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Wednesday Morning Links

September 4, 2013 / Mark / 0 Comments

Well, it’s barely morning anymore — thanks in part to the always-fun combination of an Internet problem and support staff who have no idea how Apple hardware works. Nice guys, but a depressing problem to have in 2013. Anyhow…

Japan’s Rakuten is buying Singapore’s Viki for $200 million (AllThingsD). Viki being an online video service (like Hulu) that started off featuring Korean TV dramas. Meng over at the Joyful Frog Digital Incubator has a great essay on what the buy means for Singapore — required reading for anyone in Korea working on Park Geun-hye’s “creative economy” ideas.
Coincidentally (or perhaps, “ironically,” depending on your point of view), police in Korea announced yesterday they had busted up a major TV piracy group that had made nearly $9 million since 2006, mostly selling TV dramas they did not own to overseas Koreans. (Korea JoongAng Daily)
Good look at Park Chan-kyung (Park Chan-wook’s brother) and his MANSHIN project, a documentary about shaman Kim Keum-hwa. (Korea JoongAng Daily)
An exhibition of works by 84-year-old Kim Tschang-yeul is going on at Gallery Hyundai (by Gyeongbok Palace) until Sept. 25 (Korea JoongAng Daily)

Monday Morning Links

September 2, 2013 / Mark / 0 Comments

Tom Coyner’s column today is an insightful look at historical preservation — or lack thereof — in Korea. He’s not just criticizing Koreas for not preserving their culture in the “right” way. Rather, it is more about two very different approaches to preservation. (Korea JoongAng Daily)
The positive, upbeat world of Korea’s only privately-run prison. Cheaper than regular prisons with a much lower recidivism rate (Korea JoongAng Daily)
The new, 800 km trail that goes around Mount Halla on Jeju Island (Korea JoongAng Daily)
Want a job at a Korean company? They’re looking for passion and diligence. Creativity? Not so much. Tough news for President Park Geun-hye’s “creative economy” plans. (Chosun Ilbo)
If “credibility” and “capability” become necessary to bringing criminal charges against Korean politicians (e.g.: charging the UPP with insurrection), I fear you might as well give all Korean politicians blanket immunity. (Hankyoreh)

As for this weekend’s box office (Fri-Sun):

Title – Weekend tix – total tix – Weekend revenue – Total Revenue
1. Now You See Me – 626,000 – 2.2 million – 4.5 billion won – 15.2b won
2. Elysium – 573,000 – 708,000 – 4.3 billion won – 5.4b won
3. Hide and Seek – 563,000 – 5.1 million – 4.07 billion won – 36.0b won
4. Snowpiercer – 159,000 – 9.1 million – 1.16 billion won – 65.3b won
5. The Flu – 159,000 – 3.0 million – 1.11 billion won – 21.1b won
(Source: KOBIS)

Amusingly, DESPICABLE ME 2, even though it does not open until Sept. 12, was the No. 6 movie on Sunday, and has already made 531 million won.

Which reminds me: August was the biggest month ever for movies in Korea, with nearly 21 million admissions — which blows away the old record of 18.1 million, set in February. Korean films were more than 78 percent of the box office. (Chosun Ilbo)
The Korean government is creating a practice space for indie musicians in Hongdae (Yonhap)
Here’s G-Dragon teaming up with Missy Elliot for G-Dragon’s new song “Niliria”:

Oh Say Can You CNBC?

August 30, 2013 / Mark / 0 Comments

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.

Morning links

August 26, 2013 / Mark / 0 Comments

I had no idea Yeomni-dong (not far from Shinchon in Seoul) was such a crime-ridden area. I used to live close to there. (Korea JoongAng Daily)
Korea’s organized crime targeting … universities? (Korea JoongAng Daily)
A summary of the weekend’s hip hop “wars” in Korea (Korea JoongAng Daily)
3,000 Koreans living in Mongolia these days as Mongolian economy and Korean investment there keeps climbing (Korea JoongAng Daily)
It’s always nice reading sensible thoughts on the Korea-Japan relationship (Korea JoongAng Daily)
The second KCON (or K-pop convention) was held in Los Angeles last weekend (LA Times)
I always hate to see schools restricting access to books. In Japan, 39 schools have restricted access to Barefoot Gen, a famous graphic novel about surviving the Hiroshima nuclear bomb (Japan Times and here). The classic comic book just turned 40 in June (Japan Times).

Morning Links

August 20, 2013 / Mark / 0 Comments

The Hankyoreh, with yet another really good story, has a look at laws in Korea that discriminate against people with physical and mental handicaps. Points out that things have gotten a lot better than a few years ago, but there is still a lot of prejudice and sloppily written laws.
Hong Sang-soo won the director prize at the Locarno Film Festival (Chosun Ilbo)
Prostitution and drug abuse rising in North Korea as the government loses control of areas. (Chosun Ilbo). As with all North Korea stories, please read with a bit of skepticism. But this line did amuse me:

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’s movie box office is about twice as big as Korea’s, but the health of its local movie scene is quite different. Take a look at the top four domestic movies in each country for the first half of 2013.

Japan 2013 (via Film Business Asia):

One Piece Film Z — ¥6.85 billion (US$69.6 million)
Doraemon: Nobita’s Secret Gadget Museum — ¥3.96 billion yen (US$40.4 million)
Detective Conan Private Eye — ¥3.61 billion (US$36.8 million)
Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods — ¥3 billion (US$30.6 million)

Korea 2013 (via KOBIS):

Miracle in Cell 7 — 91.4 billion won (US$82 million)
The Berlin File — 52.4 billion won (US$46.8 million)
Secretly, Greatly — 48.7 billion won (US$43.5 million)
The New World — 34.9 billion won (US$31.1 million)

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.

Vinyl Underground

August 18, 2013 / Mark / 0 Comments

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.

Seoul From on High

August 16, 2013 / Mark / 0 Comments

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…

Legatum Institute: Korea

August 16, 2013 / Mark / 0 Comments

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.

Morning Links

August 15, 2013 / Mark / 0 Comments

Moon So-young takes a great look at new Museum of Modern & Contemporary Art in Seoul, with architect Mihn Hyun-jun (Korea JoongAng Daily)

Beer popsicles! Beer ice cream. And plenty of craft beers. (Korea JoongAng Daily)
A look at one of the Han River rescue teams responsible for a 22km stretch of the river that contains 15 bridges. The team responds to 774 suicide attempts and drownings last year — saving 258 people and stopping another 185. Still, that’s a lot of suicides. (Hankyoreh)

Enjoying the hot weather? I hope so because the Korea Meteorological Administration says it is going to stick around until Chuseok — that’s Sept. 19 this year. Which I suppose means we’ll have snow by Oct. 1. (Chosun Ilbo)
This is the first Gwangbokjeol (Independence Day) I’ve ever spent in Korea so close to the Japanese Embassy. As of 9am, there were plenty of police everywhere, with all the side alleys and roads around the embassy closed off. Could be exciting.

And in movie news:

The summer may be mostly over (especially for Hollywood), but the competition at the Korean box office is ramping up, as two big films were released yesterday for Gwangbokjeol. Kim Sung-soo’s first movie in a decade, The Flu, is the new No. 1, with 306,000 admissions yesterday. Hide and Seek was second with 294,000 admissions. (All stats from KOBIS)
Bong Joon Ho’s Snowpiercer fell to third with 200,000. It’s now at 7.1 million admissions and 51 billion won ($45.6 million).
The top four films in Korea yesterday were all Korean. Then the next six were all animated films (Japanese and Western). No live-action Hollywood movies in top 10.
So far this year, Korean films have had 56.3% of box office. 40.3% for Hollywood. Nearly 1% for Japan.
Lee Young-ae goes from JSA to the DMZ (Chosun Ilbo).

Japandroids!

August 12, 2013 / Mark / 0 Comments

One of my favorite groups these days is the Japandroids. I caught them live three years ago at the Primavera Sound festival in Barcelona and loved their show. And Celebration Rock was a great, great rock album (and one of the best rock albums in ages).

Japandroids drummer David Prowse was nice enough to respond to some questions I posed, which I used for a story at the Korea JoongAng Daily and then posted in full at the Korea Gig Guide. Please, check it out. Then head to City Break on Sunday for a great show.