been a controversial and sensitive issue among international students because they were rarely informed of the services the Undergraduate Student Council (USC) provides; now they are being forced to pay. Starting from Ma

May 3 was Buddha's Birthday and Mu Sang Sa, a Zen temple of international monks in Gyeryong, held a birthday party. The KAIST Herald interviewed Manhwa Sunim, a Zen Monk from Mu Sang Sa.

While the international student body shows signs of growth, the international faculty has barely changed. The faculty in KAIST remains incredibly homogenous, with foreign professors barely making up 10% of the faculty despite claims by several presidents that they will strive to increase that number substantially. It’s not hard to see why: KAIST is directly funded by the South Korean governm

Seven years ago, I was freed from mandatory military service when I obtained my Canadian citizenship. It was honestly one of the best feelings I have ever felt, standing in front of the administrator and holding the citizenship certificate in my hands. The stories my father told — brutal daily training exercises in the ice and under the sun, unforgiving drill sergeants with voices louder tha

Ever since its inception, KAIST’s ambitious promise to increase the ratio of foreign professors has been, well, ambitious. Recently inaugurated President Shin again vowed for a goal of 15%, but exactly how he intends to hire a minimum of 10 new foreign professors every year remains opaque.

Appearance is important in any and all culture, but how far should appearance go in deciding our lives? Through the concept of gwansang, predicting one's fortune through the face, we explore the weight of how much looks can serve as an outlook to the future.

The University of Aberdeen, a British public research university in Aberdeen, Scotland, has made a decision to open a new campus in South Korea. Established in 1495 as the fifth oldest institution in the English-speaking world, the University of Aberdeen will open its new branch, located in Hadong, in the coming September.Prior to the agreement, a delegation of nine members from the provincial gov

Last year on November 26, the Daejeon Metropolitan Office of Education announced the Ministry of Education’s decision to grant the status of “specialized high school” (teukmokgo) to Daejeon High School, overcoming one of the major obstacles needed for the creation of an international school. The metropolitan office had initially intended to create an international school for grad

Could you briefly introduce the KI House to our readers?The main focus of the KI House program is one-to-one. Unlike usual language centers or school programs that teach students in groups, we try to give as much attention as possible to the individual students with the professionally trained teaching staff we have. Also, most language centers create fixed time programs that the students have to f

Christians have always been known for their frequent and large-scale missions. Historic examples, such as the missionaries sent to Scandinavia to convert the Vikings, demonstrate the lengths some devout Christians will go to spread their religious teachings. While many practitioners of their faith are likely to take the more congenial route in preaching their principles, others resort to more aggr

On December 9, the KAIST International Students Association (KISA) announced the results of the 2016 KISA presidential election. The sole candidate of this year’s election, Sanzhar Kerimbeck, has been officially elected as the next president of KISA.The election was held on December 8 from 12 p.m. to 2 p.m. Voting booths were set up in the three major school cafeterias — Kaimaru (N11),

Martin Heidegger once said, “Humans are temporal creatures.” Every hour at my club’s Membership Training (MT) retreats, every minute in a Starcraft game, and every second in a physics exam seems to dash past me. On the flip side, every hour spent in a dreary linear algebra lecture, every minute and every second outside on a cold December day seems to drag us down like a temporal

Concerns are growing over the fanatical Christian missionaries seeking out international students to convert them to the Christian faith. Many internationals have had their personal religious preferences and personal spaces violated by this relentless hounding, and though this is something that should be addressed quickly, we should take a step back and see the underlying causes and look beyond th

Video gaming has evolved at a drastic pace over the past decade. Every aspect of gaming has come a long way to cement video games as a significant and loved medium with graphics practically indistinguishable from real life, beautifully complex narratives and characters, and entertainingly demanding game mechanics. Indeed, video games are a true icon of the modern world and continue to step up thei

The Park Geun-hye and Choi Soon-sil scandal seems unbelievable. South Korea, one of the modern powerhouses of the 21st century, has been reduced to near anarchy with the exposure of the president’s secret dealings with the daughter of a cult leader. It is the perfect drama cocktail with the right amount of politics, religion, and corruption mixed in, and it’s an excruciating one to swa

September has already ended. The fall semester has started to kick into overdrive, and many organizations are taking the opportunity to release a sleuth of events and activities to get students energized and motivated. The international community starts its push with the KAIST Overseas Network Exchange (ONE). The KAIST ONE event started in the year 2007 as a way for the various nationalities in KA

With a declining birth rate and a push for multiculturalism, Korea is undergoing many changes to bring in and accommodate an ever growing foreign population. Several policies were made or updated to make it easier for foreigners to pursue careers, education, and residence in Korea. These fixes were designed with the hopes that immigrants would experience less barriers standing between them and Kor

“A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained, and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another,” writes Chairman Mao Tse-tung in his Red Book. Upon analysing the revolutionary uphea