On My Way To Korea

Disclaimer: Please don’t ask me on or offline for any extra details about North Korean refugees.  Thank you.  I will only post minimal information and only things I get consent to post.

I got to meet a friend when she came up to Seoul last weekend and we had a great time!  She’s a North Korean refugee (새터민 / 탈북자) so I felt like I had a great opportunity to get to know someone who has weathered a lot to get to where they are today.  Many of us deal with where to go when we graduate from high school or where to get a job, but I can’t even begin to understand what North Korean refugees have gone through.  Sometimes when people go through that, they take the opportunity to learn from it and make the most of what they have and succeed.  I think she is one of them who will succeed in whatever she’ll do in the future.

While I was waiting for her to come when we were going to first meet, I decided to walk around and I found a protest outside.  They opposed 이명박, the current president of South Korea, but I don’t know too much other than that.  Here’s two pics I took there:

Anyways, when we met we decided to go grab a bite to eat at a Korean resturaunt.  We both had some sort of meat and mushroom soup which was EXTREMELY delicious.  She told me a really funny story about when she went to the DMZ and yelled at the North Korean soldier saying ‘야 이 나픈놈아!’ or something along those lines.  She said her boyfriend was terrified and thought they’d be immediately shot lol.

After we had a cup of coffee, we decided to go to a movie, 의형제/Brother, which is about a South Korean agent (소강호/So Kang-ho, star of 괴물/The Host) who hunted North Korean spies and then became a bounty hunter.  In the beginning you find out that one of the North Korean spies is doing everything to help his wife and girl who are still back in North Korea.  The protagonist hunts him until he develops a relationship and sees him as a little brother.  Here’s the trailer:

It was my first experience seeing a movie in a Korean movie theater so I would have to say it was an enjoyable one =).

When we arrived at the theater, we had to wait 2 hours to see the next showing so we decided to just browse around the 용산 (Yongsan) area.  The last time I went to Yongsan I felt like I didn’t find the good market, so I really wanted to go to the ‘good’ place (선인프라자 / Sunin Plaza).  We headed over there and I got a adapter for my phone which is a combo power-plug and headphone jack so I just had to bring one adapter with me on my phone.

After the movie, she took me to a neat street by 종각 station that was extremely busy.  After walking a little bit we decided to go into one restaurant and had 낙지 닭칼비 (octopus and chicken ribs) and OH MAN was it good.  Seriously, I’ll go back there in a heart beat.  The price was really good too, like 7,000원 per person.  Here’s a pic of us with the food:

Here we talked a little bit more about North Korea.  She asked me about what I thought about the country and in short I told her that I felt sorry for those that had to live under Kim Jong-Il’s reign.  She told me that she’s looking forward to helping others who leave the country and helping people get over the propaganda they’ve been fed their entire lives.  I think that’s a very noble goal and I hope she’s able to fulfill that.  In the short term there’s always volunteering opportunities here in South Korea.  I’ll be attending one such event this Saturday which I’ll probably give some commentary on (though I’ll most likely not be able to take pictures).  I was able to find a monthly volunteering opportunity thanks to a commenter who pointed me the right direction, so thank you!

Here’s me drinking the remaining bits of the 막국수 (I think that was the name):

Well, that’s it!  We had a wonderful day and I’m really glad I got to meet her.

Being directed by my favorite K-director (임권택) and starting my favorite K-actor (안성기), I absolutely had to watch Festival (축제).  It all revolves around a grandmother who passes away and the ceremony which follows.  Festival looks at what death means to those around the deceased and how they have influenced everything around them.  If you’re interested in Korean culture, this is a must see.  It serves a dual purpose of showing what a Korean funeral service looks like and the meaning surrounding it and the culture around the younger caring for the elderly.  It also briefly touches on how the modern culture is changing and the younger don’t care for the elderly as much as they used to.

Here’s a collection of clips I extracted dealing just with the funeral:

For those interested, here’s a website which explains a little about some more things.

I wasn’t expecting very much from “My Girlfriend is an Agent” but I was pleasantly surprised.  It’s a good combination of comedy and action without any sort of love triangle sub-story.  The main guy and women are NIS agents who have to put on a different face when meeting each other both working on the same case but whose teams are oblivious to each other (one being domestic and the other international).  Here’s one scene that really shows what kind of movie this is:

Definitely go check it out, it’s very much worth the time.

I finally saw it.  The revenge movie to end all revenge movies.

Oldboy has been on many top K-movie lists and is one of the most revered Korean movies internationally.  There’s even talk about a Hollywood remake (oh please, don’t mess this one up), though it seems both Steven Spielberg and Will Smith stepped away from the project.  I’ve waited a long time to watch this one, I’m not typically a gory movie fan.  That being said, I love Gladiator and Patriot, two of the most gory war movies out there.  They provided enough character depth, beautiful camera work, awesome music, etc. to make the gore support the movie instead of take the center stage.  I felt like Oldboy was the same.  I didn’t feel like the blood was overly done to the point where it detracted from the movie.  Even more than blood and guts, I absolutely hate tasteless pornography and sex scenes thrown into movies.  Surprisingly, the one sex scene in this movie is connected to the plot so much that to take away the scene would be to destroy the story.

The main character is locked away for 15 years for a reason unknown to himself.  After randomly being let go, he tracks down his capture and unwinds the mystery.  Once the big mystery is out there, it’s pretty easy to put all the pieces together and see what’s going on.  It’s possibly my favorite revenge movie and, while I don’t believe it’ll be in my top 5, I highly recommend it.

Now that I’m all hunkered down and waiting to leave to Korea with just my job and a lot of time, I think I’m going to be watching more movies!  I guess there’s a positive side to everything.

“3-Iron” is a wonderfully done movie with a main character who doesn’t say a word and a girl who only says one poignant phrase.  The director also did “Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter … and Spring”, which was also, if I remember correctly, a very silent film which uses mostly visual cues to tell the story.  The story follows a man who breaks into empty houses (the real title of the film being ‘empty house’) and instead of stealing things, cleans and fixes up the house and lives like he lived there cooking food, wearing their clothes, etc.  He runs into an abused wife who decides to follow him around, sparking a silent love story between the two. Like the empty houses he breaks into and fixes, he enters her life and fixes her.  It’s a lovely story and I highly recommend watching this movie.