Some Korean news I’m thinking about: Kim Jong Il is not so busy with the Euna Lee and Laura Ling controversy that he doesn’t have time to, uh, give notes to the performers of Eugene Onegin. Also, North Korea has a cafepress store. This may be complicated by the recently tightened UN Sanctions. I am [...]
Entries Tagged as ‘Korea’
September 24, 2008
An Army of Dancing Cats With Pistols Can Never Be Defeated
This might be my favorite collection of post tags ever. For today’s post, some out-takes from a day of teaching. First up, from a discussion in my graphic novel class of Guy Delisle’s Pyongyang, a North Korean animated children’s show, made over into a satire by the addition of “subtitles”. Guy Delisle was in North [...]
May 19, 2008
Our Robot Masters Will Know How To Clean This Mess Up
My new favorite band. If you’ve been sitting down for more than an hour, maybe press play and stand up and see what happens. “It was more terrifying than facing the god of death.” “My mother destroyed all pictures of my father, for fear the family would get an image as leftists,” said Koh Chung-ryol, [...]
May 13, 2008
Tomorrow’s Koreanish Stars Today
People Magazine is catching a certain amount of flack this morning for having published an item that misidentifies a photo of Karl Yune as Rain, in the new Speed Racer film. Speed Racer, it’s worth pointing out, has 3 young attractive men of Korean descent on the cast, setting what might be a record for [...]
April 10, 2008
Back In The Town Where I Met Stephen Beachy And Had Blue Hair
When I was an MFA student, Stephen Beachy’s beautiful debut novel, The Whistling Song, was one of my talismanic objects of worship kept close to my bedtable (Anna Karenina is there right now). Stephen is one of my heroes, and he surprised me by showing up at my reading here in San Francisco last night [...]
September 30, 2007
No Regret
From yesterday’s search term traffic stats, my favorite one so far: korean artistes and sleep around This week’s new Google Search header image for this week comes from the film No Regret, a Korean independent film released last year, a love story between a young orphaned college student, who supports himself as a male escort, [...]
July 24, 2007
Cheonhajangsa Madonna
From the site Junge Jurnalisten’s coverage of the Berlin Gay Film Festival, a description of Cheonhajangsa Madonna, also called Like A Virgin: Ssireum [Korean wrestling] is respect for your opponent and for yourself. It takes a wrestler’s inner strength to grab hold of the belt, search for a weak point and throw his rival through [...]
June 7, 2007
bROKe in Korea
The star of this week’s Google Image-search Custom Header is an anonymous Korean punk rocker found through bROKe In Korea, a message board for Korean punk rockers. I’m researching Korean speed metal bands for my third novel. If anyone can help or wants to help, leave me a message here or email me at emperor [...]
