Korean Historical Films

Now, Korea's film industry has been pumping out about a film a year of important moments in Korea's history: now that the industry has the skill and money to tell stories a little better than they could in the '90s, and the freedom to do so that they didn't have during the dictatorial censorship of the '80s, it's time for some historical filmmaking! The movies made in the name of this sort of historical record keeping have been uneven, at best, and whether they are even mildly accurate to the actual events is not mine to discuss.

A quick rundown of a few:

Shilmido was quite good -- it was about a bunch of Korean men who were recruited by the South Korean military, pulled out of headed-nowhere lives to be trained into a bloodthirsty assassination squad with a mission to raid (I can't remember if it was Kim Jong-il or Kim Il-sung) the North Korean president's house and cut his throat -- in response to an attack on South Korea's president by North Korean assassins that led to a three day shootout between North Korean commandoes and the South's national guard, around the blue house.

Taegukki was the Korean equivalent of Top Gun, to me:insofar as it was the worst good movie Korea's ever made, or the best bad movie. I saw it with my dad when he came here in 2006, and it's about two brothers who end up getting ensnared in the Korean war, and the whole "brother against brother" thing gets examined, poked, exploited, and then beaten into the ground in slow-motion as machine guns fire in the background, the world grows silent, and a character shoutes, "NNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" and holds its head in his lap while it breathes its last. Frankly, I thought it was awful, manipulative and gory and about an hour too long (and that last hour took the melodrama over the top, into "so bad it's good" territory, and then BACK into "so bad it's bad again" territory.)

There was a movie about the May 18th Gwangju Massagre of 1979 (maybe 1978; too lazy to fact check) that featured a line up of more top Korean stars than you could shake a stick at, and a lot of violins and slow-motion in the preview, that got tapioca reviews (at best), and that I decided not to see until somebody I knew said something good about it, and encouraged me to see it. Let's leave it at, I still haven't seen it: the most enthusiastic review I've heard so far prompted me to teach my class the phrase "damn with faint praise".

Movies to come: it should be noted that a number of these historical figures have been given the historical drama (TV Series category) treatment, but have not yet (to my limited knowledge) been given the full historical (film category) treatment. On second thought, in some cases, it might be better that way. Who'd want to see Yu Gwan-sun get the "Pearl Harbor" treatment...but then, if she got the "The Pianist" treatment instead, it might fly.

An epic about Yi Sunshin's naval battles with the Japanese.
A biopic of Yu Gwan-sun (a student, and independence martyr tortured to death for protesting Japan's colonization of Korea)
Something about the 1987 Democratization movement
Was the assassination of Park Chung-hee covered in that barber movie? I haven't seen it.
A biopic of Kim Gu
Possibly an epic about Goguryeo's King Gwang-Gye-to, Korea's greatest expansionist king, who conquered Manchuria and large portions of China's eastern coast, and who, like T.S. Eliot, who appears in both English AND American poetry anthologies, is claimed by both Korea and China as one of their own, but he's had a TV series made about him already.
Hopefully, a story about King Sejong, the greatest Korean, and one of the greatest leaders in history . . . though his life doesn't make as good copy as the others, because he was a scholar and a scientist, rather than an asskicker. The story of how he came to the throne is pretty cool, though.

R.I.P. Michael.

yeah, that's two posts in a row not about Korea. deal with it. The song's "Fan Letter to Michael Jackson" by the Rheostatics - sorry about the quality. It's the only version on Youtube, and it's a cool song I remember from the '90s, and have always wanted to hear again.

I like the "It feels good to be alive" refrain near the end.

A Prayer for Iran.

Things are getting bad over there.

Here.

Movie Franchise Tagline...

Just saw Terminator 4, and rewatched Terminator 1 on my computer. The first one is a really nice, taut action movie, though one of the new retro-pleasures of watching these old '80s action movies is snickering at the action effects that were so riveting/revolutionary/terrifying in the '80s.

(My favorite this month: Tarman, from the Return of the Living Dead movies. Awful movies, as zombie films go: they seem more based on Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video than anything scary, but Tarman's pretty cool...almost scary, and pretty awesome for '80s effects. The way he moves is occasionally really cool.)

Here's Tarman. Warning: tarman.



But The Terminator films have one thing going for them:

A super-de-duper great movie catchphrase.
"Come with me if you want to live"


(Yes, I know "I'll be back" is in there, too, but that's an Arnold line, not an exclusively Terminator line, so it doesn't count.)

And the question is:

Is there any better movie franchise catchphrase?

Here are the candidates I can think of:

1. "Yippiekiyay, Mother#*@&er!" (Die Hard)
2. either "Use the force" (a bit cheesy) or "I have a bad feeling about this" (Star Wars)
3. "Come with me if you want to live" (Terminator)
4. (are we including comedy here?) "Yeeah, baby!" (Austin Powers)
5. "What're you looking at, butthead?" (Back to the Future)
6. (maybe too short, but...) "Whoa" (Matrix)

Any others I'm missing? Help me out here, readers.

Greetings, Korea Herald Readers.

Soundtrack: hit play and start reading.


Hi there. I'm Rob. I write a blog. (this is the other blog I contribute to)

If you're a Korea Herald reader, you may have found your way here by way of the URL at the bottom of my article, "News firms of questionable quality abound". This article was a response to these two articles, which basically accused English teachers of being unfit, unprofessional, vulgar, and sex-crazed. The Pressian Article- "We are Vampires" (the original Korean) The Yonhap News article (the original Korean). Here is the original blog post I wrote about Yonhap: it's stated a little more strongly than what I put in The Herald. Here's an article in the Korea Times about the same Yonhap piece. (Yay Jason Lim)

If you are annoyed that foreigners are criticizing Korea's media, then ask yourself why we have to do it: why aren't KOREANS holding their journalists to a higher degree of accountability? If you're here to tell me Koreans ARE, great! Good for you! Keep fighting the good fight, and don't give up! Get your friends to join in. If you're here to tell me it's only the right-wing papers that do it, or only the left-wing papers that attack English papers, check out the links below: they go right across the political spectrum. (p.s.: why do newspapers all have positions on the political spectrum? isn't that weird to other people, too?)

The article I wrote is about the ugly pattern of racist journalism promoting stereotypes of English teachers: often they are stereotypes based on rumors, with no statistical proof. For some actual statistics on foreigner crime, check pages 16 and 20 in the report embedded on this page.

If you don't believe what I say about the Korean media's anti-English teacher bias, check out a more in-depth look at the way Korea's media has been systematically dragging down the reputation of English teachers in this post at a friend's blog: "A History of Scapegoating English Teachers"
and also pages 9-13 of the report here.

If you're annoyed that I named your news outlet (those would be The Chosun, the Joongang, the Hankooki), here are the links to articles where your news outlets treated English teachers in an unbalanced or sensationalist way.

Chosun Ilbo: http://www.rjkoehler.com/2007/05/29/oh-those-naughty-aids-threatening-skirt-chasing-aussie-english-teachers/
http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200705/200705280029.html

Joongang Daily: http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2889573

This article talks about the Joongang daily's reporting on the playboy party: http://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LPOD&mid=sec&sid1=001&sid2=119&oid=044&aid=0000048618
and this article talks about how Joongang's coverage of the playboy party was biased and selective:
http://news.naver.com/hotissue/popular_read.php?date=2005-01-14&section_id=000&office_id=117&article_id=0000001963&seq=2
This one does too.
http://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LSD&mid=sec&sid1=102&oid=047&aid=0000057135

here's the hangooki on unqualified English teachers
http://weekly.hankooki.com/lpage/nation/200706/wk2007061113024637070.htm#_blank

I'd recommend linking Matt's blog post, "A brief history of scapegoating English Teachers," which gathers most of these sources in one place. http://populargusts.blogspot.com/2007/09/brief-history-of-scapegoating-english.html

"Beware the Ugly White English Teacher" http://sports.chosun.com/news/ntype2.htm?ut=1&name=/news/life/200705/20070528/75827008.htm

English Joongang Daily: connects English teachers to a group of pedophiles who never tried to become English teachers, and many of whom had never even visited Korea. http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2889573

If you really, really agree with me, and want to help hold the Korean Media to a higher standard, check out this brand-new site created to do exactly that, and contact this guy about how you can help contribute to the site. It's a worthwhile project that needs people power to become all that it could be.

I know that not every Korean is a racist. I'm not stupid. I also know that not every Korean journalist is a racist. As I said: I'm not stupid. I also know that English teachers are not all angels in white, living like monks in Korea. (Not stupid, remember?) however, I wish news outlets were responsible and balanced in the way they reported minorities, especially when those reports DO cause our lives to be more difficult. I've been told to my face by students that after Christopher Paul Neil's arrest, they didn't trust Canadians for a while. To my face. I do not like being held responsible for the actions of other people who share nothing with me except the country of birth, and if I AM to be associated with my birth country, I wish it would be for the positives and the high water marks, not the low points. Associate Canada with socialized health care, Tommy Douglas, Terry Fox, Wayne Gretzky and Michael Oondaatje, not Robert William Pickton and Clifford Olsen and Christopher Paul Neil, in the same way I'm sure you'd rather I thought of King Sejong, Shin Saimdang and Yi Sunshin than Kim Jong-il, Cho Seung-hee, Park Han-se, and Woo Bum-kon when I think of Korea.

And honestly, though I don't know why my motivation should matter, I write this stuff because I care about Korea, and I'd like to see Korea become a better place. Not out of some kind of smug, colonial arrogance, but because my Korean friends are just as frustrated as I am that Korea isn't always what it wished it could be, and writing about the gap between what Korea is and what Korea wants to be, is the beginning step to closing that gap. If I didn't care about Korea, I'd drink more, finish my contract, pack my bags, say "I'm tired of this shit. Fuck it." and leave. And a lot of people do, but telling me to go home isn't helpful.

To know more about why I, and other expats complain about Korea, I recommend this series: Why do Expats (in Korea) Complain So Much?

And to see how I really feel about Korea, I recommend the links in the sidebar to the right.

Thanks for stopping by!