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www.groovekorea.com / August 2014 20 A selection from our editors muST READS m U S t R e A D S Easy living in Ilsan page 82 An oasis out of the ashes page 46 Artist’s Journey page 78 New generation of ska festival page 74 Shine your two-tone shoes, don that pork pie hat and get your skanking ass out to Sinchon for the New Generation of Ska Festival 2014. What is ska? It’s a type of popular music, originally from Jamaica, that first appeared in the early 1950s and is a precursor to rocksteady and reggae. Since then, it has been through many incarnations, and now has a healthy following in Seoul’s Hongdae neighborhood. Echoes of Jeju page 66 Thirty-five years ago, my family moved to Jeju Island for just over a year — I was just 6 then — and while we were there, my father took a bunch of photographs. The exotic images and my own experience of living in Korea as a child were enough to convince me to one day go back. Now that we’ve digitized the photos, I wanted to find out the stories behind them. One of the fastest-growing cities in Korea, Ilsan is split into two districts, east and west, in the city of Goyang. Twenty kilometers north of Seoul, Ilsan is dense with housing, shopping, vegetation and foreigners. Newfoundlander Shawn Morrissey arrived in December 2000. “I could go two or three days and not see another foreigner,” Morrissey says. “Now you can’t walk down the street and not see one.” Jeju’s island culture is so distinct that its people developed an extreme dialect of Korean. But this dialect, along with much else of what constitutes the essence of Jeju, is facing rapid erosion — its characteristic maritime religion, methods of subsistence, language and culture are on the brink of extinction. Crustacean sensation page 38 Tucked into a corner at the top of a wooden staircase in Itaewon is Lobster Bar, a tiny and welcoming little refuge for those craving the comforts of the Atlantic Ocean. Whether you’re looking for succulent chunks of pink claw on a bun or an entire animal to crack open and mine through, few places in town serve lobster so proudly low-key. Since arriving in Korea, Kholo Matsafu has stepped up to every opportunity that has crossed her path. The MC-turned-musician has worked hard to fine-tune her “musical vocabulary” and, unafraid of skipping across genres and media, the singer is ready to share her serene aura and deep, sultry voice with her fans in Korea and abroad.