Brian Myers

I really like reading Brian Myers, who I consider to be the world's foremost expert on North Korean culture (and perhaps thereby North Korea in general). He teaches at Dongseo University, speaks Korean fluently...well, I'll let you read his Wikipedia page. He's legit, and I highly recommend his A Reader's Manifesto -- An attack on the growing pretentiousness of American literary prose, which was originally printed in The Atlantic.

He's got a new book coming out, which means he's in the public eye a little these days. There's an article in today's Voice of America that's worth a read, since it does a nice job of summing up a lot of his ideas in a succinct way.

In his new book, Myers describes North Korea's core race beliefs as a legacy of Japanese colonial rule in the early 20th century.

"After an initial period in which they brutally tried to stamp out all Korean feelings of pride in their nation, the Japanese decided to co-opt it. They did this by saying 'you Koreans, and we Japanese, we are all part of a uniquely pure race, a uniquely ancient race, that goes back thousands and thousands of years, to the same divine progenitor," he explained.

The Japanese left when Tokyo was defeated in World War II, says Myers, but North Korea kept key pillars of their ideology.

"The Korean people, because they are so racially pure, because they are so homogeneous, are morally superior to all other peoples, not tainted by outside influences which, according to the North Korean world view, are inherently evil," he said.

This is the main reason I'm not really looking forward to a unified Korea. There's plenty of Korean pride and wacky ideas about homogeneity to go around in the South as it is. A post-North Korea Korean peninsula would be worse up in Seoul, and especially in Jeolla, where I'm assuming a lot of North Koreans would end up if they chose to move south, but I'm sure there would be a few in this part of the country as well.

Jesus and Tinkerbell

Funny photo via One Free Korea via North Korean Economy Watch. This is a little girl wearing an "I love Jesus" shirt while visiting Mangyongdae in Pyongyang. The shirt also reads "Tinkerbell, Trust and Pixie Dust." Someone making t-shirts in China has a good sense of humor.

Good that the person who took the photo had the sense to block out the girl's face as she (and maybe the guy behind her) could have surely been dead by now had a North Korean authority seen this.

You'll notice the title of this category. I think it's getting to the point where it's relevant to speculate on such theories and I'll try to do some of that going forward. I'll probably take an irreverent tone and focus when I do so. That's my style to begin with, but I think in this case the more irreverent, the more truthful and interesting.

I haven't met any North Koreans aware of, but I think I've lived in South Korea long enough to have some grasp on what might happen should people from the North begin arriving in the South in droves. What strikes me about the above photo is that the girl's skin is very dark. She will be easily identified as a North Korean, or at least a person from the countryside, which, is first and foremost what North Koreans would be in South Korea.

The man behind her also looks like someone from the countryside. I like his grin, but again, and I might be reading a bit too much into this since I know where the photo emanates from, he looks a bit unassuming, which will also be a major theme of a united Korea. With nearly half a century of a western-style economy under their belts, South Koreans are fairly savvy when it comes to money. North Koreans are anything but.

How Did You Get Here?

I've never seen a single pomegranate in Korea -- until recently. Oddly enough I didn't find them at a luxury Lotte grocery store or something of that nature. Rather, the little old guy who sometimes sells fruit at the corner outside of my apartment was had them.

I couldn't specifically remember eating pomegranate during my life, but I was somehow under the impression that I liked them, so my friend and I bought 3 for 5,000 won. A little pricey. I didn't think much about it...I assumed the guy got them by accident, or that they were in season in China or in one of the many countries Korea recently signed a free trade agreement with.

But actually, I think pomegranates might be here to stay in Korea. I've seen them several times since. Mind you, this is all within the span of about a month. Then today, while wandering through the pages of Naver, I found some publicity photos for something called POM Wonderful, which is apparently a drink company based in the U.S., that is now spreading it's wings in Korea.

The hook for Koreans, and more specifically, Korean women? Pomegranates are high in antioxidants ie. it's good for skin. It'll also help you give better head, as the woman in the background of this photo on the right is seeming to suggest.

Don't get me wrong, I'll bet Pom is delicious. Probably a bit more expensive than I'd like to spend on a drink, but if I got a box of it free -- like the family in this photo essay apparently did -- I wouldn't throw it away. I bet I'd enjoy it.

However, as a fruit, I think pomegranates are a pain in the butt to eat. I like the fruit part, but there's more seed than fruit when it comes down to it, yet each piece is about the size of a seed. In this sense I compare it to another very seedy fruit popular in Korea, known as muskmelon in English, but I only know it as 참외 (cham-ay), since I've never seen it outside of Korea. I also came across an advertising photo essay with some cuties holding cham-ay. The occasion is that Lotte Mart is selling the melon, despite the fact that it's currently out of season. Interestingly both pomegranates and muskmelon are from the middle east and were originally brought to Asia by the Persian Empire.

Cold Winter

When I was a lad, my friends and I started making mix tapes and exchanging them in school. We called them Fresh Tunes. We continued to make these through college and in the years that followed, but then stopped.

But once file sharing took off, CDs became an utter pain in the ass to deal with -- let alone send them half way across the world. I don't ever want to acquire a CD again whether its from a friend or a female Korean pop star.

However, I knew that once there was a service that allowed users to quickly drop files into a shared spot, a box if you will, that the door to Fresh Tunes would be reopened again. Thank you Dropbox.

Here's my first Dropbox Fresh Tunes, entitled Cold Winter.

My Artistic Renderings Will Make You Weep as if You've Seen an Angel

I know it's probably the case in just about any culture, but I love how other worldly Korean construction plan renderings look. I posted one here of the planned area surrounding the Cheonan/Asan KTX station and I come across them all the time in image searches. Today, while looking for a photo of a Korean apartment building in the winter, I found the following:

That would be Doosan's "We've The Zenith," which, according to the source of the photo, was started in 2007 in Busan's Haeundae area. I'm familiar with the area, but I honestly couldn't tell you if this has been built yet. If it has it doesn't look like the above photo, that's for sure. Straight outta Blade Runner, yo.

Here's another one that's been in the media a bit recently -- for a new sports complex in Ansan, which is up near Incheon.

Looks kind of cool. Although I've been out in that part of Incheon -- and it looks nothing like anything that would someday look like the photo above or below. Quite honestly it looks like some typical Korean apartment buildings that are being built on a drained river. Naturally, there are plenty of angelic photos that would make any martian a proud pappy drawn up in anticipation. This one is quite abstract.

I'll look forward to posting more of these in the near future.

Thirst

I saw it a while ago, but I wanted to make mention of Thirst by Park Chan-wook. I enjoyed the trilogy including Oldboy, which is probably the most well-known and best reviewed Korean-made film ever (discounting Korean opinion). I've always counted Oldboy as my "favorite Korean film ever" when speaking with Koreans. But after a while, I started to question myself. It's a great movie, but it's needlessly violent, and is something that I dislike more and more as time goes by. I don't know that I'd even be willing watch Oldboy again, which is too bad.

Anyway, my point about Thirst is that most of the gore happens off camera. For whatever reason Park spares us of that, which is a welcome change. Sure there's a lot of biting into necks, but it's done in a fairly non-violent way.

The story is basically a priest, who happens to be in love with his friend’s wife, turns into a vampire though a failed medical experiment. His vampire properties, of which I'm familiar with in a generic sense, are of the classic variety -- he needs blood to survive, runs around at night, sleeps in a coffin etc.

Song Kang-ho is the lead actor. I know him from The Host, which is probably the second most famous and well-reviewed Korean film. I didn't like The Host at all, despite that a lot of people gave it the same classic of the genre tag that I'm giving Thirst. But I did like Song, he's got a way of projecting empathy that's probably one of those things you can't teach to an actor.

Song is also from nearby Gimhae, which is kind of cool, and he also went to Kyungsung University in Busan, which is right where I used to live when I first moved to Busan. On fairly unrelated note, part of Oldboy was filmed in a basement restaurant in the same neighborhood where I used to eat a couple times a week. The restaurant is called Kirin (Korean for giraffe).

I was just poking around for some odd photos involving Oldboy and I came across this, which is a side by side comparison of an image from Oldboy and Virgina Tech shooter Cho Seung-Hui. Here's a New York Times story on that topic. It's a clear emulation, and it's strange to me that anyone would try to deny the link. I'd be willing to bet that incident had something to do with Park toning down the violence in Thirst. My guess is it is a conscious move and good for him.

Look Mom! I Gots Twigs For Legs

I saw this photo on PopSeoul yesterday and it’s been stuck in my head ever since. On the left is Taemin from the boy band Shinee. On the right is Gu Hara, who I wrote about in a post here. She’s a very small woman by Korean standards (I wanted to say even by Korean standards, but the fact of the matter is that Koreans have grown in just the past decade), something you wouldn’t necessarily notice when she’s performing. When she appears on TV shows, as she and her Kara brethren have been wont to do these days, she kind of looks like a cute head on pencil -- I'm a little unsure if I'm actually attracted to her anymore.

But nothing really prepared me for ol twig legs here on the left. Initially I despised Shinee, but they must have changed songwriters or something, because the new tunes aren’t driving me to spit at the TV. They've got some hooks. Here's a link to their YouTubes most recent videos first.

I'm pretty sure that at least two of the guys in Shinee are gay, which is perfectly cool, but probably an uphill battle in the world of Korean pop music.