Peter Corbishley also pays a visit to the photographic show in Commercial Road

Alerted by LKL, it was a pleasant surprise, on my way back from eating Korean food in New Malden, to pop into Photo Space at the bottom of the road where I live. Two Korean photographers, Jo Seong-hee and Park Ju-young, are currently participating in Uncertain States, a group show at Photo-Space Gallery, 530 Commercial Road, London E1 0HY (Near Limehouse DLR). The exhibition is part of Photomonth, the East London photography festival taking place in over 85 galleries and spaces in East London with more than 150 exhibitions and events during October and November. http://2009.photomonth.org/listings/

Juyoung Park: Adam and Eve

The two Korean photographers whilst sharing a use of dark backgrounds draw on disparate themes. Juyoung Park’s personal identification with a photographic reading of biblical themes is shown in the display of only three of her photographs on this topic. [A little book near the sign-in book gives the others.] For me the cleverest of those on display is that of Adam and Eve with the apple displayed on the lid of an ‘apple’ computer. And is it wifi-enabled? Clever, but also a beautifully photographed self-portrait, and is there is a touch of narcissism?

Seonghee Jo: Heron Quays panorama

Seonghee Jo in contrast photographs nightscapes, some from the Barbican in the City and so not of the East End as such. But one is a stunning fusion of images centred on the station at Canary Wharf. It is a particular pleasure therefore to have a local East End lightmark recognised by a photographer based across London in the more domesticated environs of New Malden itself.

Uncertain States continues until 28 November

Peter Corbishley has just returned from a trip to Dhaka, Bangladesh, where the Koreans are also active.

In 2009 South Korea is putting some $320m investment into the Bangladeshi economy and nearly 160 companies are working there, including a third of all companies operating in the export processing zones. In addition in 2006, for example, KOICA spent 0.7% of its total budget on Information & Communication Technology (ICT) in Bangladesh, amounting to $1,322,000.

Bandhobi - a Bangladeshi migrant worker in Korea

What I did, however, was visit the Bangladesh-Korea Technical Training Centre where in 2008 The Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) completed a $4,000,000 rebuilding and re-equipping of the Centre, including providing curricula (in English) and one of three CNC in the country. This not the only KOICA intervention. I also came across a lone Korean volunteer at the Bangladesh-German Technical Institute, but the Germans after starting the Centre back in the 1960’s then left – although their machines seem still to be working. And there is a also a Bangladesh-Korea Information Access Centre (IAC) in Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) as well as Bangladesh-Korea ICT Training Centre for Education (BKITCE). The latter funded in pursuit of the rapidly growing ICT sector in Bangladesh, although sadly I didn’t have the time to visit these.

However, in comparison with the other technical institutes I visited the Korean are appreciated for the thoroughness of the interventions I saw, as well as for the continuing presence of Korean volunteers let alone the ongoing training – and even jobs – for Bangladeshis in Korea. And I even had lunch in a Korean restaurant with a Bangladeshi who had studied at Ewha.

Aashish Gadhvi reviews Korea v Serbia at Craven Cottage on 18 November

Two years ago Fulham’s Craven Cottage played host to a friendly match on a chilly winter evening between Korea and Greece, which went down a success. The stadium was full of crazy Korean fans singing and chanting throughout the match as Korea walked away 1-0 victors. This game against Serbia was very different from that match in many ways, and none of those reasons are particularly good.

As this match was for Korean television, it kicked off at 2:30 in the afternoon, meaning that there were fewer fans present than in the Greece game. But the Koreans as usual were in good voice, and unlike the game against Greece, had some vocal opposition in the stands. The Serbians can be very proud of the way they got behind their team, and their chants of “S-S-Ser-bi-a” were always just as loud as the Koreans’ “Dae-han min-kuk”. But that was probably because the Korean fans didn’t have much to shout for in this game. The mach was effectively over in the sixth minute, as the gigantic striker Nikola Zigic waltzed past his half asleep marker to tuck the ball away from the cross.

In reply the Koreans showed little effort in the first half. Their passing was wayward, their positioning confusing and their crossing verged on the diabolical. Korea simply could not match the strength and organisation of the Serbians. Every time Korea attacked, guaranteed they would loose the ball before any shots. Every time the Serbians attacked, you closed your eyes and hoped for the best. It was simply a no contest. What made the style of play all the more frustrating was the Koreans’ desire to keep playing long balls. Long balls against a defence which boasts Nemanja Vidic and Branislav Ivanovic is nothing short of stupidity. The Koreans were no match for the Serbians in height, so why they kept relying on long balls was an absolute mystery.

The second half was far better from the Koreans. The best chance that came was a cross from Park Ji Sung that Lee Dong Gook chose to chest down instead of going for a straight header, which gave the defender enough time to clear the ball. But most of the attacks had a similar flavour about them. Good passing, decent space, but nothing in the final third, and certainly no clear cut chances. The odd cross still went wayward and, more worryingly, the strikers Seol Ki Hyeon and Lee Dong Gook both did hardly anything at all.

But perhaps what was most worrying about the result was the pace of the Koreans. A team whose main weapon is pace and energy seemed to lack both. It was a little similar to the match against Switzerland in the 2006 World Cup, in which the Koreans simply couldn’t keep up with the pace and strength of the Swiss. But then again, this is just a friendly, and one can never read too much into a friendly. If Korea were slow and lacked energy it was probably because this was just a glorified holiday for most of them. After all the Koreans were on a 28 game unbeaten run prior to this match, and teams don’t become bad over night. Whether or not the Koreans were going full throttle or not is in the eye of the beholder, but they will come up against far more difficult opposition than Serbia in the World Cup. But as far as contests go, the Koreans really need to learn more about playing against stronger, organised teams.

This match does also shed a little light on the World Cup team that will travel to South Africa. Yeom Ki Hun seems to lack the talent to play at the highest level, and two of Korea’s key playmakers – Park Chu Young and Yong Ki Sung – were not present. The experiment of a single striker up front is not going to work if there is no striker with presence, and the Koreans lack exactly that. Lee Dong Gook no longer has the skill or power to play in that position, and Seol Ki Hyeon was nothing but a stand-in for this friendly. Park Chu Young seems to be the missing link in all this. As a clever second striker who has the ability to play good through ball passes, his skill was certainly something that was missing. Lee Chung Yong and Park Ji Sung showed they are capable of creating good chances, so perhaps all is not lost up front for Korea. The back still looks frail, and Korea were lucky that as a friendly the Serbians didn’t really get going after the initial goal. The score could easily have been 2-0 or 3-0. Korea have always had a problem replacing Hong Myung Bo as the chief organiser at the back, and unless they find a solution quickly, they will have to book early flights home from South Africa.

Stay tuned for Aashish’s exclusive interviews with Kim Nam Il and Lee Chung Yong.

Links:

• S Korea v Greece at Craven Cottage in February 2007

Eunjung Shin commences a series of articles helping those unfamiliar with Korean art to understand some of the treasures in the Korean Gallery in the British Museum. Her first choice is the famous Moon Jar.

Whenever people ask me what the essential characteristic of Korean art is, I always answer: ‘naturalism’. The full moon jar (dalhangari – 달항아리) in the British Museum represents naturalism in Korean art to its fullest extent. But the jar needs to be considered in its historical context, which includes the long-standing interrelationship between Korea and China.

The jar was made somewhere between the late 17th and mid 18th century, in the mid Choson dynasty (1392-1910), by an anonymous Korean artisan. Before the 17th century, Ming dynasty China (1368~1644) had a strong political and artistic influence on Korea. Throughout history, Korea has been less powerful than China, and the relationship is often described as being similar to that between elder and younger brothers in the Confucian tradition. The younger brother, Korea, always tried to show independence from the elder brother, China, but was never completely free. Whenever people talk about Korean culture and history, Chinese influence is always part of the story.

The Korean ceramic tradition has the second longest history in the world. The full moon jar is made of white porcelain, a tradition which was influenced by Chinese white ware. In the early Choson dynasty, potters tried to follow the Chinese white ware tradition, but Korean white ware developed its own character because it was not exported as much as the Chinese. Choson potters produced white porcelain for their domestic market, embodying the Choson neo-Confucian literati’s taste: not pursuing a perfect shape, and using a less decorated style.

Choson literati (Writing poem, Gang Hui-an (1417-1464))

Following the Manchu conquest of China, the Qing dynasty (1644~1911) was formed, markedly changing Korean attitudes to China. Choson Korea regarded the Manchus as ‘barbarians’ and thought of themselves as the only true followers of Confucius. The full moon jar was made in this period. As a result the jar shows strong Korean characteristics which are very different from the much more colourful Chinese pottery of the time.

The jar is not perfectly rounded in shape. Choson people considered a ‘perfect shape’ to be artificial rather than beautiful. Instead, they always pursued a natural ‘imperfection’. This pursuit is also associated with the Korean neo-Confucian literati’s moral attitude. Frugality and purity were the ideals of the time, in which human beings were regarded as being part of nature.

Literati house in the Choson dynasty

Naturalism appears in every aspect of Korean culture. Most traditional literati houses were made of timbers which were left unpainted. The houses retain the natural colour of the wood itself. In addition, the shape of wood also was left largely unchanged, with timbers left in their original shape rather than planed into rectangular beams. It looks as if the timbers have been embedded in the structure of the house straight from nature. In the painting by Chong Son below, the house is surrounded by its garden. The house does not dominate the space but is integrated with it. Chong Son intended the house to be seen as part of nature itself.

Ingok Retreat by Chong Son (1676-1759)

The jar is presented in the museum as a work of art, but it was not considered as such at the time. Choson dynasty housewives stored rice or soy sauce in the jar and sometimes used it as for flowers. The jar is similar in colour to the pure light of the moon. It seems like an object which has always existed in nature, long before people became aware of its existence. The full moon jar is Korean nature embodied: simple and natural rather than gigantic and colourful.

Bibliography
1. Choi, Jae-Soo, Hanoak: Traditional Korean homes, Seoul, 1999
2. Kang, Kyong-suk, Korean ceramics, Seoul, 2008
3. Pak, Young-sook, Earthenware and celadon, London, 2003
4. Portal, Jane, Korea : art and archaeology, London, 2000

Eunjung Shin is an MA student in East Asian Art at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, London

I really wish I didn’t have a day job. This trip, in May 2010, has got to be one of the most appealing prospects for a holiday that I can think of, particularly if you tack on a few days in Seoul first to take in Korean’s intangible cultural asset #1, the ancestral rites at the Jongmyo Shrine. Fabulous. Do give your serious consideration to this invitation from Arthur K. J. Park of Morning Earth.

This is an invitation to join us for Korean tea with An Sonjae (Br. Anthony) and Hong Kyeong-hee, authors of The Korean Way of Tea – in Korea at Hwaeom-sa, an ancient temple where some say tea was first planted in Korea more than 1000 years ago. Join us also at the Mungyeong Teabowl Festival, acclaimed as the best tea bowl festival in the world, where you will meet ceramic tea artists from around the world, highly accomplished local tea ware artists and the Korean Human Cultural Treasures Kim Jong-ok and Chan Han-bong. Join us high in the mountains near Gyeongju, the ancient capitol of Korea, where you will meet Park Jong-il a tea ware artist who has built his home and tea room by hand from raw clay and trees hewn in the mountains. Join us as we travel through the history of Korean tea and tea ware.

At Hwaeom-sa you will both pick and process your own tea from ancient wild plants – true organic tea, and you will stay for two nights at this ancient tea temple – an opportunity to experience the depth of Korean Buddhism and Korean tea.

There is much to see and do on this great tea journey.

We hope that you will be able to join us for Korean tea.

Please go to TeaTourKorea.com to learn more. Please also tell your friends about this extraordinary opportunity.

Join us for Korean tea. Join us for an amazing adventure.

Respectfully,
Arthur K. J. Park
Morning Earth

Links:

• Tea Tour Korea website, including provisional tour itinerary
• LKL meets Brother Anthony
• Buy The Korean Way of Tea at Seoul Selection

LKL completes its coverage of Korean artists at the Venice Biennale.

If you browse the shopping streets of Venice, among the numerous tourist outlets selling carnival masks, murano glass and designer clothes, you might find one or two shops selling well-crafted model book-cases: too big for your average dolls house, but nevertheless covetable. Something you appreciate for itself, for the feeling it engenders — of comfort, reassurance and civility.

Woojung Chun, detail from globe in Library (2009). Image © Daniele Nalesso

Echoing some of these feelings is Woojung Chun’s Library installation, in a darkened room off the end of Garibaldi Street. As your eyes adjust to the lack of light, you see what at first sight seems to be a traditional library from an indeterminate past century, with full-sized versions of the dark wooden bookcases you can find in the shops. A couple of globes stand in the centre of the room. Around them are arranged the seven bookcases. But the orbs are not conventional maps of the world, and there are no books in the bookcases. Instead, there are meticulously crafted objects, Heath Robinson contraptions, mobiles and surreal constructions, giving a feeling of Magritte to the installation.

Image © Daniele Nalesso

Globe from Woojung Chun Library. Image: LKL

Your typical antique globe comes from an age when Western Europe was embarking on a century of exploration and discovery, leading to new ideas, new wealth, and new nations to dominate. They delineate those parts of the world which are known, and those that are terrae incognitae, where be dragons.

With Chun’s globes, everything is unknown. One of them is like a three-dimensional model for a Cluedo board, with rooms mysteriously labelled as “Dog Keepers Lounge” or “Sybyl’s Salon”. You are drawn in to trace a route through the tiny doors, wondering if this is a maze to be solved. The other orb is decorated with enough strange alchemical symbols and creatures to populate a whole library of Dan Brown novels. What does it all mean?

Normally when entering a library you expect to find answers available in the resources therein; or, browsing and cross-referencing from one book to another you eventually find resolution. In Chun’s library, those assumptions are turned on their heads. Whichever way you turn, what initially seems familiar becomes alien, and you begin to wonder why you felt comfortable in the first place.

What happens if you sit on that chair? Image © Daniele Nalesso

Some of the objects in the cases are intriguing and amusing: a system of boxes, string and pulleys forms a complex contraption whose purpose is arcane; and a beautifully-engineered model of a chair suspended in a curving corridor of brass hoops took me back to my childhood and the TV programme Joe 90 (above).

Others are surreal: the chest of drawers with roots growing out of the base; or the black and white photographs of faces whose mouths are swallowing an endless string of letters and numbers.

And some are puzzling or even disturbing: tiny heads rest at uneasy angles; or a plaster nude figure lies curled up, foetus-like, with his back towards you. What is it cowering from? Is it asleep? Is it a Holbeinesque memento mori?

Instead of answers, you leave the room with a head full of questions. The darkened space with the subdued lighting gives a feeling of peace, but the mind is disturbed by its inability to resolve the questions raised by the puzzles with which it is presented. It is, however, a strangely satisfying experience.

Links:

• Woojung Chun’s website.
• Read all of LKL’s articles on the 2009 Biennale.

Breathless (똥파리) is Yang Ik-june’s debut feature, in which he is also lead actor, and the film has deservedly won numerous awards. As the film opens, a man is beating up his girlfriend in the street. To the rescue comes Sang-hoon, played by Yang, who subdues the offender only to turn to the woman and physically berate her for meekly accepting such punishment. And, momentarily distracted, he then gets clobbered from behind by the assailant he thought he had written off.

The opening scene captures the essence of the film well. At its root is the destructive nature of family violence, and the way it shapes peoples lives and influences them long after they have left the family nest. The two main characters in the film come from such abusive backgrounds, and much of the film is about their attempt to escape through building relationships with those around them. Sang-hoon finds domestic violence abhorrent, but the only way he can show this abhorrence is with more violence.

Yang Ik-june with Tony Rayns at the Screen Talk

Sang-hoon’s complex character has much of Yang Ik-june in him. Yang had a similar troubled background: “I have a lot of anger towards my family” he confessed at the Q&A after the screening, and exploring this anger through Sang-hoon’s character had a cathartic effect. The film has moments of extreme violence and extreme tenderness. We sense that redemption, and breaking out of the destructive cycle, is possible, though maybe not achievable for everyone.

Yang Ik-june with Kim Kkot-bi

[Spoiler alert]

As we head towards the conclusion of the film, and as the relationship between Sang-hoon and Yeon-hee (Kim Kkot-bi) blossoms, we sense that things might end up happily. But this is a Korean film, of course, so happy endings are not assured. Will Yang decide to choose the Hollywood cliché and have everyone living happily ever after, or will he follow a more conventional Korean approach and raise hopes only to dash them? An audience member in fact asked Yang why he chose to kill off his lead character. For Yang, killing Sang-hoon was like leaving his past behind him. And nevertheless, the remaining characters seem to be given the chance to create their lives afresh.

More info about this Friday’s talk at SOAS:

Friday, November 20th, 5pm, room G50 (main building)
Dr. Martine Robbeets, University of Mainz
Korean and the Transeurasian languages: similarities that make a difference

Abstract:
The term “Transeurasian” refers a group of geographically adjacent languages, stretching from Japan in the East to Lithuania in the West, that share a significant amount of linguistic properties. It includes at most 5 linguistic families: Japonic, Koreanic, Tungusic, Mongolic and Turkic. The very question whether these five language families descend as daughter languages from one common source is among the most disputed issues of contemporary historical linguistics.

In this presentation we intend to evaluate the evidence in support of genealogical affinity and compare the strength of the evidence with that of well-established language families, such as Indo-European. For this purpose we will discuss sound correspondences, cognate copula and shared verbal morphology.

Speaker Bio:
Martine Robbeets obtained a Master’s degree in Japanese Studies from the University of Leuven in 1996 and an MA in Korean languages and cultures at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands in 1998. From 1998 to 2003 she was appointed as an academic assistant at the department of comparative linguistics in Leiden where she studied the historical relationship between Japanese, Korean, the Tungusic languages, the Mongolic languages and the Turkic languages. In 2003 she completed her Ph.D. on the Altaic affiliation question under supervision of Prof. Dr. F. Kortlandt. In 2004 and 2005 she carried out research in the field of Japanese historical linguistics at the University of Tokyo with the support of the Canon Europe Foundation and the Japan Foundation. From 2006 to 2008 she lectured and researched at the Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz in Germany. As a postdoctoral fellow in Mainz she was hosted by Prof. Dr. Dr. Johanson and supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. From 2007 to 2008 she replaced the head of the general and comparative linguistic department in Mainz, Prof. Dr. W. Bisang. Currently she is working as a research fellow at the department of linguistics in Leuven, funded by a return grant of the Belgian Federal Science Policy Office to promote the reintegration of Belgian researchers having worked abroad.

Two Korean photographers, Jo Seong-hee and Park Ju-young, are currently participating in Uncertain States, a group show at Photo-Space Gallery, 530 Commercial Road, London E1 0HY (Near Limehouse DLR).

Seong-hee Jo: Barbican nightscape

Jo Seong-hee has been loitering in the City and Canary Wharf taking night time photographs of the cityscape, pasting them together in what initially seems a normal panorama but which infact are three images cleverly assembled into one. They can be appreciated on one level, from a distance, as a simple landscape image, but also because the large scale of the work you are tempted to look at the surface of the photograph up close, peering into the windows of the office buildings to see if you can figure out what is going on inside – reminding you of Saturday Night, Kim In-sook’s work recently on sale at Christie’s.

Detail from Barbican nightscape - Seong-hee Jo

Jo Seong-hee’s statement follows:

Seong-hee Jo
Invisible Cities
Lambda prints, float-mounted and frames (150 x 40 cm)

This project is placed in the context of urban night photography. In the early 1900s Alfred Stieglitz pioneered an aesthetic approach to urban photography when he showed that cityscapes could have an imaginative value. Today, new types of media, such as video, pose a challenge to architectural photography. My work aims to show that photography competes successfully with these media, especially if efforts are made to capture the life that surrounds such a building.

This project is an experiment to produce an imaginary “panorama” of high-rise buildings and other urban features seen by night, using the technique of collage. The pictures each consist of three images tightly juxtaposed in one frame. My idea of a panoramic impression furnished by triple images referenced McLuhan’s philosophy regarding the extension of vision. By joining images, you transcend the need to read them sequentially. Hilliard and Scott McFarland also “compressed” time into single images. The result also carries an element of voyeurism.

Juyoung Park - Salome

Juyoung Park - Loaves and fishes

Like Jo Seong-hee’s work, Park Ju-young’s biblical images, set against a black background, inspire quiet contemplation. Her images are overtly religious, but also contain elements of humour as the bible stories are brought up to date. In the intimate breaking of bread, which is a version of the miracle of the loaves and fishes, there’s a bowl of french fries in the middle of the table, while in the Garden of Eden the apple which gives knowledge of good and evil is a wifi-enabled Macbook. The Salome image represents Park’s – or indeed any Christian’s – inner struggle between the desires for things of the flesh (represented by the party-loving Salome in the red dress) and the things of the spirit (represented by John the Baptist). Thanks to the powers of digital manipulation, it is Park’s own head on the plate, and Park herself who plays the dancing Salome. Park Ju-young’s statement follows:

Ju-young Park
Stepping into the mirror
Lambda prints float-mounted and framed (84 x 64cm)

The ultimate inspiration for my work was a personal drive to share my faith with others. I wanted to recreate contemporary biblical images finding their inner meaning. Even though I chose my project as an expression of my belief, I wished to stretch the theme beyond a personal confession of faith, conveying the contemporary meaning of the stories and enabling their reading in a universal context.

As I progressed, I realised my work was concerned with the telling of my own personal story so I decided to convey the meaning through a series of multiple self-portraits. I would say my aim in this project is to communicate my sentiments with other people, or to transform my internal monologue into a dialogue, as it were.

Uncertain States continues until 28 November at Photo-Space Gallery, 530 Commercial Road, London E1 0HY (Near Limehouse DLR). Opening hours Wednesday: Saturday 11am – 6pm. Other photographers exhibiting are David George | Ulka Karandikar | Alex Sandwell Kliszynski | Spencer Rowell | Fiona Yaron-Field. The exhibition is part of Photomonth, the East London photography festival taking place in over 85 galleries and spaces in East London with more than 150 exhibitions and events during October and November.

Links:

• Photomonth website
• Uncertain States website
• Jo Seong-hee’s website

1. Insadong Scandal is like Thomas Crown Affair, only slicker and with more twists. Highly recommended #
2. Don't forget Yu Hyun-mok retrospective tonight, with introduction by Daniel Martin. “Aimless Bullet” one of the best K-films ever. #
3. Aigoo! Is Yu Hyun-mok the most depressing director ever? I don't want to see any more of his films. Kim's Daughters tonight finished me off. #
4. Results of "Petal" essay competition delayed by a few weeks. I thought it was a bit ambitious to mark them all in 7 days. #
5. London Korean Film Festival: Why can't the Barbican keep the films on one screen, instead of changing the location every night? #
6. From next week, I'll be going to work in a Korean-owned building. Is it really worth £773m? http://bit.ly/2GWSyE #

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Stephen Epstein had a busy week last week giving lectures in Cambridge, Oxford and London. He is on a lecture tour of Europe, using the trip as an opportunity to test various chapters from his forthcoming book with a critical audience. Friday’s lecture at SOAS focused on the portrayal of some of Korea’s Asian neighbours in the popular media. Monday’s talk in Cambridge – reviewed by Elizabeth Grace – examined the portrayal of North Korea.

Scene from Hanoi Bride

Over the course of history, Korea has had a semi-dependent relationship with China, has been brutally colonised by Japan, and for much of the recent past has had a neo-colonial relationship with the US. It is only in the past couple of decades, with perhaps the 1988 Seoul Olympics being the first critical milestone, that South Korea has emerged and progressively become a powerhouse. Clearly not the most powerful nation in Asia, but a country which is among the leaders. Epstein’s talk focused on how the rest of Asia, and developing Asia in particular, is portrayed in popular culture. One of the things he noted was a change from the foreigner typically being presented as male and aggressive (the US GI, the Japanese soldier) to being female, exotic and traditional.

In particular, Vietnam was used by Epstein as a case study for how Korea regards the lest developed countries of Asia. Vietnam has a number of special aspects. As a Confucian country dominated by China throughout its history, Korea and Vietnam have some long-standing affinities. Indeed, Vietnamese Studies is a popular subject at Korean universities. But these feelings of affinity are complicated by the more recent feelings of guilt on Korea’s part for their involvement in the Vietnam War.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Meet the in-laws, in Vietnam

Epstein reviewed reality shows such as “Asia, Asia”, “Love in Asia” and “Meet the in-laws”. Such shows interview foreigners (typically migrant workers) and ask them who they most miss from their home country (the show then tries, visas permitting, to bring these people to Seoul for the next show); or they present couples representing successful international marriages, or the husband based in Seoul is introduced to the in-laws based in Vietnam: for one common trait in these shows is that the foreigner, particularly in the marriage shows, is female.

Epstein also examined some TV dramas, including Hanoi Bride. Significantly, this short drama screened over the Chuseok period, emphasising wholesome family values. Here, the Vietnamese lead female character is first seen wearing traditional clothes, in street scenes where bicycles and motorised rickshaws predominate, while in Seoul urban sophistication is emphasised.

Clearly there are the unacceptable sides of Korean attitudes to Asian women: the aggressive advertisements by marriage agencies for poor Korean farmers seeking overseas wives came in for much criticism in both Korea and elsewhere. “Korean princes, please take me home”, say the Vietnamese would-be brides in one Korean newspaper; “your Vietnamese bride can cook and won’t run away”, says the advertisement by the marriage agency.

An audience in Oxford got to hear how Korea currently portrays China in popular culture. Here the picture is more complicated given the long history where China has been Korea’s elder brother. But with Korean investing in and transferring technology to its neighbour, Korea is enjoying a brief period as the elder brother. For the full story, we’ll have to wait for Dr Epstein’s book to come out.

Links:

• The Sincerest Form of Flattery, Vietnam edition, How Vietnam is trying to copy the “Korean Wave”. Mark Russell in Korea Pop Wars, 14 Nov 2009

Colette Balmain reviews Bong Joon-ho’s latest hit, and finds themes which echo his 2003 success

Bong Joon-ho’s Mother, the Korean Film Council’s submission to the 2010 Oscars – 82nd Annual Academy Awards – under the category “Best Foreign Language Film”, has much in common with his 2003 Memories of Murder: a film based upon the abortive investigation into a string of serial murders that took place between 1986 and 1991 in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province. Indeed, Baek Kwang-Ho (Park No-shik), one of the suspects – and the only witness to the murders – in Memories of Murder (Salinui chueok, 2003) is a mentally retarded man, who lives at home with his mother. In Mother, once again we have a emotionally crippled young man, Do-joon (Won Bin), who is implicated in what appears to be a sexually motivated crime: here the murder of a young school girl.

While in Memories of Murder we only hear in passing about Baek Kwang-Ho’s relationship with his mother, Mother (as the title suggest) concentrates on the seemingly incestuous relationship between son and mother (Kim Hye-ja), and as such develops a tangential story from his earlier film into the main plot focus of Mother. However while Baek Kwang-Ho is revealed to be “innocent” – of the murders at least – in Memories of Murder, Do-joon confesses to the murder of the school girl and is incarcerated as a result. As Do-joon suffers from short-term memory loss and cannot remember what he was doing at the time of the murder (possibly as a result of his mother’s attempt to kill him and commit suicide in order that they could be together in the afterlife when he was four), it is left to his mother to prove his “innocence.” She teams up with his only friend, the handsome but thuggish Jin-Tae (Jin Ku), and together they attempt to reconstruct what happened the night of the young girl’s murder.

Won Bin and Kim Hye-ja

The performances by the leads are excellent, especially Kim Hye-ja as the self-sacrificing Mother and Won Bin as her damaged son. As in Memories of Murder, Bong Joon-ho is less concerned with the circumstances of the crime itself than in its impact on a small rural community. As the mother investigates, we discover the seedy underbelly of the community where sex is a commodity to be bartered for money and alcohol, lawyers are motivated by money rather than justice, and violence amongst young men is ubiquitous. It is not too much of a push to see the mother as a metaphor for the nation as a whole, and the film as an allegorical commentary on modern day South Korea. There is something deeply ironic here as before the screening, there was a short promotional video by the Korean Tourist Board.

Some of those expecting the big budget action of The Host (Gwoemul, 2006) will no doubt be disappointed. However along with Park Chan-wook’s Thirst (Bakjwi, 2009) and Na Hong-jin’s The Chaser (Chugyeogja, 2006), Mother is one of the best films to come out of South Korea in recent years and provides a timely reminder that there is more to Korean – and East Asian cinema – than the “extreme” moniker that East Asian cinema has become inextricably associated with in the West.

“Bearing Witness: Post-traumatic identity in contemporary Korean horror cinema: Spider Forest and Mother“: Colette Balmain will be presenting her paper on Monday in conjunction with Director Bong’s visit to Nottingham.

Mother screens tonight at the BFI South Bank, followed by Q&A with the director

Aashish Gadhvi analyses the so-called defector in the Northern ranks.

North Korea’s qualification for the 2010 World Cup has brought about many questions in international football. Not least of all, the desire for more information about the team. Most of all, who are these guys? The mystery surrounding the team is pretty much the same level of mystery which surrounds the country itself. Even the most adamant of football fans, such as myself, struggle to find any information about the North Korea team. However, there is one guy who sticks out like a sore thumb. Jong Tae-se, remember the name, is one of a very few players in the North Korean team who doesn’t play in the North, but his tale is a very intriguing one, even to the neutral.

Jong Tae-se is a 25-year-old striker who plays for Kawasaki Frontale in the J-League, Japan’s premier division. He is a powerful lad, who can score goals and hold the ball up, something which Asian players have had trouble doing, but then again Jong Tae-se is no ordinary Asian lad. Born in Japan in 1984, Jong’s parents were South Koreans, although other sources have suggested that they were from the North. Jong as a youngster was educated in North Korean state-funded schools in Japan. Any of you who have seen the Japanese movie GO! would be familiar with these kind of schools. There are a few in Japan, but the few that do exist preach very much in the vein of schools in the North, i.e. loving the Dear Leader. This education no doubt helped to fuel Jong’s pro-North attitude. Little else is known about the youngster’s days in education except that he continued to go to North Korean state-sponsored schools, and started a love affair with the beautiful game.

Many of the stories which surround his national allegiance are just that – stories, but the general consensus goes like this. While watching North Korea’s defeat to Japan, thus failing to qualify for the 2006 World Cup, Jong was stirred inside, and finally decided that he wished to represent North Korea as his national team. Having always felt like a North Korea, Jong had made attempts to change his nationality and denounce his South Korean citizenship (inherited from his parents) but the request was turned down due to the South failing to acknowledge the North as a legitimate state. But with the help of some North Korean organizations in Japan, he was successfully allowed to have a North Korean passport. Through some loop holes in FIFA’s dual-citizenship laws, Jong was allowed to play for the North, although this no doubt is a very confusing area. Nevertheless Jong was allowed to represent the country that he wanted to represent. What he and his parents must have thought at the time can only be left to the imagination.

Whatever the political consequences of effectively defecting to the North are, it did not effect Jong’s performance on the pitch: it rather boosted his play. In his first two games for North Korea, Jong scored an incredible 8 goals, 4 in both matches, although they were against Mongolia and Macau! This was followed up with scoring against both Japan and South Korea in the 2008 East Asia Cup. Both of the goals he scored displayed his power, and in the case of the goal against the South, effortlessly shrugged off two defenders to chip the goalkeeper. But sadly for Jong, that’s where the goals ended. During the entire 2010 World Cup qualifiers (a total of 11 games) he only scored once, and that too in a 2-1 loss to Iran. Due to the lack of footage I have seen of Jong, I can only imagine that his primary job is probably to use his strength to hold the ball up as a lone striker. The fact that North Korea qualified with 7 draws in total throughout the campaign while Jong was playing seems to point to that conclusion.

Perhaps one of the best traits of Jong is that he is not afraid to give interviews. More importantly he is not afraid to express his opinions. In the past he has blasted his teammates for lack of effort and was one of the only players who came out and openly stated he had experienced great illness after the North accused the South of intentional food poisoning before their match up in Seoul. Whatever secrets still exist about the North, players like Jong are slowly lifting up the iron curtain, but one can only speculate how he will get on under the magnifying glass of football’s biggest stage in South Africa.

Don’t forget: South Korea takes on Serbia at Craven Cottage next week, 18 November, 2:30pm.

Picture Credits: Chosun | Chosun | Flickr | Reuters

When asked to look back at his career, Yu Hyun-mok, one of the four greatest directors from the golden age of Korean film, said that he was proud of two achievements:

1. That he was always an innovator;
2. That he never filmed a melodramatic love story.

In the latter achievement lies the key to Yu, as the romantic melodrama is standard Korean cinematic fare. Yu was never a commercial director. His most successful film, School Excursion, was a sympathetic and humorous look at tradition v modernity, as a group of children from a school in a backward, rural part of the country visit Seoul for the first time. ^[1]

Yu eschewed another familiar theme in Korean film at the time – that of nationalism. Instead, Yu is best known for Obaltan, Aimless Bullet, which is acclaimed by many as one of the best, if not the best, Korean film of all time. It focuses on the lives of an ordinary family struggling to exist in post-war Seoul.

The struggle of ordinary people as Korea emerges into modernity is to a certain extent taken up in Kim’s Daughters, the first film in the Yu double bill on the Tuesday night. Shamanism still has a hold over Kim’s wife, while Christianity is an emerging influence on some of the younger characters. And an irreverent scepticism inhabits the freest spirit among the daughters.

But the mood… The same dirge-like music that is found on the Obaltan soundtrack also predominates in Kim’s Daughters, marking the family’s laborious trudge through the troubles that afflict them. Aigoo! Every sentence uttered by Kim’s wife starts with an Aigoo! Plagued by a curse which has lingered over the house in Tongyeong on Korea’s South coast, since a relative committed suicide there 50 years beforehand. “Only after human beings endure and overcome indescribable sorrow and horror can they stand firm against tragedy,” says one leading character, twice, as if to make sure we’re getting the message. And twice we see the same old lady scooping the water out of her leaky fishing boat, imprisoned in an unbreakable circle of logic and futility: she can’t fish because she’s bailing the water out, but if she stops bailing the boat will sink. “If she doesn’t bail out the boat, many people will die”, the observer adds, on both occasions.

One of Kim's daughters about to meet a watery end

Life is a never-ending experience of fruitless labour and pain: a dutiful wife has to stay with her impotent husband despite the regular beatings she gets, while it seems to be perfectly acceptable behaviour for a husband to slaughter a man for paying a social call on his wife. The paterfamilias is dying of stomach cancer while his business is in terminal decline, and a moneylender seems to be trying to fleece him of his land. The Japanese are grabbing all the best fishing grounds so it’s difficult for a Korean to catch anything, and his daughters can’t seem to marry properly. Madness and death, including a couple of axe-murders, pile on the misery. Aigoo indeed. 97 minutes of gloom passes like 197, and yet nevertheless the plot seems abbreviated and truncated so that you can’t figure out who married whom and why one of the characters ended up in prison. To be fair, there were probably a couple of cuts from the 1960s censors which chopped up the narrative, so it is difficult to tell what narrative jumps were intended by the director.

Your trusty reviewer was more than depressed enough after Kim’s Daughters and didn’t have the emotional reserves for a further 127 minutes of Martyr, the second leg of the Yu Hyun-mok double bill which followed immediately afterwards. One aficionado commented afterwards:

[Kim's Daughters], although very interesting, was quite depressing and difficult to sit through. Martyr was even harder, but still a very compellling film even if I didn’t necessarily agree with what he was trying to say.

And another added

The second film was better, though no more cheerful. You need to stick with Yu though, Philip! He’s the grand master of Korean realism!

But the evening was not all doom and gloom. The highlight was Daniel Martin’s informative introduction to Yu Hyun-mok’s life and works (we could do with more of these screen talks at the KCC screenings), and KOFIC had kindly donated a dozen of their books on the director which were handed out to the early birds. One of the themes LKL constantly harps on about is the need to educate and inform audiences on what they are viewing, and I can therefore give the KCC, KOFIC and the Barbican full marks for their efforts. I can also enthusiastically endorse the objectives of showcasing in this festival the works of the past great directors. Yu was a perfect choice for this year’s festival, as he died in June this year a few days before his 85th birthday. And many audience members came out of Kim’s Daughters with extremely positive reactions.

Kim’s Daughters and Martyr screened at the Barbican on 10 November as part of the London Korean Film Festival 2009. Obaltan / Aimless Bullet screens tonight, also at the same venue. It’s a must-see.

I have to say, though: it just wasn’t my cup of tea. One can have too much Han in one sitting.

1. Much of this background material comes from Daniel Martin’s excellent introduction before the screening at the Barbican.

James Church: Bamboo and Blood
St Martin’s Press, 2008

After Inspector O’s slightly disappointing second outing, James Church is back on form with the third novel in the series, Bamboo and Blood. In another fast-paced story, set against the backdrop of the North Korean 1997 famine and the US-DPRK talks in Geneva, Inspector O is given his usual unsatisfactory mission (”just sweep up a few facts, and don’t dig too deep”) by his boss who always knows more than he lets on. Arms dealers and Mossad agents spice up the tale with an international flavour, all told with Church’s drily witty prose.

“You hungry? I’ll buy you lunch”. There hadn’t been food for lunch for a long time, but we still made the offer sometimes, out of habit.

The plot seems all to close to the bone:

Many of the events mentioned in this story actually happened, though not necessarily at the time, in the sequence, or exactly in the way they swirl around Inspector O. For that reason, and many others, this book is a work of fiction,

says Church in an introductory note. The fact that the story is so grounded in actual events adds to the enjoyment.

Links:

• Buy Bamboo and Blood at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com

Three Korean-born artists had solo shows at the 2009 Venice Biennale: Haegue Yang in the national pavillion, and Woojung Chun and Atta Kim as collateral events.

In LKL’s brief sojourn in Venice, it was not possible to get around all the Korean participants in various group shows, but for the record, they were:

1: Lim Won-ju in Detournement Venise 2009. No images available.

2: Lee Hye-rim in Glass Stress. A visitor captured one of Lee’s contributions and posted it on YouTube. Marginally unsafe for work:

Click here to view the embedded video.

The following photo of Lee’s contribution is sourced from the Starkwhite blog

Lee Hye-rim from the Crystal City series, 2008, C-type photograph

3: Kim Minjung in “Sant’ Elena: Seduction into the Sign” – a show based on the dialogue between the installation of Richard Nonas and the works of five women artists:

Minjung Kim

Photo Credit: Dalbera

Koo Jeong-a: A Reality Upgrade & End Alone (2009) - 3,000 Rhinestones

4: Finally, Koo Jeong-a had two installations, one in the main Giardini and one in the Arsenale. The Giardini installation, entitled A Reality Upgrade & End Alone (2009) involved 3,000 rhinestones embedded in a lawn. They were unfortunately completely invisible even if you knew what you were looking for – maybe by the time I visited either the tourists had pocketed them all as souvenirs or they had just been trampled into the mud. Or maybe they were hidden under the autumn leaves. I emailed Koo’s gallery after I visited the Biennale, and they confirmed that the rhinestones were still there, in the soil, somewhere.

Koo’s installation in the Arsenale, Fantasissima & Fantasissimus (2009), was easier to find. A sculpture that looked like a tree that was about to turn into one of Tolkein’s Ents.

Koo Jeong-a: Fantasissima & Fantasissimus (2009) - Mixed media, sound

Charles Robert Jenkins: The Reluctant Communist: My Desertion, Court-Martial, and Forty-Year Imprisonment in North Korea
University of California Press, 2008

“Our choices are what makes us who we are. Nobody knows that better than me.”

So ends the autobiography of Charles Robert Jenkins, the only American to spend most of his life in North Korea and get out to tell the tale.

Jenkins spent most of his life with three other US military border-crossers, including Dresnok, whose story is told in Dan Gordon’s film, Crossing the Line. Like Dresnok, Jenkins did not walk across the DMZ because he thought he was going to live in some socialist paradise. Dresnok had nowhere else to go, while Jenkins simply did not want to have to go on combat missions, either in Korea or in Vietnam – where he was to be posted next. Naively, and not thinking terribly straight, he thought he could cross the border, hand himself in to the Russians, and soon be headed back home. Forty years later, thanks to the Japanese, he made it.

In that forty years, he spent most of his time with the three other deserters, got married, had children and, by North Korean standards, had a reasonable standard of living. But the irony of his ultimate reluctance to return to face the music with the US Miliatary authorities is that his punishment from the court martial was thirty days’ detention (with five days off for good behaviour), while the sentence he endured north of the DMZ was forty years in a country that is one big prison camp.

It is a moving story, and a revealing one. Jenkins would not be living in Japan now if it had not been for Koizumi’s engagement with North Korea. The diplomatic bombshell that went off in 2002 was Kim Jong-il’s admission that North Korea had abducted Japanese citizens to train North Koreans as spies, and one of them happened to be married to Jenkins.

What we learn from Jenkins is that the North Koreans’ kidnapping activities were not just targeted at Japanese citizens, but just about any nationality they could get their hands on.

It is clear that the North Koreans didn’t know what to do with their American deserters. But after being forced to learn the teachings of Kim Il-sung parrot fashion they were admitted to North Korean citizenship. In one bizarre incident after another, the Americans and we the readers come to realise that North Koreans live on a completely different planet from the rest of us.

Take their attitude to women: once admitted to citizenship, the four soldiers were provided with cooks who were also expected to act as concubines (and Jenkins was reprimanded for not having enough sex with his). Take their somewhat male-centric view of gynaecology: the cooks in question were given their assignments because they were thought to be barren. They were all divorcees who had failed to provide their ex-husbands with offspring. When one of them fell pregnant by one of the Americans, the “Organization” realised they needed to learn a thing or two about the birds and the bees. And, because the evil Americans could not be permitted to father children by pure-blooded Korean maidens, kidnapped foreign women were provided as wives.

Jenkins was a bit of a handyman, and how he discovered some of his botch-it-yourself tips is anyone’s guess. Did you know that nylon fishing nets last a whole lot longer if boiled in pig’s blood? That mixing coal with clay makes it burn more slowly (maybe the latter is obvious, but the technique for executing this is less so). All sorts of handy skills such as candle-making, or handy scams such as bartering dried corn for moonshine or corn noodles, made the difference between a life which was just about bearable and one which was insufferable.

Jenkins learned a few scraps about the outside world during his forty years north of the DMZ: he knew about the Panmunjom axe-murders and the USS Pueblo incident through local broadcasts; but he also managed to secure a radio (from which he learned about Kim Jong-il’s startling admission to Koizumi) and also got to see some Micheal Jackson videos and Bruce Willis films via smuggled VHS videos. But his daughters refused to believe that the Eddy Murphy film “Welcome to America” could be remotely plausible, because the propaganda they were fed by the Organization was that blacks were kept as slaves in America. “This isn’t the real world,” Jenkins told his daughters, but it was the only world they knew.

Jenkins wrote his book – with the assistance of Time journalist Jim Frederick to help fund a trip back to the US to visit his family. He now lives quietly in Japan with his wife, working in a biscuit factory. The book is an extraordinary tale from someone who lived the best part of his life in a place that is totally incomprehensible.

Links:

• Buy The Reluctant Communist at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com

1. Best wishes to @youneelondon for her album launch gig tonight at Pizza Express Dean St. http://bit.ly/3TddQd #
2. @indiefulrok Welcome home after your travels! in reply to indiefulrok #
3. David Kilburn, friend to Korean traditional arts – and KAA UK – in ill health. Get well soon David. http://bit.ly/2NpuxL #
4. Bong Jong-ho Mother screening and Q&A now moved to NFT1. More tickets available! http://bit.ly/YuEIH #
5. RT @suzyinseoul k-pop fandom going batshit crazy today http://bit.ly/3gdeMN. Will someone tell me what's going on with TVXQ and SM? #
   • Jo Wakely: SM are slave diving b’s and the boys want their contracts altered to so they have more freedom and actually get paid the right amount…It’s all getting very nasty….
   • Suzy in Seoul provides the following background info from the Korea Times:http://bit.ly/66PRd8

   

6. Around the World in 80 Days: In Korea. 33:30 in, around 13 mins of footage. Not the usual dog restaurant, + Busan port http://bit.ly/3ccNlc #
7. I'm told Harry Hill's TV Burp on Sat 8 Nov will have a Korean sketch, w/ Korean actors from Holby City and Neighbours #
8. Yang Ik-june's Breathless left people speechless at the Barbican last night. Amazing film, fascinating & funny Q&A #
9. Jen Barclay enjoys a mushroom and swaddling clothes treatment at a Jeju Island health spa: http://bit.ly/44bthf #
10. @FGajia Thanks for uploading that Harry Hill TV Burp Korean feature! http://bit.ly/4o1dJ7 in reply to FGajia #

    Click here to view the embedded video.

11. RT @CoolstuffKorea Telegraph mag likes Korean Milan-based designer Michi Jung's speakers that look like furniture: cool! http://bit.ly/taa1T #

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That’s what The Times seems to think. I’ve never had much confidence in that paper when it comes to Korean film (one of their critics in particular, Wendy Ide, seems to have a complete downer on the country), but I’m not sure that many informed Korean film buffs would agree with the choice of Lady Venceance as the top Korean film of the Noughties. I’m not sure even that Park Chan-wook fans would nominate it as his best.

Yesterday’s Times had one of those periodic “top films” lists, this one being the top 100 films of the decade. The only Korean film to make it, at #97, was Lady V. The top East Asian film in the list (unless you consider Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain, at #17) is Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love (#37), followed by Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away (#61), Edward Yang’s A One and a Two (#82), Zhang Yimou’s House of Flying Daggers (#93), Lady V and then Kinji Fukusaku’s Battle Royale (#99).

And dull-as-ditchwater films such as Gladiator make it in at #32.

Any consolations? Team America, World Police, with its famous Kim Jong-il puppet, is at #5.

Links

• The 100 Best Films of the Decade, The Times, 7 November 2009

Details of Kiejo Sarsfield’s classes for November:

14th November.

Menu :	1. Haemul pajeon (seafood pancake) 2. Bibimbab (Mixed vegetables, beef, rice with spicy sauce) 3. Korean Miso Soup with tofu
Time :	11 AM —2 PM
Cost :	£30

This menu seem most popular, I have done it many times.

28th November. Cancelled

This menu is for the drinks party, Christmas and New Year. If you are planning to have a party, this would be very useful.

Menu :	1. Tiny meat ball with tofu. 2. Seafood ball with spicy sauce 3. Rice ball, belly pork and lettuce
Time :	11 AM —2 PM
Cost :	£30

Contact kiejosarsfield [at] hotmail [dot] co [dot] uk to reserve your place