North Korean Art

I saw this picture on the 'Ask a Korean' Website.


















All I could think was, 'Nice carpet and...wait a minute... for a piece of totalitarian propoganda that painting looks KIND OF AMAZING'. The artists name is Kim Sung Geun (김승군) and, like the soju bottles below, it is hard to find images on Google. I think his style is fresh and original (not sure about the last picture, though) and I will be using it for my computer wallpaper at work. Imagine having an entire wall covered by an original...

Blue 007 Soju

Soju used to be more imaginatively packaged. I think these are some of the only pictures of the old blue soju bottles outside Naver.

I have two questions. Why did the soju companies change from blue to green bottles? And why aren't I drinking a bottle of awesome 007 soju from a blue bottle, wearing an official 금복주 T-shirt RIGHT NOW?

Definitive proof, as if more were needed, that everything in the past was better than it is now.

Korean Literature- The Good, The Bad and The Weird.

The best place to begin experiencing Korean literature is probably 'The Portable Library of Korean Literature' series, a collection of short modern novels. As this review from the blog Korean Modern Literature in Translation points out, these books do tend to dwell on the miserable experience and aftermath of the Korean civil war. Other themes to the fore include family relationships, food, sickness and poverty. To be honest, this came as a quite a disappointment to me after the technicolour violence and hyper reality of modern Korean cinema. Reading about the minutae of everyday rituals and the petty frustrations of economic reality in Korea is educational, even necessary, but not always appealing. Even very recent works like 'A Photoshop Murder' by Kim Young-Ha were heavy on the soya bean soup and complex web of social obligations.

I particularly disliked the (apparently much esteemed) Yi Mun-Yol's 'An Appointment With My Brother'. A quick extract: '"Your brother is more than ten years your senior, so I think you should make a bow" Mr Kim said to my brother...It was a great relief to me and helped make my first words to my brother easier to bring out. I returned my brothers full bow with a half bow, and could use the plain form of speech without any hesitation or uneasiness'. Would it be culturally insensitive to suggest that this is awkwardly translated and makes the author sound like a pompous arse/stuck up ajjoshi? Most of the book continues in this vein. I kid you not.

Yi Sang's 'The Wings', on the other hand, was a revelation. A vivid description of mental dislocation and disintegration, it seems to stand completely apart from the other works I have read in the series and has encouraged me to look out for more translations of Korean novels. Yi Sang was heavily influenced by European writers, and and this may have made his work more accessible to me. Still, he is something of a national hero (having spent time in a Tokyo jail for 'Thought Offence') and most Koreans, young and old, will have studied his work in high school. See perhaps the only photo taken before his death in 1937, aged 27, below:



















Finally, a poem from the poet Ku Sang, from the 'English Translations of Korean Literature Series'. I am not a fan of his work, finding it laden with heavy handed (Xian) religious imagery and simplistic appropriations of Western culture.

You've just got to love this one, though:

Even the Knots on Quince Trees, part 3:

In Minor Seminary,
early one New Year's Day,
having cut out from the newspaper a picture
of Her Imperial Majesty all dressed in white,
I rushed straight to the toilets.

Having done like the serpent in Genesis
who, squirming his whole body, expelled
like pus a blasphemous passion,
I turned my back on that monastery
in which I had spent three years.

And I became a follower of isms.

ㅋㅋ

와탕카...

...translated into English is a good introduction to real Korean Kultur. They should distribute this book to new teachers in Korea, rather than teaching them about spicy Kimchi, making soap and all the other sparkling PR bullshit to 'educate foreigners' about a sanitised version of Korean culture that has never really existed. 와탕카 is crude, silly and funny, as you can see from this predictably 똥 fixated example here. It is also satirical and cynical about authority figures and traditional social roles/responsibilities. Comes in handy for introducing lesson topics to older students, as well.

Cottage Cheese & Maekolli

The other day my daughter threw up a bucketload of home made cottage cheese in my face at a a samgyupsal restaurant. She was facing me in her baby carrier and suddenly turned into a little vomit volcano. It was pretty funny. In retrospect. It was also all my wife's fault for making her eat the vile stuff. I wrote a longer post about it, but the only thing worth reading was the punchline, so I deleted it.

Best new discovery in MegaMart: mini cans of maekolli. 6 for about 3,000 won. Overpriced, but somehow more fun than the plastic bottles. If I get drunk on Stout and maekolli tonight, I might end up eating the remaining cottage cheese in the fridge.

Sign Language

1 and 2: What's the point in coming here then?
3 and 4: From a safety warning/notice by a lake in Jinju. What is that man doing behind the pillar? And why is the boy flipping me the bird?
5: Old Kimbap Cheonguk sign.
6: OTL = frustration emoticon... some joker rearranged the toilet sign at my uni.

Only in Korea...

UK election

The UK election results are nearly in. The Conservatives have the most seats, but not a majority. The Labour Party is pretty much knackered and looking for a deal with the Liberal Democrats. Although the LibDems seemed well placed, due to Vince Cable's strong performance during the economic crisis and Nick Clegg's 'victory' in the TV debates, they failed to make significant gains in the election.

As for me, I was trying not to weep into my breakfast cereal when I saw the Tory gains against Labour. When their lead was only in opinion polls it seemed so much more remote. I was at university the last time the Tories got kicked out, and it is terrible to see them on the brink of power, especially since objective external circumstances (ie. the economic crisis caused by laissez-faire economic policies) have ripped the guts out of their free market nonsense. The pro-Cameron, Murdoch owned tabloids will start shrieking that Cameron should be PM despite being unable to win a majority.

I hope a Lab/Lib pact screws them all over royally and radicalises a Labour Party that abandoned it's grassroot members and supporters more than a decade ago. I think the reason Labour squandered it's political and economic opportunities and capital so horribly is that the entryist liberal leadership thought they were just too smart to listen to trade unionists, doctors, nurses, teachers and all the other ordinary people who believed Labour would offer something better than discredited Thatcherite bullshit. After all, these people were working at the point of delivery as the government wasted millions on layer upon layer of managers who served no useful purpose except to inspect, observe and harrass their staff in the name of accountability. It was also the core labour supporters who warned them most insistently to go with Europe rather than the US over Iraq. These two basic mistakes, along with a misplaced faith in the City of London, ultimately destroyed New Labour.

After all this, we are faced with the dread prospect of Tories in charge of aggressive cuts in the public sector, letting unemployment soar whilst cutting benefits for the poor and taxes for the better off. Their proposals for electoral reform could help to keep them in power for a decade or more. I just hope what remains of the liberal left can, in effect, snatch victory from the jaws of defeat in the next 24 hours or so.

Update:
Or not. As you please.