It seems like most years in Korea, you get that one last big snowfall in late February or early March. And once again, the weather obliged.
And an hour later:
Category: Random Stuff (Page 2 of 7)
We had a late Lunar New Year this year, coming the week before Valentine’s Day. So welcome to the year of the red monkey (丙申年). To celebrate, here’s a look at a pretty Seollal sunset through a dirty subway window.
For reasons I do not quite understand, my old post about Hongdae coffee shops from 18 months ago appears to be getting more interest. But of course, being Korea, 18 months is a long time, and most of the post is now out of date. So if you’re looking for good coffee in Hongdae, check before going anywhere.
In particular, Coffee Me is gone, having shut down last summer. Cafe Belief still exists, but it has moved to the Hapjeong area, behind the Mecenatpolis
Anthracite has apparently had some issues with its workers, but they seem to have solved those problems are going strong still. Yri and Jebi are still good, too, if you’re in the Sangsu area. On the Donggyo side of Hongdae, Gabia is still your best bet (imho), and Cafe Libre in Yeonnam-dong.
Anyhow, happy lunar new year.
After weeks of the clearest fall skies I can remember in Korea, the smog finally rolled in last week, turning everything all throat-scratchy and post-apocalyptic. But last night it rained and cleared everything out, at least for a little while. Plus the leaves are finally turning colors (it’s been pretty warm all October), so everything in Korea is pretty lovely at the moment.
Erg, August already? Apologies for the lack of updates. It’s been a hot, soggy summer in Korea, one that doesn’t really lend itself to blogging.
On the plus side, I’ve been making some decent progress on the writing. Finished one short story (very short) and I’ve been cranking away on the sequel to Young-hee & the Pullocho. Most significantly, I think I finally worked out a few bugs in that story and nearly gotten through a re-write. But still a long way to go.
Back in early July, Bank Street Bookstory in New York City was nice enough to have a reading of The Pullocho. That was a wonderful surprise, but I was even more surprised to discover they filmed the reading, and put some highlights up online.
- Also, there have been a couple more reviews of The Pullocho, at London Korea Links and ATK Magazine (very positive reviews, too, so big thanks to Philip and Cindy, and huzzah!).
- Publisher’s Weekly did a very nice writeup of Ed Greenwood’s new publishing ventures … something that should directly relate to my own writing (eventually).
- Hey, the Wondergirls are back, with a very, very ’80s song:
We had a pretty amazing sundown last night.
And incredible skies this morning.
For no particular reason, here are a few photos of a couple of sunsets from last week.
I’m going to miss this apartment when I move…
Young-Hee & the Pullocho is a “portal fantasy” — meaning a story in which the fantasy element is accessed from our boring world via a doorway, like the wardrobe in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. That meant I needed to come up with a portal. So how to get Young-hee into my magical world?
Fortunately, Korea is a country with no shortage of strange doors. Like this one I passed while on a walk today, on the right of the photo, just sitting there on the side of the hill. No steps. No signs (unless you count the graffiti underneath it).
Why is it there? Who uses it? Could there be a magical world lurking behind it? I have no answers. But I love wondering about it.
It looks like my name has graced the iconic Boing Boing website for the first time. Yay.
Well, it’s kind of there. A little bit. Actually, the very cool Colin Marshall was invited to provide a bit of guest blogging. And for one of his first posts, he linked to his entire Korea series from his Notebook on Cities and Culture blog. So there I am, fourth on the list.
Okay, it’s a pretty minor mention, but I’ll take it all the same. Thanks, Colin.
Long wall of text coming. Sorry.
Anyhow, no, I’m not talking about the jam band. “Phish” as in trying to scam someone to get their personal information, like passwords or credit card details, usually so you can steal their money. Phishing is quite a problem in Korea, often turning up in news stories, but in the last week, two phishing incidents hit pretty close to home — some scammers tried to steal from a relative yesterday (let’s call her “F1”), and the friend of a friend actually lost 20 million won to another scammer earlier in the week (“F2”).
In each case, the method used was rather similar, so I wonder if this is a problem that’s getting worse, or if two incidents just happened to hit close to home. These phishing attacks are pretty devious. Like most grifts, they’re designed to take advantage of human nature and our personal blind spots.
The scam begins with a phone call. A guy claiming to be with the police says that you have been targeted in a bank fraud and identity theft. They’ve caught the guy, but there will be lawsuits and all sorts of legal hassles. They warn that not taking care of this right away could result in months of trouble and your bank accounts could be frozen for a time.
But then they offer a solution — if you go to the police’s website, you can register your information and protect yourself. Of course, the URL they mention is not “go.kr” and not the real Korean police website. It looks the same, but it is “.com”.
Throughout, they keep talking fast, trying to stop you from thinking, lulling you into a rhythm, taking advantage of most people’s tendency to want to please others and be respectful. They also know your name and same bits of personal information (easily bought on the black market), designed to make them sound official.
Luckily for F1, once they started saying they needed her to transfer them money, she got really suspicious. She said she needed to check their info and would call back, asking them for their names and departments so she could call them back. They said to use the number on her caller ID, but she said no, she’d call the main police switchboard and the operator could pass her along to them. They immediately hung up.
F2 was not so lucky, and sent a lot of money.
It’s easy to look down on people who get scammed, but grifters are smart at recognizing glitches in human nature, and “hacking” our behaviour, like how a computer hacker breaks into online networks. That said, there needs to be a lot more education in Korea about how to protect your personal information.
More annoying, though, was the response of the real police. F1 called the Mapo Cyber Police division, but their response was “If you didn’t lose any money, don’t worry about it.” They said they could do anything about it and weren’t interested in filing a report or gathering information. So lazy and amateurish (and, unfortunately, typical).
tl:dr — Don’t ever give away your personal information over the phone and be careful about online. Korea’s lack of information security is getting ever more dangerous.
I was taking a look at traffic to this little blog (bloguita?) a little while ago, and noticed a few hits coming from the forum attached to a popular Korean pop culture website. There, on a thread all about the actor Bae Yong-joon, one commenter had linked to my website, saying some nice things about Pop Goes Korea, but also making some strange claims about my “bias” against Bae Yong-joon, apparently instead favoring Lee Byung-hun.
Which I thought was more than a little odd. I mean, there’s a lot in the book about Lee because, well, there’s a whole chapter that profiles him. But in that chapter, when I talk about the rise of the Korean Wave, I clearly indicated the prime importance of Winter Sonata, the drama that made Bae so internationally famous. I may have tweaked Bae’s obsessive fandom once or twice in the past, but I think I’ve always given him his due.
So if I talked a lot about Lee Byung-hun, it was because he was the subject of the chapter, and because he was generous enough to give me plenty of time for interviews, responding to my many questions. Bae would have been a great choice for a TV chapter, but at the time, he just wasn’t interested in participating in the book (and I had some contacts with his company and manager at the time, so wasn’t just cold-calling from out of nowhere).
But, being the Internet, people like to speculate, which led to some really odd comments, like maybe I preferred Lee Byung-hun because his personal scandals appealed to my male sensibilities. Very, very odd. If anyone wanted to take a moment to research a little, they would have found plenty of stories about the importance of Winter Sonata and Bae in Hallyu history.
Anyhow, it definitely was not a big deal. I only mention it because of some other online fusses I’ve seen lately. There’s apparently a squadron of people who loathe the very nice folks at Eat Your Kimchi, so when EYK was announced as a guest on some Arirang TV show, a mini-mob arose, accusing EYK of all sorts of ridiculous stuff (like fat-shaming, which would be, like, the exact opposite point of their videos on the topic). The mind boggles.
Fans of K-pop groups are always quick to switch to outrage mode, whenever someone is perceived to have slighted their favorites. Some of those fans are famous for being totally unhinged.
But it isn’t just Korean pop culture fans, of course. It seems like any field where people are the least bit passionate, that passion turns so quickly and easily into a wild, mob mentality. Left hate right. Right hates left. The fantasy and science fiction communities, also love a good flame war (“So-and-so famous writer from the past was racist!” being a popular starting point).
All of which makes me so happy to be middle-aged. I have my loves and dislikes, but aside from my family, all my music favs, art, movies or whatever have a much more moderate place in my psyche. “I hate X.” “Oh, okay. I quite like X, but that’s all right.” Life is so much more pleasant this way.
* * *
Then again, no shortage of the big Twitter flame wars involve adults, so I guess age doesn’t mellow everyone.
Young-hee and the Pullocho
Young-hee stumbles into a magical world, where the fairy stories of her childhood are real and all the frustrations of her everyday life fade away — until her little brother is kidnapped by a goblin. The only way Young-hee can save him is by finding a magical plant called a pullocho, but little does she realize the fate of a whole world hangs in the balance.
On sale now at:
Amazon
Pop Goes Korea
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!
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)