Category: Korea

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[the two koreas]

Today’s top story involving Korea ought to be Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon’s likely appointment as UN Secretary-General.

Indeed, last night’s annual reception for National Foundation Day was packed, attended by far more dignitaries, of far higher rank, than in past years. United States Ambassador John Bolton was there — Jenny remarked that he is shorter than she expected — as were the ambassadors of the other permanent members of the Security Council, as well as Japan’s ambassador, who is currently the president of the Council. The big crowd was there, I am certain, because of the news that had come out less than an hour before the reception began that South Korea would be providing the next SG. Already the appointment was having one of its desired effects: raising South Korea’s profile in the world.

At the moment, however, the big Korea news is that the North is planning a nuclear test. The timing is fairly typical of North Korea — these are the same people who managed to stage a naval incident in 2002, killing four South Korean sailors right around the climax of the World Cup hosted in South Korea. Whether today’s announcement is meant to derail Minister Ban’s appointment or merely overshadow it is unclear, but it is certainly bad news.

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[ban’s the man]

So it looks like Ban is the man. In today’s final Security Council straw poll to determine who the Security Council will recommend for Secretary-General, Minister Ban Ki-moon of South Korea received only one “Discourage” vote, and received “Encourage” votes from all five permanent members — the only Security Council members with veto power.

So barring either a surprise shift in the Security Council or an even more unlikely rebellion by the General Assembly, which ultimately has the decisionmaking power — technically, the Security Council only recommends candidates, though historically they have recommended just one for an up-or-down vote by the General Assembly — Ban Ki-moon will be the next United Nations Secretary-General.

Update: New York Times says “Korean Virtually Assured of Top Job at U.N.“

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[because his pants say “m”]

At very long last, I think I’ve found an online copy of the video for “Muomnika?” (“뭡니까?”) by Shim Tae-yoon (심태윤) that can actually be watched by people without the South Korean citizen ID number required to log in to many Korean sites.

Go here and click on the image of the guy with the afro who’s saluting.

Once you’ve installed all the various ActiveX controls, you should see an unattractive man chatting amiably in a language you don’t understand. Be patient. He babbles for a minute or two, but then comes the video. It’s not exactly genius or anything, but it’s a helluva catchy tune, and Shim’s goofy little dance, silly afro and M-pants are what it’s really all about. That and the Korean raggamuffin rapper with the fur gloves.

Oh, and just so you know, the name of the song means “What is it?”

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[mtv-k is here]

Some time back, I told you about MTV Desi and MTV Chi, for the South Asian-American and Chinese-American markets respectively, and I mentioned that MTV-K was in the works.

MTV-K is now here.

And, as with the other two stations, I have helpfully done the work of combing through the top-ten candidate videos, weeding out the weepy piano ballads, the overblown hip-hop extravaganzas and the talentless girl bands who mostly shake their tiny, tiny booties, and leaving you with only the gems (or at least the bearable videos).

NB that this is an IE-only exercise, and that I can’t link directly to the videos, so you just have to go to the site and click on them yourself.

Big Mama have gotten a lot of attention for being overweight, ordinary-looking women with great voices in a country whose music industry has tended to reward beauty over talent. “Break Away” was their breakthrough single.

Bobby Kim has a pleasant enough voice, and “Falling in Love” is a pleasant enough song, with a pleasant enough video. Get the idea? Perfectly pleasant. Not bad. Not great, but nice. The sort of song that you would let date your daughter but not marry her.

Far East Movement is a SoCal hip-hop trio, of whom two members are Korean and one is Japanese and Chinese. They apparently did a song for Fast and Furious II: Tokyo Drift, which I somehow managed not to see. “Holla Hey” is good silly fun.

If you love Shakira’s rock numbers, you’ll like Jaurim’s “Fan Yi Ya.” Enjoy a video of an English version at their MySpace site.

“Obvious (Want You)” is a nice little punk dis from a girl who can play bass. Check out Maggie Kim’s website for her cover of “Raspberry Beret.”

And there you have it. Enjoy.

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[still more of that damn korean song]

아름다음 강산 (Beautiful Rivers and Mountains) by Lee Sun Hee (이선희)

Note: To view the videos, click on the links next to the light-blue words on the left, in the third section down from the top. Especially worthwhile is the third such link (이선희 - 아름다운 강산, 아카라카치, for those who read Korean or like to sqint) You will need to install an ActiveX control, and if you’re using Firefox, you’ll need to restart afterwards. IE is a better bet. Sorry it’s so much trouble!

Okay, you’re probably sick to death of hearing about “Beautiful Rivers and Mountains” by now, but here are three versions by the sexiest Korean woman ever, Lee Sung Hee, who has become something of a feminist hero simply for looking like an actual human being, with glasses and human hair, instead of like your typical K-pop starlets, who are all rail-thin and have fake hair. (I suppose it’s no surprise that prefer the nerdy girl in glasses with the powerhouse talent underneath to the vacuous beauty queens.)

Of particular interest is the third link in the list, in which Lee performs for a World Cup crowd in 2002. It’s kind of amazing to see this song, once regarded as a subversive attack on the state, performed as the centerpiece of a gigantic nationalist pageant. But then, it was also weird seeing thousands upon thousands of South Koreans urging each other to “Be the Reds.” As I have said before, a sense of irony is not Korea’s strong suit.

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[kim’s video debut]


Any New York City film buff is familiar with Kim’s Video. Especially in the days before Netflix and GreenCine, Kim’s was the place to go for your obscure cinema needs.

The video chain’s founder, Korean-born Yongman Kim, dropped out of an NYU Film School class that included Jim Jarmusch and Lees Ang and Spike. He has now at last gotten around to making his own film debut as director of 1/3, a psychological thriller set in the East Village and involving both a Buddhist monk and the snorting of cocaine from off someone’s ass.

The film opens in New York City on Friday, October 6, at City
Cinemas Village East.

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[있어요! / i have it!]

At last! At last I have it! From the Koryo Bookstore on West 32nd Street, I have procured a region-free, English-subtitled edition of the first Korean movie I ever saw, and one that I have wanted to see again ever since: Barking Dogs Never Bite, a.k.a. A Higher Animal, a.k.a. Dog of Flanders. More when I’ve actually re-watched it.

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[let me count the ways]

It was Elizabeth Barrett Browning who asked every English major’s favorite math question: “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” It is, of course, a question the poem utterly fails to answer, or even adequately explain.

If Browning were Korean, however, she might be able to put a number on it, or at least on the number of ways to say you love someone.

It all comes down to verb endings and their proliferation in Korean. I’m sure you’re comfortable enough with verb conjugations that change the tense or person, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Roadmap to Korean: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Language, by Richard Harris, provides a list of 18 different ways to say “I’m going to school” and 23 ways to ask “Do you know?”. That’s all with the same verb root, in the same tense and person. The shifts change the levels of politeness and formality, and some of them have subtle meaning shifts as well, like expressing surprise or leaving an open-ended feeling.

Fortunately, most of these verb endings are relatively rare. Still, it’s discoveries like these that make me worry I’ll never really grasp this language.

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[more on shin jung-hyeon]

아름다음 강산 (Beautiful Rivers and Mountains) by 신중현 (Shin Jung-hyeon/Shin Jung-hyun) (Love, Peace & Poetry: Asian Psychedelic Music)

I have a bit more to share about Shin Jung-hyeon (신정현), the Korean singer I mentioned yesterday.

First of all, I think a better translation of the title is the more literal “Beautiful Rivers and Mountains.” In fact, with Young’s help, I translated the lyrics — she did a rough translation, then I went through and tried to make it into more coherent poetry, spending a lot of time flipping through my Korean-English dictionary to look at secondary meanings of words. But we’ll get to the translation in a moment.

The story of the song is also interesting. It came about when Park Chung Hee (박정희), the longtime military dictator of South Korea, asked Shin Jung-hyeon to write a song in praise of the Blue House, the official residence of South Korea’s president — the equivalent of a sitting U.S. president requesting a song in praise of the White House. Shin refused, which is not something to which dictators take kindly. Not long afterwards, he released “Beautiful Rivers and Mountains”:

Beautiful Rivers and Mountains

Blue sky
White clouds
A thread of wind rises
To fill my heart

Blue-green leaves
Blue-green river
In this beautiful place
You’re here and I’m here

Hold my hand, let’s go and see, run and see that wilderness
Let’s come together and speak of our new dreams

Blue sky
White clouds
A thread of wind rises
To fill my heart

Into this world
We were born
This beautiful place
This proud place
We will live

The brilliant red sun
Glitters on the white waves
Together they overflow the ocean
How good it is to live here!

I will love you with the song I sing

Today I’ll go to meet you and we’ll talk
Time will pass
We will live together, then fade and fall

In this everlasting place
I hunger to create
Our new dream

Spring and summer go,
Fall and winter come
Beautiful rivers and mountains!

Your heart, my heart
Your heart, my heart
Yours and mine are one heart
You and me
Us
Forever
Forever
Our love is eternal, eternal
We are all, all in endless harmony

Now, somehow President Park got it in his head that this song was a political snub, and he probably wasn’t entirely wrong. According to what Young has been able to dig up in various Korean blogs and in an interview with Shin himself, the trouble began when he and his group, The Men, performed the song live on television. Shin had shaved his head for the performance, and the backing group had put up their long hair with traditional women’s hairpins, all of which was considered outrageous at the time. Park’s wife saw the performance and was deeply insulted. The insult was compounded when Shin gave the song to Kim Jeong-mi (김정미), who had a reputation as a twepyejeon (퇴폐적), or decadent, and recorded the song in an exaggeratedly breathy, sexy style.

But what really did Shin in was a conviction for dealing marijuana. According to a recent interview, he played a gig at one of Korea’s biggest theaters, and the many Western hippies on hand — apparently some of the hippie vagabonds on the Asian trail made it all the way to the Hermit Kingdom — gave him so much marijuana that he ended up supplying the whole Korean rock scene for a while, though never indulging himself. (This is what the man says, anyway.) Once he was busted, the authorities had every excuse to ban Shin from performing and to ban a number of his songs from being played on the radio. Still, he remained an important pop composer, and his songs were often major hits recorded by Korea’s biggest stars.

The ban was finally lifted in the 1980s, when Shin began recording and performing again. In 1997, there was a major tribute concert and a renewed interest in Shin’s career, and he is now widely respected as one of the most influential Korean pop artists of all time.

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[korean psychedelia]

아마 늦은 여름이었을 거야 (It Was Probably Late Summer) by 산울림 (Sanullim/Sanulrim) (Love, Peace & Poetry: Asian Psychedelic Music)

아름다음 강산 (Beautiful Landscape) by 신중현 (Shin Jung-hyeon/Shin Jung-hyun) (Love, Peace & Poetry: Asian Psychedelic Music)

Yesterday, in a thrift store in Park Slope, I stumbled upon a fascinating artifact of the roots of Korean pop culture: a compilation called Love, Peace & Poetry: Asian Psychedelic Music, which includes two Korean psychedelic rock songs from the 1970s. The CD is part of a series of psychedelic rock compilations from all over the world. On this volume, curator Stan Denski has also turned up tracks from Japan, Cambodia, Turkey, China and Singapore.

Today I showed my new CD to my colleague Young and was surprised to find that she recognized both Korean artists. Sanullim is a trio whose name means “mountain echo.” They’re well known as one of the founders of Korean rock, and this song is from their 1977 debut. When I then showed the CD to Counsellor Yoon, a music buff whose office is across the hall from mine, he immediately began humming “It Was Probably Late Summer” and told me he and his friends had seen Sanullim live back in ’77 or ’78.

Shin Jung-hyeong is even more important, and Young claims he’s one of her favorite singers. He began his career playing for American GIs in 1955, and gradually he developed his own style, becoming the Jimi Hendrix of Korea, as Yoon put it, and launching Korean rock pretty much single-handedly.

The song showcased here, “Beautiful Landscape,” is a hit from 1972 that has been widely covered. The translation of the title doesn’t quite do it justice — the word used for “beauty” is the Korean rather than the Chinese term, giving it an earthy feel, while the word for “landscape” is literally “river-mountain,” a much more poetic term. It’s essentially a paean to the Korean landscape, but the paranoid, authoritarian regime of Park Chung Hee managed to find something wrong with it, and with similarly simple lyrics from other songs, and made Shin suffer for it.

As with the Brazilian Tropicalists who were similarly persecuted, Shin was eventually rehabilitated and today is recognized as one of Korea’s greatest musicians. According to Young, he receives tributes from Korean pop stars of all stripes, who see him as an inspiration.