Books, blog and other blather
Hey, looks who is on TV!
I was interviewed by CNBC for a little segment on Korean pop culture. I appear around the 90 second mark. It was not too exciting, but at least international media are trying to understand what is going on in Korea.
Btw, there are more concerts and good things listed over at the Korea Gig Guide.
Virginity is a prerequisite for the song-and-dance troupes who entertain the North Korean dictator, and the defector said officials had a hard time finding any virgins.
Japan 2013 (via Film Business Asia):
Korea 2013 (via KOBIS):
In Japan, the top four are all animated movies, and all films geared toward children. In Korea, the top four are all live-action, geared toward young adults and adults.
I love finding dingy old LP bars.
This is Old Music, located across the street from the Jongno District Office. Tiny, incredibly musty, nothing on the menu but beer and whisky, but a very good vinyl collections. The owner tells me it has been around about 10 years and occasionally gets folks from the nearby embassies.
Yesterday Seoul had perhaps the clearest skies I’ve seen since returning to Korea. From my office in the west of Seoul, I could see Mount Gwanak in the south and apartment complexes from all over the city. There were some great clouds, too.
My office is pretty high up, but the windows are tinted, so you cannot really take decent photos from inside. But then I realized that the building has a helicopter pad on the roof. So I headed up and tried taking some photos from there.
First I went up in the middle of the afternoon. Here’s a pic looking west. You can see Banghwa Bridge far off on the left, and Ilsan to the distance, slightly to the right:
Later, I went up around sundown, when the magic hour was turning the city orange:
And here’s the view to the east. You can see the new high-rises at Hapjeong, then Yeouido behind them, and in the distance Mount Gwanak:
The same view, but a bit further back with the helicopter pad in view:
Then I tried out the panorama setting on my Galaxy S3 camera. There’s a few wonky stitches, but overall I thought it looked pretty good:
Argh. This blog format doesn’t allow me to throw in extra-wide images. Need to find a good place to show off these panoramas…
A year ago, the very nice people at the Legatum Institute invited me to join their summer program, a week long retreat in Italy. It was pretty amazing, talking about the world and the rise and fall of nations, and grandiose things like that with people like Vali Nasr, John Hale, Robert Kagan, Anne Applebaum, Robert Shafer, and Lucie Spickova (and many, many more).
But the real focus of the Legatum Institute isn’t randomly holding events in Italy. The institute is more about sponsoring research and hosting programs for advancing freedom and prosperity around the world. Probably their signature project is the annual Prosperity Index, which tries to quantify the idea of prosperity and rank all the countries around the world.
Which is why I am so happy to announce that I have just made a small contribution to Legatum’s Prosperity project — a country report on South Korea, called “Ready for Prime Time.” My report focuses on Korean culture and soft power and how its successes has helped reshape Korea, making it a more confident and prosperous nation.
It’s pretty cool to be able to add my name to the Legatum’s list of contributors. Past reports have been written by people like James Robinson (who co-wrote Why Nations Fail with Daron Acemoglu) — his essay on Colombia, “The Orangutan in a Tuxedo,” was excellent.
I should add a thanks to everyone at Legatum, for inviting me to the first event and for asking me to write this new report. And to Peter Passell, my editor, who always makes my writing 137 percent better. And an extra thanks goes to Jeff Gedmin, the president of the institute, for being behind it all.
