Books, blog and other blather
Yay! It looks like I’ve found a place to live in Korea for the foreseeable future. And, somewhat bizarrely, it’s right in the middle of where I used to live. A huge, sprawling city of 10 million people, and I keep ending up in the same neighborhood.
Oh well, at least I have a decent view for once.
Dear Real Estate Agent:
If you are going to show me an apartment, please take a minute to make sure it has not been rented already. Especially if it is a really nice, affordable apartment that is going to make my wife all happy.
Sincerely,
– Mark
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On a related note — wow, have rental prices ever climbed in Korea since I last lived here. If you wonder why the Korean real estate market seems so crazy, these two recent stories from the Korea JoongAng Daily may help clear things up:
– Deposits, monthly rental prices soaring
– Gov’t trims apartment supply to spur real estate market
Yes, these two articles appeared on the same day. Story A: The government should do something about rising housing prices. Story B: The government cuts supply to raise housing prices. I’m guessing that one policy or the other could work, but not both.
This is my favorite time of year in Korea — I love it when the hot, summer rains pelt down — so after dinner this evening I took a little walk through the drenched streets of downtown Seoul. And, well, this is what I found:
Pretty cool, huh? The Cheonggyecheon was pretty swollen. Usually, the stream looks more like this:
This was the start of the Cheonggyecheon this evening, when the rains were really coming down:
As opposed to this:
Anyhow, one of my favorite parts of Seoul is just walking around, seeing what I might find on a random street on a random day. Like yesterday, I was walking near the Seoul History Museum, when I suddenly realized that I had never checked out Gyeonghuigung Palace before, and I really should. So I did:
Heunghwamun Gate was originally further east, then moved by the Japanese during the colonial era, and finally moved here in the 1980s.
Gyeonghuigung was apparently destroyed by the Japanese during the colonial era, so this is almost all a reconstruction … But it was quite a nice reconstruction.
The main entrance to the palace is under construction until August, so that was a bit of a bummer.
Unlike the other palaces in Seoul, this one was dead quiet. No tourists anywhere and just a few folks walking around.
Here’s a view of the palace from a hill behind it:
After checking out the palace, I stubbornly refused to retrace my steps and leave the same way I came in, so I started looking around for a back gate. But apparently there wasn’t one. Undeterred, I kept looking, eventually heading up into the forest hill behind the palace. There I found an old wall, with little steel doors in the side. It wasn’t locked, so I walked through and found myself on a little roadway.
I kept walking up until I got to the top of the hill, and what did I find? The old Seoul Weather Observatory, in operation since 1933, I do believe.
Around the observatory, there’s some rebuilt sections of the old Seoul wall (looking very unhistoric, by the way) and quite a nice path snaking its way around the hill. It led to this park:
Which had a whole bunch of cats sleeping on the stones and in the undergrowth:
By now I was up pretty high, in an interesting taldongne area.
There’s even a walking tour and map through the alleys:
And a few forlorn hanok:
Eventually the road took me back down to Sajik Park. Here is a view of Inwangsan from the park:
Oh, right, I started this post talking about the Cheonggyecheon being swollen by the rain. So here are a couple more pics:
Just a pic of Bugaksan on a rainy afternoon:
Some days, this is my favorite building in Seoul:
How a ghost movie has never been filmed here, I don’t know.
And the sun setting over Inwangsan a couple of days ago:
Inspired, I decided to type into Google “Why does my husband”, which brings up the predictable (“…look at other women”, “ignore me”, “lie to me”, etc.). Interesting, if a little depressing.
And then I typed “Why does my wife”, and I found a rather surprising suggestion.
So, the Marmot’s Hole closed the comment section. Very good, says I. If people have something to say, let them write about it on their own websites. Or they can email the blog owner, and if he likes it, he can post it. I know my view is a minority, but that is what I think of Internet commentary — keep the signal-to-noise ratio as high as possible. Even if it means being choosy or mean.
Strangely, the closing of the comments have led to some really weird accusations here and there around the Korea blogosphere. People have called the Marmot arrogant or a sell-out or whatnot. Kind of fascinating, really, to see what kind of a bizarre world so many people live in, and how much we bring our own quirks, foibles, biases and scars to our analysis of the world (myself included).
As someone who knows the Marmot reasonably well, I can say with some assurance that “arrogant” is about the last adjective one can apply to him. His blog has changed over the years, but that is mostly based on changes in his life. For several years, he was translating for a Korean news site, so he was regularly immersed in Korean news; his blog content reflected this. Plus he had a lot more free time at work then. One reason I liked the blog so much back then is that it provided fast commentary on the news of a sort that one could not find elsewhere in English (and was hard to find in Korean, too, imho).
But after he changed jobs to Seoul Magazine, he was no longer surrounded by news, and he no longer had nearly as much free time. No surprise that his website content changed to reflect his new job and schedule. That is the simple truth. No government pressure on him. No one telling him to do more of this or less of that. No dreams of glory. No Uncle Tom hopes of being accepted by Korean society by attacking foreigners. Just changing circumstances.
(I should note, too, that no one has remotely come along to pick up his slack from his news-blogging days. As I said last year, with the disappearance of Oranckay and Antti Leppanen from the blog world and the Marmot changing his style, it was a real hit for English-language commentary on Korea. Sure, there are more voices out there now, some quite interesting, but no one is doing what they were doing).
Although I see Robert is now planning to re-introduce comments, with some snazzy new moderation software in place. Best of luck to him. But seeing how his comment section went (and others like it at countless other blogs and forums I have followed over the years), I offer the following half-assed analysis:
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Okay, so I saw AVATAR over the weekend. And I suppose I liked it well enough. It was impressive. But at the end of the day, that is all it was — an impression. Great special effects, but nothing that held any weight, which I fear is the problem with all digital effects. When I think back on Aliens, or Skeksis, or even ET, despite the mechanical fakeness they sometime had, I remember them with a sense of reality. AVATAR, however, I remember like a video game. A really expensive, well-made, realistic video game, but still fake and slight.
Honestly, I quite preferred TITANIC. Sure it was cliched and had some terrible dialogue, but its basic plotting and storytelling were fantastic. The world it presented felt truly real and substantial.
Anyhow, after I saw AVATAR, I saw IN THE LOOP, and I liked LOOP a lot more. Funny, insightful, often witty and sometimes even wicked. And a film for grown-ups. Highly recommended.
Btw, AVATAR did 1.6 million admissions last weekend in Korea, or about 13.6 billion won. Not bad, but certainly not SPIDER-MAN or TRANSFORMERS numbers.
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Random note: I loved this Manohla Dargis interview from a couple of weeks ago. As many others have quoted: “Let’s acknowledge that the Oscars are bullshit and we hate them.”
The “pop” in POP GOES KOREA (and Korea Pop Wars), of course, is a reference to pop culture, or “popular culture”. Well, over the weekend, the man who apparently came up with the term “popular culture” passed away. His name was Ray Browne, and he was a professor at Bowling Green State University (in Ohio).
Amusingly, he claimed that his first use of the term in 1967 was a mistake. He was originally using the term “people’s culture”, as well as terms like “everyday culture” and “democratic culture”.
On the other hand, “pop art” was apparently coined in 1954 by John McHale. So maybe that was my real point of reference, I just did not know it.
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In other news, Edward Chun, the guy who wrote about Korean pop music for MTV Iggy a couple of months ago, just turned up on Gawker of all places. Edward is now in journalism school at Columbia, and for a project on journalism ethics, he and some students put together a presentation in the form of hiphop verse, using Jay-Z’s Empire State of Mind. I found it quite amusing, in a goofy sort of way. Worth a watch, if you have not see it already. But what would Drunken Tiger think?
Here are a few random pics I found over the last few days that I found amusing/interesting for one reason or another.
First of all, from today’s Joongang Ilbo and a story about payphones in Korea, the top 10 payphone locations around Seoul:
I have no great insights on these locations. Although I was amused to see a “correctional facility” make the ranking. Otherwise, I see no obvious patterns to these locations.
And to go with that, a chart of payphone usage in Korea since 1997.
I personally find this chart fascinating because I first arrived in Korea in 1996, in the middle of the pager era. Some of my most vivid memories back then are of the huge lineups everywhere, for pretty much any and every payphone in the country. Talking on the payphone in some loud bar, trying to explain to your friends how to get their. Or listening to someone at that same loud bar have a fight with his/her boyfriend/girlfriend (er… not that I never did anything so ridiculous, of course). Good times.
Anyhow, I find it amazing that there are still over 150,000 payphones in Korea. Although, according to the story, 20 percent of payphones have not been used in the past year. Yikes.
And then, just the other day, I checked out Korea’s Web Standards website at www.webstandards.or.kr and found this:
“Cannot establish a connection” indeed. Fortunately, the link is working again, but at the time, it struck me as funny. (Actually, it is one of the many sites associated with the Korean web pioneer Channy Yun, a very nice guy).
Finally, here is a pic of Bong Joon-ho from the San Sebastian Film Festival last week, where he was on the jury.
That is him in the middle, looking toward the camera with a funny look on his face. I do not know why, but his expression seemed pretty amusing.
Okay, it is about time I said a few things about my life and what has been going on for the last while. Obviously I have not been updating this blog as often as I should, nor have I been able to share with you as much fun news from the Korean entertainment industry as I would like. These bits of personal news are are not really secrets — all my friends know about this stuff already, but for various reasons I did not feel like posting about it online.
Main news #1 is that I am not The Hollywood Reporter’s correspondent in Korea anymore. Nor Billboard’s. Nor anyone’s. In fact, I have not been much of a reporter in over a year. Last year, Bang Productions, a rather cool documentary company based in Singapore, hired me to help them develop several Korea projects. We produced those two HIP KOREA programs (on Rain and Lee Byung-hun) and we have several other fun things in the works.
Main news #2 is that I will not be in Korea much longer. In a few days, I will be moving to Spain. Why? Who knows. But after so many years in Korea, it is exciting to be beginning a whole new phase in my life.
So, what does that mean for KOREA POP WARS? Well, first of all, tomorrow’s box office update will be my last. When I started writing the box office three years ago, it was actually pretty tough getting that information. I had to slog through a bunch of sources to fit together something decent. But these days, thanks to KOFIC and KOBIS, box office numbers are fairly readily available. You can link to here (although I imagine KOFIC will probably change that link one or twice each year, so no guarantees how long it will last).
It also means that this blog will not be around much longer. For now, I will keep using it, perhaps turning it into a Spain version of London Korean Links. But some time soon, I will be introducing a new blog at www.markjamesrussell.com (for now, it just redirects here).
In the meantime, I should thank everyone who checked out KOREA POP WARS, whether regularly or just once in a while. And a huge thanks to everyone who bought a copy of POP GOES KOREA. That was the main impetus for starting this blog, and for all the book’s faults and shortcomings, I am proud of it (and, once again, big big thanks to everyone who helped me with it). The nice reviews and kind words have only been a bonus.
I suppose I will give some sort of Farewell Address in the coming days, just to sum up my thoughts and feelings after so long living in Korea. And there will be periodic updates, as different things occur to me. Most importantly, I think there will be some fun news coming from www.markjamesrussell.com, as my new life in Europe begins to take shape.
Back in February, I mentioned the HIP KOREA documentary on Discovery Channel, a program about the singer Rain and modern Korean culture in which I was involved.
Well, now it is time for episode 2 of HIP KOREA — SEOUL SAVVY, featuring the actor Lee Byung-hun. In many ways, HIP KOREA 2 is the prequel to the Rain episode, as this episode goes back and examines the changes Korea went through during the 1990s and into the 21st century. Rain is about where Korea is now, but Lee Byung-hun looks at how Korea got here.
It turns out that Lee Byung-hun is a pretty good conduit for that story — he first made it big in 1992/3, around the time Korea got its first civilian president. He made JSA in 2000, at the same time as the North-South Summit between the Koreas. He starred in a couple of huge TV dramas that helped spark the boom of Korean TV dramas around Asia (aka Hallyu). And he starred in a couple of really big movies (A BITTERSWEET LIFE and THE GOOD, THE BAD, THE WEIRD) that showcased how far Korean movies and society have come along.
HIP KOREA — SEOUL SAVVY makes its debut on NHK in Japan on June 13 at 12:55am (technically June 14), in a two-hour, back-to-back showing with HIP KOREA — SEOUL VIBES (the Rain episode). It then encores on NHK BS (satellite) on June 19 at 8pm and June 20 at 4:30pm.
It airs in Discovery at the following times in the following locations:
Korea – Thursday, June 18 at 8pm. Encores on June 20 at 2pm, June 21 at 1am in the morning and June 23 at 12am midnight.
Singapore/HK/Malaysia – Thursday, June 18 at 7pm. Encores on June 20 at 1pm and 12am midnight and June 23 at 11pm.
Taiwan – Sunday, August 16 at 10pm. (Rain’s episode will be bundled and aired at 11pm.) Encores on August 23 at 3am and 3pm.
I am quite excited to finally have this going on the air — it was a lot of work and took nearly a year to make. Actually, considering how Lee Byung-hun is a fairly substantial chapter in my book, POP GOES KOREA, you could say I have been working on this episode for years. So I hope you have the time to check it out.
Pop Goes Korea: Behind the Revolution in Movies, Music and Internet Culture (2nd edition) is the only English-language book to examine the whole of Korea's entertainment industry and how it became such a powerhouse over the past 20 years. With profiles of many of Korea's top stars (including Lee Byung-hun and Rain), Pop Goes Korea features chapters on movies, music, television, comic books, the Internet, and more.
On sale now at:
Amazon.com
Kobo eBooks
And hopefully more ebooks stores very soon.
The original edition of Pop Goes Korea is now out of print.
K-Pop Now! takes a fun look at Korea’s high-energy pop music, and is written for its growing legions of fans. It features all the famous groups and singers, and takes an insider’s look at how they have made it to the top.
You can buy at:
Amazon.com
Chapters Indigo
Tuttle (my publisher)
Kyobo Books (in Korea)
Goodreads (not for buying, but still a good link)
© 2024 Mark James Russell
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