WSK Stories of the Month - Growing Coffee on Jeju Island

Love for coffee is getting pandemic these days. You can find a coffee shop in every block of a sizable office district. Some people go so far as buying espresso machines and other coffee gadgets to furnish in their own homes. (Well, being one of those crazy coffee lovers myself, I am just being envious.)

Coffee is a highly sensitive plant, requiring specific growing conditions. It grows in subtropical regions where the temperature stays above 10 degrees Celsius even during winter. That’s why farming coffee has been mostly considered out of the question in Korea.

Well, Ms. Roh Jin-Yi doesn’t accept that.

 

Most of the world’s coffee is grown in a band around the equator from 25 degrees

north to 25 degrees south of the equator

Korea’s First Coffee Farmer

The first coffee farmer in Korea, Ms. Roh has invested all her money and energy in farming coffee in a 400-pyeong (1 pyeong equals 3.3 square meters) green house in Jeju City since early 2008.

Despite the unfavorable conditions, even Jeju being too cold, Ms. Roh has been persistent in realizing her dream of cultivating coffee. And she has succeeded to reap enough coffee for about 10% of Jeju citizens to sample taste.

And last October, Ms. Roh even held the first Jeju Coffee Festival in her own coffee plantation. At the festival, there was coffee tasting, coffee drinking competitions, hands-on experience of roasting coffee beans and hand-dripping. 

   

 

Hard Work, But I Love It

Ms. Roh is currently growing some 25,000 coffee trees in a 5,600 square meters plantation. And it is no easy job looking after those highly sensitive plants. They have to be watered twice a day (at the break of dawn and around sunset) for 3, 4 hours. A storm hits, and the fragile plants get all knocked out of their pots, and Ms. Roh has to spend many sleepless days harnessing them back in. They also need to get nutrition shots at regular, designated times.

Roh says she does not expect coffee farming to become a profitable business.

“It’s costly to keep the green house warm and it takes 3 to 5 years from germination to harvest. But I’m doing this not because I want to make money, but because I like it,” says the coffee farmer. And adds, “If I make money later, I would like to build a coffee museum,” expressing her ultimate ambition.

Many cheers and well wishes to her dream!

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                                                                                                                  ⓒ코리아브랜드

PS: This article is taken from the WSK Newsletter #32. I was one of the members of WSK batch 3 and I would like to continue sharing their articles through my blog.

www.koreabrand.net

WSK Stories of the Month - The Times 50 Best Inventions of 2010

The Paris Motor Show, one of the world’s four major auto shows, was held from October 2 to 17, 2010 at the Paris Expo. If the Geneva Motor Show in March introduces newly launched cars of the year, then the Paris Motor Show in the autumn showcases models that are to be launched the year after.

The theme of the Paris Motors Show 2010 was “eco-friendly.” Eco-friendly has now become such a preval!ent trend worldwide, especially with the EU’s reinforcement of regulations regarding carbon emissions control.

Eco-friendly vehicle invented by KAIST

The Online Electric Vehicle (dubbed OLEV) manufactured by the Korea Advanced Institute of Technology (KAIST) was included in the 50 Best Inventions of 2010 published by The Times, along with Apple’s iPad, Google’s Driverless Car, Sony’s Alpha A55 Camera and others. Also included was the English-Teaching Robot invented by the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST).

In the OLEV are embedded electric power strips that provide electromagnetic power to the vehicle, wirelessly, charging an onboard battery and powering the bus’s electric motor.

The Times introduced the OLEV as an advanced green growth technology that could speed up the commercialization of electric cars and also as the world’s one and only online electric vehicle.

The system’s creators at the KAIST say, “The technology not only eliminates pollution, but also alleviates the problems usually associated with hybrid vehicles such as heavy batteries, lengthy charging and limited range.”

Korean technology opens up a new horizon

The OLEV has been on a test operation since last March at the Seoul Amusement Park. It was also presented during the G20 Seoul Summit in November in front of COEX, garnering outstanding reviews. Furthermore, the vehicle is scheduled to be featured next month in the TV program “Into the Future” of Discovery channel.

The OLEV received mixed reviews in the early stage of its development. Although it is an innovative technology that was meant to pursue both green growth and economic profit, some voiced the car’s low practicality as the cost of planting electric power strips under the pavements would be quite steep. Nonetheless, its inclusion in The Times list is without a doubt a distinct acknowledgement of its potential.

The English-Teaching Robot

The other Korean item that made in the Times list is the English-Teaching Robot nick-named “Mero,” developed by the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST).

The robots can move in any direction and can follow human facial expression!s. They are not only effective teachers, but the students also enjoy interacting with their new, fun, and cool school “staff.”

While the robots are used primarily in support roles for real human teachers, the Time Magazine called them a “job terminator,” saying they could potentially replace the native speakers currently employed in Korean schools.

Although there remain issues of economic feasibility as well as ethics, both inventions indicate excellent capacity of Korean universities as future leaders of world science and technology.

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                                                                                                                   ⓒ코리아브랜드

PS: This article is taken from the WSK Newsletter #31. As one of the members of WSK, I have been given task to share this article through my blog.

www.koreabrand.net

설날 먹는 거 | What you eat on Lunar's New Year's Day

설날 [Seollal] Lunar's New Year's day. We do have this celebration in Indonesia called "Imlek" means Chinese New Year. In Indonesia there are a lot of Chinese ethnicity that a long time ago came to Indonesia and since then has become part of Indonesia. And here in Korea, it is one of the biggest holiday.

Today, while doing class, my teacher gave us this sweet cake made from rice .... it is called 한과 and she said it is eaten during Seollal.

한과 [Hankwa]

Also, today I had the opportunity to taste Ttokguk which is a soup that is usually eaten in Lunar's new year's day. People said that if we eat one bowl of ttokguk, you also eat one year of age. So, if you eat 10 bowls of ttokguk, you will earn 10 years which means you will get older by 10 years :)

떡국 [Ttokguk]

2011년 2월 1일

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