Thursday, March 31, 2011

"I Love You"

http://blogs.wsj.com/korearealtime/2011/03/22/south-koreas-sleeper-movie-i-love-you/
 The movie, "I Lover You", is a movie flimed based on a famous webtoon (cartoon that is published on a website). This movie illustrates loves between Seniors. I have not watched the movie yet, so I will shortly describe the contents based on my memory about the cartoon. There are two couples in this movie. One of the old men delivers milk every morning, and meets this old lady who collects trash to earn little money. The man helps her pushing the cart to collect the trash, and falls in love with her. Another man is the friend of that old lady, and he also lives day by day by earning small amount of money from managing parking lots. He has this wife who has dementia, and he takes care of her so well.
 When I read this webtoon, I felt many things. The scenes where the old man tries to talk to his wife with dementia was so touching, and since all of four characters are abandoned by their children, it made me think thoughfully about how I would treat my parents when I get older. The thing I thought the most, is about love. People does not consider older people to love someone else other than their family, especially in Asian culture. Most Korean people think this as something embarrassing. However, I learned that people can love others no matter how old they are.I really look forward to watch this movie, since many people says that this movie illustrates those things I mentioned well.

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Asian education

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/fashion/16Cultural.html?_r=1
 Amy Chua is a professor of Yale University. She recently wrote a book about her education, which is extremely harsh to their children. After I read this article about her new book and her educational theory, I recalled the memories of the education in Korea. Almost every Korean parents regard their children's grades at school as the most important thing.Therefore, they force their children to attend "cram schools" after schools are over. "Cram schools" are basically similar to the schools, but the students attend there for additional studies after school. There are many types of "cram schools," and English and Mathematics are regarded as the mandatory subjects when one goes to the cram schools. Usually, when a kid enters an elementary school, his or her parents send the kid to a cram school, and sometimes a child as young as four or five years old goes to the cram school. The hours a student studies in the cram schools in a day depends, but many of them stay in there at least two or three hours. Since most of them go to more than one cram schools a day, so many students come to home as late as seven. As one goes to a middle school, the hours they stay in cram schools increase, and high school is even worse. For instance, I had classes until five p.m., had diner at school, and was forced to stay at school until ten for "night study hall". After that, I had to go to a cram school, which started at 11:00 p.m. and ended at 1:00 a.m..
 Many people asked me if it was effective to study in Korea. And every time someone asks such a question, I answer them "No". Even though I studied for a long time, I could not concentrate on almost any subject, since I was so tired due to last night's cram schools. After I read the article about Amy Chua, I started to wonder if that kind of education is really effective. From the article, Chua says that she forces her children to be on the top of everyone in any field. That can be possible if one really put efforts 24/7, but I am not sure that will make the one happy. Not to mention that the child would rebel against parents, in my opinion, this kind of education does not guarantee the stable and happy future.

Monday, March 28, 2011

UV


 A Korean comedian, Sae-Yoon Yoo, is recently gaining people's attention by releasing a new album. His first album was released last year, and it was so popular for the witness in the songs. Corroborated with a professional singer-song writer, Sae-Yoon created a  group, UV, and made people laugh with brilliant  lyrics and music videos. Last summer, they released a song named "Sorry, I'm not cool", demonstrating a guy's feeling towards the woman who wants to break up with him. After UV gained some attention from people by that song, they appeared in a show, called UV Syndrome. This show was a documentary type, and filmed UV's daily lives. During the show, UV did some embarrassing things, including having a concert in a high school radio booth, which successfully made people laugh. The newest album is gaining attention with the collaboration with one of the most famous singer, JYP. As one of the people who enjoyed last summer's UV's album I'm really looking forward to listen to the album.


Sunday, March 27, 2011

Please Look After Mom

 The novel, Please Look After Mom, was written by one of the most prominent author in Korea, Kyung-Sook Shin, and was so popular. Released in 2009, Please Look After Mom was sold over 1.7 million copies, and affected Koreans in many different ways. Here is the synopsis from Barns and Novel.
 A million-plus-copy best seller in Korea—a magnificent English-language debut poised to become an international sensation—this is the stunning, deeply moving story of a family’s search for their mother, who goes missing one afternoon amid the crowds of the Seoul Station subway.

Told through the piercing voices and urgent perspectives of a daughter, son, husband, and mother, Please Look After Mom is at once an authentic picture of contemporary life in Korea and a universal story of family love.You will never think of your mother the same way again after you read this book.

 As one of the readers who was so impressed and touched by this novel, I felt so glad when I heard the news that this novel will be released in the U.S.. For the younger people, this novel gave chances to look back what they have done to their parents, and for the older people, it gave chances to reminisce their memories with parents. As one of the people who were influenced by this book, I hope people over the world enjoy it. 

Friday, March 25, 2011

After Japan was attacked by a huge earthquake two weeks ago, many countries have been sending them helps. As a country located right next to Japan, Korea is also trying to help Japan. Many medias are trying to persuade people to donate for Japan by many means. However, the concert that was broad casted yesterday for the fundraising is blamed by many people, because of song selection. There is an old singer, Young-nam Jo, who chose to sing a inappropriate song to persuade people to donate for Japan. What he sang was a song that's lyrics was made out of one of the most famous poet's poem. The poet has died during the time period when Japan was invading Korea, and thus the poem is about blaming Japan and wishing the freedom in Korea. After this concert was broad casted, many people in Korea blamed the singer and the PD of the show for the song selection. It is good to help other country to recover from a disaster, but I think that people should be aware of the whole situation too. Helping others is what we should do, but we don't need to do that by humiliating our history.  

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

   Since the movie, Memory of Murder, was opened in Korean theater in 2003, films about those unsolved cases gained attention. Memory of Murder is a film that is based on a real case where the murdered is not found yet. In 1986, a woman's body was found, and within a month, three more dead bodies were found that were seemed  to be murdered in the same way. The police tried to find the murderer, but eventually failed, and the case was closed, because too many years were passed. In 2007, another film, His Voice was released. This film is also based on a real crime case. It is about the boy who was kidnapped in 1990s. The boy's body found to be dead, but this case was also closed unsolved, because of the prosecution prescription.
   These movies were popular, not just because those are entertaining. The major reason for those films to be successful, is because of the the purpose of the movie directors to make those films. They filmed the movies about the past cases to find the criminals. Although the cases were closed because of the prosecution prescription, some people could not give up to find the murderers, and decided to gain people's attention by medias. Even though they were not successful on finding the criminals, people became more aware of those crimes, and I believe that that helped people to prevent some of crimes.

Monday, March 21, 2011

I am a singer

  
    This new Korean TV show, I am a singer, is enormously popular these days. This show is showing the competitions among seven famous singers in Korea, all popular and famous. When they are assigned certain songs or themes, they recreate those for two weeks and have performances. So far, they had only two performances, but the quality of that were surprisingly good, and therefore, people's expectation for the next performances is growing. When the seven singers perform, 500 random people vote for the best one and the one who gets the least votes must yield for another singer for the opportunity to have performances.
     Korean Music industry was not so fluent these days, because many of the singers are "wanna-be singers" without much skills. As this show becomes so popular, many of the Korean people became interested in more "skilled" singers. In my opinion, this show is really good, since it gives opportunities for the singers to perform their talents, as well as amuse the audiences.

Wednesday, March 9, 2011


Korean people, especially the young women are very sensitive about being in fashion. Most of them copy the stars, so whenever some star tries something new and be famous because of that, those items become widely popular and be sold a lot. These days, most popular one is the style called “the airport fashion”. As the name of it shows, this style is based on the clothes and accessories worn by stars in airports. The basic theme of this fashion is “worn as if you did not care much about clothes”, but this is kind of ironic, since people care a lot to wear as naturally as possible. Here are some pictures of so-called “airport fashion”.





People's interest in clothing and fashion can be helpful to improve Korean fashion industry. However, Korean people tend to try hard to copy what everyone else is wearing, which cannot be helpful for one's individuality. To be a "fashionable person" people should learn to create their own style, rather than try to be a part of everyone else,