On a cold night in the Gobi, a tourist van, limping on three tires and a steel rim, bounced up to a ger, the circular tent of the desert nomads.
After peering into the tent, the three young tourists asked the herdsmen inside for help. The men grouchily gave them a choice: watch the last half of a South Korean soap opera on television, or wait it out under the stars.
"They were just too busy to notice us," Khorolsuren Byambasuren, the tour guide, said here, still miffed at the memory of her mid-September mishap. "They waited until midnight, when Min Sung-yong happily met Kim In-ha, at the last part of Intrigues of the Life. Then the guys enthusiastically helped us, and we were on our way to the tourist camp at 3am."
Mongolia's ancient hospitality takes a holiday during the time slot for dubbed South Korean soap operas. With Mongolia's two main television channels showing South Korean movies daily, a giant Do Not Disturb sign goes up every evening across this sparsely populated land.
Mongolians and Koreans are ethnically related peoples cut off by centuries of history. In the 13th century, Mongolians swept across China and down the Korean Peninsula, and were on the brink of invading Japan until several naval disasters changed their minds.
Mongolia's occupation of Korea left linguistic affinities, shared genes and wild horse herds, known to this day as Mongolians, on the South Korean island of Cheju, the staging base for the frustrated invasion of Japan.
Today's bonds reflect, to some degree, the solidarity of two small nations living on the edges of a rising China. Commercially, Mongolia is an outpost for Korean business. On an ethnic level, Koreans and Mongolians are like fraternal twins.
Advertising banners here implore "UB"girls to try a cosmetics line from Seoul, Ulan Bator's new style maker. For ad campaigns in Mongolia, South Korean companies do not bother to reshoot with local models.
"It works -- our features are that similar," Byambasuren said over lunch at a sidewalk cafe.
Kim Sung-chul, a South Korean pastor who has been here three years, said, "We look the same; our skin is the same; our grammar structure is the same."
Since 1999, the year Kim Dae-jung, then South Korea's president, flew here, the Ulan Bator-Seoul route has been one of the busiest for Korean Air and Mongolian Airlines.
Remittances from Mongolians working in South Korea have become an important source of income to this nation of 2.5 million. With 20,000 Mongolians in South Korea, the country now has more Mongolians than Japan, Europe and the US combined.
While some Mongolians say they are put off by a Korean arrogance, many Koreans say the advantages are there for both sides.
"After two years, Koreans can speak Mongolian," said Kim Wan-jin, a translator.
"But it is even easier for Mongolian people to learn Korean," Kim said.
Sitting in a lotus position, four men weave glittering beads through gold thread on an organza sheet, carefully constructing a wedding dress that would soon wow crowds at Paris Fashion Week. For once, the French couturier behind the design, Julien Fournie, is determined to put these craftsmen in the spotlight. His new collection, which showed in Paris on Tuesday, was entirely made with fabrics from Mumbai. He said that a sort of “design imperialism” means that French fashion houses often play down that their fabrics are made outside France. “The houses which don’t admit it are perhaps afraid of losing their clientele,” Fournie
A court in Thailand sentenced a 27-year-old political activist to 28 years in prison on Thursday for posting messages on Facebook that it said defamed the country’s monarchy, while two young women charged with the same offense continued a hunger strike after being hospitalized. The court in the northern province of Chiang Rai found that Mongkhon Thirakot contravened the lese majeste law in 14 of 27 posts for which he was arrested in August last year. The law covers the king, queen and heirs, and any regent. The lese majeste law carries a prison term of three to 15 years per incident for
A gunman killed 10 people and wounded 10 others at a Los Angeles-area ballroom dance club following a Lunar New Year celebration, setting off a manhunt for the suspect in the latest mass shooting tragedy in an American community. Captain Andrew Meyer of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department said Sunday that the wounded were taken to hospitals and their conditions range from stable to critical. He said the 10 people died at the scene in the city of Monterey Park. Meyer said people were “pouring out of the location screaming” when officers arrived at around 10:30 pm Saturday. He said officers then
INSTABILITY: The country has seen a 33 percent increase in land that cultivates poppies since the military took over the government in 2021, a UN report said The production of opium in Myanmar has flourished since the military’s seizure of power, with the cultivation of poppies up by one-third in the past year, as eradication efforts have dropped and the faltering economy has led more people toward the drug trade, a UN report released yesterday showed. Last year, the first full growing season since the military wrested control of the country from the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021, saw a 33 percent increase in Myanmar’s cultivation area to 40,100 hectares, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime report said. “Economic, security and governance disruptions
RSS