Books, blog and other blather

Author: Mark (Page 3 of 90)

Talking music on the radio

My good friend Shawn left Korea last year after seven years there, most of that spent immersed in the local indie music scene. Since moving to Hamilton, Ontario (that would be Canada), he’s had a weekly radio show about Korean indie music on McMaster University radio, CFMU.

As I am currently visiting family nearby, Shawn invited me to join him on last week’s show. It was good fun. For an hour, I shared some of my favorite Korean music, and we chatted a bit about music things. You can listen to the results on Mixcloud. (I also briefly wrote about it over on the Korea Gig Guide).

 

Not a bad weekend …

Friday, the brutal month-long heatwave finally broke, as temperatures dropped into the 20s and nearly all the pollution just disappeared. The result was some of the best weather I can recall in Seoul in ages. Just great for sitting outside or having a picnic or whatever. And Sunday night—bonus—a rainbow.

Misari - Saturday morning

 

Gangdong Sunset

 

Gangdong Rainbow

 

A new Pullocho story in Mithila Review

aswangatnight

“Aswang, at Night” by Mia S-N | Likhain.net / @Likhan

Some happy news to report — the young but very interesting Mithila Review just published a long-ish short story of mine, “Samjogo and the Vengeful Stories.”

The Samjogo was a significant character in Young-hee & the Pullocho, and this short story references some things he talked about before the events of the novel. But more than just a fantasy story, it was a story about stories. I talk a bit about it and some of my influences in this interview from the same issue.

My story was part of the Mithila’s latest issue, a double-sized issue on the theme of Asian SF. So there’s plenty of good stuff in there from all over Asia, by a wide range of writers. I’m really happy to be part of such an interesting new venture, and I think you’ll see a lot more good writing coming from the Mithila Review in the future.

 

 

All you zombies…

TraintoBusan1

As I type this, a new Korean blockbuster has come roaring out of the gates, setting several records in its opening weekend. And it’s a zombie movie. How fun is that?

Train to Busan has gotten 5.3 million admissions since its release last Wednesday (including 500,000 or so in pre-screenings), and made about 43.8 billion won. Most impressively, it set a new one-day record, with 1.28 million admissions on Saturday, just beating out the Yi Sun-shin movie, Roaring Currents.

It strikes me as pretty fascinating how good Koreans have gotten at genre blockbusters. From Shiri back in 1999, which kicked off the current age of blockbusters, to the monster fun of The Host in 2006, and now Train to Busan—repeatedly filmmakers here have been able to shake things up with their unique takes on mainstream, Hollywood-style movies.

TraintoBusan2

Anyhow, I doubt Train to Busan will surprise Roaring Currents in the end. It doesn’t have the benefits of a resonant, nationalistic message to squeeze out those last few tickets. But it’s nice to see a smart, well-made blockbuster doing so well.

Incidentally, what’s up with this promotional still? Is it a deliberate homage to The Host?

TraintoBusan3

The_Host-010

Tim Duncan retires!

Duncan

Sad to hear Tim Duncan is retiring. While there have been plenty of more explosive or exciting players in the NBA, there has never been any player I respected more.

Duncan-Robinson

I mean, take a look at his stats, especially the per-36 numbers and the Advanced — they barely budged for 20 years. Just excellent right up until the end.

TD5

¡Que raro! K-Pop en español~

K-pop enspanyol

Hey, just got some fun news: K-Pop Now! has been published in Spanish! And by Penguin Random House Mexico.

I’ve written a lot about how K-pop has found much popularity in much of Latin America, but I never thought that I would get to be a part of it. ¡Fantastico!

 

Changing downtown Seoul

From Matt’s Gusts of Popular Feeling website, I came across this article on redevelopment plans for the Jongno/Junggu central parts of old Seoul. Kind of fascinating, on several levels.

Most notable is this map, both for what it shows and for what it doesn’t.

SeoulDevelopmentPlans

As you can see, pretty much everything along Jongno (and Sinmunno) is up for redevelopment, from Gyeongui Palace to Insa-dong. But that’s a bit weird, because most of that area has already been redeveloped. I doubt they’re doing to tear down the Four Seasons Hotel any time soon.

Similarly, the last of the old restaurants and pojang macha to the east of City Hall are slated to come down — which is a tiny bit sad, but to be honest there’s not a whole lot left there that really matters.

The area around and to the west of the main government buildings in the northwest of the map is also slated for redevelopment, which makes me a bit more wistful. But it is the center of town, and there’s nothing that’s really old, so my personal memories aside, I guess that’s not a big surprise.

What saddens me the most is to see that area between Jonggak and Jongno 2-ga on the north side of the road up for the wrecking ball. That would include that wonderful fish and makgeolli restaurant that was so important in Hong Sang-soo’s Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors.  I love that place … although I’m more than a little shocked it hasn’t just caved in and killed a dozen or so people already.

But the general trend of the government take a ham-fisted approach of designating certain areas to be protected continues. That always ends up “protecting” a bunch of buildings that are utterly unimportant and (more importantly) overlooking a lot lot of really important places. I do wish the Korean government would take an approach closer to, say, Barcelona, where building-by-building is examined for its importance.

It’s funny to think that the area on that map labelled “Jongno 5-ga” will be one of the last old-Seoul places to remain. When I first came to Seoul, most of the downtown felt like that, with the fish restaurants and labyrinthian alleys and random sweat shops. It’s probably a good thing that we don’t have so many sweat shops left, but it is still a bit sad to be losing the Seoul that I remember.

 

Fortitude season 2 – first teaser trailer

Fortitude-s1

So excited to see the first trailer for Fortitude season 2. The first season was one of my favorite TV surprises ever. I had no idea what to expect, it was a gorgeous mix of icy landscapes, quirky characters, ancient plagues and sheer terror.

Season 2 does not begin until January. About all I know at this point is that Dennis Quaid is in it.

fortitude2

Here’s the short teaser trailer:

So, it looks like Trump was right…

brexit

What a crazy year we are having. In the wake of the British vote to leave the EU (“Brexit”), it is increasingly becoming clear to me just how very right Donald Trump is…

No, not right about policy. Or economics. Or anything that involves thinking.

But one thing he appears to be absolutely right about is why and how people make decisions. As we learned from the playbook for selling the intellectual snake oil that was Trump University:

“You don’t sell products, benefits or solutions — you sell feelings.”

Bingo. Which is why facts are so useless in dealing with the Trumps of the world. Or the Brexits. Or the Catalonian independence types, or the Quebecois separatists, etc. etc.

Another highlight in this section is about selling by approaching people’s “problems”:

  • Customers don’t have need—they have problems.
  • A lot of sales training and books tell you about the importance of selling to customer needs. Although this is basically true, customers don’t sit down and think, “I’ve got a need.” Instead, they experience problems and seek solutions to them.
  • The customer has to perceive the problem, of course. You may perceive the problem, but if the customer doesn’t, then there’s no way they can bite the solution line.
  • So the sales job is about finding, eliciting and solving these problems.

So, instead of finding needs and providing solutions, Trump (and his ilk) find problems and provide feelings. Strength for the weak. Security for the frightened. Clarity for the confused. It’s a pretty potent pitch, especially compared to co-called technocrats, talking about money and data and empty little facts.

Personally, I don’t view the Brexit vote as the end of the world. Markets have roiled mostly because no one thought this would actually happen, and markets don’t like to be surprised. But how this all shakes out politically, I have no idea.

Brexit1

As someone who has a UK passport, I’ll be sad if that becomes a lesser document. I like the idea of trying to bring the world and people together. I hope the UK politicians figure out how to fix things before it’s too late.

But the powers-that-be having been mucking things up around much of the world for far too long. Promising benefits that never come, or demanding sacrifices that don’t actually help. Only when politicians and others begin to recognize people’s real problems and feelings, and present their ideas for the future in those terms, are we going to see things get better.

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