xteethx

Castaway on the Moon

What a fascinating movie from the NYAFF.  It’s left such a lasting impression on me even though the director himself introduced the movie by saying it got negative reviews in Korea and the sponsors also introduced the film by saying that it almost didn’t make the cut.  I went to see it on the fourth of July and it was a packed house that was pretty diverse.  Judging by the round of applause at the end of the film, I think a lot of people enjoyed it.

There are many themes which the movie touches upon but the most memorable is its exploration of relationships and intimacy in an overwhelmingly crowded world like Seoul.  The main protagonist survives an attempted suicide jump from a bridge over the Han river and ends up on an isolated little island. (It actually exists unbeknown even to most Koreans.)

It inevitably conjures up memories from Tom Hanks’ Castaway but the director, Lee Hey-June, has a knack for creating such poignant or comical moments that keeps the storyline on a deserted island from dragging.  He also has a knack for finding humor in sad things and overwhelming joy in the most mundane things.  It felt weird to laugh hysterically when the protagonist was crying in anguish, snot dripping and all, over his failures in the real world.  Since he has to start from scratch to feed himself, the movie touches upon the theme of work and the satisfaction we get out of it.

But I wouldn’t say this is the main point of the movie; at least for me it wasn’t.  While on the island, an internet-addicted woman who holes herself up in the room, observes him through her camera. The two isolated individuals, outcasts from society, make contact.   It’s scary, it’s joyous,  it’s heart-wrenching and it’s like high school all over again as these two learn to communicate with each other. You laugh so easily and feel so deeply through the most simple words and interactions.

Society, especially in a city like Seoul, can be burdensome and cruel with its expectations.  He drowns in them; she floats up when the streets are emptied of people during a civilian defense drill. But can you really be your own island? Perhaps, but you would be robbed of the riches and intimacy of connecting with others when all you have is a virtual world or a volleyball named Wilson.

Seoulful

Stumbled upon Tommy Kane’s art work through a Spraygraphic newsletter.  I absolutely loves his illustrations of Seoul; it made me miss Korea immediately.  His drawings are almost cartoonish and pleasant to look at because his colors are bright.  But the amount of detail and his thoughtful commentary he scatters around makes me appreciate his work even more.

Oh, and I liked what he said about Korean girls. (although some of us truly do not require plastic surgery)

You can find more of Tommy on his blog or buy his stuff here.

Nothing to Envy

(Kim Il-Sung mural)

Just read “Nothing to Envy” by Barbara Demick.  It’s a good read of five different North Korean defectors and their harrowing accounts of escaping to South Korea.  I couldn’t put the book down and stayed up until 5:30 a.m. to finish reading it.

This was quite different from other books I read about North Korean defectors.  “Aquariums of Pyongyang” and “Eyes of the Tailless Animal” were written by North Koreans who were imprisoned in the gulags.  The accounts were horrifying; too gruesome to believe.

Other interesting books on North Korea are “Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea“, by Guy Delisle and “Rogue Regime” by  Jasper Becker.  The former book is a comic strip account of Delisle’s experience there as a supervisor over a kids cartoon show and the latter details how Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il were able to stay in power and provides figures on everything from famine-related deaths to North Korea’s nuclear weapons arsenal.

But Demick’s book is an intimate look of everyday life in North Korea through five different people.  Through their accounts, you see how their lives, their jobs, their potential suitors, are randomly ruled by rigid class lines much not unlike the Indian caste system.  When Miran realizes that her father’s background from South Korea has decided her future – “a job in a factory, marriage (most likely to a fellow factory worker), children, old age, death,” – she blurted to her boyfriend, ” I feel I have no purpose in life.”

Still, even good standing and job performance will not guarantee you security, promotion or even food.  When a frail Dr. Kim crossed over to China, she was surprised to see a bowl of rice mixed with meat on the ground outside a house.  As she heard a dog barking,  she realized that dogs in China ate better than doctors in North Korea.

What’s tragic of course, is that these realizations and self-epiphanies can’t be voiced or shared without the risk of imprisonment, torture, beatings or execution.  Spies are everywhere, even among your families and friends, so who’s to be trusted?  Plans to escape the country could not even be shared between two star-crossed lovers who sacrificed and risked so much to date each other for nine years.  One can’t help but to see their story be made into a movie when they do end up meeting again in South Korea.  These are extraordinary stories of sacrifice, survival, risk and guilt that need to be told.

There is one quote from the book that resonated with me and sums up the heartbreaking decisions North Korean defectors need to make:

“Liberty and love

These two I must have.

For my love I’ll sacrifice

My life.

For liberty I’ll sacrifice

My love.”

Sándor Petőfi

(1823- 1849)

Lonesome Journey

Journey, Ian Kim

“Lonesome Journey”
This image was created for a story about a Korean man who left Pyongyang in 1905 with hopes of a better life in America with his wife, sister and mother. The three women toiled laboriously on crop plantations year after year so that he could get an education and become a lawyer — a dream that citizenship ineligibility laws prevented him from realizing. – One Inch  Punch

Armistice

Armistice, Ian Kim

http://www.iankim.net

Move Over Chun Li

Finally. A female Korean street fighter. Why couldn’t they come up with this 15 years ago when I was still at a respectable age to play?

Honestly I don’t like her all that much. I hate the double ponytails, the upward slanted eyes, the outfit (purple crotch pants? and …purple?), random stripes on her body and what’s up with the fake eye? Stupid.  Another concoction of a nerdy guy’s fantasies.  Wouldn’t it be amazingly different if we can have a fully clothed female fighter, like the one below?

Juri with taekwondo uniform. Much better.

Was Juri modeled after Yuna Kim, South Korea’s adoring little figure skater?

Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist

Especially when you pride yourself on ethnic homogeneity and some nationalism.
Korean power (NYT)

If we all could just admit
That we are racist a little bit,
And everyone stopped being
So PC
Maybe we could live in -
Harmony!

38°

“No division of a nation in the present world is so astonishing in its origin as the division of Korea; none is so unrelated to conditions or sentiment within the nation itself at the time the division was effected; none is to this day so unexplained; in none does blunder and planning oversight appear to have played so large a role. Finally, there is no division for which the U.S. government bears so heavy a share of the responsibility as it bears for the division of Korea.”

-Gregory Henderson, former U.S. Foreign Service officer and noted Korea scholar, 1974                                                     (emphasis is mine)

On August 10, 1945, fearful that communist Russia would take over Korea after the Japanese surrendered, an all-night meeting was held in the Executive office Building next to the White House.  Around midnight, two young officers, carved out a U.S. occupation zone south of the 38th parallel using a National Geographic map as a reference.

Thus the fate of an entire nation began, causing a clusterfluck called the Korean War that wounded or killed 900,000 Chinese soldiers and  520,000 North Korean soldiers, in addition to 400,000 UN troops, of which two-thirds were South Koreans.  U.S. casualties were 36,000.

Around 3 million Koreans were killed, wounded or missing as a result of the war with another 5 million becoming refugees.  South Korea’s property losses were put at $2 billion and North Korean losses were estimated at only slightly less.

Since then, the two Koreas have grown apart with a history rife with tensions and craziness you’ve probably never heard about:

• 1974 – A North Korean agent attempted to assassinate President Park Chung Hee as he gave a speech but he misfired and killed Park’s wife.  Park continued on with the speech.
• In 1976, North Korean troops beat two American officers to death with clubs and ax handles in a DMZ melee to stop the trimming of a poplar tree. In reaction, the U.S. deploys massive ground, air, and naval forces to back up the operation, Paul Bunyan, to chop the damn tree. (mission accomplished)
• In 1987, a female north Korean spy, Kim Hyon Hui, planted a bomb that blew up a South Korean airliner with 115 aboard. Although she was sentenced to death, she was later pardoned in Seoul and received many marriage proposals. (wtf)

Sixty years later, the two Koreas are still technically at war and could not be more different from each other.  While the north continues to be stuck in the 50s  under a communist regime complete with labor camps, poverty, hunger and famine that have reduced people to eating rats and bark in the most desperate times, a competitive economy and democracy have resulted in technological advancement and materialism in the south, where they don’t lose cell phone reception on an elevator or subway the way you would in New York.

As this recent article points out, bringing the two worlds together is not easy, but is possible.  I have met north Korean defectors in Seoul whose worlds I can not even imagine.  Learning how they got to Seoul is amazing but they’re  not sure why anyone would take interest in them.  Unfortunately they’re right.  To my surprise I found that many south Koreans do not really pay attention to north Korea or the plight of north Koreans.  Sadly, many do not even desire unification because they believe that unification would cause the south Korean economy to collapse.

It’s difficult to accept condescending or apathetic attitudes toward the north Korean refugees especially after all they went through to get to Seoul, which is not the easiest city to adjust to; it can be lonely, tiring and difficult place to succeed in.

And they do miss their families back north and worry about them.

It’s a sad situation; one that I can feel passionately about but feel so helpless to do anything.  I miss Mulim, Chulnam, Lori, and Joseph. I hope to be more helpful to them in the future and I’m confident that I will see them again.

I hope the U.S. is not as ambitious to fight terrorism as it was with communism.

The history I cited on this post is from The Two Koreas, written by an American journalist, Don Oberdorfer, a former reporter for The Washington Post.

Drink Sap

I’m posting this because it’s Korean, not because it has any particular importance in the world. yet.

(slow day at the NYT?)

KoFroYo

So Korea is the most wired nation in the world. World’s largest shipbuilder. Won gold in baseball at the Olympics and has the world’s strongest woman.

But who cares!? Perhaps its all-time greatest accomplishment is the awesome tart frozen yogurt, or “fro-yo”

However I prefer the term “Ko Fro Yo”, which was first coined by world-renown food critic Bruce Lee of Eatclub because it aptly identifies the country that spawned the “fro yo” craze.

I first hated KoFroYo, as I first hated kimchi, but like kimchi, it’s an acquired taste.

NY and NJ kofroyo shops are popping up everywhere but i have to say the most fun one I went to is Mr. Yogato in DC where they have goofy rules to get discounts and they have a ton of interesting toppings.

so eat up; just don’t try the yogurt tea at Red mango if you’re in Seoul though.