PSY, Attaboy, Hyun-Bin 현빈, and The Ultimate Korean Star Taboo

Soundtrack: PSY: "Right Now" - a K-pop (or thereabouts) song that actually kind of rocks.  I like it.  Hit play and start reading; more about PSY later.


One of the conversation topics I like to bring into my discussion classes is this: what's the worst sin a Korean celebrity can commit?

I usually lead in by referencing a few Korean celebrity scandals - including my all-time favorite celebrity scandal anywhere, EVER: the Na Hoon-a scandal (I wrote about it here) - rumor had it that he'd had his manhood cut off by gangsters for getting involved with a starlet who had been "claimed" by a Korean gang leader.

Repudiating those claims led to what I still believe is the greatest celebrity scandal moment, maybe ever, when Na Hoona held a press conference where he stood up on the press conference table, unbuttoned his pants, threatened/offered to give proof positive his piece was pristine, and then stared around the press room with an "I fucking dare you to ask another question" face until all reporters had snapped their pictures, and had begun, presumably, to cower in fear.  After the press conference finished, I imagine he slew a wild boar with his bare hands, battled an army of ninjas with lightning from his eyes, and tore out the viscera of the reporter who'd first concocted the story, tied a gold bauble to it, and worn it around his neck.  That press conference video: truly epic.


Anyway, the question I bring into class is, "What's the one thing a Korean star must not do?"  (I teach the phrase "career suicide")

In America, it's racism.  And if you don't believe me, kindly let me know if Michael Richards has been getting any work lately.  Even a megasuperduperstar like Mel Gibson was out after two strikes - being shunned from Hangover 2 is a pretty good definition of rock bottom, if you ask me.

Some of the other sins worth comment:

these days, a lot of people in my classes didn't have a problem with stars who were gay (though some would prefer if one kept it to onesself)
domestic violence was seen as pretty unforgivable
alcohol problems were OK as long as they didn't disrupt one's career
drug issues, no surprise, were a much bigger deal here than back home
a surprising amount of resentment for stars who used their fame to get into a good university
plastic surgery?  a great deal of ambivalence, both for males and females

But this was agreed upon almost across the board, and emphatically with my male students: the number one taboo for Korean (male) stars is:

Don't you DARE try to skip your military service.

MC Mong (a singer I liked) saw his career vanish like a puff of breath on a cold day, when allegations surfaced that he had teeth pulled to dodge his military service.  And then, instead of just doing his service (the only way to recover), he stuck to his guns, and kept trying to dodge.  His music was (is) fun.  But he's been erased completely: TV shows where he used to be a featured member edit out any mention of him.

PSY (see the video at the top) was a reasonably successful hip hop star, but when he tried to skip his military service, he ended up, "serving it twice," in wifeoseyo's words.  Since he paid his dues, all is forgiven (not quite forgotten though), and he can now release a song like "Right Now" and run a comeback.  As I said: I like the song.  I also like that he looks like a total ajosshi, that he's so totally out of the K-pop mold, yet he's got a hip-hop career.

but if you don't serve... well, first of all, you can't work any kind of job in Korea without doing your military service... but also, buddy, you're the object of contempt for anyone around you who hears about it.  Ask Korean men around age 30 to 40 (that is, old enough to remember) about Steve (Seungjun) Yoo, a Korean rapper who was really popular until 2002, when, and after spending lots of press time talking about how he'd happily do his military service when the time came, he instead became a naturalized US citizen, and got deported.  He walked away from his music career, and lives in LA.  Even today, Wifeoseyo and the men in my class talk about him with a kind of contempt that's usually saved for Judas, Brutus, Japan collaborators, and Jim Hewish.

And in light of this, there's a fella named Hyun-Bin.   (image)

He's been a popular Korean actor for a while, and his drama, "Secret Garden" is having its series finale right about now.  Not only is he famous for his acting, the song he recorded for "Secret Garden"'s soundtrack is currently number one: this is about the Korean equivalent of being Whitney Houston in 1992, with the number one song and the number one movie at the same time.  He's the buzz buzzy buzzmaster all around the Korean internets and he's twittertastic as well.

Here's "That Man" - his #1 song right now, from his #1 TV show OST.


The time has come for him to serve in the military, and rather than go for some patsy desk job, or work in military propaganda videos like a lot of stars do, he's applying to join the marines: one of the grittiest, dirtiest, frontlineiest, right-up-in-the-shit jobs the Korean military has to offer.  (Article: English Chosun)

The Marines is known to be dangerous, and Korea is known to love celebrities who seem unpretentious - ones who give to charity anonymously, who choose not to use their fame to get into famous universities, who make TV appearances without makeup, and act the fool at a noraebang for cameras, so that people know they're just ordinary folks too.  That Hyun-bin wants to eschew the privileges his fame could earn him, and serve the military the best he can, is admirable.  (Korea Herald reports: since the North Korean shelling of Yongpyeong Island, men signing up for the marines has taking a huge jump.  Attaboys!)

And readers, I guarantee you: when he does finish his service, he will have a couple of years where he can do no wrong, for approaching his military service this way, and if he plays it right, he might stretch the cachet he's earned here even longer.  If you think people love him now, just wait a couple of years until he gets out.

Good for him.  That's all.  Good for him.  And good luck serving your country, sir.

OK. Lee Hyori gets it this time. 이효리

This is a little after the fact, but something had to be said.

Oh come on Hyori. I like Lee Hyori (이효리). What's not to like? She's cute, she's a super-de-duperstar in Korea, she's really fun in her TV appearances.  She's great, right?  Plus, my "fetish bingo" post about her is one of my most popular posts ever (and the one where I most often have to clean up trolls' comments)

She makes awesome videos and super-fun songs like U-Go-Girl, which is one of my favorite K-pop videos, mostly because Hyori actually seems like she's having fun when she dances, while a lot of the popstars out there seem like they're just playing a role, or going through the paces their trainers taught them (especially live: they're just not having fun.  The farther down the alphabet scale (b-list stars, c-list stars) the worse it is).



She's great, right?  Absolutely... except...

she was on CNN.go on November 11.


and here's what she says, according to the subtitles, starting at: 0.25 or so.

Seoul is a city with a long history.  There are two sides.  Many traces of traditional things on one hand...but it is a well-planned city where you can also see many modern designs.  Koreans are racially homogeneous. It's always been about one culture and one ethnicity.  So we have a strong solidarity above anything else.  And there is the emotional attachment that Koreans call "jeong" which relates to the brotherhood of the race.  This "jeong" is what bonds us tightly and makes us think of one another as a single family.

So... she gets a chance to introduce Korea to the world.

And she chooses to introduce the one-blood myth as the thing that will make people decide Korea's awesome?  I mean, really?  "The best thing about us is that YOU can NEVER be a part of our club!  It's nothing you did; you were just born wrong.  Isn't that great!  Come visit Korea tomorrow!"

As a non-ethnic Korean who plans to live the better part of my working life in Korea, I'm really annoyed by this one-blood stuff.  Really annoyed.  Because while there are many ways to define what Korean society is and isn't, it's one of the few that draws a circle in which I will always be an outsider, no matter how well I speak the language, no matter how dutifully I perform the jesa and the other rites, no matter how many little Koreans (correction: half-Koreans) I bring into the world.    It was a useful myth to generate identity during the Japanese occupation, as well as to help Koreans sign onto Park Chung-hee's development plans... but now that non-Koreans living in Korea have topped the one million mark, and in light of the fact there's NO WAY Korea could have been invaded two thousand times (as it's told) without a little bit of invader DNA mixing into the pure Korean gene pool (p.s.: why is it called the "mongol spot" if Korean DNA is pure?  Shouldn't it be called the Korean spot?)...can we please retire the one-blood myth?

(more on the one-blood Minjok Myth from the Metropolitician, who points out that the one-blood method of encouraging national identity was led by Koreans who had been studying European fascism.  And more again about race-based nationalism.)

"We have a strong solidarity above anything else" -- really?  Because if the one blood thing is true, then North Korea's gotta be included in that solidarity, but most accounts of North Korean refugees don't seem to support that ideal solidarity.  And ask ten South Koreans if they would wish for North and South Korea to be reunified tomorrow, and watch all the backpedaling and equivocations you start to hear.  "It'll be expensive.  It was really hard for Germany.  I don't think our cultures are the same anymore.  Maybe if other countries provided a LOT of aid...  Well, on second thought let's not go to Camelot: it is a silly place."

I'm sorry, but I call bullshit on any one-blood solidarity talk as long as 400 000 South Koreans will come out for a U.S. Beef protest, without seeing at least double that coming out for every protest demanding accountability for North Korea, and the fact they are still operating concentration camps to suppress their own people...(or, in Hyori's one-blood view, "our brothers and sisters").  Didn't hear a lot of "let's reach out to our brothers and sisters" rhetoric anywhere after North Korea shelled that island last week. (More of my posts about North Korea)

And then, just in case we hadn't already gotten the message that Koreans are way more specialer than others, so we should visit Korea and hope to become cooler by association (but really, that won't work, because we have the wrong blood, so we can't be part of the club... but I guess we should still visit Korea to gaze longingly at the cool insiders)... she trots out jung.

Has she updated her views on Korea since 1983?  And is this really what she thinks will win the esteem of CNN.GO viewers for Korea?

Now Jung is an interesting idea - my favorite piece on Jung is from The Joshing Gnome, who wrote "What is Jung and how can we kill it" (part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4 part 5) in 2008: one of my favorite pieces of K-blogging, and so good I hope he tells me before he ever takes his website offline, so I can copy his series and host it on my page, wherever that is.

Basically, Jung is a feeling of warmth, affection and intimacy between two people.  It can come out of a lot of things -- it's been used as the reason split-up couples get back together (they're just used to being around each other), it can be used to describe the feeling of kinship that rivals eventually develop, and it can also be used to describe that feeling when you feel like you've been old friends with someone, even though you've only just met them, or the affection by which two old friends can pick up exactly where they left off, even though they haven't seen each other in twelve years.  It's the applicable word for the way you can take one group of five people, put them in a room together for an hour, and they're still strangers, and you can take another group of five people, put them in the same room, under the same conditions, and they'll come out friends for life (cf: The Breakfast Club).  Group B has jung.  The Breakfast Club had jung (and not a Korean in the lot of them, was there?)  Group A doesn't.

Now, because there isn't a word that carries exactly all those nuances in English (or in most languages,) I've been told by Koreans that jung is a uniquely Korean feeling.

I disagree: Jung is simply a uniquely Korean word... but here's another word that doesn't exist in English: "schadenfreude" (feeling happy when something bad happens to someone you hate - for example, the way I felt when I saw this video of Brett Favre)



Now, the fact schadenfreude is a German word doesn't mean that only Germans can feel schadenfreude.  Germans aren't the only ones to go "Yeah!  Brett Favre is really annoying!  That clip was awesome!  Maybe this time he'll stay retired!"  In fact, when I first learned the word schadenfreude, the feeling I had wasn't one of confusion and lack of understanding; the feeling I had was recognition: "So there IS a word for that!"

And it was the same with "jeong" - I was glad to learn the word, because it's a great, useful word that describes an aspect of human interactions in a clean, simple way.  It hits the nail on the head better than any English word I know.

I'm sorry, Hyori, but jeong doesn't relate to the brotherhood of the race, or you have to explain why most of my South Korean friends, as well as South Korean media, are trying to distance themselves from North Korea.  It isn't race-based at all, and making it sound like it's tied to Korean blood is ignorant, and wrong.  I KNOW jeong isn't race-based, because I've had classes of Korean students who just didn't get along, who filled hours of my life with awkward pauses and silences (and it wasn't because of their English ability: they were all intermediate) they just didn't have jeong.  They didn't talk together in Korean either, the night we went out for some beers, in a desperate hope that maybe that would get them talking to each other.  If jeong came from being Korean, they should have had it... but they didn't.

(And if Jeong comes from korean blood, will my kids have half-jeong?  Does the country we live in while they grow up influence that?  What about full-blood Korean international adoptees who can't speak Korean? What about ethnic Koreans in China? Do they have jeong? what about kyopos who can or can't speak the language?  What about a missionary kid who grew up in a Korean school and speaks fluently, but has blue eyes?  And when does jeong get passed from the (Korean) parents to the (Korean) kids, and can that only happen while physically in Korea, or while using the Korean language?  Could a non-Korean kid raised in Korea in a Korean family have jeong?)

And this kind of a description of Korean culture -- laced with undertones of racism and exceptionalism -- is badly miscalculated, if this is how you think viewers of CNN.GO will be convinced to like and admire Korean culture.

I like you a lot, Hyori, but you stepped wrong this time.  And I'm calling you out (fourteen days late).  And maybe the Hyori fan club is going to fill my comment board up with hate... but I'll just have to deal with that, because Hyori's view of Korean culture is outdated, and just ignorant, and as one of the people who is marginalized by the myths promoted in it, I WILL stand up and object to it.

I like you a lot, Hyori, and any time you want a private English tutor, just call me: we're the same age, you know.  But I hate what you said, and the way you think about Korean culture (if this is actually how YOU feel about Korean culture) because you're making me an outsider.

And I'm not.

OK, Brian, I'll bite. Here's some Yuna for you. 김 연아

Since I'm apparently Brian in Jeollanamdo's main source for Kim Yu-na stuff, I'll give him what he's obviously looking for.

Kim Yu-na performed at the Festa on Ice here in Korea, to entertain her rabid Korean fans and get paid. The show was playing on a television in the restaurant where I had dinner with my buddy, and it was . . . quite a show. Three of the five cheesiest songs I know came on (fortunately, "You Lift Me Up" either didn't make it onto the card, or played while I was out of the room), but the goofiest point came when Kim Yuna did her solo ice dance, wearing a short, flappy skirt, and some dumb, besmitten cameraman did some of the worst camerawork I've seen in my life.

See, when watching figure skating, the long shot is important to see the full skating motion. This one goofball cameraman started perving on Yuna with his camera, aiming way-too-close shots right at her lady bits instead of panning out to actually show what she was doing, and leading to the low point of the night, the extreme close-up of the crotch-shot jump at 1.12. (And for the really pervy of you, in slow motion at 4.20 (heh heh. 4:20). He also can't keep her face in the frame at 3:30...I'm guessing he was operating the camera with one hand, if you know what I mean.



Anyway, there you go, Brian. Hope it was good for you; I prefer the competition stuff.

My buddy Charles was visiting from Canada, and he asked me if Koreans were fans of figure skating before Yuna came along, and whether Koreans were figure skating fans or just Yuna fans. I answered as honestly as I could, and said, "Really, Koreans are Korea fans, and any Korean who's doing well will find a fanbase here, and a bunch of sudden diehard fans of the sport." I have more to say about Korean sports nationalism, and sports nationalism in general, but Korea sports nationalism isn't much different in type than other countries...though it might be different in degree. Especially now that Koreans are doing well in various arenas, I'd say that if you wanted to imagine Korean sports nationalism when living in Korea, think (if you're a baseball fan) of living in an entire country of Boston Red Sox fans. The rabidness, the "we've been through hard times" narrative, exacerbated by the smugness of "look how well we're doing now!"

But good for Yuna. At this point, she could sell her bathwater as perfume in every boutique in Apgujeong, and rabid moms would make their daughters drink it in hopes that some of her star power would rub off on them before the exam.

Kim Yu-na, Yu-na Kim: Plato's Perfect Skate: 김연아 Rocks!

Proud uncle side-note: my sister-in-law caught my nephew's first steps on video. Yeh.


Now in other "Videos of awesome things" news: Kim Yu-na.
As you know, somewhere in every philosopher's mind is a little cave carved out by a cat named Plato, where the most perfect, flawless form of everything in the universe exists in its unsullied state.

Somewhere in there, there's a little, perfect TV playing this Figure Skating women's short program:

Watch it once: just watch it. Even the TV announcers realize they're watching something flippin' awesome, and shut up, about halfway through the program.

Kim Yu-na (the Korean way, with the family name first) or Yu-na Kim (the western way, with the family name last), is a teen-aged figure skating phenomenon out of Seoul. She's only eighteen years old now, and she's been kicking the crap out of the ladies' singles category for a few years already. She's telegenic and cute: she appears in TV commercials here in Korea and sells, better than most of Korea's other "Best in the world/Korea at X" stars, for example Park Ji-sung (family name Park), the Soccer (that's Football to the rest of the world) star who is holding his own impressively on Manchester United, but who's so ugly, and un-charismatic in front of the camera, that they can only make commercials like this: keep the camera at a distance, and show him kicking stuff, because that's the only time he looks impressive. (Notice at the end of the ad, when the close-up is as short as they can make it and still have him be recongnizable, as if the camera's afraid to get close to his face)



(Mind you, as a soccer player who DOESN'T have a face for advertising, he's certainly not alone.)

But Yu-na Kim is cute, holds the camera, and is carrying herself quite well for a young star under the microscope that is Korean celebrity-worship. She even sings pretty well.



Drink your milk.


For Nike Women


However, the thing she does best is skate. She traveled to Toronto a few years ago, and she and her mother camped out on Brian Orser's front door until he agreed to train her, they got themselves a really good choreographer, and little Yu-na's natural athleticism blossomed. The other best skater in the world is a Japanese lady named Mao Asada, who is the same age as Yu-na, and they've been vying with each other for world number one ranking, and despite the bitter, WWE-type rivalry some nationalist Korean netizens would probably love them to have, all reports say they're friends.

Yu-na Kim has won other world championships and major international competitions before - read more on her wikipedia page; I'm too lazy to copy it out here -- and this is a short program she's used before in competition, but this time, she comes in at full health, in Canada (she really likes Canada, girlfriendoseyo told me), in Vancouver -- on the rink where the Olympic skates will be next winter == and her first triple is absolutely perfect; from there, she gets more confidence, and lands her other two jumps perfectly as well, and ultimately sets a world record for the highest score ever in a women's short program (72.24). Her technical score is off the charts, because she got bonus points for each perfect jump, Girlfriendoseyo explained to me. Watch the video again, and let that sink in, and pay special attention to the look on her face at 3.29 in the video, just as she completes her skate: it's the pure bliss of someone who knows she just did something really, really special.



There it is.
And in a nice change, even the Korean announcers' heads do not explode when her world record is announced (unlike certain races during last year's Summer games, when you might have thought the Korean announcers were on speed. Follow this link, skip to 5.00 in, and watch the excitement build until the end of the race, or skip to 7.00 to just hear the announcers orgasm over their guy winning... yah At least some people realize it sounds a bit silly).

Way to go, Yuna! I haven't watched figure skating regularly since my sisters used to make me sit through it when I was a kid, back in the days when Elvis Stojko was turning the men's skating world on its ear by doing routines with songs that had beats, instead of all snoozers and string quartets, but even a rube like myself knows when something amazing just happened. The other reason I'm happy about Yuna's success is because she's an awesome role-model for all the young Korean girls who don't want to be popstars.

(Speaking of popstars, listen for the WonderGirls' "Nobody" playing in the background as the arena waits for her scores.)

Congrats, lady.

Ji Man-Won... Korea's Ann Coulter? How To Shoot at Someone Who Outdrew Ya

Post subtitle explained at the end.

Soundtrack: "I'm An Asshole" by Dennis Leary (uhh... warning: some bad words in this song)

so then, to balance out that unrestrained joy-down from the previous post...

Conservative Critic Ji Man-Won, and a bunch of netizens, actually attacked Moon Geun-Young for anonymously donating to various charities.

Add another item to the list of things to call "Korea's X" -- things in Korea that are like more famous things elsewhere.  Korea's Ann Coulter. (picture stolen from The Korean's site, but altered here at Roboseyo)

This goes to prove that many pundits, and (not all, but certainly enough) netizens are dicks.  I've written before about how too many netizens are dicks, and bring the dialogue down to the level of the lowest common denominator, instead of trying to raise their own level.  Here in Korea, where netizens have to use their actual ID numbers, and so the things they say can be traced back to their real identities, even that isn't enough to dissuade them from being duh-icks (read it out loud) online, and pundits will always be jerks if it can make them more famous. (photo stolen from Brian's write-up on the topic, but altered here at Roboseyo.)

Matt from Popular Gusts has a really great write-up about Moon Geun-Young's grandfather (one of the reasons she's being attacked is because he was affiliated with the communist party), and Ji Man-Won, the obnoxious conservative pundit who led the attack on her.  He also directs our attention to Mike Hurt's article, "My Stomach Hurts" where the Metropolitician talks about how envy at others' success brings out the worst in Koreans.  

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Moon Geun-Young, like Tiger Woods before her, when somebody said something stupid and ignorant about him, has responded in the only appropriate way: by remaining silent about the whole fustercluck.  Now she has doubly impressed me as a class act, rising above a whole bunch of ugly with grace.  I might even start liking her TV spots, and forgive her voice for being so. darned. cute.. 

Post subtitle explained: this is a line from the lovely Leonard Cohen song Hallelujah, as sung by John Cale:

"Maybe there's a God above, all I ever learned from love

Was how to shoot somebody who outdrew ya"

Which is exactly what these petty parasites are doing, for fame, or for release of the frustration at their own unhappy lives, or for the sheer lulz of being a dick anonymously.  They're taking aim at someone who outdrew them, who accomplished more in life, lashing out in spite, rather than taking aim at the kinds of accomplishments that Ms. Moon has been achieving with her success.

To all such netizens, and the pundits who sic them on classy people trying to make their way as best they can:

Go fester.

Now here's something beautiful, to put you (and me) back in a good mood.

So Moon Geun-Young just went from Annoying as Hell to Over-Exposed, but Cool Nonetheless

So Moon Geun-Yeong, the Korean pop-star whom I have lampooned before (I even feel a bit bad about that now), just went from "really, really annoying" to "over-exposed, but kinda cool" when news came out that she was the donor sending large amounts of money to Community Chest Korea, a charitable organization. . . anonymously. Not with a shining light on her back saying, "Look! I'm a good person! Buy my merchandise! Pay no attention to the rumors that I throw furniture if restaurants don't serve me quickly enough!" A. No. Ny. Mous. Ly. God bless her bright, squirrelly eyes, even as they stare at me from the side of every fifth bus in Seoul.

Hopefully, this kind of celebrity leadership leads to copycatting behaviour from Korea's youth, rather than some other recent celebrity trends.

A mini-retrospective on her cutest/most annoying TV spots:






selling pizza with crab on it...


my personal favorite...




And finally, encouraging soccer fans to move around a bit during the 2006 World Cup...



Respect, ms. Moon.

The only goal of Korean pop music producers (Banana Girl)

is to create something that will stick in your head like a ballbuster,

and dress it up in as much cute/sexy line-straddling hijinks as they can.

**OK. I should qualify this with saying "often" "sometimes" and "many" instead of "always" "never" and "all". . . but sometimes it seems this way, OK?**

to me, the experience of diving into modern Korean dance/pop music is about tantamount to skipping lunch and eating cotton candy until I'm full instead.

And I swear, there's a musically gifted, sugar-hyper six-year old singing to herself, confined in a music studio basement somewhere who is the inspiration, maybe even the composer, for all these songs.

For your consideration:

Crazy Crazy Crazy, by Banana Girl (note the cute faces, the attempt to start a line-dance craze, and fingers pointing in the air with baby-pink cute smiles)

Here is my running "this is what's going through my head as I watch this video" diary for chocolate, also by Banana Girl. (maybe it's just Banana Girl...)



candy. too cute.
the v sign -- two fingers in the air. getting the cheese on early.

seriously, is this band's target audience four-year olds?

lollipop flowers. . . and then a wiggle dance in a bare-shoulder dress.

ooh. slipped on a bananaa peel. didn't see that coming.

ooh. it can't be a korean mousic video without an attempt to start a dance craze. . . it's like a Freddie Prinze Jr. Movie.

Cartoon mascots. and cotton candy. I swear this video had a six-year-old executive procucer.

the platinum blode wigs are. . . uh...

I wonder how many of these dance crazes people attempt to start, but never catch on. The people at the dance club probably didn't take this one on because they couldn't find enough cartoonishly large lollipops.

holy crap a rodeo machine! only for two seconds.

a candy-cane pole dance and that rodeo machine again. . . so their target audience is four-year old girls and thirty-one year-old men, then. hmmm.

So did hershey sponsor the making of this video?

Wow. There are genres of Korean music I like but dear friends, this ain't it.
I think my hands are shaking.


That was kind of fun.

So, is K-pop getting too sexified? Here's "Kiss Kiss" also by Banana Girls

Again, James Turnbull would be better at discussing the cutsified, lolita-sex appeal of the baby talk, whiny singing, eyelash-batting bicycle-riding kid stuff, balanced against the intensive oral fixation (lollipops, fingers by mouth, a FREAKING CHERRY!), the stick-in-your-head-with-crazy-glue catchiness with those whiny syllables at the end of every line (not just in this song, either)


This sounds very similar to the band/artist I mentioned before explaining why K-pop is sometimes like wading through a swamp of cute, (Lee Hyun Ji) -- any connection between these bands, other than the fact they're like corkscrews in my brain?  It's difficult to explain this kind of pop culture without seeing it, but this is a common form of femininity here, as far as I can tell, and I know some people (not many, but a few) who do (or try to (from time to time at least)) act like these starlets (with varying degrees of success); at the same time, I'm not so much an expert, but I have a feeling a band like this wouldn't have a snowball's chance in hell of making it in North America, unless they played up the cutesy cheesiness to the level of hardcore fetish, and ended up in some kind of creepy raincoat-flasher target-market niche/asiophile who would have found out about them anyway demographic, kind of like that old Russian teen-lesbian-pop-duo import from 2003, TATU.

All this stuff is way sexier than what one could get away with pulling three years ago, say -- even superduperstar Rain had his song banned for singing about his magic stick!

And this is where I live, dear readers.

So what do you think, readers?  What's the North American culture equivalent to Banana Girl?   And what would happen if Banana Girl decided to tour the states?  The cultural differences that manifest in pop culture fascinate me to no end.

I Like Big Bibles, and thoughts on Sir Mixalot and Lee Hyori

Just watch it. It's funny as heaven.



Next...
Lee Hyori was in a soju ad that's been playing on loop at subway stations around Seoul for a while now.


Now sure, it's Hyori bringing her special brand of hypnotic, "You. . . will. . . buy.  . . this. . . product" CF queenieness and all. . . but what the heaven is up with the song choice?

Of all the songs to choose for a Hyori ad, why choose a schlock novelty from the early nineties, from a one-hit-wonder Dr. Demento crossover poster-boy -- and then running an ad with THAT song, fifteen years after it came out???

(PS: it creeps me out that there are kids who can rap that entire "baby got back" song, who were not even BORN when it came out...though the video is wildly hilarious)

adding to the weirdness of that song showing up in an ad, sorry, but the song fits Hyori like a baggy sweater.  Ass lovely as it is, I'm still looking for the "big ol'" part.  Unless she forgot the other cheek at home on the day she went in for this photo shoot:
Sorry.  While the word shapely is certainly apt, bootylicious just isn't the one for dear Lee Hyori. She's lovely, in that "dear god what a perfect stomach" sort of way,
and a big part of her appeal is the old "of all the K-pop stars, she actually seems like she's having fun instead of just pacing through her choreographer's routines" kind of charisma. . . but she doesn't have enough junk in the trunk to sell records on her big ol'juicy buh-tawcks (thanks, Forrest Gump) alone.

allow me to illustrate:

Big ass:
(courtesy of Nike; text here)

Happy Sir Mix-a-lot (he and his othabrothas can't deny they got sprung):

(lovely nonetheless, but) NOT big ass:
UNhappy Sir Mix-A-Lot: (his othabrothas and he can't deny: they AIN'T got sprung.)

Though with a little help, she might yet hold her own against J-Lo and the bootylicious gang. . .  Sir Mix-a-Lot and his fellas might like this augmented bitty-bit:

But I shall stick with admiring the assets Hyori pops best:

fun charisma, and a really great tummy.

To the choeum chorom music choosey-people who picked THAT song for their ad:

work harder.

Heh heh heh. That's exactly what I thought the first time I saw it. Roboseyo's Untimely Film Reviews, part II

"My Sassy Girl," Jeon Jihyun's breakthrough film role (though really, the Samsung commercial and the Giordano commercial will be the reasons she's remembered), was a huge hit in Korea, and remade into a Hollywood film staring Elisha Cuthbert and something something something.

The Korean movie's Trailer:


The Hollywood Remake's Trailer:

(IMDB page)

The Hollywood version tested so poorly with audiences they cut their losses and sent it straight to video. Article here.

"My Sassy Girl" — a smash hit in its native South Korea in 2001 — went straight to video in the US because men rejected its premise of a male character putting up with a bossy love interest in American test screenings, Lee said Friday.

Here's my summary of the movie:

Guy meets beautiful girl.
She treats him horribly, but he dotes on her dutifully, because she's just THAT DARN BEAUTIFUL!
She treats him horribly, but he dotes on her dutifully, because she's just THAT DARN BEAUTIFUL!
She treats him horribly, but he dotes on her dutifully, because she's just THAT DARN BEAUTIFUL!
She treats him horribly, but he dotes on her dutifully, because she's just THAT DARN BEAUTIFUL!
She treats him horribly, but he dotes on her dutifully, because she's just THAT DARN BEAUTIFUL!*
She treats him horribly, but he dotes on her dutifully, because she's just THAT DARN BEAUTIFUL!
She treats him horribly, but he dotes on her dutifully, because she's just THAT DARN BEAUTIFUL!
She treats him horribly, but he dotes on her dutifully, because she's just THAT DARN BEAUTIFUL!
She treats him horribly, but he dotes on her dutifully, because she's just THAT DARN BEAUTIFUL!
She treats him horribly, but he dotes on her dutifully, because she's just THAT DARN BEAUTIFUL!**
She treats him horribly, but he dotes on her dutifully, because she's just THAT DARN BEAUTIFUL!
She treats him horribly, but he dotes on her dutifully, because she's just THAT DARN BEAUTIFUL!
She treats him horribly, but he dotes on her dutifully, because she's just THAT DARN BEAUTIFUL!***
She treats him horribly, but he dotes on her dutifully, because she's just THAT DARN BEAUTIFUL!
She treats him horribly, but he dotes on her dutifully, because she's just THAT DARN BEAUTIFUL!
She treats him horribly, but he dotes on her dutifully, because she's just THAT DARN BEAUTIFUL!
She treats him horribly, but he dotes on her dutifully, because she's just THAT DARN BEAUTIFUL!
She treats him horribly, but he dotes on her dutifully, because she's just THAT DARN BEAUTIFUL!
She treats him horribly, but he dotes on her dutifully, because she's just THAT DARN BEAUTIFUL!
She treats him horribly, but he dotes on her dutifully, because she's just THAT DARN BEAUTIFUL!
Jeon Jihyun dances. She's hawt.
She treats him horribly, but he dotes on her dutifully, because she's just THAT DARN BEAUTIFUL!
She treats him horribly, but he dotes on her dutifully, because she's just THAT DARN BEAUTIFUL!
A limp excuse for her ridiculously self-absorbed behavior is half-heartedly presented.
She treats him horribly, but he dotes on her dutifully, because she's just THAT DARN BEAUTIFUL!****
She treats him horribly, but he dotes on her dutifully, because she's just THAT DARN BEAUTIFUL!
She treats him horribly, but he dotes on her dutifully, because she's just THAT DARN BEAUTIFUL!
She treats him horribly, but he dotes on her dutifully, because she's just THAT DARN BEAUTIFUL!
Some sad stuff happens. They can't be together for some stupid reason.
Long after he's given up hope of meeting her again, they meet again, through a coincidence that strains credulity, then bursts it, stomps it, and poops on it.
She finally realizes he's the man for her.
Movie over.

* at this point, I'd stopped buying the film.
** by this point, I had not even a single shred of respect for the male lead anymore, and wanted to punch him and tell him to grow a pair.
*** beauty nothin': by this point it could have been Audrey Hepburn and I'd have kicked her to the curb for constantly treating me like a turd
**** heavens to betsy they're still stretching this garbage out?

I KNEW this movie wouldn't fly in North America. Knew it. No man would watch another man be treated like such a sap for the entire duration of a movie. Meanwhile, many Korean women I've met love this movie, and think it's touching how the guy dotes on the girl, without ever thinking about how completely emasculated he's been -- degraded to a level reserved for discarded cellphone accessories -- and wish a guy would dote on THEM like that. To them, I usually answer, "Do you want a boyfriend, or a puppy?"

And every once in a while, I meet a young lady who seems to have taken this movie as a how-to-guide on how to attract a man. And I lose interest about the way you do when you realize that the chocolate bar you saw on the table is actually cat poop.

(kinda like this)


Doesn't. Work. (unless you want a man you can't respect)

There's another movie that sets an even WORSE pattern for young women's behaviour in Korean society. . . but only one I can think of, and I'm saving my write-up on that one up for a proper, spittle-flying frothing rant-down.  

Sure, there are cultural reasons why Korean women might gain some vicarious pleasure from seeing a woman treating a man like poop for ninety minutes, in a culture that is still recovering from having sexism institutionalized pretty much at every level possible, and if a movie like this is part of the recovery process, fair enough. . . I don't have enough sociological background to explore that in depth, but I can understand the movie's existence, from that perspective.

(update: on the comment board, James Turnbull, who is eminently qualified to expand upon these points, provides some context for what I mean, but ultimately dodge, here.)

However, I still don't have to like it, and whatever the movie represents aside, as a matter of personal taste, I found the movie charmless, and the characters unlikeable (the cardinal sin for me watching movies).  I just didn't want to spend time with these people.

Anyway: here's to North American girls NOT having this crap model of femininity foisted upon them.

(PS: For another rant/review I wrote back when nobody read my blog: Here's what I said about D-War back in January!)

New Phone, Correction Plus Jo Gwon; also, Expats and the DEAR LEADER HIMSELF!

First: Dear Readers in Korea: I've heard that there are phone services which will allow me to get a phone account in my own name. Which ones (as in, which service providers? What do I have to do/bring, and where can I go?) More importantly: my current phone is in the name of a friend, and I want to get a new phone that has the same number as my current phone. . . does she have to be there for me to do that, or what are the necessary details for making that switch-over? Anyone who's done the switch, or could point me to some helpful information, would get a gold star of appreciation from Roboseyo.)


Second: this is beyond belief.

Spotted in an Athens, Georgia record store

He looks healthy to me.
(HT to these guys, via these guys. Why don't MY readers send me awesome links like that?)

OK, I have an announcement, but it's just going to have to become a post of its own, because Jo Kwon will make you laugh.


So third, as an update on the old JYP Post from Sunday...

I'm an idiot.

I looked at the post date, not the original air date of the Jo Kwon Youtube video on my PopSeoul post, and blundered badly enough to prove PopSeoul clearly does it better than ol' Roboseyo, chasing me back into my corner. I'll just have to keep giving you this goofiness (which I do well), because obviously fact-checking (an important part of celebrity gossip writing, and life in general, too) ain't my strong point.

So that Jo Kwon kid from the video 1. was that age back in 2001, and 2. is a boy. Not that you'd know it from that old video...

But 2. he's now grown up (a bit), looking older (though not a lot more masculine), old enough to be promoted (according to the linked article) as the male counterpart to female Korean Wave star Choi Ji Woo:

What do you think, readers?  See any resemblance?

And despite (or maybe because of) being promoted as the male doppleganger of a major female star, our buddy Jo went out and got himself....

A FLIPPIN' SIXPACK!!!

He's lucky to have that sixpack, and can also rest content in knowing that he's still at best, the third prettiest male star in K-pop (as well as at worst, third most androgynous) thanks to Lee Jun Ki:

(remember lee jun-ki from this totally commentary-free post?)

And Bae Yong Joon.



Finally on a slightly more serious note, Kesumo of K-ROK added a little something to the "Why do Expats Complain" discussion which I found worth reading, appropriately titled, "Wah wah wah."

She discusses Korea's rapid development, and the way it leaves the older Koreans, basically, living in a country they no longer recognize as theirs: here are my favourite lines:

Can you imagine coming of age eating tree bark to survive and consulting shamans, and then in the number of years M*A*S*H was on the air, people around you –including your children and grandchildren -- are talking on cell phones, drinking overpriced coffee, and worshipping Prada? You haven’t just been left behind in the dust. You’ve been left behind on another freakin’ planet.

Thanks for adding your thoughts, Kesumo.

But everybody: don't forget about that phone thing. Help me out. I'm too busy with midterms to look it all up myself.

Move over, PopSeoul!

So I randomly stumbled across this on Youtube (I SWEAR I was not searching for Wonder Girls)

Super-Pop-Producer JYP has been taking online auditions for his next manufactured pop band, including this 13-year old kid (meaning 11 or 12 western age), Jo Gwon, who (especially in her first dance audition in the video) shows off a pretty good voice (for a kid) a really fantastically goofy knack for rocking up a crowd with wacky dances. With a little polish (see 5:40 - 6:40), I'm sure she could be the next product off the JYP shelf.

Meanwhile, the dance lesson part of the video (starting at 3:38) is just. plain. weird. at 4:48, you get to watch JYP, a big grown-up male, teaching a bunch of eleven and twelve year-old possible future products, all girls, how to twist their torsos like sexybacks (a skill he successfully imparted to his most successful proteges)...and it's just weird, is all. (Though when Jo Gwon, who's obviously there for her pipes and not her steps, tries to do these kinds of moves. . . it's really really funny in a cute, not-yet-perverted-or-commodified-youth, i-don't-understand-the-suggestions-this-dance-move-makes-so-i'm-just-imitating-my-dance-coach sort of way.)

Youtube is loaded with JYP Audition videos, ranging from pretty impressive to kinda cringeworthy, QUITE cringeworthy, even MORE cringeworthy, to, uh, this. As always, there are a few young girls who seem to have taught themselves to sing by watching The Little Mermaid over and over.

In other I Wanna Be A Star news, there's a new star getting a pretty big buildup these days. . . with one problem.

Her name: 혜나 or "Hye-na" in Korean, is being written on the posters in a way that could cause some, uh, confusion, if she ever goes international.

Does anybody else here spot the problem?


Anyway, here's one of her videos from youtube...this one gets kinda crazy in the middle.


And here's another. This one's pretty hot.


So, uh, good luck, Hyena.

"Thanks, Rob."

(A Very Special Update: Otto, of "I, Foreigner", in linking to this page, said some of the nicest things I've had said about my blog so far: (and he hasn't even read the stuff I deleted, thinking "too bizarre")  From the write-up:

If you are looking for a blog ... that will make you say “WTF!” before you burst out laughing, a blog that will make you wonder if this man even has a job to have time to find stuff like this, then look no further.

Thanks Otto. You just made my day, and possibly my week.

A Demonstration of the Way Navigating the K-Pop Scene Sometimes Feels Like Wading Through a Swamp Of Cute

except instead of algae floating on top of the water, it's English sentence fragments.
Lee Hyun Ji 이현지 is the perpetrator today.

The entire video. . . if you dare. (Pay special attention to the E.T. appearance two-thirds in.)

How did they even do that?

Memo to 7-11: If you manage to get one of Korea's loveliest faces signed for a photo shoot. . .

Hire a makeup artist and a photo-shop guy, too.

And she comes to the set looking like she didn't sleep, or has a hang-over

Send her home to sleep, and reschedule.

They say she's probably had reams of surgery. . . and it's not that I'm suddenly approving of the whole male gaze/beauty image thing



. . . but if they dropped a lot of coin to get a silly-hot star to appear (and in case you doubt she is. . . here)

You'd think they'd have protected their investment a bit with an airbrush.

(they could have called the soju people and asked for tips:)

And these aren't even "X-star at home/taking out the trash in sweatpants" pics, in which I wouldn't criticize a star for being human -- these are for an ad campaign, so I'd have thought 7-11 would try to make their star look nicer -- I was just startled to see pics of a normally ridiculously pretty star looking so un-gorgeous.  (Gorgeless?)

  It took me five seconds to recognize the familiar-looking fifty-year-old as actually being the 20 (or so) year old 김 아중.

(more Kim A-Joong)

(or is that just how quickly plastic surgery faces age?)

In other "normally very very good-looking stars looking hung over, tired, or raggedy in an ad" news. . . from a while back. . . "Sorry I'm late for the photo shoot.  I was getting, ah, acquainted with your product last night until four."

remind you of anything?



oh yeah. also. something something olympics. something something bla bla blah, China something something lip synch something something TOTALLY UNSURPRISED.

Lee Hyori - U-Go-Gull 이효리 aaaaaand. . . Fetish Bingo!

So, the very demure Lee Hyori,

(source)

Korea's favourite pop tart, has a new album out, and her first video seems to be a game of fetish bingo:
Here's the video. It's catchy and fun. Enjoy it now, because by the end of August, if you live in Korea, you'll be grinding your teeth at hearing it for the seven-hundredth time.



My fetish reference count so far (watch carefully: the editing's pretty quick):
Cheerleader
Hot Schoolteacher
Sailor
Sexy Librarian (the bookish character in glasses at the beginning)
Black lingerie (though the corsette-ish lingerie she wears is about as de-fanged of sexiness as she could manage while still name-checking it -- maybe because of controversies like this in Korea in the past, and her face appears on a lingerie mannequin that was wearing something risque, but it's a close-up, so that she's not seen wearing it)
Lollipops (ditto: it was the size of a normal chupa-chup, which makes me want to say, if you're gonna put it in, commit!  At least make it oversized.)
1950s American roller-skate girl (the denim shorts & tied off plaid shirt)
and of course, hot nurse -- which (though the schoolteachers didn't object to THEIR reference) stirred up a mini-controversy online, enough that they seem to have cut the nurse from the official video.

Absent: leather and lace, bondage (I wonder why)

Any other fetishes I missed?

You can see the nurse at about 0.27 of this preview,


a few captures from here


but that cute nurse has vanished from the full-length video.

The song is catchy, with a pretty driving beat -- reminds me of Nellie Furtado throwing down with Timbaland in "Maneater" (best played real loud) -- another song which I like, that features driving rhythms.

The rapper featured is called "Nassun" 낯선 and. . . as with J-Crown from the Jewelry videos a while back, I'll let you decide whether he's a douche or a real badass gangsta. All I'm gonna say is. . . if you can't grow facial hair. . . don't.  Finally, in a review of Hyori's best English lyric-singing so far. . . she's come a long way from "Just one ten minutes" to "I'm gonna get you" to this. . . 


But she still can't pronounce her "r" so I'm sure there are a lot of gulls that feel very empowered by this video.

You go, gull.

(photo source)


Seriously, though, her English in this one gets a solid "B," and if she were speaking it to me directly, I wouldn't be above bumping it up to an A+.


(from the same site as the nurse pictures above: Hyori's promotional photos:)

Does the "made in Korea" sign over her breasts signify her endorsement of the Korean plastic surgery industry?

These are the deep mysteries.

Another tootin' cool video featuring a Korean gull:



Some video editor now needs glasses, from squinting to get the editing right as s/he made this one.

More goofy Korean ads

This one features the lovely "Go Ara" - acting like a baby



This one. . . I don't really know WHAT to say about it


and its partner



except that it resembles this screensaver that James Turnbull showed me, which is ridiculously, awesomely, addictively random.

and they match this one (posted before) for sheer weirdness.


meanwhile, on a bet to see whether sex really can sell anything, next proof:

gas heaters! (this company had a big promotion smack in the middle of insadong for about four months in spring, playing that ad and the "making of the sexy gas heater ad" video on constant loop, along with a person dressed up as the robot walking around while some poor schmoe followed it with a stereo around his neck playing that awful, stuck-in-your-head-like-a-burr song, also on constant loop. (James Turnbull on 'why do they have 'making of the ad' ads going around?)


And the classic: "Let's get a really hot star to act like a total infant" ad (note especially the awful English "everyday new face" at the very end)

and in case you doubt her hotttness credentials after that atrocity:

(link: this one got banned. Not nude or anything, but sweaty and suggestive. Follow the link if you want. Perv.)

17 tea: she's talking about good health here


another for 17 tea. . . what this has to do with tea, I don't know, but I wanna buy some.


But this one's my favourite of the day: from mongdori (see sidebar), this is an ad for raspberry wine, and it makes me laugh every time I see it --


the "intentionally silly deadpan delivery" thing is kind of new in Korea, and a welcome change if it catches on, considering it's a layer more subtle than what passes for comedy these days: (from a game show)


(from a movie. I think 70% of Korean movies are either gangster films or sex comedies. I'm waiting for a gangster sex comedy to come out and make the entire Korean movie industry implode)

boy, living here is fun!


(oops; almost forgot the reason I started this post:)

by the way. . .
the. greatest. korean. ad. ever. (from about 2006)

that dance was imitated for two years by my kindergarten students, and every time that song by the Pussycat Dolls came on in a club, I cracked up the dance floor with the "Don'Cha" dance, for a good six months. Pure joy.


(update: brian: is this the weird hajiwon commercial you wanted? It's the oddest one I found)


she says bang bang in this one. That's almost the same.