Korea Pop Wars

Once a Year, Whether We Need It or Not...

2011-07-31T21:25:00.001+09:00

Well, it has been over a year since I last made a post around here. I'm still around at www.markjamesrussell.com on occasion, and the Korea Gig Guide is doing better than ever. Feel free to check them out, if you are in the mood. And hopefully we will have some news about a new book before much longer...

Homepage Updates

2010-06-21T21:57:00.002+09:00

Hi all. Just a little reminder about some updates going on over at my real blog -- some music updates from Korea, an interesting video about motivation and money, and a bit of talk about PiFan.

Pop Goes Korea in Malaysia

2010-06-01T15:19:00.003+09:00

Okay, this is a little late, but I just found out that POP GOES KOREA received a very nice review last October in Malaysia's NEW STRAITS TIMES. (Sadly, I cannot find the link on the newspaper's website anymore, so must link to the Findarticle version).

Actually, it is more of a summary than a full review, but the author, Johan Jaaffar, calls POP GOES KOREA "incredibly informative" and is generally positive of my book, so one is appreciative of kind words and publicity whenever and wherever they can be found. Thank you very much, Mr. Jaaffar.

Musical Notes

2010-05-23T17:06:00.002+09:00

A couple of interesting music-related items that I have recently run across. First, there is this amazing essay on songs about Seoul. Apparently there was a special exhibition at the Chunggyecheon Museum (just ending today, terrible timing by me) about some 1,400 pop songs about Seoul that have been recorded over the years. Some interesting tidbits about Patti Kim, Lee Mija and a lot of great singers from the past.

And then there is this interesting video about the Korean singer Hwang Boryung (who also performs as Smacksoft). Bo is a very cool woman and well worth a listen. I do not know Stuart Reece, the video creator, at all (although some Googling reveals that he is a deejay at TBS-eFM), but it seems that he is intending on starting a series about underground music in Seoul. A very promising start. I hope to see more soon.

Seoul Underground: SMACKSOFT from Stuart Reece on Vimeo.

Meanwhile, over at the other blog (cont'd)...

2010-05-15T07:33:00.002+09:00

Just a reminder that I am not updating over here much these days. Over at my "real" blog, you can find:

Comments about the Seoul not-so-Foreign not-so-Correspondents Club and their latest anti-journalism controversy

A new film market in Singapore

A bit about the Barcelona Asian Film Festival

A round-up of reviews from Cannes for Im Sangsoo's remake of THE HOUSEMAID (and some other Asian films

Filming North Korean Films (Almost)

2010-05-08T09:29:00.002+09:00

Far too little is known about North Korean cinema, which for 60 years has been turning out little-known juche masterpieces. Certainly it is one of my big regrets that I was not able to go to North Korea and visit the Pyongyang film studio myself.

So it was a treat to discover this short documentary by filmmakers Shane Smith and Eddy Moretti, about their travels to North Korea to film the North's film industry. And while they did not get to see any movie making, they did get to North Korea's movie museum and a few sets. Their video is just 23 minutes long, but it is rare to see so much footage from the North, all taken with permission (well, almost all).

* * *
Hrm, apparently people have been adding more and more videos about North Korea onto Youtube. Many have English subtitles or are English dubs.

And plenty more at Juche Korea's Youtube channel.

* * *

Oh, speaking of North Korean cinema, a couple of months ago, I mentioned that Johannes Schoenherr was writing a series of stories on the subject. Well, he has been keeping at it, and now there are well over 20 articles at the Daily NK.

LA Times Smacks Down Korea -- Why Exactly?

2010-05-04T18:09:00.003+09:00

Very strange post on the LA Times' Big Picture movie blog (thanks to The Marmot for finding this) -- it talks about why Korea is getting IRON MAN 2 before Japan, saying that it is mostly because of Korea's high rates of online piracy.

I say strange because I have no idea why Korea is getting singled out. IRON MAN 2 was released in over 50 territories last weekend, all over the world. Day-and-date releases from Hollywood are increasingly the norm, and have been unremarkable for quite some time.

Big Hollywood films, especially those released in the May-June area, have usually been released in Korea at the same time as in the United States for years now. Korea usually saves up its big blockbusters for later in the summer, in July and August, often causing Hollywood films to move their opening dates to avoid the biggest Korean films then. But May is the biggest time of the year for Hollywood in Korea.

That said, even films that get a delayed release can do well. MAMMA MIA! was released in Korea two months after it was in the United States and much of the West, but it made $25 million in Korea and was the fifth-biggest film of 2008. Sure, Korea has a lot of online and offline piracy, but perhaps the situation is more nuanced (and profitable) than some people would like to bellyache.

I especially dislike media executives complaining about online piracy without any comment about what their RESPONSIBILITIES are. Like they can hold on to their movies, music, TV shows or whatever and release them whenever they want. Sorry, but this is the Internet age, and if you do not give customers a fair chance to buy your content, they are not going to wait patiently for you to release something when you feel like it. Yes, consumers need to respect copyright. But producers also have a responsibility to make sure their content is available in a timely, convenient manner.

The LA Times would have been much better off asking the more interesting question -- Why is Japan still releasing so many movies so much later than the rest of the world? The Japan market is the unusual one that needs an explanation, not Korea.

(And in case you are interested, the reason Hollywood films are released so much later in Japan has more to do with its tricky theatrical market than its respect for copyrights. In Japan, it can be hard to book screens, hard to market movies, there is relatively low theatrical attendance for the country's population, high ticket prices and a whole host of difficulties.)

History of the North Korean Army

2010-04-08T15:28:00.002+09:00

Okay, this is pretty far from what I usually talk about on this blog, but I also thought it was pretty cool -- it is the US Army's 1952 History of the North Korean Army. It was classified up until 1982 (if I am reading it correctly), and was posted onto the Secrecy News website a couple of days ago.

The profiles of the NK leaders (including Kim Il Sung, of course), beginning on page 90, are especially interesting. Like this fun tidbit:

Non-Communists who know KIM personally describe him as a roughneck, poorly-educated, poor at languages, with little administrative ability. He is, however, an able and ruthless guerrilla leader.

Kunsthalle One-Year Anniversary Party

2010-04-06T18:17:00.009+09:00

One of the more interesting artistic spaces in Seoul, imho, is Kunsthalle, the stack of shipping containers located close to the Dosan Park Intersection in Gangnam. And they are having their one-year anniversary party this weekend, April 8-10.

Each day from 5pm until 3am will feature events, music, dancing and plenty more. Saturday will also have brunch from noon to 5pm. Sounds like a lot of fun.

Kunsthalle has hosted a wide range of artistic events and other cool stuff since it opened last April (it was event host to the Korean Music Awards on March 30). Set up by the Berlin artistic group Platoon (they call themselves a "movement"), this is an attempt to blend the artistic and the political into a seamless entity. Or, I suspect, it is a cool way to meet girls. Whatever, I think it is worth checking out and supporting.

* * *
Oh, and over at my main website, I talk about Seoul Fashion Week, the recent article about it in the New York Times, and Korean design in general.

Meanwhile, over at the other blog...

2010-03-26T07:36:00.003+09:00

Some thoughts on Korean movies in America, live music websites, and other things over at my new blog. I guess I should get into the habit of writing over there. Feel free to check it out if you like.

More MOTHER

2010-03-23T05:37:00.002+09:00

More news from Bong Joon-ho's MOTHER, this time from Hong Kong, where it picked up three prizes at the Fourth Asian Film Awards, including Best Picture. It also won Best Screenplay and Best Actress.

Korea has done quite at the Asian Film Awards in general, picking up Best Picture at the first Awards for THE HOST (which also won for Best Actor, Cinematography and Visual Effects), and at the second Awards for SECRET SUNSHINE (which also won for Best Director, and Best Actress).

Meanwhile, MOTHER continues to do well in the United States, and has now made over $100,000. Last weekend, it grew to 19 screens (up from six from the previous weekend) and its box office topped $53,000 (up from $36,000). It will be interesting to see if it can keep it up for long.

MOTHER in America

2010-03-18T05:32:00.002+09:00

Bong Joon-ho's MOTHER opened last weekend in the United States. Just six screens, but it opened to nearly $6,000 a screen -- good enough to be the No. 2 movie by per-screen average (for movies on more than one screen).

So, just $35,000 so far... not sure if distributors are planning on growing MOTHER's release. Since my last post about the film, its Rotten Tomatoes rank is up 1, to 88, but its Metacritic score is down on, to 79. Still, pretty good -- it has the fourth-best score on Metacritic and ninth-best on Rotten Tomatoes.

Band of Brothers, The Pacific ... The Korean War?

2010-03-14T19:02:00.003+09:00

I came across a great interview with Bruce McKenna, the head writer and showrunner for the epic HBO series THE PACIFIC (and a writer for BAND OF BROTHERS). Totally worth a read.

But at the end of the interview, they ask him if he would like to move on to the Korean War next. And this is what he said:

HitFix: Do you think, though, that if this works out as well for HBO as they're obviously hoping, that they're going to go looking for that next war? Are we off to Korea next? Do we skip ahead and do Vietnam?

Bruce McKenna: I don't know. We'll see how well "The Pacific" does. I think it will do well. For me personally, the one war story that I would write is the story of the Chosin Reservoir. The Korean War is the forgotten war. Forget the Pacific, nobody knows anything about Korea. It's a Marine story and it's quite moving. Whether HBO does it or not, I hope they do. They did "Generation Kill" and I think something on Korea would be a great idea.

HitFix: Does that feel like another miniseries to you? Can you even think in a two-hour format anymore or are you stuck thinking in 10-hour blocks?

BM: Believe me, I think in whatever format they're willing to pay me to write. The Chosin Reservoir would be a better movie than a miniseries, because it was a very contained event. Now Korea? That's a miniseries.

So perhaps it is not likely at this stage. But just the thought that someone like McKenna would like to tackle the Korean War is a nice thought. Maybe we will get lucky some day.

MOTHER Comes to America

2010-03-12T18:57:00.003+09:00

Bong Joon-ho's MOTHER gets a limited release in the United States today, and so far the reviews are very good -- 87 percent fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, and an 80 metascore on Metacritic (which I find more useful than RT).

Manohla Dargis at the New York Times gives the film a glowing review. And even more interesting, the New York Times has Bong himself describing a scene from the film, talking about how and why he shot it the way he did.

I am not sure how big the release of MOTHER is (I suspect it is rather small), but will update this post once I find out.

I find it remarkable that a quirky film like MOTHER would get such a strong response in the West. MOTHER has almost none of the typical features you see in an Asian film that gets released in the West. No martial arts. No ghosts. No gangsters (well, almost none). It is like audiences in the West are growing much more comfortable with international cinema. Like it is getting normalized. Which I think is a great thing.

* * *

In a completely different vein, I just came across this fascinating little article about cinema in Saudi Arabia. Apparently all theaters there were closed in 1980 and just now some people are trying to bring them back. In general, I find the history of world cinema a great subject in general, and especially so in the Arab world. For instance, how many people remember that Egypt once had a very strong movie industry? I once met a filmmaker from Bahrain (perhaps the only filmmaker from that small island state), Bassam Al-Thawadi and he told me a lot of great stories about what it was like for him trying to make movies in Bahrain.

Maybe the same forces that are making Korean movies more normal in the West are also, in some small way, liberalizing the Arab world? Is this an example of the soft power of culture in globalization? Maybe not, but it is something I like to think about these days.

Epik High No. 1 on iTunes

2010-03-10T06:32:00.006+09:00

Well, I never would have imagined it, but Korean hiphop group Epik High is currently sitting on top of the iTunes US hiphop chart.

Also currently are No. 1 in New Zealand, No. 2 in Australia and No. 3 in Canada. Pretty wild.

Epik High's new album, Epilogue, was just released on iTunes on Monday (March 8). I am told that it has bounced around on the charts for Japan (as high as #9), France, Germany and the UK. Good for EH.

Very encouraging for a more "real" group to make some noise outside of Korea, as opposed to a more manufactured teen-pop group. But, as I have argued many times over the years (along with many other folks, of course), real music is much more likely to get noticed around the world. Hiphop and indie rock are the real futures of K-Pop around the world.

(Again, there is room in the world for teen-pop, too, just as there is a place for the Jonas Brothers, Miley Cyrus and the like. But that sort of music is not majority of the music industry. Artists who write their own songs have a lot more "weight" with critics).

If you are interested, here is the music video for Epik High's lead-off single Run. I have never been a huge fan of the group, but this song is rather catchy.

Don't forget, Epik High will be on CNN's Talk Asia on April 21.

(UPDATE: I added a link to the iTunes chart, that I forgot to add when I originally posted. Although I am not sure how long Epik High will be on top, which is why I posted a screen capture).

Bong Joon-ho in the Press

2010-03-09T18:42:00.003+09:00

Bong Joon-ho's latest film, MOTHER, is getting a release in the United States, and with that comes a bunch of publicity. The Wall Street Journal has a nice blog entry about Bong here. And the Harvard Crimson here.

Will post more as I find them.

Movie Magazine Suicides, Part 1000 (or so)

2010-03-09T17:49:00.002+09:00

The long, slow suicide by Hollywood's trade magazines continues, as Variety just axed their best movie reviewers, including their top Asia reviewer Derek Elley.

Now, I can see getting rid of some expensive reviewers, especially in Hollywood (where, let's face it, reviewing the latest blockbuster means pretty close to nothing). But for less well known markets, like Asia, having reviewers who know the countries, the creatives and the history is pretty important. And Derek has long been one of the smartest and more important reviewers of Asian films.

Perhaps the modern economics of media just do not include a place for reviewers anymore. Film companies have other ways of getting out word about their movies. And just about anyone can blog their opinions, no matter how facile (hello!). But I still think Variety is losing more than they are saving by getting rid of someone like Derek.

This is just the latest in a long line of moves the movie trade magazines have made to eviscerate their publications. Variety created Variety Asia Online, then shut it down. The Hollywood Reporter had THR-Asia, then shut it down. Screen still has an Asia presence (the strongest of the three), but for how long? Film Business Asia is off to a promising start, but is still just that, a start -- and it does not have reviews.

Movies in Asia pull in over $6 billion a year, in theatrical revenue alone. Maybe nearing $7 billion, depending on how you measure these things. I find it hard to believe that there is not room for or need for a decent publication (online or offline) about the Asian film industry.

New Beginnings, Portugal and More

2010-03-03T17:12:00.003+09:00

Now that I am not living in Korea and POP GOES KOREA has been published, I have been wondering how much sense it makes to continue a blog called Korea Pop Wars. So I have been slowly developing a new blog, that is more general and reflects the things I am working these days -- www.markjamesrussell.com.

If you are interested, feel free to check it out. If you are only interested in Korea things ... Well, I might cross-post Korea-related content here, at least for a while. Or I might not. I am not sure yet.

Many thanks, though, to everyone who lent their eyeballs here over the years. When I started this blog, it was primarily done to work up interest for the book (then titled Pop Wars: The Koreans Strike Back, which is why this blog is called Korea Pop Wars). I thought about talking about the latest Korean celebrity news, but around the same time all those K-Pop blogs got started, and no need to be redundant, so that idea fell by the wayside.

I also thought about talking about some of the more fun things I saw and heard about from the Korean entertainment scene, but I was a journalist back then, and if I talked about all the off-the-record stuff, it would not be long before no one told me anything anymore. So that idea did not go anywhere. So eventually the blog became what it was. Maybe not as dynamic as I hoped for, but judging by the traffic, there were a few of you out there who liked it. Thanks much.

Anyhow, I am currently in Porto, Portugal, at the Fantasporto Film Festival. So far, it has been great fun, and I hope to talk more about it over at the new blog.

Avatar Sets the Record

2010-02-28T20:32:00.003+09:00

For the first time in 11 years, the biggest movie in Korea is no longer Korean. It looks like AVATAR has finally become the most popular film ever in Korea, topping the admissions for previous record holder THE HOST. 20th Century Fox says that on Sunday, AVATAR reached 13.01 million admissions, making it the biggest selling film ever in Korea.

AVATAR was already the highest-grossing film ever in Korea, due to its higher tickets prices.

My only caveat is that, according to my records, THE HOST had 13.02 million admissions, so it is possible that AVATAR has a few more tickets to sell. But even if that is the case, it is obvious that AVATAR will set the record in a day or two. (UPDATE: My caveat is moot. KOBIS says that AVATAR hit 13.08 million at the end of Sunday).

What is really amazing to me is that AVATAR's 13 million admissions is so much higher than the next-closest foreign film, TRANSFORMERS 2, which had only 7.4 million admissions. That means AVATAR is over 75 percent higher than the next-biggest foreign movie.

Kind of sad, really. For years, the top foreign film in Korea was RETURN OF THE KING, which had its problems, but was mostly a good, epic movie. But TRANSFORMERS, TRANSFORMERS 2 and AVATAR? Those are three really crappy movies. I hope a new Korean movie can come along to retake the top spot before too long.

Pop Goes Vietnam

2010-02-28T01:34:00.002+09:00

This is kind of random, but a long interview I did with the BBC Vietnam has just been published. In Vietnamese. So if you can read Vietnamese (and, really, who can't these days?), check it out.

The reasons for the interview are because of the great popularity that Korean TV, music and pop culture is having in Vietnam these days, and to talk about how the lessons of the Korean entertainment industry might be applicable to a place like Vietnam. That second reason in particular was a big motivator for me to write POP GOES KOREA in the first place.

I really believe that in the future, we are going to see more and more local cultures staking out space in the world pop culture scene, much as Korea has done over the past decade. Vietnam still has a long way to go, but I hope they can make it. What a great sign that would be for other countries that worry about their local cultures in the face of the Western entertainment industry.

Kim Yuna Wins

2010-02-26T14:20:00.007+09:00

Kim Yuna blew away the competition with a 228.56 for Olympic gold in the women's figure skating.

Asada Mao was second with 205.50, and Canadian Joannie Rochette was third.

FYI, Yuna's score would have given her ninth among the Men, which is pretty amazing considering the women's program is shorter, so has less time to build up points.

More to come. But it is 6am here in Spain and I need to go back to bed.

UPDATE: Okay, it looks like the Olympic Committee is working overtime to prevent people posting videos of the long program. But in the meantime, here is a great video from the New York Times, with Yuna and Brian Orser explaining her Triple-Triple jump combination.

UPDATE 2: Hey, that documentary I worked on -- Hip Korea: Seoul Spirit, for Discovery Asia -- has a preview up on Youtube (sorry, no embedding).

UPDATE 3: Actually, I just did the math. The women's freeskate is four minutes, versus 4.5 minutes for the men. So assuming Yuna could keep skating at the high level for another 30 seconds, she could have scored a 168.8 on her freeskate, which would have beaten all of the men. Of course, you cannot compare men's and women's programs like that, but it sure is interesting.

Halfway There — Kim Yuna Wins the Short Program

2010-02-24T16:39:00.007+09:00

So far, so good for Kim Yuna, who is leading the women's figure skating competition after the short program. In fact, her 78.50 points is a new world record.

Here is her performance (at least for the moment), with English commentary:

Asada Mao is in second, with 73.78 points, and in third is Canadian Joannie Rochette (whose mother passed away just a few nights ago, giving her a backstory that would make overcoming-tragedy-obsessed producers at NBC actually explode).

I thought I should mention something because a small story like this can slip through the cracks.

FYI, you can see the very good NBC short report on Kim Yuna here.

Anyhow, great for Yuna. Now we are just 40 hours away from the long program and seeing if she can pull off the big prize.

Number Won — Korea Gets a Music Chart

2010-02-24T03:13:00.005+09:00

It is long, long overdue, but at last Korea has its music charts back. The Ministry of Culture has put together GAON, an "official" music chart that is going to measure online and offline music sales and put it all together to form a chart of the most popular music in the land.

Music charts in Korea have long had problems. Most notable were the scandals and problems that plagued the TV music charts, on the terrestrial stations and on music video channels. After so many payola investigations and other legal problems, most channels pulled their countdowns for years.

More serious, imho, was the loss of the "official" sales charts. MIAK (the Music Industry Association of Korea) disbanded in 2009, as part of some larger government reorganizations. But even before MIAK was disbanded, it had stopped keeping track of music sales (and even then, they only tracked physical sales, which have lagged behind digital sales in Korea since 2003).

MIAK is supposed to be replaced by the KMCIA, which will include online as well as physical sales. There are no charts at KMCIA yet, but it looks like they are taking steps toward adding CD and online sales charts.

So why care about music charts? Certainly I am not interested in bragging rights between one K-pop band or another. What is important, though, is transparency. Transparency may not be as sexy as Lee Hyori or as flashy as a 2PM dance move, but it is far more important for having a successful pop industry.

Look at Korea's movie industry, for example. Ten years ago or so, it was really hard to find good information about how movies were doing in Korea. If you saw a chart, it was most likely only for Seoul. Nationwide data came weeks later, if it all, and was pretty unreliable. Theater owners fought for years that their box office data was proprietary and releasing it would put their business in danger. It was against the interest of each individual to release that data.

But guess what, it was in the overall industry's interest to have that data. Without reliable data, distributors could not be certain how well their films were doing, and therefore how much money they should be making. Poor numbers increase risk, which makes the whole system work much less efficiently.

The Korean government put a real emphasis on improving the quality of box office data, and it is no coincidence that better box office data happened at the same time as overall box office went up up up. And I think it is also no coincidence that lousy numbers in the music industry have gone along with that industry's decline over the past eight years.

Hopefully, Gaon will work out, and that more reliable information might lay the foundation for better days for the music industry.

Of course, if you want to know more about Korean music, movies, charts and all that fun stuff, you should pick up a copy of POP GOES KOREA.

Kim Yuna, Olympics at Last

2010-02-23T20:47:00.005+09:00

Just a few hours now from the women's figure skating* competition at the Olympics. Which means at long last, we are going to find out if Kim Yuna has what it takes to win the biggest prize in her sport.

As a young person who watched Brian Orser in the Winter Olympics in 1984 and 1988, I can remember those competitions to clearly. So it is kind of wild now to be a small part** of that world, having worked with Yuna and Brian (and David Wilson and their whole crew) over the past year on a documentary. Meeting Brian for the first time I was surprised to feel myself geeking out.

For what it is worth, I can definitely say that all the people on Team Yuna and at the Toronto Cricket Club are some of the nicest, smartest people who I have ever met. Yuna (and her mom) really have created an amazing team to help push her to her goal.

What happens now? Who knows? Yuna has a great chance to make history, but you never know. As Brian pointed out to me, the Olympics often see unexpected skaters rise up and take the gold, because the pressures at this time are unlike anything else, even the ISU's World Championships. Good luck to her today and Thursday. It should be a great competition.

-----
* I refuse to call it "ladies' figure skating". Seems way too anachronistic to me (not that anyone asked me for my opinion).
** Okay, a very, very small, tiny part of that world.

Avatar Inching Closer to No. 1

2010-02-23T02:47:00.002+09:00

James Cameron's 3D epic AVATAR is moving ever closer to setting the all-time attendance record in Korea. As of Monday, it sat with 12.83 million admissions, good enough for No. 2 all time in Korea. The No. 1 film, THE HOST, is just 190,000 admissions ahead, with 13.02 million. So it is looking increasingly likely that the biggest film ever in Korea is soon going to be a James Cameron film ... Which strangely enough was the state of things 10 years ago, when TITANIC was the biggest blockbuster ever in Korea (before SHIRI came along).

FYI, AVATAR has now made 118.7 billion won ($103 million) in Korea.

FYI 2, the Korean film SECRET REUNION (Uihyeongje) is also doing quite well -- 3.5 million admissions after three weeks. In fact, three of the top four films were Korean last weekend, so it looks like things are bouncing back after a rough January.

AVATAR Drops Out of First -- But Still Eyeing the Record

2010-02-09T08:09:00.003+09:00

AVATAR finally slipped out of first place in Korea last weekend (coincidentally the same weekend it dropped out of first in the United States, too). It dropped all the way to third, behind two Korean titles, SECRET REUNION (Uihyeongje) and HARMONY.

But AVATAR is hardly out of gas. It still pulled in over 365,000 admissions, or nearly 4 billion won. That brings James Cameron's blockbuster up to 11.9 million admissions in Korea. Could it make it to 13 million admissions, beating THE HOST? Possible, although difficult. I guess it depends how much of the Seollal bump it gets, and how much goes to newer movies. Regardless, the film's 108 billion won ($92 million) is by far a record for box office revenue.

With AVATAR's dominance in January, Korean movies have had a tough start to the year, taking in just 44 percent of the box office so far. But they should get a good lift this weekend, thanks to the Lunar New Year.

(All stats courtesy of KOBIS, as usual).

Great New Books on North Korea

2010-01-27T19:47:00.007+09:00

The New York Times has a review of three new books about North Korea -- Brian Myers' THE CLEANEST RACE, Barbara Demick's NOTHING TO ENVY and Ralph Hassig and Kongdan Oh's THE HIDDEN PEOPLE OF NORTH KOREA. Not an all-encompassing review, but a decent overview of three interesting books.

Barbara was the LA Times' correspondent in Korea for several years, and is definitely a first-rate journalist, thinker, and writer. I have not read her book, but assume it is as solid as everything else she has done. There is also a good article on her book (and Myers') at Salon. Demick's NOTHING TO ENVY is available for purchase here.

Myers I know from his lectures at the Royal Asiatic Society and the occasional email. He has a very provocative thesis -- that North Korea is in no way Communist, Marxist, (certainly not Stalinist), Confucian or any of those typical labels, but is in fact a completely nationalism/race-based ideology derived from Japanese propaganda from colonial times. Very fun stuff. THE CLEANEST RACE is available at Amazon, of course. Here is an excerpt from his book. Kurt Achin (Voice of America) also profiles Myers' book here, with an audio version here.

* (Hey! Myers' got Andre Lankov to write a blurb for his book, too. Great minds think alike. Andre wrote a little something for the back of POP GOES KOREA, too. Many thanks Andre).

Sorry, but I do not know anything about THE HIDDEN PEOPLE OF NORTH KOREA or its authors, but I hope to check that book out, too, before too long.

Avatar Joins 10M Club

2010-01-25T14:54:00.003+09:00

It is official -- AVATAR has become the first foreign film to top 10 million admissions in Korea. According to KOBIS, AVATAR has now had 10.2 million admissions, pulling in 91.1 billion won ($79 million) in Korea.

And according to the Chosun Ilbo, AVATAR is already the highest-grossing film ever in Korea (thanks to the higher ticket prices).

It really has been a staggering run for AVATAR in Korea, landing easily in first place every week for the past six weeks. Last weekend, ATTACK THE GAS STATION 2, the No. 2 film, could not even get half the admissions AVATAR did.

Before AVATAR, the top foreign films in Korea were TRANSFORMERS 2 with 7.4 million admissions, TRANSFORMERS and RETURN OF THE KING. James Cameron's previous film, TITANIC, had about 4.5 million admissions.

Btw, the top Korean film over the same period has been WOOCHI, which has been doing okay, but not spectacular -- little over 5.5 million admissions, and 40 billion won.

NK Korean Movie Stories

2010-01-23T08:27:00.002+09:00

One of the most unusual aspects of North Korea (one of the world's most unusual countries) is its rather remarkable movie industry. But like so many things about North Korea, very little is known about its cinema.

Fortunately, Johannes Schoenherr has started a series of stories in the Daily NK about North Korean movies. Johannes was screening movies in Germany back in the 1990s when he got to know the North Korean diplomats there, and then they invited him to North Korea. He has posted three stories so far, outlining his experiences there, with many more to come. It promises to be quite a fun series, check it out.

Random Notes -- Vol 5, No. 1

2010-01-17T08:57:00.011+09:00

The Film Society of the Lincoln Center has posted its top 100 films of the past decade. Bong Joon-ho's THE HOST was the top Korean film, at No. 71 (eh). His (much better) MEMORIES OF MURDER landed in 84th. Hong Sangsoo had two films on the list, WOMAN ON THE BEACH at No. 83, and TURNING GATE at No. 97.

Other thoughts on the FSLC list... Very cool to see IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE at No. 2. And two films by Apichatpong Weerasethakul in the top 10 (and another at No. 39). But I think I was most amazed that Tsai Ming-liang's GOODBYE DRAGON INN made it to No. 23; I loved the film, but I had no idea so many other people liked it, too).

AVATAR is officially the biggest foreign film ever in Korea. As of Jan. 17, it has about 9.3 million admissions and 80 billion won ($71 million). Definitely it will be the first foreign film to top 10 million admissions. TRANSFORMERS 2 was the previous record-holder, with 7.4 million admissions. Years ago, James Cameron's TITANIC was the foreign record holder (heck, it was the biggest film ever in Korea before SHIRI came along), with 4.5 million admissions.

Harper's Index is now online and searchable. Here are the results you get for "Korea". Sadly, no results for "kimchi"; the search engine must be broken or something. (Nothing under "Mongolia" either).

Sounds like a pretty big shipment of counterfeit DVD's caught by the United States, having come via Korea. I wonder if they were Yongsan specials...

How completely shocked am I that this is the fifth year I have been doing this blog? Incredible how quickly the time passes. But hopefully I will get off my butt and open the new website soon.

Okay, this is totally random... But over on the Predictably Irrational blog (found via Andrew Sullivan), the author compares the Google prediction for "How do I get my girlfriend to" versus "How do I get my boyfriend to".

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.

The Korean Wave -- More Just Korea

2010-01-13T17:13:00.007+09:00

One of the major points of POP GOES KOREA is that the Korean Wave was not really about Korea. It is about globalization, and how the forces the created the Korean Wave will be creating other regional cultural powers in the future.

I recently stumbled across a great case in point, the Turkish drama GUMUS ("Silver," but better known as Noor in the Arab world). Noor has become very popular in many Arab countries (the series finale apparently had 85 million viewers around the region on the Middle East Broadcasting Corporation), and that popularity has spurred interest in Turkey in those countries.

Take a look at this report from Monocle magazine about Noor. Change the soap opera to Winter Sonata and the location to Korea, and the story would be virtually indistinguishable from the many articles about the Korean Wave that appeared over the years.

(Well, indistinguishable except for one notable difference. At one point, the reporter comments: "While Turks are proud of their past, they don't look back." Hard to imagine anyone using that sentiment to describe Korea.)

Similarly, here is a Monocle story about the music scene in Taiwan, and the influence it is having on mainland China.

The point being, people all over the world are looking for good stories, music, and culture, and that Hollywood cannot begin to do it all. Sure, American pop culture is the biggest force around, but it is not the only force. And as time goes by, we are going to see more and more local forces -- like Noor, like Korea -- rising up and capturing the imaginations of people from around their regions and beyond.

Record Box Office(s) in Korea (and Elsewhere)

2010-01-06T21:41:00.003+09:00

A big congratulations to the Korean film industry, which set a new box office record last year -- 1.08 trillion won ($948 million), according to KOBIS (according to early numbers, as official stats take a while to finalize).

Quite impressive, although much of that record came from higher ticket prices -- admissions in 2009 totaled about 156.5 million, less than 157 million in 2007 and 161 million in 2006 (the best year on record). But with higher ticket prices, 2009 box office was able to overtake 2006, which had been the previous record-holder with 1.03 trillion won.

Korean movies had their second-best year according to revenue (530 billion won), or their fifth-best by attendance (76.6 million), accounting for about 49 percent of the box office. That is a huge improvement over last year's 42 percent, but still lower than any time since 2001.

In addition, six of the top 10 films last year were Korean (led by HAEUNDAE, of course), and 12 of the top 20. Only one film in the top 20 was neither Korean nor Hollywood, and that was RED CLIFF 2 (with 2.7 million admissions, it was the 14th biggest film of the year).

So, on balance, I would have to call 2009 a pretty solid success.

* * *

By a nice coincidence, the country where I am now living, Spain, also had a record-setting year at the movies. Movies in Spain took in 675 million euros, or about $965 million (just slightly ahead of Korea).

Even moreso than Korea, Spain record came from higher ticket prices. In fact, with 110 million admissions (much less than Korea), it was one of the weakest years for admissions of the past decade.

Spain also features a lot more diversity than Korea, with its top films doing far less spectacularly than Korea. Compare top movies in each country. The top Korean films were HAEUNDAE ($69 million-ish), TAKE OFF ($52 million), TRANSFORMERS 2 ($44.5 million) and 2012 ($33 million).

While in Spain, the top Hollywood films were UP ($35.8 million), AVATAR ($34.5 million) and ICE AGE 3: DOWN OF THE DINOSAURS ($31.2 million), and the top Spanish films were AGORA ($30 million), PLANET 51 ($15 million) and CELL 211 ($12.7 million).

But in Spain, local films do not do nearly as well as they do in Korea. In 2001, they had their best year in quite some time, reaching 18 percent. And in general, they hover around 15 percent.

* * *

When the Korean movie industry went south a couple of years ago, a lot of producers moved into musicals and theater instead. Musicals in Korea grew crazily for much last the last six or seven years, making it an attractive genre. Now, however, it looks like the musical market is reaching a peak, much as movies did. There is a nice overview of the state of the musical industry here.

* * *

UPDATE: China apparently had an amazing year at the movies, too, with their box office soaring 44 percent to $910 million. As recently as 2003, movies made just $110 million in the theaters in China. Looks like this year will finally be the year that China overtakes the Korean movie market (although given that China has 20 times the population of Korea, it is about time, really).

Big TV's Big Shakeup

2010-01-04T18:55:00.005+09:00

Wow, it finally happened. After years of rumors, Orion has finally sold its On Media cable TV channels. And not only did they sell On Media, but they sold it to arch-rival CJ. I really am amazed.

For years, On Media was the dominant cable TV channel group in Korea (the industry jargon is "Program Providers"). After cable TV was launched in Korea in 1995, it was much more a whimper than a force for several years. But gradually On Media grew, starting with Tooniverse, and adding music, movie and other channels (including HBO briefly, and of course the mandatory baduk channel). Soon after the turn of the century, the American program Friends made a huge splash in Korea (which On Media did not have), followed by Sex & the City (which it did) and CSI (On Media, too), and soon cable TV was a big deal. Soon, On Media was by far the biggest Program Provider in Korea (at one point accounting for nearly 50 percent of all cable TV watching).

Then CJ decided to add cable TV to its growing list of entertainment and media companies. After a few missteps, it was running neck and neck with On Media, which has been the situation for the past several years.

But strangely, despite On Media's success, there have always been strong rumors that parent company Orion wanted to sell it. Rumor has it that the Orion bigwigs did not like being involved in the entertainment industry, considering it too unstable and too different from the company's core businesses. For a couple of years, there were supposedly serious talks going on between Orion and KT. At one point, a contact of mine even told me it was a done deal. But obviously that never happened.

Then Orion sold off its movie exhibition company, Megabox, so there was something to the rumors. And then the company closed its newly opened production company, Motion 101. And about a year ago, people started to mention CJ as a serious suitor for On Media.

What will it mean for the Korean entertainment industry? Fierce competition between CJ and On Media has helped to boost prices paid for top programs to ridiculous levels. I assume that is going to cool off now (at least until someone else comes along... there is always another challenger to the throne). I assume, too, that CJ is going to start closing some of the overlapping channels, or at least changing some formats.

But my biggest worry is that this deal with further retard the development of original programming on cable TV. Much as cable in the United States has become the source of much of the best storytelling these days (Sopranos, The Wire, Mad Men, etc.), I think Korea needs cable TV to step up and become a player. When On Media produced Bong Man-dae's erotic series DONGSANG IMONG, I had hope that they were going to become something like HBO. Sadly, rather than take the best elements of that series and develop them, cable TV instead chose to focus on the sex, and have instead made endless unwatchable ero-dramas. Sigh.

I do not see the CJ-On Media deal making things any better... But who knows? Maybe this will embolden CJ to start producing something with substance.

Top 10 Films of the Zeros

2009-12-31T18:43:00.014+09:00

Okay, here is the least creative post idea in quite some time -- my list of the top 10 Korean movies of the past decade. But after a decade of so much great cinema, I thought it would be fun to organize my thoughts and try to put together a couple of comments about some of the best movies Korea produced. It certainly is amazing to look back and see how much has changed over the past 10 years in Korean film and culture. Anyhow, for what it is worth, here are my top 10:

1. Memories of Murder
This movie is, quite simply, the complete package -- a story that is at once accessible but also full of meaning and symbolism. It looks great (thanks in part to Ryu Seong-hee's production design). Wonderful acting. Easily the best Korean film of the modern era.

2. Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors

Hong Sang-soo's best movie, with a solid mix of wit, insight, and creativity. The story of a young woman and her two suitors unfolds in two parts, with Hong's trademark mirrored story structure (back when it was fresh), and does so in a way that adds to the story, is not just a gimmick. At first, you watch the film and at times wonder "What's the point?" (after all, it is a Hong Sang-soo film). But as the story unfolds for the second time, it gains a richness that is really fascinating. The black-and-white really does help you concentrate on the characters and the story and not get distracted.

Best of all, you can still find many of the restaurants and locations from the movie and have drinks there with your friends. At least for now (I am sure all those locations will all be torn down soon enough, though).

3. The President's Last Bang
I can still remember going to the press screening for The President's Last Bang. Obviously Im Sang-soo's historical perspective was what it was (shall we say controversial?). But despite that, I was blown away by the film. I thought it was funny, smart, beautiful looking, darkly humorous and an all-round great movie. But as the lights came on, the journalist sitting close to me (a rather famous reporter) says to me, full of scorn: "I think that film is dangerous." No comment about the art or the story, just a purely political reaction. Very disappointing, but an all-too-common reaction by all-too-many people (perhaps moreso in Korea). Sad when people put politics ahead of art.

4. Failan
I remember watching this movie full of skepticism. I mean, the whole idea -- a Chinese bride and her gangster husband who fall in love despite never meeting -- sounded so cheesy. But by the end, I was crying. Yes, embarrassing to admit, but this story totally got to me. A delicate tale told just right.

5. Oasis
Lee Chang-dong is Korea's smartest filmmaker, with movies that have the richness of novels (no surprise, since Lee started out as a novelist). This is Lee's best movie, featuring not just a smart story, but also two amazing acting performances, by Moon So-ri and Sol Kyung-gu.

FYI, here is my old story about Oasis in Newsweek, many moons ago.

6. Chunhyang
This is the Im Kwon-taek movie that should have won at Cannes (not the silly and swollen Chihwaseon). Im's told the Chunhyangjeon traditional story through a retelling as a live pansori performance at the Jongdong Theater in downtown Seoul. As the story goes in and out, from the theater with the singer and audience, to the dramatic re-creation of the story, the artifice actually draws you in deeper and makes it more engrossing. Quite a feat.

7. Tale of Two Sisters
I have the same feeling about most of Kim Jee-woon's movies -- so close to excellence, but there is something fundamentally flawed about them. Tale of Two Sisters was the same, going on for 15 minutes too long, past its natural climax. That said, Tale of Two Sisters was a gorgeous film, with each scene leaping off the screen with color and dynamism (take that, James Cameron). And its psychological horror was genuinely creepy in a smarter, deeper way than most horror films.

8. Lies
It is a huge surprise for me to have this film here (along with anything by Jang Sun-woo), but I re-watched the film earlier in 2009 and quite liked it. The story (from a novel by Jang Jung-il that got the author imprisoned for six months) of a high school girl who gets into a torrid affair with an older artist, Lies could have easily descended into soft-porn silliness, but somehow Jang (well, "Jangs") kept the film smarter than that.

(Okay, technically Lies was 1999, but it was released in Korea on Jan. 8, 2000, so I am putting it in my list).

9. Take Care of My Cat
Such a light, little film, about four young women from Incheon, their friendship coming apart due to the trials of entering adulthood. But the characters were rich and intriguing, and the whole added up to much more than the sum of its parts. Possible depressing lesson of the film: The only way to break free of the bonds of daily life is to get out of the country.

10. The Isle
Like Lies, this is another film I am really surprised to have in my top 10. Certainly no one is more surprised than I am to have a Kim Ki-duk film anywhere on this list. Generally I quite dislike his movies (especially the Orientalist silliness he seems to have fallen into since Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ... and Spring). But the more I thought about it, the more important The Isle seemed to me, and the better it fared in my memory. Many filmmakers have tried to go "shocking" (like Park Chan-wook's "Vengeance trilogy, or, in the West, films like Saw), but, really, none of them can compare to Kim Ki-duk and his infamous fishhooks.

Telling how old all those films are. Even my Honorable Mention list (if I had written one) would have concentrated on older films. What did I like from the past five years? Mother, The Host, Woman on the Beach, Like You Know It All, The Chaser, The Good the Bad the Weird, Secret Sunshine, Tazza... and a few others. But there were rather few really exciting films compared to how many Korea was producing from the last 1990s until 2004-ish.

Of course, there are plenty of other really good films that did not make my list. One of the most memorable and wacky movies of the last decade was Save the Green Planet. I quite liked Lee Sung-gang's My Beautiful Girl Mari. Park Chan-wook's ~~Violence~~ Vengeance Trilogy was certainly important in gaining international respect for Korean movies (and there is no denying Park's considerable talents as a director). But (at least for now), those are the 10 movies that I think were the best of the last 10 years.

The Ox Takes Manhattan

2009-12-30T19:57:00.002+09:00

First OLD PARTNER, a documentary about a farmer and his ancient ox, becomes the surprise hit of 2009 in South Korea. Now it is coming to America. Read the New York Times review of OLD PARTNER here.

Shin Joong-hyun's Fender Guiter, Other Random News

2009-12-27T21:54:00.009+09:00

Jason Strother has a fun and interesting article about Korean rock great Shin Joong-hyun getting honored by Fender with his very own guitar. Apparently it was the first time Fender has given that honor to an Asian artist. There is a longer audio version of the story, too.

The Korea Times just published a surprisingly thorough look at the year ahead in movies. The article lists a lot to look forward to, from big names to long-time-coming sequels.

An interesting article on Asian-American hiphop, particularly in the Los Angeles area.

Dave Stewart (of the Eurythmics) is producing The Wondergirls' new album? (Okay, apparently this was announced a couple of weeks ago, but I just noticed it. And am rather stunned).

Hey, Darcy Paquet's book, NEW KOREAN CINEMA, is out at last. Very cool. Looking forward to reading a very different take on the Korean film industry than I wrote about. Hope to get some sort of review up here before too long.

You have undoubtedly heard plenty about Korean TV dramas and other entertainment doing well all over Asia and beyond... But here is an intriguing story about the old MBC drama JUMONG becoming a bit hit in Iran.

With the country being rocked right now by a democratic uprising, it is fascinating to learn a little bit about the changing going on these days to popular culture in Iran. I have met with several Iranian filmmakers and poets over the years (and regular folk, of course), and I am constantly intrigued at how different life is there compared to how most people in the West think it is.

Marmots, Trolls, Avatars and Other Random Creatures

2009-12-22T06:40:00.008+09:00

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:

Bad commenters drive out good (as Coming Anarchy noted, this is the Internet version of Gresham's Law). Back when the Marmot's Hole averaged 10 comments a post, it had more substantial comments than when it was averaging 50-100 comments a post.

Insanity is solely a function of size.

Ergo, eliminating a crazy will not reduce the amount of insanity in a website. Either someone else will become infected with the craziness, or else two or three people will start to share a portion of the crazy.

Corollary: No one can be crazy alone.

(Counter-corollary: Michael Jackson. And most other mega-celebrities, who clearly go insane after too much isolation).

(Possible counter-counter-corollary - We are all nuts already. Just the Internet sometimes makes it more noticeable.)

And finally, most people's reading comprehension is really terrible.

* * *

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.

* * *

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."

AVATAR in Korea

2009-12-18T16:52:00.003+09:00

In case you were wondering, James Cameron's 3D blockbuster AVATAR currently sits on top of the advance ticket sales, accounting for 71.2 percent of all sales (KOBIS, of course). Not bad -- although it does not come close to the 89.7 percent that TRANSFORMERS 2 got.

It is also playing at five IMAX theaters around the country -- in Seoul at the CGV Wangsimni and Yongsan, and in Daegu at the CGV Daegu, Gwangju at the CGV Gwangju, and in Ilsan at the CGV Ilsan.

It is hard to believe I was in Korea way back when TITANIC came out. Hard to believe that at the time it was the biggest movie ever in Korea, with something like 4.5 million admissions (SHIRI was still a year away). I watched TITANIC in what was then the only multiplex in Daejeon, The Academy (I think it was called). It was a decent theater, with three screens, located near the train station. Today, that theater is part of the Megaline franchise, and has been divided into nine tiny screens (assuming it is still there).

It really gives you sense of how much the Korean movie industry has changed over the past decade -- from almost no multiplexes to almost nothing but multiplexes, from low attendance to high (national attendance to films has tripled in Korea since TITANIC). And, of course, the most popular films in Korea are now all Korean. The biggest foreign film ever in Korea, TRANSFORMERS 2, would not even make it onto the top-10 overall there.

Oh, and there is an article on 3D movies in Korea (although not a lot of information about the local scene) here.

Hip Korea Wins

2009-12-13T01:14:00.003+09:00

Well, turns out that HIP KOREA - RAIN did okay at the recent Asian Television Awards, held in Singapore earlier this month. The program up for four awards, and it came away with one win and two runners-up. Pretty respectable, I think.

The program won for Best Cross-Platform Content, which I suppose means it was available for cell phones and computer downloads and the like. Runner-up awards (which the Asian TV Awards call "Highly Recommended") came in Best Music Programme and Best Infotainment Programme. So congratulations to the producers and all the people who put the program together (I was just the "associate producer" on it, so cannot really take credit).

You can see the complete list of winners here.

* * *

Speaking of Rain, I guess he has had a big couple of months, mostly because of his movie NINJA ASSASSIN. Since it was released on Nov. 25, it has made $32 million in the United States, and another $6.4 million in Korea (7.4 billion won, according to KOBIS). Plus another $260,000 in Italy (Box Office Mojo).

But seriously, the film did get a pretty wide release around the world, with a lot more countries opening the film over the next few weeks. So all told, its box office could rise a bit. And this really in a home video sort of film, so I think that its investors should be pretty happy when all is said and done.

And speaking of box office, the latest travesty inflicted upon us by Roland Emmerich, 2012, has done very well in Korea, topping 5 million admissions, or about 35 billion won ($30 million). Worldwide, it is over $670 million. Apparently we all love seeing the world destroyed, much more than we enjoy good stories. Me included.

Hip Korea Nominated for Asian TV Awards

2009-11-24T07:36:00.006+09:00

As a commenter mentioned earlier, the Rain episode of the HIP KOREA documentary that I worked on has been nominated for four Asian Television Awards -- Best Music Programme, Best Infotainment Programme, Best Direction and Best Cross-Platform Content. As I have never been nominated for much of anything before, I must admit that it feels kind of cool to be a part of a program that is up for four awards.

The Asian TV Awards will be handed out on Dec. 3.

Oh, and since I am talking about Rain... His publicity blitz for NINJA ASSASSIN recently took him to Toronto, where he gave interviews for the local media, like the Sun and the Star.

Kim Daul Gone

2009-11-20T19:31:00.009+09:00

By now you have probably heard that Korean fashion model Kim Daul was found dead in her apartment in Paris on Thursday, Nov. 19.

Daul was just 20 years old, but had been a top model for three years or so. She was also known for a big and quirky personality, as evidenced in this cool mini-interview at Test Magazine. I think you get a sense of what she was like in this photo shoot, too.

She also bared that quirkiness often on her blog I Like to Fork Myself. I had been following it for a couple of years, reading it irregularly, but nearly always loving it when I did. She talked a lot of music and modeling, of course, but also about her loves, like collecting cutlery, schlocky horror films, cereal and guinea pigs. She also had a great post when she told Korean netizens who were on her case for doing some nude pictures to shut up.

And then there were posts like this one (one of her first):

my life as daul was so miserable and lonely.
please join my loneliness in another world.

Sure, she adds "just kidding" a few lines later. And one does not want to overly psychoanalyze a blog. But still...

And then there was this post:

and thanks to stupid tv show from korea ppl think i like to
torture myself and thanks to that im getting lots and lots of
suicide emails on a daily basis
but im definately not depressed, and i dont want to killmyself

And more recently, here:

freedom comes with such cost.

but is it even freedom?

one could get numb living like this. pretty things. comfort. vanity. decadent nights to make up for losses.

but this endless loneliness

there must be something wrong from the core.

i worry as i take the courage to sleep

I remember thinking about a month ago how her blog had gotten wordier recently, like there was something she was trying to figure out, or something that was on her mind, eating at her.

Here is a picture of Daul at 5 years old:

Korea has had a much-discussed problem with celebrity suicides for a while (something I have avoided discussing, because I find the whole subject somewhat lurid and distasteful). But I did not know that modeling in general also has been wrestling with a similar problem (at least according to stories like this one). Regardless of the cause, suicide is always such a waste. But if Daul was suffering from mental health issues, it would be a shame that she did not get the help she needed. In general, I wish people were more aware of mental health and willing to get help when they needed it (or encourage their friends who need it to get help).

No OLDBOY for Hollywood

2009-11-17T18:57:00.002+09:00

Okay, this is a few days old, but I quite enjoyed this story about how talks between DreamWorks and Mandrake Pictures to remake OLDBOY have broken down. It is an interesting article, helping to point out the many problems aside from creative that potentially stand in the way of any project -- ownership and other rights, speed of development, executives changing jobs, etc.

As you probably know, there have been stories floating around about how DreamWorks wanted to remake Park Chan-wook's iconic film, with Steven Spielberg directing and Will Smith starring. But looks like all that is now kaput.

Of course, OLDBOY was loosely based on a Japanese manga of the same name, so just who would be remaking what was always a tricky question. Like the proposed remake of THE GOOD, THE BAD, THE WEIRD... just who "owns" the idea? Anyhow, all moot now.

The Sincerest Form of Flattery, Vietnam edition

2009-11-14T22:27:00.006+09:00

One of the big reasons I do not like the term "Korean Wave" (as I talk about in POP GOES KOREA) is that the term undervalues the size and scope of the cultural trends affecting pretty much everywhere. It is not a Korea thing, as much as it is a globalization thing. And just as Korean entertainment companies got a great boost by improving their business management, marketing, and artistry, now other creators and businesses are getting into the act.

In an interesting example of what I am talking about, here is an article about how Vietnam is following Korea's example in how to produce pop stars.

The article talks about how aspiring singers in Vietnam are coming to Korea to produce their albums or study with Korean music labels:

Another pop star, Ho Ngoc Ha, who recently took part in the Asian Song Festival 2009 in South Korea, said: “Going to South Korea to witness their technology, I understand their entertainment industry. They can make anybody to become a bright star with that professional and huge system”.

Actually, this has been a long time in coming. I remember representatives from KBS telling me way back in 2002 that they were seeing a lot of interest in their programs from Vietnam. One of Vietnam's first multiplex chains was run by a small Korean exhibition company (sadly now out business in both countries, I do believe). And I have been seeing media folks from Vietnam Media Corporation for years, at PIFF, Cannes, and elsewhere. The Vietnamese program 39 DEGREES OF LOVE was deliberately modeled on Korean TV dramas. No surprise, then, that producers and creatives in Vietnam's music scene would also try to emulate Korea's successes.

All very cool, but this is about more than just Korea. In my humble opinion, the point of these influences and changes is not Korea's Koreanness. These are trends that are deeper and more pervasive. After all, it is not a coincidence that Korea's cultural rise in Vietnam (and elsewhere) came at the same time as its corporate rise. In Vietnam, Korean cosmetic and appliance companies were aggressive in breaking into the market, which helped open things up to cultural content (and vice versa).

So I definitely credit Korea for being one of the first non-Western countries to modernize its entertainment industry and reap the benefits of doing so, I think it is important to realize that almost all countries are looking to do the same thing. India and China are of course the highest profile competitors in Asia, with Hollywood studios falling over each other to sign up deals in those countries. But you can see it pretty much everywhere. I can see it here in Spain, in their music and movies (Spain produces a lot of films each year, thanks in part to an aggressive Catalan film community).

While the Hollywoodization of the world's entertainment industries can be distressing at times, on the whole I think this is good for most local cultures. They are learning how to produce popular, engaging entertainment, which is the best way to ensure local entertainment industries continue to exist (or even thrive) in the face of the huge, global entertainment conglomerates. So if Vietnam can emulate Korea to strengthen its entertainment industry, I think that is a good thing.

UPDATE:
And just hours after I post this story, there is an article out of the Philippines about the popularity of Korean pop stars. Okay, not really related to the Vietnam story, but still interesting to see how mobile today's pop culture can be, and how good Korean stars are at getting that popularity around Asia.

Fire and Rain

2009-11-10T19:07:00.004+09:00

Looks like the Hollywood PR machine is gearing up for Rain's all-action, ultraviolent film NINJA ASSASSIN. For example, here is a nice clip of one of the fight scenes.

And the NINJA ASSASSIN stories are starting to appear in the press (like here and here), thanks in part to a press conference last week in Seoul.

So far, the only review I see is a pan in Variety -- but what did you expect from those humorless dorks. (UPDATE: The Hollywood Reporter review is here. At least this reviewer seemed to get the point a little more.)

NINJA ASSASSIN gets released in the United States, Canada, South Korea, Singapore and Malaysia on Nov. 25, then in oodles of other countries in the beginning of December and throughout the month.

UPDATE: Ah, I knew there would be a lot more NINJA ASSASSIN stuff on the web soon enough. Like here are six clips from the film. Most of them are fighting scenes, and most seem well choreographed and bloody and such (although ninjas fighting on the streets is a little goofy... okay, a little *more* goofy).

And, best of all, here is the NINJA ASSASSIN trailer in Lego:

From the Kim Sisters to 'Oh Brother'

2009-11-06T16:05:00.004+09:00

I grew all excited when I saw the headline in the Chosun Ilbo this morning: "5 Decades of Korean Girl Bands." It even started promisingly, with an opening graph about the Kim Sisters.

But then came sadness, as the article jumps abruptly from the Kim Sisters of the 1950s to SES in the late 1990s. From there, it merely lists the major girl groups of the past decade -- SES, FinKL, Baby VOX, Jewelry, Wondergirls. Sigh.

Strangely, the article even asks, how did we go from groups like the Kim Sisters to the manufactured eye candy of today? But then it leaves a non-answer by critic Lim Jin-mo and gives a vapid rundown of a few vapid groups. While, of course, posting as much eye candy as possible. Thereby kind of answering their own question.

"Why are today's girl groups just eye candy?"
"I don't know, but here are some pretty pictures."

That Mr. Lim is quite the go-to guy for music analysis these days. He is quoted heavily in this recent Korea Times story about K-pop. Heck, even I interviewed him for that Rain documentary on Discovery Channel that I worked on earlier in the year.

In the KT article, Lim, as usual, presents his argument about pop culture in moral terms, which I rarely like.

"The utmost value of today's music consumers in listening to music is 'fun.' They no longer seek any serious messages or meanings from music as people did back in the 1980s and '90s. I'd bet this fun-oriented appetite of listeners will continue for years to come," he said.

First of all, there is nothing wrong with "fun." We are talking about pop music after all, which is supposed to be popular. "Good" in no way precludes "fun".

Secondly, it is such a middle-aged gripe to complain that culture used to have meaning when I was young, but now it is all shallow and garbage. He similarly complains about the media and the music labels, saying they are all shirking their responsibilities and are only about money. Zzzzzz.

I call them "should" arguments. He should do this. They should do that. Like when he talks about Korean artists learning English to succeed in the West:

"But their ultimate goal there should be standing on stage with Korean-version songs with a very Korean sound, which would be the completion of the Korean wave."

As I have argued several times before, when it comes to big picture issues, I am much more interested in systems than morals. All the "shoulds" in the world will not do much if you have a system that is pushing people toward a "shouldn't".

If you want people to have wider interests, maybe you should make those options more available. I have written before about the importance of live music as the foundation to a more natural, organic music system, and how Korea does not have much of a live scene despite having so many talented, creative young people. But even if someone were to be interested in a Korean indie band, how would you find them? The resources in Korea are very few, poorly organized, and poorly supported. The live music venues have terrible websites that rarely post their schedules more than a few days in advance. Cyrock has stopped updating. Weiv rarely posts about modern Korean music anymore. Lord, I miss MDM magazine.

(Of course, there is always Indieful ROK and the Korea Gig Guide, at least for you foreigners. Oh, and newbie site Pocket of Sky for lyric translations).

Okay, now I am really digressing. I started off talking about girl groups and how they have evolved, then I devolved into a bunch of other issues. But it would be nice if important national publications like the Chosun Ilbo were to address issues like this with a little depth and research instead of just printing pictures of young women in short skirts. (Great, now I'm making a moral argument, too).

(Btw, I think my headline for this post would have been better were there not a Korean band called the "O! Brothers". It confuses the sarcasm. So apologies all any and all who read this hoping for comments about them and surf-rock in Korea.)

North Korea in the New Yorker

2009-10-28T12:36:00.002+09:00

Barbara Demick, one of my favorite journalists, has a book coming soon about life in North Korea, titled NOTHING TO ENVY: ORDINARY LIVES IN NORTH KOREA. And as part of the PR for that book, there is an article (that you have to pay for) and a Q&A session (free!) with her in the New Yorker this week. Totally worth a read.

There is also an excerpt from her book in The Paris Review, also very good.

You can order her new book here.

Pop Is Dead Random Notes - Vol. 4, No. 2

2009-10-26T13:56:00.003+09:00

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.

* * *

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?

Pyeongchang Olympics in 2018?

2009-10-17T18:10:00.004+09:00

Well, this is an interesting development. Only three cities have submitted bids for the 2018 Winter Olympics -- Munich, Annecy and ... (wait for it) Pyeongchang.

For the last several years, I have been pained by Pyeongchang's previous bids for previous Olympics. Pyeongchang is a beautiful place, but its bids were simply not very good (yes, it got votes in 2010, but I still think the bid was fundamentally flawed).

But this time, they may be in luck. From what I can see on the Internet (dubious research, I know), people are pretty dubious about Annecy's bid. Which leaves it pretty much a two-country race, between Germany and Korea.

* * *
And as long as I am talking about sports, I should point out the Kim Yuna had a great short skate at the opening of the Trophee Bombard tournament in Paris yesterday (part if the ISU's Grand Prix tournament). Yuna scored a 76.08; her nearest competitor, Yukari Nakano, a 59.64

As Philip Hersh wrote on his LA Times sports blog:

One short program does not a season make. But this one made it clear that Kim at her best will be impossible to beat, and Kim at 80% of her best still is better than anyone else. Athlete, artist -- this young woman is breathtaking on the ice. Barring injury or early retirement, she can be the greatest women's skater in history.

HAEUNDAE Floods Canada

2009-10-12T22:49:00.005+09:00

The Korea disaster blockbuster HAEUNDAE washed ashore Canada last weekend. The general verdict -- not bad, for a genre everybody already knows well. The biggest split were between those who considered HAEUNDAE's head-slapping, plentiful-emoting ways to be refreshingly different or just ridiculous.

Here is the Toronto Sun review - 3/5 stars
The Globe and Mail review - 2/4 stars
The Toronto Star review - 2.5/4 stars
And the National Post review - 2 stars (out of 4, I presume, but am not 100% sure)

The averages out to 55.6%. Damn Canadians. I have not seen any information about when and where else HAEUNDAE might be coming, but if I do, I will let you know.

A World of Film

2009-10-09T17:22:00.003+09:00

An interesting survey over at UNESCO's Institute for Statistics about the number of films made around the world (found via Nikki Finke's Deadline Hollywood Daily).

According to the survey, India is the top filmmaking nation in the world, with 1,091 films made in 2006, followed by Hollywood with 485 "major" productions".

(Note: Nigeria would be second, with 872 films, but those films are all shot on video and designed for home viewing, as there are virtually no cinemas in Nigeria, so Nigeria is not counted in the official survey results. Not unfair, I think... If you were to include all the independent and student and amateur films made in the United States, films of comparable or better quality than most of the Nigerian films, I'm sure the United States would be in the thousands. But, still, it is interesting to realize how much filmmaking goes on in Africa and how even there, movies are not all about Hollywood.)

Very interesting to see how big a presence Asia had in the survey -- an addition to India, Japan was third, China fourth and South Korea was ninth.

Not in the survey but similarly interesting is how much money is spend on movies in those countries, too. China is on track to spend over $700 million in theaters this year, and continues to grow substantially each year. Japan is about $2 billion/year. South Korea is around $1 billion. India is impossible to guess at (I have seen estimates ranging from a few hundred million dollars to well over a billion), but it is notable.

The European box office is still larger than Asia, mostly because of higher ticket prices. But that gap is narrowing every year. And with so many films being made over here, you can see Asia rising in importance. Which is, of course, why Hollywood has been trying to find partners and possibilities in Asia over the past few years.

I do not think this is a zero-sum competition, though. Almost every country has a demand to see films about its own culture in its own language. That is not going to disappear, no matter how many "tentpole" pictures and superheroes Hollywood creates. In fact, I think we are clearly seeing the limits of the Hollywood model. Yes, US major films can be incredibly popular all over the world, but they are not the be-all-and-end-all of moviemaking. Especially now that countries like Korea and Japan have learned from Hollywood and are making entertaining films of their own.

Which is (if I may market myself a moment) one of the major points of POP GOES KOREA. Entertainment globalization is not a one-way street, even if the United States is the biggest dog on the block and has, until now, been fairly dominant. People learn and systems evolve.

We have seen it in Luc Besson and his action film company in France. We have seen it in Korea, then Japan and increasingly in China. And I think in the future, we are going to see more and more examples. Not just in movies, but in all of entertainment.

Don't Mean a Thing If It Don't Have That Zing

2009-10-06T19:07:00.004+09:00

After a month of absolutely spiceless food, I went to my first Korean restaurant last night since moving to Spain. It was generally agreed upon by my group (of about eight Koreans and Korean-hyphenates) that it was one of just two decent Korean restaurants in Barcelona. Someone claimed there were only around 12 Korean restaurants in all of Spain... I have no idea, but there are not a lot.

Anyhow, the food. We went to a restaurant called Sangil, in the Gracia part of Barcelona. First of all, the food was basic but quite good. I had the yugaejang, and the ingredients were fresh, the broth reasonably spicy. There was not a lot of banchan, but what they had was pretty good. We even split a little soju (which sported a Jeonju International Film Festival label on the back, giving us some idea how old it was). All in all, a nice refresher in Korean food.

But the prices, yikes. Nearly everything on the menu was 12-15 euros -- that is well over 20,000 won, for a basic Korean lunch, the kind of thing that is usually around 5,000 won in Seoul Even the Jajangmyeon was over 12 euros. Jajangmyeon? Bizarre. And the galbi dishes were much more. I knew I was going to have to pay a premium for Korean food over here, but that was a little surprising.

Oh well, at least the won is getting a little stronger against the euro at the moment...

Random Pics

2009-09-29T06:37:00.007+09:00

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.

HAEUNDAE Tsunami Floods North Korea

2009-09-28T22:46:00.002+09:00

Channel News Asia is reporting that North Korea is cracking down on foreign films after a university student was caught watching HAEUNDAE on his computer.

The student reportedly downloaded the film while at a relative's house in Chongjin, in northeastern North Korea. He then took the film back to Pyongyang to watch with his dormitory friends.

North Korea has been awash in pop culture from South Korea for several years, something NK authorities have mostly ignored, much as it mostly ignored the many markets that had sprung up around the country. But recently the North's government has started cracking down on those markets, so apparently South Korean pop culture has got to go, too.

Why is South Korean culture so dangerous to the North? Some, like Andrei Lankov, argue that seeing South Korea's material prosperity makes the North look bad by comparison. Others, like Brian Myers, say the danger is in not in seeing the South's material success (which most people in the North already know), but in seeing that South Koreans do not all yearn to be part of one united Korea, under the care of the North and Dear Leader. Whatever the reasoning, the effects are much the same.

On the other hand, this story claimed that South Korean pop culture has been losing its cache in the North for some time now, so maybe the crackdown is not such a big deal. But I suspect that story overstates the situation.

Anyhow, I do find it amusing that an illegal download of the blockbuster HAEUNDAE (now the fourth-biggest film of all time in Korea, with 11.4 million admissions) had the capacity to create so much trouble north of the DMZ.

More AFKN Fun

2009-09-28T04:30:00.003+09:00

Last year, in a post about the history of AFN Korea, I talked about some websites that delve into the history of the American Forces Radio & Television Service. One of those sites I mentioned was Thomas Weston's history of AFRTS.

Well, Mr. Weston has gone on to start a new blog all about the history of AFRTS, which includes a couple of posts about Korea so far. And there was this post of the AFKN newsroom from 1968.

I also ran across this website for the Southwest Museum of Engineering,
Communications and Computation, which features many interesting old AFRTS stories, including many from Korea. My favorite was this first-hand report on AFRS back when it was mobile, driving all over Korea. Great old pics of AFKN here.

iPhone Coming?

2009-09-24T05:22:00.002+09:00

Stop me if you have heard this one before, but it is now being reported that the iPhone is going to come to Korea -- really for real this time.

Nothing has been officially announced yet, but speculation is the iPhone will roll out by November, in some sort of partnership with KT. But you will forgive me if I do not hold my breath in anticipation.

First, the positive spin (from the WSJ story):

Industry participants said Wednesday's decision is a big step in changing all that because it will bring more price competition to smartphone handsets and because so much software is available for the iPhone from Apple or developers rather than strictly through phone carriers.

"It basically opens a new world," said Lee Chan-jin, a pioneer of South Korea's software industry and chief executive officer of DreamWiz Inc., a mobile software developer and Web portal. "Korea's cellphone software industry was sick, but I expect it to be reinvigorated with iPhone."

Yes, the Korean telecoms' attempts at creating app stores have been dreadful. So the competition from Apple should be invigorating.

But there is also a negative side to this change. Much like the Blackberry ruling last December, which allowed the Blackberry to be sold in Korea, no regulation or law has been changed to allow for this change in policy; the government bureaucrats just decided to start interpreting the regulations differently.

This, imho, is not a good thing. Doing business should be about following the laws of the land. Transparency. Playing games with government officials is about as opaque and murky as can be. It invites backroom deals, payoffs and all sorts of shenanigans.

So while I appreciate the government regulators taking a step forward, it is frustrating to see just how backward their thinking still is in too many ways.

A Digital Korea Blog

2009-09-20T16:25:00.006+09:00

I just ran across the blog by Kim Chang-won, Web 2.0 Asia, which I quite liked. Chang (as he calls himself) is the co-CEO of the Internet startup TNC (which was acquired by Google Korea a year ago), and he has a real gift for explaining some of the quirkier aspects of Korea's IT industry as well as the future of the web in Asia (although mostly Korea).

Among the posts I really like of his are this great take-down of SK's terrible apps store, Samsung's attempts to join the app store market, the lack of iPhone in Korea, and even an escort business map of Gangnam.

All of which remind me, if you are interested in Korea tech issues, you should also check out Channy Yun's Korea Crunch (including an interesting post about Twitter and its Korean competitor Me2Day) and
Techno Kimchi (although this is not being updated much these days). And there is a nice overview of the top Asia tech blogs at OpenWeb.

Btw, I thought this was amusing -- when I went to check out Web Standards Korea, I found this:

Billboard and Charts in Korea

2009-09-16T22:37:00.004+09:00

I was surprised to read today that my former magazine BILLBOARD is at last coming to Korea, having signed up a local partner.

BILLBOARD is teaming up with some company called ViewLife and the Korea Entertainment Producer's Association to produce Korea music charts and a Korean-language magazine. Good luck to them.

Has anyone ever heard of ViewLife Inc.? I have not and was unable to find any information about the company. A dubious beginning. But who knows what that really means?

KEPA, on the other hand, does have a website.

Will BILLBOARD really be able to put together a chart for Korea? When I worked for the magazine, I was always impressed at how countries like Malaysia could have a chart, but somehow this was beyond Korea (no offense to Malaysia, which is a fine place).

(Hrm... Looking at the BILLBOARD.biz website now, I see not Malaysia there anymore, but it used to be in the magazine for a while.)

Anyhow, the point is the dubious nature of the Korean music charts. Several TV stations used to keep charts, but there were so many scandals related to how they compiled their figures that most of those charts were disbanded for several year.

With the rise of digital music sales, the telecoms and Internet portals have offered a wide array of charts, but they are all so disorganized and spread out that none really offers an accurate overview of the nation's music tastes (although I do like Bugs' Indie New Music Chart)

For several years, the Music Industry Association of Korea (nee the Recording Industry Association of Korea) used to keep track of album sales. But with album sales declining by around 80-90 percent from 2000 to today, that became an increasingly fruitless activity.

Life became more complicated in 2002 when collecting the monies for online and digital music was taken over by the Korean Association of Phonogram Producers. This went poorly, though, as much of Korea's music industry thought the KAPP was useless, so refused to join, and instead several private collection groups were started (ironically, one collection agency for digital revenues was bought by Soribada, the group most responsible for the rise of online file-sharing in Korea).

MIAK was finally disbanded earlier this year, replaced by the Korea Music Content Industry Association. The KMCIA is supposed to keep track of both physical and online sales in the future, but at the moment their website appears to be under construction. I have not heard from people in the Korean industry what they think of KMCIA, but hopefully it will be more successful and useful than its predecessors.

Suffice it to say, I am skeptical about anyone's ability to put together a decent music chart any time soon. And more importantly, in this age of digital downloads, file-sharing, Myspace, background music, and more, how can we really measure the "top songs" anymore? Music has become such an abstract and amorphous idea, I do not see the benefit and need for such charts, not like there used to be in the 1980s or so. And with so much information available at everyone's fingertips, people no longer really need the charts to find out about new music or trends. The power is (increasingly) out of the music labels hands, so what do charts matter?

iPhone? Aigo!

2009-09-15T06:25:00.003+09:00

I really want to complain about the latest stumbling blocks facing Apple's iPhone in Korea. Now that the iPhone appears to be squeaking past the Korea Communications Commission's first hurdle (the WIPI non-standard), the KCC found another bureaucratic roadblock. Which leads KT journalist Kim Tong-hyung to write this great line:

The country claims itself as the mobile capital of the world, and yet it has managed to fall behind nations such as Guinea-Bissau and Equatorial Guinea in securing the planet's hottest mobile device.

I want to complain... except I live in Spain and find myself equally unable to procure an iPhone. Very different problem over here, though. Here, Apple has a local operator (Movistar). But Movistar does not appear to have any iPhones in stock anywhere in the country. In fact, according to the comments at blogs like this one, it seems like the iPhone is out of stock around much of Europe.

I assume it has something to do with the Apple's iPhone contracts around Europe about to end in the coming months (as mentioned in the WSJ the other day). But it is still pretty annoying.

I Want My MTV (aka, "Getting Iggy With It")

2009-09-07T04:20:00.002+09:00

The very gracious and insightful Edward Chun just posted a series of articles over at MTV Iggy (MTV's Asia culture site) about the state of Korean pop music. All are very interesting and fun. You can check out the main page here.

And best of all (from my selfish perspective), he happened to use me and POP GOES KOREA as a major source for several of his articles. Not only that, but Stone Bridge agreed to let Iggy use a few excerpts from my book, like this short chapter on the singer Rain, and this one on Shin Joong-hyun.

I appear mostly in Edward's introductory article, but if you read all his stuff, you'll hear my voice scattered here and there (along with a lot cooler people than myself, but I still happy to be included).

And there is this very cool interview with In Sooni (it has nothing to do with my book or me, but I thought it was great).

Just so you know that Edward is no slouch, I should let you know that he has a real music background (heck, he even has a Wikipedia page). So when he is talking about the musical elements of K-Pop or whatever, he is not just yammering on; in fact, he knows what he is talking about.

Anyhow... Edward, thanks much for the kind words and the great stories.

Korea Weekend Box Office - Aug. 21-23-- Final Edition

2009-08-25T14:20:00.002+09:00

Plenty of new films this week, but none of them did very good business, as the top four films were unchanged from last weekend.

TAKE OFF continues its strong run, pulling in another 5.79 billion won ($4.6 million), for a total of 38.06 billion won ($30.4 million). That is over 800,000 additional admissions, taking it well past the 5-million-attendance mark (5.35 million, actually), and making 6-million a certainty. The question is, how long will it last?

HAEUNDAE also passed a big milestone over the weekend, but in its case it was the 10-million mark -- just the fifth film ever to do so in Korea. HAEUNDAE made 3.74 billion won last weekend to bring its total to 71.1 billion won ($56.9 million).

Even GI JOE is doing well still, adding another 1.86 billion won to lift its total to 16.66 billion won ($13.3 million). That makes Korea far and away the strongest international territory for GI JOE outside of the United States -- the next-closest territory is Russia with $7.9 million.

The top new film this week was the Korean horror film YOGA HAGWON, opening in fifth with just 957 million won, or 1.34 billion won ($1.1 million) including Thursday.

PERFECT GETAWAY opened just in sixth. But I thought the film was a lot of fun. Totally recommend if you are looking for a good summer thriller.

Pixar's UP fell to 12th, just nosing past the 1-million-attendance mark for 7.3 billion won -- just about the same as RATATOUILLE and WALL-E.

This Week	Title............................................	Release Date	Screens Nationwide	Weekend Revenue (bil. won)	Total Revenue (bil. won)
1.	Take Off (Gukga Daepyo - Korean)	7.29	615	5.79	38.06
2.	Haeundae (Korean)	7.23	513	3.74	71.08
3.	GI Joe	8.06	372	1.86	16.66
4.	Ice Age 3	8.12	380	1.18	5.06
5.	Yoga Hagwon (Korean)	8.20	329	0.96	1.34
6.	Perfect Getaway	8.20	293	0.96	1.22
7.	Orphan	8.20	223	0.76	0.93
8.	Sophie's Revenge	8.20	235	0.45	0.59
9.	Public Enemy	8.12	294	0.34	3.06
10.	Largo Winch	8.20	220	0.28	0.40

(Source: KOBIS - Figures represent 98% of nationwide box office)

It somehow seems appropriate that, as I sign off on my last box office report, Korean films are currently sitting at 49.7 percent of the box office for the year. Pretty close to half. After all the downs and ups the Korean movie business has been through over the 13 years I have been here, it seems kind of cool to be leaving with things right in the middle.

Seulpeun Annyeong, Hanyang...

2009-08-24T16:14:00.003+09:00

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.

Sweet Cats Need a Sweet Owner (The most random topic yet, at least for a Korean entertainment blog)

2009-08-22T20:36:00.006+09:00

Okay, for reasons I shall explain soon, I need to find a new home for my two cats, Miroo and Jiroo. I have been posting all over the place, in English and Korean websites, but so far come up empty*. And now that I am days away from moving, I thought I would try posting about my cats on my blog.

Miroo is 8 years old male (neutered), slightly overweight, and quite nice, without being clingy. When he was young, he took a bad fall outside and broke both of his front legs. It took a lot of surgery and care to nurse him back to strength, but today, he is healthy and fine (although he walks with a slight limp). But he does like to sit with people, especially when it is cold out.

Jiroo is just 4 years old and female (spayed). She is less cuddly than Miroo (definitely not a fan of being picked up), but she quite likes to play, with strings or toys like that.

Both are quite independent of people but close to each other, so they are fairly undemanding pets. Nice company, without being overbearing.

If you are interested, please drop me an email. I am based in Seoul, close to Shinchon (at least for now).

-----------------------
*Okay, not totally empty. A couple of nice people queried, but decided to get other cats. And several really freaky people called who I would never, ever want taking care of any living thing, especially not my cats.

For example, the one guy who likes to keep cats on leashes all day, when he is out at work. He asked "Do you have a bag I can carry them in, or do I need my own?" Then he adds that he has had several cats over the years, but they keep running away. Yikes. Serious freak.

Korea Weekend Box Office - Aug. 14-16 (Penultimate Edition)

2009-08-20T01:03:00.002+09:00

Sorry this chart is so late (again). Too much work going on these days, I guess.

Topping the box office last weekend was the ski jump film TAKE OFF, with 6.61 billion won ($5.29 million). Oddly, that is by far the best weekend the film has had since it was released three weeks ago -- it opened to 5.01 billion won, then dropped to 4.98 billion won the next week. I guess people are getting tired of HAEUNDAE, but still want to see something home-grown. Maybe the holiday and the nasty heat helped, too.

Anyhow, TAKE OFF has now made 28.27 billion won ($22.6 million) and pulled in 4.0 million admissions since it was released -- a solid hit, with the potential to grow into something bigger. Topping 5-million admissions (as it seems sure to do) is always impressive.

HAEUNDAE may be slowing down, but it is still doing well -- 7.23 billion won last weekend to bring its total to 64.4 billion won ($51.5 million). With 9.1 million admissions (including 865,000 last weekend), HAEUNDAE is now the fifth-biggest film ever in Korea, and certain to pass the 10-million mark.

GI JOE continues to do surprisingly well, with another 3.4 billion won last weekend, for a total of 13.2 billion won ($10.6 million).

ICE AGE 3 had a rather soft opening, with just 2.39 billion won over the weekend. PUBLIC ENEMY did even worse, with 1.54 billion won.

I do not know anything about the Korean film BULSIN JIOK, which opened in sixth. But there it is.

People must not have liked ONE MILLION at all, as it is dropping like a stone.

This Week	Title............................................	Release Date	Screens Nationwide	Weekend Revenue (bil. won)	Total Revenue (bil. won)
1.	Take Off (Gukga Daepyo - Korean)	7.29	678	6.61	28.27
2.	Haeundae (Korean)	7.23	638	6.26	64.44
3.	GI Joe	8.06	488	3.40	13.20
4.	Ice Age 3	8.12	461	2.39	3.11
5.	Public Enemy	8.12	375	1.54	2.15
6.	Bulsin Jiok (Korean)	8.12	291	0.84	1.20
7.	Up	7.29	251	0.38	7.00
8.	Summer Wars	8.12	118	0.36	0.46
9.	Detective Conan: The Raven Chaser	7.30	133	0.30	3.86
10.	One Million (10 Ok - Korean)	8.06	240	0.31	2.92

(Source: KOBIS - Figures represent 98% of nationwide box office)

Korea Weekend Box Office - Aug. 7-9

2009-08-11T11:42:00.003+09:00

A great case this weekend of how much stronger hit Korean films still are in Korea, even compared to the biggest Hollywood blockbusters. TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN took about 48 days to become the biggest foreign film ever in Korea, with about 7.4 million admissions. HAEUNDAE beat that mark in just 18 days.

Yes, everybody's favorite tsunami HAEUNDAE is still kicking butt in the theaters, taking in another 9.2 billion won ($7.5 million) over the weekend to bring its total to 53.0 billion won ($43.1 million). That is about 7.46 million admissions, making it the ninth-biggest movie ever in Korea and rising fast.

It looks certain to me that HAEUNDAE has the strength to top 9 million admissions and become the fifth-biggest Korean film ever. Even 10 million is pretty doable. But getting over 11-million and contesting with the big-four (SILMIDO, TAEGUKGI, THE KING AND THE CLOWN and THE HOST)? Possible, but much more difficult.

The Korean ski-jumping film TAKE OFF (Gukga Daepyo) landed in No. 2, with 5.5 billion won, to lift its total so far to 17.2 billion won ($14.0). So TAKE OFF looks like it is also a solid, if more middling, hit.

Very close behind is Lee Byung-hun's Hollywood debut, the action blockbuster GI JOE, with 5.4 billion won over the weekend -- or 7.1 billion won ($5.8 million), including Thursday and previews.

Surprisingly, I thought GI JOE was much less terrible than you might expect. In fact, I rather enjoyed myself (thanks in part to diminished expectations, but still...). A solid popcorn film for the lazy days of August.

The Survivor-meets-Battle-Royale film 10 OK (One Million) did not fare so well, opening only in fourth with 1.5 billion won. Or just 2.0 billion won ($1.6) since Thursday.

Pixar's UP is doing about what you would expect in its second week -- 1.4 billion won more for a total of 6.1 billion won ($5.0 million). It looks like yet another film will squeak past 1 million admissions (it is currently at 833,000), but not do much more.

The only other Korean film on the top-10 was CHAW, with added another 433 million won to bring its boxoffice to 12.3 billion won ($10 million).

KOFIC chart to come as soon as the nice people at the Film Council update their website.

UPDATE: Okay, here is the early-release chart up on the KOFIC site. The numbers do not match with my report yet. Hopefully I will be able to fix this is a couple of hours.

Pop Goes the Contract

2009-08-10T08:21:00.007+09:00

There is a fairly decent overview of the contract situation faced by entertainers in Korea over in today's Joongang Ilbo. Using the lawsuit Dong Bang Shin Gi (aka TVXQ) has filed against SM Entertainment as the peg, the article looks at the long and onerous contracts that most entertainers in Korea have to have, especially singers.

As you have probably heard, on July 31, three members of DBSG filed suit against its management company, claiming their contract is unfair. DBSG is one of SME's most popular bands these days, and is doing especially well in Japan, where they recently played two nights in the Tokyo Dome. The band's complaints were mostly the same things we have heard over and over again in Korea over the years -- their contracts are too long, their contracts do not pay enough, the penalties for leaving the management company are too severe, the performers do not have enough control over their own careers, the performers are not paid enough (probably the biggest issue).

I do not want to get into the details of DBSG's particular case. That is something for the Korean courts to decide. But I do think that cases like these bring up a much bigger point.

Arguing about the "fairness" of idol contracts -- how many years should they be, how much should the performers be paid, etc. -- misses the big point. I am tempted to call it "Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic," but that is probably a bit harsh -- after all, the Korean entertainment industry is showing few signs of sinking any time soon. It is more like arguing about what kind of pain reliever is best for a critically ill patient. That is, such talk deals mostly with the symptoms of the disease and misses out entirely on the causes.

Korea's pop idols are not paid poorly and overcontrolled because the management companies are evil. The management companies are just doing their best within the current system. And judging by the long list of big stars who have emerged from Korea's music system over the years, they are apparently doing something right.

The trouble is, Korea's music system itself, which is very resource-intensive and very top-down (like far too much of the Korean economy in general). Because the burden of developing stars and marketing them falls solely on the music companies, it takes a huge amount of money to create new stars. The biggest companies have over 50 performers (mostly young people) in training at a time, taking dance classes, singing classes, learning how to act like stars, and usually living in company housing, eating food paid for by the company, being driven everywhere by the company. All this adds up pretty quickly.

So when a band gets paid pennies for an album sale, you have to remember that the performers spent years in training before they earned any money, and that for each performer earning money and doing well, there are many other aspiring young people who never make it, but who nonetheless burn through company money. How many hopefuls does each company have for each performer who makes it? Five? Ten? I do not know, but it is big enough.

The real problem (as I argue in my book, POP GOES KOREA) is the lack of diversity in Korea's music business, in particular the lack of a live music scene. In most countries, live music is the core, the heart. Young people pick up instruments and play in their parents' garages or wherever. Some get good enough to play in clubs. A few get good enough to put out albums (or MP3s or whatever). A very few make money. Basically, the cost and inconvenience of developing acts falls on the wanna-be performers. By the time they get to the music labels, a lot of the winnowing and development has already happened.

Even in Japan, where J-Pop is big business, you have J-Rock and jazz and a fairly wide range of choices. And choices drive competition, when reduces the stranglehold that music companies otherwise might have.

Strangely, Korea used to have a great live music scene. It was a long time ago, but back in the 1960s and 1970s, most of the big performers had a live music background, whether playing on the US Army bases around the country or playing the live clubs of Myeong-dong or wherever. Even in the 1980s, as Korea's music scene turned more poppy and synthesized (and saccharine), there was still a live foundation most of the acts had -- Cho Yong-pil, Shin Hae-chul, Jo Sung-mo, and the like were all live performers first.

But in the early 1990s, the scene began to change, especially with the coming of Seo Taiji. Even though Seo Taiji wrote his songs (well, mostly) and performed them himself, he typically performed them prerecorded, with The Boyz dancing away furiously beside him. It was the formula that Korea's music companies would use to create their boy- and girl-bands. And soon the manufactured dance bands came fast and furious. Within a few years, they dominated the TV music shows, Mnet, and the like.

For a generation of young people in Korea, being a "star" has meant being a dancer first, a pretty face and perhaps a singer. Very few young people pick up a guitar with dreams of making it big. Sure, plenty of kids play music, for any number of reasons. But few harbor serious dreams of using the guitar (or whatever) to become rock stars.

And as long as the live music scene is not a viable route to becoming a star in Korea, the local music scene will remain dominated by the music labels and manufactured pop music.

The funny thing is, for all the talk of the dominating power of the music companies, the truth is they are actually very weak. They are merely responding to the economics they are given. If young people were to choose different music, the whole system would fall apart. If playing in Hongdae became a route to fame and fortune, then the system would have to change. But as long as Korean young people show no interest in anything but K-Pop, all they will be given is K-Pop. And the system will not really change.

The Housemaid Cleans Up

2009-08-05T23:51:00.003+09:00

Happy day today -- I just bought the great new DVD of Kim Ki-young's THE HOUSEMAID.

THE HOUSEMAID (1960), of course, has long been recognized as one of the great films in Korean history. It is a crazy, claustrophobic tale of a family being terrorized by their housemaid. But describing the plot hardly begins to describe just how fun this movie is.

If you have seen THE HOUSEMAID before at one of its retrospective screenings, you know that it really needed some cleaning up. Much of the movie was faded, scratched, or had degraded in any number of ways.

The quality of the image is ~~pristine~~ mostly pristine (save for two reels, which were more damaged and are still rather poor), the sound is clear. It is great to see a Korean film getting such special treatment. If only the English subtitles were prepared as carefully as the rest of the film (they are okay, but the mistakes are careless and unnecessary). The essays in the booklet that accompanies the DVD are not very interesting or helpful... But I fear I am nitpicking. This DVD is a great restoration.

If you want to buy THE HOUSEMAID on DVD, you can get it at Kyobo Books or any number of online bookstores (like this one). It is totally worth it. Or, if you cannot find the DVD, you can always watch it online for free.

Oldboy vs. the Economic Crisis

2009-08-05T02:05:00.003+09:00

This is kind of odd (not really funny, but kind of interesting). Someone has taken the most famous fight scene from Park Chan-wook's OLDBOY and redone it so Oh Dae-su fights the evil bankers/businessmen who caused the American/world's economy to tank over the past couple of years.

<a href="http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-US&from=sp&vid=b80879e8-e96e-44d6-abb6-7340be64d5aa" target="_new" title="Milo Ventimiglia Cinemashes "Oldboy"">Video: Milo Ventimiglia Cinemashes "Oldboy"</a>

Korea Weekend Box Office - July 31-Aug. 2

2009-08-04T23:53:00.002+09:00

In its second weekend, HAEUNDAE has turned into an official blockbuster -- the silly tsunami film brought in 11.3 billion won ($9.26 million) in its second weekend, to bring its total boxoffice to 34.0 billion won ($27.9 million). Most significantly, its second weekend boxoffice was a tick higher than its first, indicating that people liked what they saw and were spreading the good news.

The ski jumping film TAKE OFF (Gukga Daepyo) did not fare so well, making its debut in second with 5.0 billion won ($4.10 million), or 6.8 billion won including its early Wednesday opening. That is less than half the business of HAEUNDAE, despite appearing on nearly as many screens (886 vs. 762).

Pixar's UP had a typically middling open, at least for a Pixar film in Korea. It opened in third with 2.2 billion won, for a total of 3.0 billion won ($2.5 million). Which I find kind of weird -- whenever I see a Pixar film in Korea, it gets a great audience reaction. Not sure why that does not translate into more tickets.

FYI:
The Incredibles - $6.8 million
Cars - $3.0 million
Ratatouille - $6.9 million
Wall-E - $7.4 million

The latest Detective Conan film (a Japanese anime) had a decent opening, in fourth with 1.2 billion won, or 1.6 billion won since Thursday.

The Korean comic horror film CHAW added another 1.1 billion won to bring its three-week total to 11.0 billion won ($9.0 million).

HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE dropped to sixth, adding 984 million won to bring its total to 19.3 billion won ($15.8 million). It looks like the latest HARRY POTTER will cross the 3-million-attendance mark, but barely.

TRANSFORMERS 2 is still on the chart, adding a tiny 246 million won to bring its huge haul to just over 50 billion won (50.4 billion won, or $41.3 million). South Korea is easily the third-biggest market in the world for the latest Transformers, behind only the United States and the United Kingdom.

The only other Korean film in the top 10 was LIFTING KING KONG (aka BRONZE MEDALIST, or Kingkongeul Deulda). It has now made 8.7 billion won.

Jimmy Lee Jones

2009-08-03T08:32:00.007+09:00

I was walking through the Yongsan Electronics Market last week when I stumbled across this fun find -- the first album by Jimmy Lee Jones, from 1981.

Jimmy Lee Jones (aka Lee Jeong-myeong) lived in Nashville for many years in the 1980s, where he won a songwriting competition and recorded a couple of albums. In the 1990s, he opened a bar/cafe in Daejeon called Palomino, where he still works pretty much every day. His open-mic nights were a huge hits in the 1990s, before the economic crisis.

This album, like his others, is a mix of English and Korean. Basically the same songs twice, in English on side A and in Korean on side B. Although Jimmy always called himself a country singer, the country on this album is in more of a 1980s easy-listening style... a bit like Leonard Cohen's album Various Positions or Recent Songs (think Coming Back to You).

I remember Jimmy because I used to attend the open-mic nights at Palomino with some regularity back in the day (although I never performed... just there to listen). The old part of Daejeon is pretty forgotten these days, but back in the 1990s, before Dunsan-dong was finished, it was a pretty happening part of town. Jimmy was very nice about hanging out with a noob like myself, taking me around with his friends to some great little restaurants around town.

There is an interview with Jimmy (although very poor quality) on a local TV show here. You can also see him perform on that program (also low quality) here.

Oh, and here is another I found.

Anyhow, to find Jimmy's old album (in near-mint condition, too) was a really fun little accident. I am pretty sure none of his albums were ever issued on CD, but if that ever changes, I will be sure to update this post.

UPDATE: Well, that did not take long. Two minutes after I post this, I discover Jimmy has a blog (mostly just Korean). Lots of good stuff there, including a pretty good timelime of his life here (English and Korean).

Korea Weekend Box Office - July 24-26

2009-07-29T12:08:00.003+09:00

The disaster epic HAEUNDAE opened strong last weekend, with 1.5 million admissions over the weekend, and 2 million including its Thursday opening. Not record-breaking numbers, but not bad.

HAEUNDAE is playing at the CGV Yongsan with English subtitles, incidentally.

Otherwise, nothing too amazing to report. HARRY POTTER is doing okay, with 2.5 million admissions over the past couple of weeks. Like the last few Potter films in Korea, it will top 3 million but not 4.

TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN is poised to become the biggest foreign film ever in Korea, beating the first TRANSFORMERS. But not by much. Like most Hollywood blockbusters here, it just cannot sustain as long as the local hits do. Looks like the film should top 7.5 million admissions, but not 8 million.

UPDATE: The box office chart should get interesting for the next few weeks. Pixar's UP opened already, on Wednesday. I'm interested in how it will do, as Pixar films usually struggle to pull in 1 million admissions in Korea.

And the week after UP is released, GI JOE hits the theaters, starring Korea's own Lee Byung-hun.

Btw, also opening this weekend is the Japanese film FISH STORY. I saw it in Udine in April and quite enjoyed it. I doubt it will have English subtitles in the theaters, but if I hear otherwise, I will let you know.

Also, Cine 21's website is saying NEW MOON, the Twilight sequel, will open in Korea on Dec. 10. This is apropo of nothing... I just thought some random Twilight comment might help boost my hits.

Korea Weekend Box Office - July 17-19

2009-07-21T16:46:00.001+09:00

This Week	Title............................................	Release Date	Screens Nationwide	Weekend Revenue (bil. won)	Total Revenue (bil. won)
1.	Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince	7.15	829	8.21	11.47
2.	Chaw	7.15	531	3.64	4.85
3.	Transformers 2	6.24	571	2.19	48.17
4.	Bronze Medalist (Kingkongeul Deulda - Korean)	7.01	390	1.24	7.29
5.	Running Turtle (Geobuki Dallinda - Korean)	6.11	357	0.68	20.20
6.	Doraemon: Nobita's Dinosaur 2006	7.15	179	0.48	0.51
7.	Juon	7.09	208	0.27	1.96
8.	Five Senses of Eros (Ogamdo - Korean)	7.09	353	0.26	2.72
9.	Arthur and the Invisibles	7.09	192	0.068	0.77
10.	Haeundae - Korean (preview)	7.23	19	0.046	0.071

(Source: KOBIS - Figures represent 98% of nationwide box office)

From a Nappeun Namja to a Nappeun Gajok

2009-07-20T10:55:00.002+09:00

Okay, this is one of the stranger things I have read about in some time -- the Chosun Ilbo is reporting that when Rain performed a concert in Macau at the end of June, in the audience was Kim Jong-il's grandson.

That makes me wonder if he was also on-hand for the filming of BOYS OVER FLOWERS, when they had those Macau episodes. Maybe Kim Jong-il's grandson was an extra? Oh Korean Wave, is there anything you can't do?

Bloody Good Fun

2009-07-19T01:27:00.003+09:00

So why didn't anyone at Wild Side Films or Park Chan-wook's company send me one of these?

Korea Weekend Box Office - July 10-12

2009-07-18T17:00:00.002+09:00

Okay, this box office chart is a week late. Many apologies.

As you can see, TRANSFORMERS 2 is still king of the mountain here in Korea, although it is finally slowing down a little -- "just" 900,000 admissions last weekend to bring its total to 6.6 million, or 44.63 billion won ($35.1 million). I do not think the new HARRY POTTER film is going to do very well in Korea (not in comparison to its North America numbers), but it should still be strong enough to send TRANSFORMERS 2 into second place.

The next three films were all Korean, so there is some robustness for local films, despite this being the middle of Hollywood's best season.

And CHAW, the comic-horror film, was in 10th, despite not officially opening until the 16th.

And a fairly international crop this week, as we have the latest JUON (Japan) film in fifth, ARTHUR AND THE INVISIBLES (France) in sixth, and MISSING LYNX (Spain) in eighth. The Italian film THE UNKNOWN WOMAN was 12th, followed by France's LET IT RAIN.

This Week	Title............................................	Release Date	Screens Nationwide	Weekend Revenue (bil. won)	Total Revenue (bil. won)
1.	Transformer 2	6.24	873	6.24	44.63
2.	Bronze Medalist (Kingkongeul Deulda - Korean)	7.01	463	1.90	5.19
3.	Running Turtle (Geobuki Dallinda- Korean	6.11	379	1.64	18.89
4.	Five Senses of Eros (Ogamdo - Korean)	7.09	403	1.59	1.96
5.	Juon - Here We Go Again	7.09	208	1.12	1.34
6.	Arthur and the Invisibles	7.09	285	0.59	0.65
7.	Blood Pledge (Yeogo Goedam 5 - Korean)	6.18	209	0.18	4.07
8.	Missing Lynx	6.24	103	0.085	0.76
9.	Night at the Museum 2	6.04	85	0.083	12.39
10.	Chau - Korean	7.15	38	0.031	0.059

(Source: KOBIS - Figures represent 98% of nationwide box office)

Stream of Consciousness

2009-07-16T20:52:00.004+09:00

A fun story in the New York Times about the "unearthing" of city rivers... citing Seoul and the Cheonggyecheon as a prime example.

Actually, I thought Seoul modeled its restoration of the Cheonggyecheon on San Antonio... but I could be wrong.

Swamped...

2009-07-15T08:02:00.002+09:00

Apologies for the lack of updates, but I am really swamped at the moment. I hope to have something interesting up in a couple of days...

Korea Weekend Box Office - July 3-5

2009-07-07T08:30:00.002+09:00

TRANSFORMERS 2: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN continued its assault on the Korean box office (not to mention on eardrums, sanity, etc.), accounting for a huge 66 percent of all movie ticket sales last weekend. Michael Bay's robot film pulled in another 9.86 billion won ($7.8 million) on the weekend to bring its total to 35.28 billion won ($27.8 million) -- that is ahead of the opening of Bong Joon-ho's THE HOST, depending on how you count these things.

The blockbuster has now had over 5.2 million admissions in 12 days, making it by far the biggest foreign opening ever in Korea. Could TRANSFORMERS 2 be the first foreign film to make it to 10 million admissions? Possibly. I do not see any huge films on the calendar for the next couple of weeks (HARRY POTTER on the 15th, then HAEUNDAE on the 23rd). Although traditionally Hollywood films do not sustain at the box office as well as Korean films do.

After TRANSFORMERS, the next three films on the chart were all Korean, so I guess that is kind of good news. RUNNING TURTLE continues to hold up, landing in No. 2 with 1.84 billion won to bring its total to 16.18 billion won ($12.7 million).

The uplifting tale of some scrappy women overcoming the odds to compete in an unpopular sport ~~FOREVER THE MOMENT~~ BRONZE MEDAL had to be a disappointment -- despite a big advertising push and a big opening on over 500 screens, the weightlifting drama made just 1.78 billion won ($1.4 million) over the weekend (barely 251,000 admissions).

This Week	Title............................................	Release Date	Screens Nationwide	Weekend Revenue (bil. won)	Total Revenue (bil. won)
1.	Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen	6.24	1076	9.86	35.28
2.	Running Turtle (Geobuki Dallinda- Korean)	6.11	402	1.84	16.18
3.	Bronze Medalist (Kingkongeul Deulda - Korean)	7.01	529	1.78	2.27
4.	Blood Pledge (Yeogo Goedam 5 - Korean)	6.18	352	0.52	3.66
5.	Night at the Museum 2	6.04	254	0.25	12.25
6.	Missing Linx	6.24	204	0.21	0.65
7.	Mother (Madeo - Korean)	5.28	220	0.12	19.79
8.	Terminator: Salvation	5.21	118	0.084	29.60
9.	The Unknown Woman	7.02	21	0.066	0.093
10.	Drag Me to Hell	6.11	23	0.20	1.82

(Source: KOBIS - Figures represent 98% of nationwide box office)

Escaping North Korea, on The Daily Show

2009-07-02T10:36:00.003+09:00

Mike Kim, author of ESCAPING NORTH KOREA, was on Jon Stewart's The Daily Show on Wednesday. You can check out the interview below.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Mike Kim

thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Jason Jones in Iran

It makes me wonder how North Koreans learn Calculus using dead Americans...

There was also a short but interesting article on Mike Kim in the Japan Times.

Korea Weekend Box Office - June 26-28

2009-06-30T14:19:00.003+09:00

TRANSFORMERS 2: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN had a huge opening last weekend, the biggest since at least PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN 3, and pretty close to Bong Joon-ho's 2006 hit THE HOST (Goemul).

The loud, toy robot sequel pulled in 14.1 billion won ($10.9 million) over the weekend, and 19.7 billion won ($15.3 million) since it opened on Wednesday. That equates to 2.1 million admissions over the weekend and 3.0 million since Wednesday.

If it seemed like just about every screen in Korea was playing TRANSFORMERS 2, you were pretty much right -- a record-shattering 1,038 screens. There are just 2,000 screens in all of Korea. (When I came to Korea, there were not even 500 screens in the entire country).

(Btw, the chart below says 1,200 screens for TRANSFORMERS, but remember the KOFIC list double-counts some screens, so tends to be a little exaggerated).

The real question will be staying power. Movies like PIRATES 3 and SPIDER-MAN 3 had openings nearly as big as THE HOST, but they ended up with much smaller totals. TRANSFORMERS (the first) by comparison had 1.3 million admissions in its opening weekend, but went on to pull in 7.4 million admissions, the best foreign film ever in Korea.

The only other movie that anyone went to see last weekend was RUNNING TURTLE (Geobuki Dallinda), which made 1.8 billion won ($1.4 million) to bring its three-week total to 13.0 billion won ($10.1 million). TURTLE is going to top 2 million admissions, making it officially a hit, I guess.

Everything else is sad. The No. 3 film BLOOD PLEDGE (Yeogyo Goedam 5) made just 499 million won ($387,000) over the weekend, bringing its total to 2.8 billion won. That's just 59,000 admissions for it last weekend.

MISSING LYNX from Spain opened in fourth. The only other Korean film was Bong Joon-ho's MOTHER (Madeo), in sixth. MOTHER has now made 19.5 billion won -- slightly less than what TRANSFORMERS 2 did in five days.

Rather amazing to me was that the 8th Mise-en-Scene Genre Film Festival landed in 10th. With just two screens. That's pretty wild. The 11th place film, THE BROTHERS BLOOM, sold fewer tickets, despite being on 110 screens. Wow.

Transforming Cinema

2009-06-30T03:27:00.001+09:00

So I checked out TRANSFORMERS 2: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN over the weekend. And I must say, I agree with popular opinions -- both of them, the critics and the unwashed masses. TRANSFORMERS 2 is definitely stupid and ridiculous, at any level a terrible film. I also quite liked it.

Which seems to be how people in general are perceiving the film. Critics hate it, but audiences think it is much better than the first TRANSFORMERS.

That article I linked to points out that it is Michael Bay's worst film ever on Rotten Tomatoes, the review aggregator. But what I find really interesting is that is is also Bay's second-best reviewed film ever on Metacritic (behind THE ROCK). Rotten Tomatoes, of course, merely looks at whether reviewers liked a film, then averages the number of positive votes. Metacritic, on the other hand, assigns a value to each vote, then takes that average.

So what does that mean? It means that most critics on balance dislike TRANSFORMERS 2, but they do not dislike it that much. But for Bay's previous films, opinions were more divided, with some people liking them more but others hating them more.

Math is so much fun.

Wonderwha?

2009-06-30T02:45:00.005+09:00

Hey, the Wondergirls are now launching their English campaign for the West. If you go to Wondergirls World, you can get their international website. Click on "videos" to see their old song Nobody dubbed into English. And there is this announcement for that site on Youtube -- to be honest, a little painful.

In case you have not heard, the Wondergirls are going to be touring with the Jonas Brothers this summer. There is a Seattle Times story about the tour here.

And an article about the English version of Nobody appearing on iTunes here -- the article is okay, but the comments following it are really interesting. It is beginning to sound like Asian pop culture is finally becoming normalized in the United States. Or at least it is becoming a lot closer to normal.

Yu Hyun-mok Passes

2009-06-30T00:23:00.004+09:00

I just read that the great Korean director Yu Hyun-mok passed away Sunday night, at 85 years old (or 83, depending on what you read). Very sad news.

Yu was the last of the "three great filmmakers" of the 1950s and 1960s (the other two being Kim Ki-young and Shin Sang-ok). Yu was most famous for OBALTAN: THE AIMLESS BULLET, a neorealist film about the hard life of the downtrodden after the Korean War.

But for me, my favorite Yu film was EMPTY DREAM, a remake of Tetsuji Takeji's DAYDREAM. Yu was arrested for EMPTY DREAM, even though the actress Park Su-jeong did not really appear naked (good summary at the link above). Anyhow, I saw EMPTY DREAM at the Puchon Fantastic Film Festival in 2004, when they played it with a restored soundtrack. Very interesting, surreal film, and completely different than OBALTAN.

Yu's SCHOOL EXCURSION is pretty fun, too, and it used to be available on DVD (although I have not seen it in stores for ages... maybe the Yongsan black market still stocks it).

Sadly, I am no expert of Yu's films. I only met him briefly a couple of times, when he was obviously of fading health, and I never really talked to him at all. But I am happy that I did at least meet him (and Shin Sang-ok). You can read about Yu in the Korea Times. Darcy's page on Yu is here. And of course you can always read Wikipedia.

You can also briefly see Yu Hyun-mok in these old news videos from the 1960s, here, here, and here (that last one is from the 2nd Grand Bell Awards, back in 1963, with Yu winning Best Director for his film TO GIVE FREELY).

Weird. Wikipedia says Yu was born July 2, 1925. But my book The History of the Korean Cinema says he was born May 17, 1924. Quite a difference. Maybe the date is just a lunar/solar calendar thing. But I don't know about the year difference.

(Btw, I swiped that pic from Darcy's website. I hope that is okay).

Rock'n'Roll World -- And Some Random Stuff

2009-06-28T14:42:00.002+09:00

As much as I love old Korean rock music, it is important to remember that the trends and forces affecting Korea were not occurring in a vaccuum. Rock music was shaping many societies around Asia around the same time, sometime in similar ways as it did to Korea, sometimes in different ways.

Surprisingly (at least for me), one of the most exciting places in Asia for rock music back in the 1960s and '70s was Cambodia (pre-Khmer Rouge, obviously). Thanks to exposure to rock music from Americans fighting in the Vietnam War, right next door, a real garage-rock/psychedelic sound emerged in the period, featuring both new bands and classic Cambodia crooners (like Sinn Sisamouth, Ros Sereysothea, and Pan Ron) who switched to take up the new rock'n'roll style.

You can download the music from the Cambodia Rocks compilation here. There is also a documentary being made about the music from that period; you can see a trailer for that film here.

The Philippines, with its history so entwined with the United States, also had a lot of rock music. Including the group Rocky Fellers, whose song "Killer Joe" made it onto US music charts back in 1963. India, too, had plenty of rock music (after all, even The Beatles went there for a while to hang out in 1968).

Japanese rock music is more well known, in particular the "group sound" movement. This website had a lot of great information about psychedelic rock music from all over the world, especially Japan (but, damn, it was also one of the saddest sites I have ever read).

And of course there is also Tuvulan throat singing. Who can ever get enough of someone gargling Love Will Tear Us Apart Again or Orgasmatron? Great stuff.

For psych rock, as always Gerald Van Waes's website about psychedelic music around the world is the most complete and interesting site around, with plenty of amazing information and links about the old rock music of Korea, Japan, India, and plenty more.

Anyhow, my point is that too often people think of music, movies and the culture of countries (especially in Asia) in too much isolation. How can one really talk about trends in movies in Japan without knowing about trends in movies in the countries around Japan? How can one talk about the Korean Wave in music without knowing what domestic trends are affecting music in countries around Asia?

* * *

I seem to have been appearing in the Korean media a bunch recently. If you can read Korean and would care to check it out, there is a profile of me and my book at the Joongang Ilbo here, an article in the Joongang about how Korean movie titles change when going abroad here (which quotes me a bit). And this month's Esquire Korea mentions my book as well... I will link to it if I can ever find a link to the story.

Korea Weekend Box Office - June 19-21

2009-06-23T09:35:00.003+09:00

Another week at the top of the box office for RUNNING TURTLE (Geobuki Dallinda), which added another 3.9 billion won ($3.0 million) to its coffers, to bring its total revenue to 9.6 billion won ($7.5 million) since June 11. Not a runaway hit, but 1.4 million admissions is not bad.

The latest film in the Whispering Corridors horror series, A BLOOD PLEDGE, landed in No. 2, with 1.6 billion won ($1.25 million), or 1.8 billion won including Thursday.

NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM 2 was the top foreign film, earning 1.3 billion won to bring its total to 11.4 billion won ($8.9 million). TERMINATOR SALVATION added 1.1 billion won for a total of 29.0 billion won ($22.6 million).

Bong Joon-ho's MOTHER (Madeo) added 801 million won ($625,000) over the weekend to bring its total to 18.9 billion won ($14.8 million). With 2.8 million admissions thus far, MOTHER should make it over 3 million admissions, but it will be a lot closer than I originally thought.

There were no other Korean films in the top 10 last weekend, but we did have a Hong Kong film (THE SHINJUKU INCIDENT) in ninth and a French film (ASTERIX AT THE OLYMPIC GAMES) in 10th.

Btw, as I write this, two days before it opens TRANSFORMERS 2 is accounting for 89.7 percent of all ticket reservations. Yikes.

Korea Weekend Box Office - June 12-14

2009-06-16T18:19:00.003+09:00

A new Korean film took the top spot at the box office last weekend, the crime thriller RUNNING TURTLE (Geobuki Dallinda) with 3.3 billion won ($2.6 million), or 3.7 billion won including Thursday and other previews.

Second went to NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM 2, with 2.7 billion won ($2.1 million) to bring its total to 9.6 billion won ($7.6 million).

TERMINATOR SALVATION continues to do strong business in Korea, coming in third with 1.7 billion won ($1.3 million), for an impressive 27.2 billion won ($21.6 million) since it was released May 21.

Bong Joon-ho's MOTHER (Madeo) also is doing well, with another 1.4 billion won ($1.1 million) to bring its total to 17.4 billion won ($13.8 million). Now with 2.6 million admissions, MOTHER looks like it will top 3 million admissions, but not make it to 4 million. Still, 3 million is a pretty solid number for a Korean film, so good for Bong.

Only one other Korean film in the top 10, MY GIRLFRIEND IS AN AGENT, way down in ninth. GIRLFRIEND added another 100 million won last weekend to bring its total to 26.1 billion won ($20.7 million) since April 22.

BLOOD: THE LAST VAMPIRE may not be a Korean film, but it did star Jun Ji-hyun. Unfortunately, Jun was not enough, and BLOOD opened to just 378 million won ($300,000).

(Courtesy of KOFIC)

Random Notes - Vol. 4, No. 1

2009-06-13T13:08:00.005+09:00

I just stumbled across this old Harvey Kurtzman comic from 1952 called A CORPSE ON THE IMJIN. Yes, the Harvey Kurtzman who later founded Mad magazine.

IMJIN, however, is much more serious than Kurtzman's later work. It is a dark story set in the Korean War, of a soldier sitting at the shore of the Imjin River, watching a body floating by, wondering how the man died. Then the story takes a grim turn. A short but fascinating read.

Matt at Popular Gusts beat me to writing about the comic book exhibition over in the National Museum of Contemporary Art, down in the Seoul Grand Park (by Gwacheon). The exhibition runs until Aug. 23 (and, who know, maybe the museum will have updated its English website by then... but for now, you can see the Korean website about the exhibit here).

As long as I am on the subject of comic books, I just found out about Kim San-ho a Korean comic artist who used to draw for Charlton Comics back in the 1960s and 70s (and even Marvel a little). He returned to Korea later and made several Korean comic books and wrote a lot about Korean history, too. You can see a gallery of some of his comic book covers here.

I watched Jun Ji-hyun's BLOOD: THE LAST VAMPIRE last night. No surprise that it was not very good. The first half felt exactly like the original anime, and was borderline interesting -- basically BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER will all the humor and wit taken out, and several bathtubs of blood put in.

About halfway through the film, the mood shifts, and it begins to feel like a Hong Kong movie like CHINESE GHOST STORY, with a lot of really frenetic action sequences and cheap special effects. One of the biggest action sequences is really poorly done, and looks like the producers ran out of money. The story changes from the original anime, too, acquiring a ridiculous backstory that is unnecessary and really, really cheesy.

It's too bad -- Jun Ji-hyun looks exactly right for the part of Saya, the Vampire hunter. Unfortunately, the director and writer were quite terrible and uncreative.

I loved this story about our favorite cloning scientist Hwang Woo-suk getting a science award recently. I do not know anything about the loonies who give out the Jang Young Shil Award of Science, Technology and Culture, but you have to love this line from the KT story:

Hwang was unable to participate in the awards ceremony at the Press Center in downtown Seoul, due to a previously scheduled court appearance.

Hip Korea on Discovery II: Even Hipper

2009-06-10T09:49:00.002+09:00

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.

Korea Weekend Box Office - June 5-7

2009-06-10T09:09:00.004+09:00

A new week, a new No. 1 at the box office. This time it was NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM 2, with a healthy 5.4 billion won ($4.3 million) over the weekend, or 6.0 billion won ($4.7 million) including Thursday. The original NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM did quite well in Korea a couple of years ago, so the sequel's success was not really a surprise.

Fighting it out for No. 2 was TERMINATOR SALVATION and Bong Joon-ho's MOTHER (Madeo). TERMINATOR edged out MOTHER in terms of admissions -- 538,000 to 533,000 -- but MOTHER was slightly stronger at the box office -- 3.7 billion won ($2.9 million) to 3.6 billion won. But I like to rank the film's by revenue, so let's give the victory to MOTHER (unfortunately, KOFIC ranks by admissions, so the chart below does not reflect my opinion).

Since it was released May 21, TERMINATOR has made an impressive 24.6 billion won ($19.4 million) -- that is 3.7 million admissions and the film will certainly top 4 million soon. Easily the most successful TERMINATOR film here in Korea.

Since MOTHER was released May 28, it has made 14.7 billion won ($11.6 million), or nearly 2.2 million admissions. I think it will make it to 3 million, which is not bad, especially considering the subject matter of the film.

Otherwise, not much exciting happening in the top-10. MY GIRLFRIEND IS AN AGENT (7 Geup Gongmuwon) is still doing business at No. 5, earning another 660 million won to bring its total to 25.8 billion won ($20.3 million). It has just topped 4 million admissions, but it will not make it to 5 million.

CASTAWAY ON THE MOON (Gimssi Pyoryugi) and THIRST (Bakjwi) are the two other Korean films on the chart, in seventh and eighth. But really, this is barely a top-10 list. Only the top eight films were on over 100 screens and only the five films had over 100,000 admissions over the weekend.

(Courtesy of KOFIC, of course)

Btw, CJ CGV's monthly box office report came out a few days ago, and it was quite encouraging. Last month was the strongest May on record with 16.3 million admissions, way up from May 2008's 12.8 million. But more importantly, Korean movies made up 49.1 percent of the box office, which was the strongest showing in year (maybe ever).

Usually Hollywood's summer blockbusters start coming out in May and completely dominate Korea until July or August. Last year was the most extreme example, when Korean movies accounted for a humiliating 7.8 percent.

So far in 2009, Korea movies have 46.9 percent of the local box office.

Low Moments in Jurisprudence - Actress Sued for Being Beaten

2009-06-05T08:41:00.002+09:00

Here is a story that I simply could not believe -- the estate of late-actress Choi Jin-sil was successfully sued by an advertiser because Choi was beaten by her former husband.

The unnamed construction company hired Choi in early 2004 to advertise their apartments. But in August, Choi was badly beaten by her then-husband, and instead of hiding the scandal, she went public. It was huge news at the time.

(You'll have to trust me about how big that story was, though, since none of the English-language newspapers' archives seem to go back that far, and none of the Korean gossip sites were in operations back then... But there is this Hani story).

The court's judgment?

Models who failed to maintain appropriate dignity as representatives of the products they represent should compensate for the damages caused to their advertiser, the top court ruled.

Okay, technically, she was probably sued because she went public with the scandal instead of hiding it. But regardless, not a great moment for the Korean courts. Most of the time I think the Korean courts get overly criticized by the expat community in Korea, but this story really bothered me.

Korea Weekend Box Office - May 29-31

2009-06-03T00:11:00.003+09:00

Wow, it was really a two-film weekend, wasn't it? Bong Joon-ho's MOTHER (Madeo) and TERMINATOR: SALVATION together accounted for a mammoth 1,400 screens or so (KOFIC tends to double-count a lot, so the screen numbers in the chart below are a little exaggerated, but they are still huge). Two films accounting for 70 percent of a nation's screens? Really?

On the other hand, those two films accounted for well over 70 percent of the box office, so it is not like the theater owners aren't being efficient and economical. Sometimes, one of the only things I find more bewildering than the lack of consumer choice in Korea is the lack of demand for choices.

Anyhow, MOTHER (Madeo) opened in No. 1 last weekend, to no one's surprise. Nearly 6.7 billion won ($5.4 million) over the weekend, or 8.1 billion won ($6.5 million) including Thursday. That's over 1.2 million tickets sold in just four days. Not bad at all, especially for such a simpler film than Bong's THE HOST (Goemul). MOTHER may not be epic, but it is totally worth watching. Go see it soon.

The biggest surprise for me was the continuing strength of TERMINATOR 4. I thought it would have plunged like a stone after its opening weekend. But instead it held on for another 5.2 billion won ($4.2 million), bringing its total to 19.3 billion won ($15.4 million). Over 3 million tickets in just 11 days. Proportionately, it is doing so much better here than in the United States. Strange.

After those two films, you get a huge dropoff. ANGELS & DEMONS was in third, with just 1.1 billion won, for a total of 10.8 billion won.

MY GIRLFRIEND IS AN AGENT (7-Geup Gongmuwon) continues to hold on, earning another 909 million won to bring its total to 24.7 billion won ($19.8 million).

Korean films also accounted for the sixth spot (CASTAWAY ON THE MOON), ninth (THIRST) and 10th (BOAT). Half the films in the top 10 Korean during Hollywood's high season? Not bad at all.

Oh, and Hong Sang-soo's LIKE YOU KNOW IT ALL (Jal Aljido Mot Hamyeonseo) was down in 14th, in case you wanted to know. Not huge business, but at least it broke 200 million won.

(Source: KOFIC)

The Mother of All Thrills

2009-06-01T10:53:00.005+09:00

I saw Bong Joon-ho's MOTHER over the weekend and quite liked it. I thought perhaps I should write up a little review of sorts, so here you go.

Bong Joon-ho's latest film, MOTHER, is a departure from his last two films, MEMORIES OF MURDER and THE HOST, lacking much of the humor and scope that made them so memorable. Instead, MOTHER is a much darker and more personal story; but it is without a doubt a Bong tale -- smart, powerful and really engrossing.

MOTHER is the story of the mother of a retarded young man (Won Bin) who must save her son when he is arrested for murdering a high school girl. The police jumped the gun, arresting him on some pretty weak evidence, then pressuring the son Do-joon to sign a release he did not understand.

Determined to free her son no matter what, the mother relentlessly (even ruthlessly) pursues any lead she can. After a few false turns and a lot of apathy from the town officials, she begins to uncover a deeper story, involving a troubled young girl who had a really rough life.

Set in a small town and dealing with a murder investigation, MOTHER has some obvious similarities to MEMORIES OF MURDER. But the focus and style of MOTHER is really different.

The first half of MOTHER focuses more on Do-joon, setting up his character and his friend. There is an incident at a golf course that is one of the few light spots in the movie, but it felt a little unnatural and awkward. Only after Do-joon is arrested and the spotlight moves to his mother that the story really begins to get into gear.

But once it gets going, MOTHER is really good. Kim Hye-ja is great as the obsessive mother, and her desperation gives the movie much of its power. You never know quite what she is going to do, even while suspecting she might do anything. It adds up to create a kind of emotional claustrophobia that really hits hard.

Now, while I said this film is not as deep or analytical as some of Bong's other films, there is evidently a lot going on anyway. There is plenty of psychology happening throughout. The relationship between mother and son especially is anything but normal. The mother's recurring talk of an injection in the thigh to take away bad memories is quite suggestive.

Another thing that struck me was the age difference between Do-joon and his mom. Although never clearly stated in the film, Do-joon is played by the 27-year-old Won Bin, while the mother is played by the 67-year-old Kim Hye-ja. And while having a baby at 40 years old is not unheard of, it is still a little unusual.

In short, MOTHER is not without flaws, but it is the best Korean movie I have seen in quite some time. Maybe since THE CHASER. It is thrilling, scary, violent and unexpected ... really a gripping combination.

Korea Weekend Box Office - May 22-24

2009-05-27T14:50:00.004+09:00

Oops, I nearly forgot about the box office this week. Sorry about that.

As I predicted, TERMINATOR SALVATION did ridiculously well in Korea last weekend, must as TERMINATOR 3 did a few years ago, making 9.3 billion won ($7.4 million) over Fri-Mon, and a total of 11.1 billion won ($8.8 million) if you include Thursday when it opened. That over 1.4 million admissions (1.7 million including Thursday), easily making it the biggest opening of the year so far in Korea.

Expect a huge drop-off for TERMINATOR next weekend (it was a pretty mediocre film, and there is some big competition looming), but an impressive opening nonetheless.

The top Korean film of the weekend was MY GIRLFRIEND IS AN AGENT (7 Geup Gongmuwon) in third, earning another 1.8 billion won to bring its five-week total to 23.2 billion won ($18.4 million).

In fourth was CASTAWAY ON THE MOON (Gimssi Pyoryugi), earning 1 billion won to bring its total to 3.7 billion won.

Other Korean films in the top 10 were THIRST (Bakjwi) in seventh, INSADONG SCANDAL in eighth and Hong Sang-soo's LIKE YOU KNOW IT ALL (Jal Aljido Mot Hamyeonsa) in ninth.

I saw LIKE YOU KNOW IT ALL last weekend and quite liked it. Not as much fun as WOMAN ON THE BEACH, but similar in tone. Maybe a little "deeper." Maybe a little too long. But fun and full of some amusing perspectives on film festivals and artists. It is playing with English subtitles at the CGV Yongsan in Seoul and is totally worth checking out.

(Stats courtesy of KOFIC, as always)

I have no idea how well Bong Joon-ho's new film MOTHER (Madeo) will do (although as I write this, it handily has the biggest advance sales on the Internet), but it opens Thursday this week. And it too is playing with English subtitles at Yongsan. Funny, the film had great reviews at Cannes pretty much across the board, but apparently the jury members for the section it was in all hated it.

Oh, the Korean title is Madeo. Does that sound like "Mother" to you? Or more like "Murder"? Probably just a coincidence, but the thought amused me.

Korean History, Live and Online (and some random food notes)

2009-05-21T13:07:00.009+09:00

For some research I was doing recently, I ran across the most amazing resource online -- a huge collection of photos and videos about Korea, dating from the 1950s to the present. Some are old news stories, others are government propaganda videos, and others are, well, I have no idea.

I'm talking about E-History website, run by KTV (Korea Policy Broadcasting?). For the video section especially, you can spend countless hours, just skipping around and browsing. Sadly, the site is only in Korean, but it is pretty easy to navigate, even for beginners.

There are 11 categories running down the left side, for politics, economics, military, society, eduction, culture and more. Below those categories, the site is also organized by decade. And because all the videos have been indexed and described, the search engine works surprising well.

Here is a sampling of some interesting videos related to movies and culture:
- Old movie theaters from 1957.
- Television starts in Korea in 1956, thanks to RCA.
- More about Korea's first TV station HLKZ, from 1956.
- AFKN from 1959.
- Opening of KBS headquarters in 1976.
- Some movie awards from 1959. Includes clips of Yu Hyun-mok (the famous director) and Choi Eun-hee (the great actress and wife of the late Shin Sang-ok).
- The first Best Korean Movie Awards in 1962. With awards going to Shin Sang-ok (for Romantic Papa) and Kim Ki-young (for The Housemaid) and Choi Eun-hee.
- The first Grand Bell Movie Awards, a few months later in 1962.
- Grand Bell Movie Awards from 1990. Features Kang Su-yeon winning an award, lots of really bad hair and shoulder pads.
- A report on Shin Sang-ok and Choi Eun-hee in North Korea from 1984 (with plenty of Bukgoe comments throughout).
- Sadly I could not find much interesting about old rock music. Did find this 1963 video about singer Lee Chun-hee.

And just some random stuff I liked:
- A golf tournament from 1954.
- Namdaemun devastated by a fire in 1954 (wow, deja vu).
- Yonsei's Severance Hospital back in 1962.
- Yonsei University's 80th anniversary.
- Korean boxer Yu Jae-du beating Koichi Wajima for the WBA Light Middleweight Champion belt in 1975 (Yuh Jae-doo?).
- A video from 1970 talking about Korea's next five-year plan and how Korea would develop in the future.
- The opening of the Yanghwa bridge connecting Mapo and Yeongdeungpo in 1965.
- The opening of the Seoul Sanga Apartments in Chungmuro in 1967.
- Namsan Wayne Apartments being destroyed in 1994
- Don't leave your nasty gum around, from 1990.
- Miss Korea 1957. Includes the swimsuit competition.

Okay, you get the idea. I could do this for days, but those selections should get you started. What a great website.

UPDATE: Given how popular Kim Yuna is these days, I thought people might want to check out these skating videos:
- Skating in 1955. Around 1 minute in, we get some figure skating, too. They could be the ancestors of Kim Yuna (metaphorically, that is).
- Rhee Sungman taking in some skating on the Han River in 1958 (including some more figure skating).
- 1959, more speed skating and figure skating (and the figure skaters are getting a little better). (Oh, love the spelling of "sports" in this one. 스포오쯔... never seen that before).
- Ice fishing and ice hockey from 1961 on this one.
- Skating at Gyeongbok Palace in 1963.
- Skating at the Dongdaemun Ice Rink, which I never knew existed, in 1964.
- Ice Carnival at the Dongdaemun rink in 1964. Including a talented little 6-year-old, Yoon Hyo-jin (who went on to finish 17th at the 1976 Olympics in Innsbruck).

* * *

A couple of random restaurant notes. Seems like every time I turn around, new Indian restaurants are popping up all over the place. I talked about Manokamana before (which now seems to be doing very well, as I can never get a seat there).

But if you cannot get a seat at Manokamana, there is another option just down the street -- Amma. Amma is just as good as Manokamana, if not better (I think the portions are bigger), and it is dead quiet. The furniture is a little odd (like out of a 1995 Korean dabang, but don't let that throw you). It is right behind the Hyundai Department Store. Map here. Totally worth checking out.

If you are looking for more of a Western bar experience, a new place just opened up in Shinchon that I also recommend called Beer O'Clock. Beer O'Clock has a good selection of beers (including Alley Cat Pale Ale), your basic bar food (which I have not tried yet, but looks good), and a great ambiance. It is on the second floor, with floor-to-ceiling windows that all open up, making almost every seat in the place a window seat.

I have not been there on a weekend yet, so maybe the vibe changes then. Hopefully not, but I do not know. But for a quite, comfortable mid-week place, Beer O'Clock was really good. Easily the best Western bar in Shinchon. Map.

* * *

UPDATE: Random note. As I write this post, my blog is the 10th most popular in the world under the Google search "distressed bondage." Sometimes I do not understand the Internet at all.

Korea Weekend Box Office - May 15-17

2009-05-19T13:16:00.003+09:00

No big surprises at the box office last weekend. The new film based on Dan Brown's "symbology" professor Robert Langdon ANGELS AND DEMONS landed in No. 1 with 4.5 billion won ($3.6 million), or 5.2 billion won ($4.1 million) if you include Thursday. Actually, I heard that they never really made a movie, but the Illuminati conspired to boost its box office and make it No. 1 anyway.

MY GIRLFRIEND IS AN AGENT (7 Geup Gongmuwon) continues to do well, taking in another 2.8 billion won ($2.22 million) to bring its total to 20.4 billion won ($16.2 million).

New Korean movie CASTAWAY ON THE MOON (Gimssi Pyoryugi) opened in third, earning 1.8 billion won ($1.4 million), or 2.1 billion including Thursday.

STAR TREK dropped to fourth from second, but it is still doing pretty well for a Star Trek movie in Korea. It made 1.8 billion won to bring its total to 5.6 billion won ($4.4 million).

THIRST (Bakjwi) fell to fifth, although it has squeaked past 2 million admissions. It has now made 13.5 billion won ($10.7 million).

Other Korean films this week include INSADONG SCANDAL and CYBORG SHE. Well, depending on whether you consider CYBORG SHE a Korean film. It was written and directed by Kwak Jae-young, but it is a Japanese-language movie with a Japanese cast and was completely financed by Japanese companies. Welcome to globalization... nations coming together to make utter dreck.

Any way you look at it, this May is shaping up to be much, much better than last year, when Korean films dropped to just 7.8 percent of the box office. That was brutal.

It is just too bad that Bong Joon-ho's MOTHER is not coming out until the 28th. I bet that film is going to do huge business; if it came out a week earlier, it could have helped Korean movies have their strongest Mays in years.

As it is, I am guessing TERMINATOR 4 is going to do some huge business here. TERMINATOR 3, if you recall, had what was then the biggest opening weekend ever in Korea. And that film was terrible. TERMINATOR 4 looks brilliant and plenty of fun, so should be pretty strong.

PGK in the Wall Street Journal

2009-05-19T11:28:00.004+09:00

Well, that was quite a surprise. A journalist friend of mine just called me to congratulate me. I had to confess, I had no idea what she was talking about, so she said to me "the Wall Street Journal article?" Still no idea. But a few mouse clicks later I discovered that the wonderful Evan Ramstad had written about POP GOES KOREA in today's issue of the Asian Wall Street Journal. Very nice.

If I may quote "Mr. Ramstad" (got to love that level of formality):

Mr. Russell says the growth of South Korea's entertainment industries is a function of economic development that has left more Koreans with the time and resources to become pop-culture "consumers." To a lesser extent, he credits technology changes that reshaped distribution and a receptivity to new cultural products bound up in the globalization of trade over the past two decades. In short, the talent has been there all along and the time finally became ripe for it to flourish as a business.

Mr. Russell's book is the first by a non-Korean to explain the rise of Korea's entertainment industries. With lots of pictures, lists (top TV shows, most expensive movies, worst flops) and sidebar articles, the book could hardly be more approachable.

Anyhow, be sure to check out Evan's story. And if it inspires you to pick up a copy of POP GOES KOREA, you can find it on Amazon.com here.

UPDATE: The Korean newswire Yonhap, which always likes to report on the big-time international papers when they report on Korea, has picked up the story, too.

Cannes and Korea in the Hollywood Reporter

2009-05-15T08:19:00.003+09:00

Korea is getting plenty of coverage in The Hollywood Reporter at this year's Cannes Film Festival. Not surprising, really, given all the Korean films there this year.

There is a Q&A with Bong Joon-ho here, and another one with Park Chan-wook.

There is also this interesting story about the state of Southeast Asian cinema. And this overview of the Japan film industry. And this Q&A with Ang Lee.

I'll add more stories as I come across them.

(Note: If you check out some of the following stories, you might notice that none of them are by me. I have been very slow to mention it here, but I actually stopped writing for THR some months ago, and have instead been putting my energies into some other projects. Which I should talk about soon).

Like You Know Thirst -- English Subtitles

2009-05-13T10:45:00.004+09:00

Good news folks -- the new Park Chan-wook film THIRST and the new Hong Sang-soo film LIKE YOU KNOW IT ALL are both being shown with English subtitles, beginning tomorrow at the CGV Yongsan theater.

If you can maneuver in Korean, you can see them listed on the CGV website. If you don't know Korean and don't know anyone who knows Korean, it would probably be easiest just to head on down to the theater and checking out the timetable while you are there. There are plenty of ways to kill time at the Yongsan Mall if you miss your film's starting time. Sorry, but the films have a different schedule every day, so I cannot list the start times here.

LIKE YOU KNOW IT ALL is supposed to be one of Hong's funnier films, at least according to a couple of people close to Director Hong. And it is long -- 126 minutes. But if it is funny, like WOMAN ON THE BEACH, then I am okay with the extra time.

I may not be a big fan of THIRST, but I know a lot of people always want to see Park Chan-wook's films, so good luck seeing it.

And of course, MY GIRLFRIEND IS AN AGENT continues to screen at the Cinus theaters in Seoul with English subtitles (and Japanese).

I just stumbled across these subtitled screenings on the CGV website. There was no official announcement and I cannot find anything about these screenings on Naver, so if I have made a mistake, please let me know.

UPDATE: Paul over at the Hub of Sparkle blog has apparently taken the trouble of listing the screening times and locations of all the English-subtitled films for this weekend. Very nice of him.

Korea Weekend Box Office - May 8-10

2009-05-12T12:49:00.003+09:00

So, with big-budget Hollywood summer films filling theaters, along with the high-concept, hotly anticipated Park Chan-wook movie, what film takes the top spot last weekend? MY GIRLFRIEND IS AN AGENT (7-Geup Gongmuwon), the silly action-comedy. Not sure if that makes me shudder or if it warms my heart. A bit of both.

AGENT made 2.9 billion won ($2.2 million) over the weekend, bringing its total to 16.2 billion won ($12.5 million). Or 2.47 million admissions, if you prefer. Regardless, it is definitely a hit. Will be interesting how it holds up over the next couple of weeks. I think 3 million admissions should be safe, but 4 million might be asking too much of it.

The JJ Abrams reboot of STAR TREK did fairly well, considering how Trek-averse the Korean market usually is, making 2.6 billion won over the weekend ($2 million), and 2.9 billion won total since Thursday.

Park Chan-wook's THIRST (Bakjwi) dropped pretty dramatically from last week, making just 1.9 billion won ($1.5 million) over the weekend -- that is down from 5.6 billion won last weekend. With 1.75 million admissions so far, it looks like it will pass 2 million, but 3 million will be a reach (unless perhaps it does very well at Cannes).

INSA-DONG SCANDAL keeps chugging along, again in fourth, earning 1.4 billion won to bring its total to 6.0 billion won.

WOLVERINE dropped a lot, too, earning just 1.3 billion won last weekend, after making 3.4 billion won last weekend.

There were no other Korean films in the top-10, but we did have a Japanese film in seventh (the anime KERORO GUNSO THE SUPER MOVIE 4: GEKISHIN DRAGON WARRIORS) and a French film in ninth (also animated, WHITE TUFT, THE LITTLE BEAVER).

Korea Weekend Box Office - May 1-3

2009-05-05T13:36:00.003+09:00

Park Chan-wook's THIRST (Bakjwi) opened strong last weekend, easily taking the No. 1 spot with 5.61 billion won ($4.4 million). THIRST had 821,000 admissions over the weekend (and 1 million since Thursday), far surpassing the 472,000 for I'M A CYBORG BUT THAT'S OKAY, and just slightly less than the 870,000 for LADY VENGEANCE.

In second is the second week of MY GIRLFRIEND IS AN AGENT (7 Geup Gongmuwon), which made 3.50 billion won ($2.7 million) to bring its 10-day total to 10.4 billion won ($8.1 million).

WOLVERINE opened only in third, but it was a relatively good opening for the franchise -- 3.40 billion won ($2.7 million) for WOLVERINE versus 3.66 billion won for X-MEN 3 ($2.9 million).

INSADONG SCANDAL opened in fourth, with 2.38 billion won over the weekend for a total of 2.89 billion won ().

With Korean films taking in three of the top four spots at the box office, looks like they will not tank as badly as they did last May, when Korean movies accounted for a paltry 8 percent.

Something else I found interesting is how many screens are now available for movies. A few years ago, when THE HOST opened on over 800 screens, a lot of people complained about big movies "monopolizing" the theaters. But this week, even though THIRST was on over 600 screens, AGENT and WOLVERINE had over 500 and INSADONG had over 400. Even the rest of the top-10 films all had plenty of screens.

So how well will THIRST do? Well, it's biggest competition in the coming weekend is the new STAR TREK film -- which, while it looks good, has never been a strong franchise in South Korea. But the following week, the competition will really ramp up. If I were to venture a guess, THIRST might squeak over 3 million admissions, but it is going to be tough.

One interesting sign, though -- when I look at the movie ticket reservation chart, as of Tuesday morning, AGENT is ahead of THIRST, 22.64% to 22.63%. Not a lot, but it suggests that AGENT is getting stronger word of mouth and could do better over the long haul.

No IP Piracy Here, Ye' Scurvy Dogs

2009-05-03T23:23:00.004+09:00

Intellectual Property is a weird issue. On one hand, I believe that information wants to be free and that, given convenient and appropriately priced options, people will pay for digital content. On the other hand, having pirated DVDs and software for sale on every major corner and subway station, right out in the open, is just nuts. I mean, many of the guys take requests, for pete's sake. So I guess I kind of feel like Korea is at once too harsh with its digital IP enforcement and way too lenient.

Which is why I do not at all understand the United States Trade Representative removing South Korea from its Piracy Watch List for the first time since 1989. (Taiwan was removed, too). You can read the full report here (see page 10 in particular). At least the report says that Korea could return to the list if progress does not continue.

Meanwhile, Canada is on the Priority Watch List? Really?

Btw, if you scan down to page 35, the USTR gives a list of the world's most Notorious Markets. So if you plan to do any traveling, check out that section to find out all the best places to do your shopping.